3 . In today’s day and age of one click purchases and immediately accessible information, instant gratification (满足) is seen as the norm. The always — on world, with smartphones and Wi-Fi, reinforces that you have to get what you want right away. But instant gratification isn’t always best in fact, impulse control is an essential life skill. When it comes to achieving your goals, delayed gratification is the skill that will get you there faster.

The truth is, it’s not realistic to get everything you want, much less get it immediately. Instant gratification is actually a source of frustration — it creates false expectations. By learning to employ delayed gratification, you buy time to strategize thoughtfully and learn from your failures.

Delayed gratification means resisting the temptation of an immediate reward, in anticipation that there will be a greater reward later. Those with high impulse control typically excel at delayed gratification.

According to Freud’s “pleasure principle”, humans are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. This is why children seek instant gratification. But as we mature, this desire is tempered by the “reality” principle, or the ability of humans to consider risks versus rewards, by which we’re able to delay fulfillment instead of making a poor decision — especially if the later reward is greater than the one we’d get immediately.

The ability to hold out now for a better reward later allows you to save money for a vacation, skip dessert to lose weight or take a job you don’t love but that will help your career later on.

In the 1960s, Stanford professor Walter Mischel tested hundreds of young children by placing each child in a private room, accompanied only by a single candy placed on the table. Researchers then offered each child a deal: If the child refrained from eating the candy while researchers briefly left the room, the child would be rewarded with a second one; otherwise there would be no second one. Some children ate the first candy immediately. Others tried to restrain themselves but eventually gave in. Only a few children managed to hold out for the two-candy reward.

Researchers followed the experiment participants into adulthood over a span of 40 years. Unlike the children giving in to temptation, the children who delayed their reward were far more successful in almost all areas of life. They scored higher on standardized tests, were healthier, responded better to stress, had fewer substance abuse issues and demonstrated better social skills. This delayed gratification example proved that it is crucial to success in almost every facet of life.

4 . There’s a lot being said out there about the state of women in this country. The gender gap still exists when it comes to salary, confidence, happiness, and the number of women in the C-suite and science. Women aren’t as happy as they were in the 1970s, and their happiness relative to that of men has taken a nosedive (暴跌).

But it’s not all doom and gloom (无望). A recent study shows there’s one career path in which women’s happiness is greater than men’s: entrepreneurship. One out of every 10 women in the U.S. today is starting or running her own business. More than a third of those women want to expand their business beyond five employees. Women with established businesses ranked their happiness nearly three times as high as women who are not entrepreneurs.

Women are most likely to run or start a business between the ages of 35 and 44 — a period in which moms are more likely to be taking care of young kids at home. The flexibility of entrepreneurship may very well attract such women during this busy time in their lives. “Our research found that the benefits of entrepreneurship are beyond economic and social value,”professor Donna Kelley and the lead author of the report said. “Clearly, entrepreneurship provides women with a most satisfying career choice.”

The happiness doesn’t translate for women just getting started with their business, who report lower levels of happiness than women working for an employer, though still slightly higher levels than men in the same position as them. The reason for this may very well be the gender confidence gap. As women’s businesses mature and become more successful, their levels of happiness surge. “Confidence is a belief in one’s ability to succeed, a belief that stimulates action. In turn, taking action improves one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed.”they write.

And the links between confidence and happiness are plentiful. The happiness-success link exists not only because success makes people happy, but also because positive emotion creates success. For women, entrepreneurial success may be the key to a happy career. And as more women start and run their own businesses, the world may just be a happier place.

5 . After graduating from college, Tan Minyan decided to become a cemetery custodian (守墓人).

“With four colleagues, I don’t need to worry about any complicated relationships,” the 22-year-old girl shared on her Sina Weibo. “Moreover, my office, dormitory (宿舍) and canteen are in the same building, the pace of work is slow and I almost feel as if I have retired early.” Her decision has caused heated discussion on social media in November about how young people nowadays can deal with social anxiety and benefit from genuine interpersonal relationships.

