1 . When it comes to protecting your mental health, you can take steps to adjust your daily routine to be a bit kinder to yourself. Here’s some of the advice some experts offered.

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Stephanie Roth-Goldberg, a licensed clinical social worker, says this could mean allowing time to relax with your coffee for a few minutes before leaving the house or getting some physical activity before work. See how long you need to accomplish something good for yourself.    2    !

Take breaks during the workday

    3     — it can do wonders for your concentration and overall mood. If you don’t have a lot of opportunities to take breaks, Goldberg recommends going for a short walk or even visiting a friend at their desk to help break up the day.

Designate a screen-free time during the day

Goldberg explains that designating a time during the day when you completely disconnect from screens is “a great mental health tool that people don’t make use of.”    4    It’s commonly recommended to disconnect before bed, though. “Spending time away from screens allows for creativity, connection and feelings that otherwise would not happen,” she says.

Set up a bedtime routine

Getting enough high-quality sleep is essential to our mental and physical health. Katie Leikam, a licensed clinical social worker, recommends setting up a nighttime routine to ensure you get the shut-eye you need.     5    and turn off your lights at the same time every night. “This will help you obtain better sleep, which is one of the best things you can do for your mental health,” says Leikam.

2 . We all know how colors alter how we feel when looking at pictures, but shapes are just as powerful in affecting us psychologically. They not only provide the framework for the physical world,     1    . By understanding the science of shapes, you can effectively utilize (利用) them in your photography.

Because of its structure, the triangle is often used to represent perseverance and achievement. Its wide base indicates the struggle or the journey,     2    . That’s why when you search for images of “success”, it’s not surprising to see hundreds of photos of people on top of hills or mountains that are, of course, shaped like triangles.

    3    . Apart from the rule of thirds, many photographers (as well as artists) like to use what’s called the golden triangle rule in their composition. It involves arranging elements (原理) in a triangle to create a harmonious and symmetrical (对称的) image.

Squares and, similarly, rectangles are the most common shapes you see in man-made objects.     4    . People like them because they’re simple, balanced, solid, and secure.

The square’s positive attributes aren’t just limited to physical entities; it also works well in adding emotional and aesthetic (审美的) layers to images.     5    . When put together, it also creates a pattern that feels orderly and industrial.

4 . Not only does Linda Greenlaw do one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, but she also does it extremely well. She has been described as “one of the best captains on the entire East coast”.     1    

Linda was born and brought up on Isle au Haut, a tiny island ten kilometers off the coast of Maine, the USA. She fell in love with fishing as a child, and she worked on fishing boats during her summer breaks from college.     2     Alden Leeman, a man she’d never met before, hired her for thirty days on his swordfishing (捕箭鱼的) boat. The trip was a success and eventually Alden offered Linda her first boat to captain in 1986, which probably made her the only woman ever to captain a swordfishing boat.

    3     Linda says that not only does she like the way she feels on a boat, but she also gets passionate about catching a fish. More than anything, she’s proud of being a fisherman, even more than she is of being a best-selling author.

Linda has published four books to date.     4     In it, Linda tells the story of one fishing trip and describes the adventures she experienced on board with her five-man crew, including bad weather, sickness. mechanical problems and, of course, the fish.

But the world of fish and fishing is a man’s world.     5     In her own words, she says: “I am a woman. I am a fisherman. I am not a ‘fisherwoman’, ‘fisherlady’ or ‘fishergirl’.”

5 . Reasonable people should not have blind faith in the medical profession.     1     We have to check out the medicine we take. We have to ask for second and even third opinions. We must do some research. We have to use our common sense and be informed about our health care.

While it is true that modern Western medicine has risks, we shouldn’t reject it totally.     2     Most people who get good medical care are healthier and live longer.

If this is the case why has “alternative” health care become so popular in North America and Europe? Often the fear of surgery motivates people to look for these alternatives. Many people think that these treatments will help even when the situation seems hopeless to Western doctors.     3     Surgeons perform dangerous surgery, but natural healers (治疗师) do not seem to give dangerous treatments. People don’t think alternative care would kill anyone by mistake.     4     No one wants to go to a doctor in a cold hospital clinic. Since some doctors don’t have a nice “bedside manner”, people like the attention they get from alternative healers.

    5     All doctors and healers are human beings who can make mistakes. They can miss things and waste valuable time. No matter what happens, we have to think about all of the different options. Remember, there are millions of patients who are alive and well today because of “conventional” Western medicine.

6 . The Covid-19 pandemic has forced millions of us to participate in one of the biggest social experiments of our time: what would happen if office workers largely abandoned their workplaces and began working from home?    1    

One thing seems clear: more people working remotely has brought some benefits for the environment. Wildlife has be enable to reclaim urban spaces while people have been tapping away at their home keyboards, with less commuter (通勤者) traffic.

