1 . Advice for Cooking on a Tight Schedule

From my experience, there are three main reasons why people don’t cook more often: ability, money, and time.

    1    Money is a topic that I’ll talk about another day. So today I want to give you some advice about how to make the most of the time in the kitchen. Here are three tips for great cooking on a tight schedule:

Think ahead. I usually think cooking is a pain when I’m already hungry and there is nothing ready to eat. So think ahead of the coming week. When will you have time to cook? Do you have the right materials already?    2    

Make your time worth it. When you do find time to cook a meal, make the most of it and save yourself time later on. Are you making one loaf of bread?    3    It takes around the same amount of time to make more of something. So save yourself the effort for a future meal.

    4    This may surprise you, but one of the best ways to make cooking worth your time is experimentation. It gives you the chance to hit upon new ideas and recipes that can work well. The more you learn and the more you try, the more ability you have to take control of your food and your schedule.

Hopefully that gives you a good start.    5    And don’t let a busy schedule disappoint you and stop you from making some great changes in your life!

2 . Lots of people find it hard to get up in the morning and put the blame on the alarm clock. In fact, the key to easy morning wake-up lies in resting your body clock     1    . Here is how to make one.

•     2     In order to make a change, you need to decide why it’s important. Do you want to get up in time to have breakfast with your family, get in some exercise or just be better prepared for your day? Once you are clear about your reason, tell your family or roommates about the change you want to make.

• Rethink mornings. Now that you know why you want to wake up, consider re-arranging your morning activities. If you want time to have breakfast with your family, save some time the night before by setting out clothes, shoes, and bags.     3     That’s a quarter-hour more you could be sleeping if you bought a coffee maker with a timer.

• Keep your sleep/wake schedule on weekends. If you’re tired out by Friday night, sleeping in on Saturday could sound wonderful. But compensating (弥补) on the weekends actually feeds into your sleepiness the following week, a recent study found.     4    .

• Keep a record and evaluate it weekly. Keep track of your efforts and write down how you feel. After you’ve tried a new method for a week, take a look at your record.     5     If not, take another look at other methods you could try.

3 . We humans love to stare into our smart devices. We gaze for hours—about 10 hours and 39 minutes a day—at our computers, smartphones, tablets and televisions. Is all this staring bad for us?   It might be, mainly because as we stare at our devices we are exposing ourselves to blue light.

Blue light is a type of electromagnetic radiation with a very short wavelength that produces a high amount of energy. While it’s true that light can damage our eyes under certain circumstances, there’s no scientific evidence suggesting that blue light is harmful to our eyes. But many people still think it is, which is why blue-light-blocking glasses are so popular. So, do the glasses work?

“Everyone is very concerned that blue light may be causing damage to the eye, but there’s no evidence that it may be causing serious damage, ” Dr. Rahul Khurana, a clinical spokesman, told Business Insider.

Blue light exposure is nothing new. In fact, the sun is the largest source of blue light. Moreover, blue light is also present in LED light. But if blue light isn’t harmful, then why are we constantly rubbing our eyes when we’re looking at our screens?   The answer is eyestrain (眼疲劳). More than 60 percent of people experience eye problems associated with digital eyestrain. And blue light, it seems isn’t the cause. Instead, our eyes are so strained because most of us blink less when we stare at our digital devices. So, if eyestrain is the real issue, blue-light-blocking glasses are probably of little use.

9 . I learned Japanese a few years ago. I can say that learning a language is a huge challenge to me.    1    Here are a few tips from experts which can help you become fluent.

Know why you're studying a language.

Learning a language is not something you can just pick up and put away as you please. As Language Testing International points out, some languages can take up to 2, 760 hours to learn well. Even easier languages, like French and Spanish, will still take 720 hours. No one can do that much work on their own without serious motivation.     2    Write it down where you can see it to keep yourself motivated.

Practice.

You can't just do a lot of practice for one day and then take three-days off.    3    Set a regular chedule and stick to it. If you can make learning a language a routine, the battle is partly won.

Speak with native speakers.

Talking with a native speaker is the single best way to improve your language skills. But how can you find one?     4    Also ask your friends and family to see if they know someone who speaks your target language.

    5    A language represents people and their culture. If you don't value the people or the culture, then you don't value the language. So make efforts to learn about the native culture if you want to know the native language. Films and TV shows are a good place to start. Newspapers and news shows can also teach you what the people you are studying are interested in.

10 . Traveling to a foreign country can make you frightened if you don't know the local language.Mr.Thibault has a number of tips to help travelers manage in a destination when they don't speak the native tongue, based on his own experience.Here are a few of them.

Download a Language Translation App

Mr.Thibault tends to rely on Google Translate and suggests that travelers find an app that works for them.Ideally, find one that specializes in the language you need to translate especially if the language uses a character set you’re not familiar with, or have difficulty pronouncing.

Speak with Your Hands and Head

Pointing with your hands and nodding or shaking your head, Mr.Thibault said, are easy ways to communicate with locals in the country you’re in.“Gestures are all universally understood，” he said.

Learn a Few Key Words

Knowing basic words and phrases like "hello""thank you” and “I’m sorry，I don’t speak your language.Do you speak English?” is a must, Mr.Thibault said.Showing that you care enough to learn some of the language before you go, and at least enough to acknowledge that you don’t know more, is a form of respect and will make you go a long way to be liked by locals.

Work with a Local Travel Agent

If you feel particularly uncomfortable in the country you’re heading to, and you have to go anyway, relying on a local travel agent who knows both your and your destination's languages can be incredibly useful.

Hire a Local Tour Guide

A tour guide can help you get a better grasp of the local language and is a good person to practice words and phrases with.Whenever Mr.Thibault visits a new country, he books a sightseeing tour with a guide on the first day of his trip.“I use this day to learn about my destination and get familiar with the language,”he said.