According to the survey by China Youth Daily, more than 80 percent of the nearly 5,000 college students questioned said they bad mild social anxiety disorder. The disorder surfaces most frequently when speaking in front of large groups, communicating with strangers and asking for favors.

Cheng Qiang, who works for a media group in Beijing, is one of them. The 29-year-old young man told China Daily he started having social anxiety disorder in middle school. To avoid contact with coworkers, Cheng often wore a mask even when going to the toilet or kitchen so he would encounter fewer people.

“The disorder becomes more severe when I am around people who know me but are not close,” he told China Daily. “Their attention makes me nervous, and I don’t know how to respond.”

Wang Wenda, a psychology lecturer, found that most of the people who suffer from social anxiety are introverted (内向的), la ck confidence or social skills, or have suffered traumatic (生成创伤的) interpersonal relationships. Wang also believes that the disorder is not trivial. It may lead to panic attacks and other psychological problems as a result of a lack of contact with other people.

According to China Daily, Wang’s suggested solution was as follows: People with social anxiety disorder should go out and expose themselves to more social gatherings and practice their social skills, adding that through greater social experience and small successes in social encounters, they will reap the benefits of having a real social life and come to enjoy positive interpersonal relations.

6 . You have to get to your job interview, but you don’t have access to an automobile. How would you solve this dilemma (困境)? Most people would probably call an Uber or perhaps ask a friend or family member for a ride. But not this Indiana woman. Kasia Shelton from Muncie has been arrested for stealing a vehicle from a local dealership (经销商). According to police reports, the 20-year-old used the 2013 Kia Optima to drive to a job interview in Indianapolis.

The auto theft happened on Monday, October 9. On the day, Shelton arrived at RDI Motors in Muncie and asked an employee to see a certain 2013 Kia Optima. He showed the car to Shelton and we can only assume he talked in length about its great condition for its age, the features, and the reliability. The employee later told the police that Shelton seemed interested in the car and asked to take it for a test drive. But while he was talking to her and preparing the car for a drive, the dealership’s telephone kept ringing and ringing. He said that he had to excuse himself constantly to go pick up the phone, yet there was never anybody on the other end of the line. The last time the phone rang was just as the employee had gotten the car ready for Shelton to take it for a test drive. When he got back from the phone, Shelton and the Kia were gone.

The RDI employee immediately called the Muncie Police Department. The police then began using the Flock camera surveillance system (监控系统) in an attempt to spot the car. A while later, they saw the car again, this time returning to Muncie. After that, the cameras lost the car, but we now know that Shelton drove it back to RDI Motors. Finding out wasn’t too difficult. The police said they were able to connect the car to Shelton because she had filled out an online form on RDI Motors’ website.   

When the police later showed up at Shelton’s door, she seemed confused and thought the officers were pulling off some kind of a joke. She genuinely didn’t seem to understand what she was getting arrested for. After all, she returned the Kia to the dealership once she was done with her trip. She didn’t plan to keep it, so what’s the big deal?

Whether she understood the reason why or not, Shelton was arrested. She has been charged with auto theft, which could land her in prison for up to two and a half years.

7 . Not Even Wrong

My eight-year-old son, lack, is a boy with autism (孤独症). Even though I always hear from others that he is very bright and he is making enough progress to meet goals, I am still anxious walking into their parents’ meetings.

Last fall’s parents’ meeting was even worse for me. I noticed Jack making a great effort to keep up with others. Some parents watched Jack and whispered (窃窃私语) and no children were willing to play with him. I started to see the social divide between Jack and his peers (同龄人) widening.

After the parents’ meeting, his teacher spent long time talking to me. She told me that it was getting more difficult for Jack to meet goals just because he was bright. Some teachers and students always complained (抱怨) about Jack’s actions. She also advised me to think about whether the normal class was the best setting for him. Hearing these words, I was very upset.

Then she blew my mind. She showed me one example of Jack’s works and said, “I didn’t know how to grade this. It’s not even wrong, but it’s not right.” I grasped when she said “not even wrong”, which is the name of one of my favorite books on autism, by Paul Collins. The book says a girl whose idea is so far off base but it is not even wrong. It perfectly describes autism and it perfectly describes Jack.