    2    The major benefits of home working include people having more flexibility to do jobs around their family, and balance exercise and leisure time, thus being able to wear whatever they like, controlling their own heating and lighting and not having to commute.

Many people have also been able to get more done while working remotely.    3     “There used to be a lot of resistance to working from home because managers thought employees would just go of off and watch soap operas, but there’s a lot more trust now,” says Sue Williamson at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia.

    4    Many people forced to work from home have reported feeling isolated and finding it harder to switch off due to the unclear boundary between work and home life.    5    This is probably because it’s hard to get those accidental conversations between people that spark ideas when everyone is physically separated.

As vaccines help to control Covid-19, many organizations are hoping to reap the best of both worlds by letting employees work from home on some days and travel to the office on others.

Blood: Water Mission is founded by the Grammy Award-winning band, Jars of Clay.     1     And Blood: Water Mission is one of them with a mission to help communities to fight against the HIV/AIDS and water crisis.

    2     So Blood: Water Mission has launched the 1,000 Wells Project as a nationwide movement to raise enough money to provide clean water to 1,000 communities in Africa based on the equation (公式) that $1 provides one African with clean water for an entire year.     3     It includes a variety of clean water solutions and sanitation (卫生) training, as well as funding health clinics, which help in the prevention, treatment, care and support of communities affected by AIDS.

The results of our efforts paint a new picture in these communities. There has been a remarkable improvement in the water situation and community health.     4     Women and children no longer walk several miles a day to get water. Village leaders have the resources and training to bring sanitation and healthcare into their communities. Water-related diseases have disappeared. Those with AIDS are living longer lives.

    5     In the process, we learn about how AIDS affects African communities. By connecting with the people in Africa, we are developing social responsibility. In the meanwhile, Blood: Water Mission’s movement engages Americans in social justice and thoughtful action.

It’s a beautiful story. We invite you to be a small part of a larger, beautiful story.

8 . Bring back the night

Our lives are ruled by time and we use time to tell us what to do. But the digital alarm clock that wakes us in the morning or the wristwatch that tells us we are late for supper are unnatural clocks. Our biology dances to a more ancient beat that probably started to work in our humans’ early life.

The instructions for a biological clock are fixed within our genes, and those of almost all life on Earth. And they also affect our levels of attention, mood, physical strength, blood pressure and much more.     1    

Biological clocks help time our sleep patterns. This marks the passage of approximately 24 hours and controls everything we do. Our clocks are even used to predict the differing demands of the 24-hour day and adapt our behavior in advance of changing conditions.

    2     By contrast, as dawn approaches, our bodies get themselves ready for increased activity when we wake. Few of us appreciate this internal world, however. We are drawn by an apparent freedom to sleep, work, eat, drink or travel when we want.

Body clocks differ between people. If you are alert in the morning and go to bed early, you are a morning “lark”, but if you hate mornings and want to keep going through the night, you are a night “owl”.     3     In our first decade, we tend to wake early, but by the time we are teenagers, bedtimes and getting-up times become later and later.

This habit of getting up later continues until we are about 20 years old.     4     By the age of 55—60 we are getting up as early as we did when we were 10. This could explain why young adults really do have a problem getting up in the morning. They show both delayed sleep and lack of sleep because they are going to bed late but still having to get up early in the morning.

We humans have welcomed the freedom to do what we want, when we want to do it. Our 24/7 society has affected the night, an apparent victory of civilization over nature.     5     Disrupting sleep actually has a negative effect on our brains and that drives many of us to substitute the rhythm normally imposed by internal time with coffee and sugary snacks to give us energy and keep us awake. But we have not achieved freedom. We have just created a 24/7 timetable which we cannot keep to without damaging our health.

10 . Apps play tricks on you to turn an activity into a habit. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to encourage healthy behaviors such as exercising or playing word games.    1    . Here’s how to recognize when your tech habit might be an unwelcome obsession (着迷), and practical steps for you to take back control.

Do a cost-benefit analysis.    2    That’s why we need to try doubly hard to do self-assessments of how features such as streaks (打卡时间) or leaderboards are helping and hurting us. Think over whether the behavior they inspire in you contributes to or detracts from your welfare.

Build in “cheat days”. They are like days off from a strict diet.    3    It can also help to schedule days off from our habits—whether it’s running, reading the news or scrolling Instagram.

    4    Especially for young people, it can be helpful to plan in advance activities that might be a distraction. If your teen knows he’s allowed one hour on YouTube at 7 p.m., then he can relax without thinking about when he’ll be able to hop on his favorite app.

    5    Tech companies, schools, social institutions and governments all have a responsibility to help reset standards of technology use. For example, schools have experimented with locking up students’ phones so they can’t use them during the school day. And the government in some countries have restricted the time young people are allowed to spend playing video games or using social media apps.