In his book, Paul Collins wrote, “Children with autism are like the square pegs (钉，桩). Hitting a square peg into a round hole is hard work. What’s worse, it’s destroying the square pegs.”

As a mother of a boy with autism, I want to help find more square holes. I want this world to be a world where it is okay to be a square peg without having to pretend to be round. We have been hammering (锤打) square pegs into round holes for a long time. Now we should put down the hammers. And I hope that some of those kids told their parents. And I hope that some of you read this and tell your kids. And I hope that we, all of us together, CAN change the world.

8 . As COVID-19 continues to influence consumer behavior, the use of non-plastic payment methods is rising. But does this spell the end of the plastic credit card era?

Since the first Diners Club credit card was unveiled in 1950, much has changed. Recent technological developments and in-store consumer preferences could suggest times are changing. For some years now, various founders of financial institutions, as well as industry experts, have foreseen plastic credit cards or any other means of physical payment methods including cash will not be around much longer. They based their predictions on the light-speed growth of digital payment.

At the beginning of the global pandemic (大流行病), governments took measures to protect their citizens, leading to lockdowns of varying degrees. The fear of contracting the virus through high-traffic ATMs and the refusal of merchants to accept cash can only be seen as a great addition to an already declared war on cash. Meanwhile, the urgency to spend a minimum time period in stores in order to avoid interactions led consumers towards digital solutions.

Furthermore, options like QR codes (二维码), NFC, and PINs have been around for a while but a true market breakthrough seems to only have happened since the beginning of the pandemic. According to Worldpay, without these telecommunication innovations, the shift in people’s payment behavior is out of the question. 86% of contactless adapters built into smart devices have seen themselves proceed with contactless payment. This trend will help to wipe out cash and plastic credit cards.

From a different perspective, countries like France, Italy, and Germany had almost 150 million smartphone users in 2019 alone. And it’s been reported that 80% of the transactions (交易) will be done via Internet-backed devices by 2025. And this figure will keep rising as more and more cheap smartphones are pouring into the global market. It is expected that e-wallets are going to be the most preferred payment method by then.

So, will there be a comeback for our beloved plastic spending power? I would put away my cash and plastic cards, switch on my phone instead of inserting cards, and present QR codes at a self-checkout instead of queuing behind a mass of people. I believe that many people think the same way.

10 . How do consumers access, buy and use their favorite products and services? The answer to the seemingly simple question is changing. Traditionally, people often see ownership as the most desirable way to have access to products. However, an increasing number of consumers are paying to temporarily access or share products and services rather than buy or own them Customer behavior towards many goods and services changes from ownership to sharing. This transformation of people’s consumption, habits has made sharing economy grow and it seems that some individuals and companies have already benefited from this trend.

Growth in sharing systems bas particularly been fueled by the Internet with the rise of social media systems. Anyone can be part of the sharing economy. It is reported that of the 44 percent of U.S. adults who are familiar with the sharing economy, 86 percent say it makes life more affordable, 83 percent say it makes life more convenient and efficient, and 78 percent say it builds a stronger community. The central idea of group consumption is simple: Obtain value which remains in goods or services that are not entirely used by their owners.

A recent survey from Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the largest professional service firm in the world, shows this so-called “sharing economy” is growing faster than ever. Although we are not sure about the current size of this market, by 2025, according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the sharing economy could represent $335 billion in profit worldwide. Nowadays, well-known examples of successful corporations built on group consumption systems include Airbnb, a San Francisco-based online accommodations marketplace, and Zipcar, a car sharing brand that is now part of the vehicle rental service company.

The speed of its growth suggests that the sharing economy might represent a serious threat to established industries, due to fewer purchases in conventional markets. For consumers, it seems to bold the advantage to unite cost reduction, benefit expansion, convenience and environmental consciousness in one type of consumption. Companies therefore should understand the new situation and manage their operating system in order to adapt to current and future business models to provide new sources of profits within this growing area of the sharing economy.