1 . Adults understand what it feels like to be flooded with objects. Why do we often assume that more is more when it comes to kids and their belongings? The good news is that I can help my own kids learn earlier than I did how to live more with less.

I found the pre-holidays a good time to encourage young children to donate less-used things, and it worked. Because of our efforts, our daughter Georgia did decide to donate a large bag of toys to a little girl whose mother was unable to pay for her holiday due to illness. She chose to sell a few larger objects that were less often used when we promised to put the money into her school fund(基金）(our kindergarten daughter is serious about becoming a doctor)

For weeks, I’ve been thinking of bigger, deeper questions: How do we make it a habit for them? And how do we train ourselves to help them live with, need, and use less? Yesterday, I sat with my son, Shepherd, determined to test my own theory on this. I decided to play with him with only one toy for as long as it would keep his interest. I expected that one toy would keep his attention for about five minutes, ten minutes, max. I chose a red rubber ball — simple, universally available. We passed it, he tried to put it in his mouth, he tried bouncing it, rolling it, sitting on it, throwing it. It was totally, completely enough for him. Before I knew it an hour had passed and it was time to move on to lunch.

We both became absorbed in the simplicity of playing together. He had my full attention and I had his. My little experiment to find joy in a single object worked for both of us.

2 . Cities usually have a good reason for being where they are, like a nearby port or river. People settle in these places because they are easy to get to and naturally suited to communications and trade. New York City, for example, is near a large harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River. Over 300 years its population grew gradually from 800 people to 8 million. But not all cities develop slowly over a long period of time. Boom towns grow from nothing almost overnight. In 1896, Dawson, Canada, was unmapped wilderness(荒野). But gold was discovered there in 1897, and two years later, it was one of the largest cities in the West, with a population of 30,000.

Dawson did not have any of the natural conveniences of cities like London or Paris. People went there for gold. They travelled over snow-covered mountains and sailed hundreds of miles up icy rivers. The path to Dawson was covered with thirty feet of wet snow that could fall without warming. An avalanche(雪崩) once closed the path, killing 63 people. For many who made it to Dawson, however, the rewards were worth the difficult trip. Of the first 20,000 people who dug for gold, 4,000 got rich. About 100 of these stayed rich men for the rest of their lives.

But no matter how rich they were, Dawson was never comfortable. Necessities like food and wood were very expensive. But soon, the gold that Dawson depended on had all been found. The city was crowded with disappointed people with no interest in settling down, and when they heard there were new gold discoveries in Alaska, they left Dawson City as quickly as they had come. Today, people still come and go — to see where the Canadian gold rush happened. Tourism is now the chief industry of Dawson City — its present population is 762.

3 . The problem of robocalls has gotten so bad that many people now refuse to pick up calls from numbers they don’t know. By next year, half of the calls we receive will be scams（欺诈）. We are finally waking up to the severity of the problem by supporting and developing a group of tools, apps and approaches intended to prevent scammers from getting through. Unfortunately, it’s too little, too late. By the time these ＂solutions"（解决方案）become widely available, scammers will have moved onto cleverer means. In the near future, it’s not just going to be the number you see on your screen that will be in doubt. Soon you will also question whether the voice you’re hearing is actually real.

That’s because there are a number of powerful voice manipulation ( 处理 ) and automation technologies that are about to become widely available for anyone to use. At this year’s I/O Conference, a company showed a new voice technology able to produce such a convincing human-sounding voice that it was able to speak to a receptionist and book a reservation without detection.

These developments are likely to make our current problems with robocalls much worse. The reason that robocalls are a headache has less to do with amount than precision. A decade of data breaches（数据侵入）of personal information has led to a situation where scammers can easily learn your mother’s name, and far more. Armed with this knowledge, they’re able to carry out individually targeted campaigns to cheat people. This means, for example, that a scammer could call you from what looks to be a familiar number and talk to you using a voice that sounds exactly like your bank teller’s, tricking you into "confirming" your address, mother’s name, and card number. Scammers follow money, so companies will be the worst hit. A lot of business is still done over the phone, and much of it is based on trust and existing relationships. Voice manipulation technologies may weaken that gradually.

We need to deal with the insecure nature of our telecom networks. Phone carriers and consumers need to work together to find ways of determining and communicating what is real. That might mean either developing a uniform way to mark videos and images, showing when and who they were made by, or abandoning phone calls altogether and moving towards data-based communications — using apps like FaceTime or WhatsApp, which can be tied to your identity.

Credibility is hard to earn but easy to lose, and the problem is only going to get harder from here on out.

4 . Today’s world is not an easy adjustment for young adults. A key skill set for success is persistence (毅力), a characteristic that researchers say is heavily influenced by fathers. Researchers from Brigham Young University discovered that fathers are in a unique position to help their adolescent children learn persistence.

BYU professors Laura Padilla-Walker and Randal Day arrived at these findings after following 325 American families over several years. And over time, the persistence gained through fathers led to higher achievement in school.

“There are relatively few studies that stress the unique role of fathers,” Padilla-Walker said. “This research also helps to prove that characteristics such as persistence — which can be taught — are key to a child’s life success.”

Researchers determined that dads need to practice an “authoritative” parenting style. Authoritative parenting is not authoritarian: rigid, demanding or controlling. Rather, an authoritative parenting style includes some of the following characteristics: children feel warmth and love from their father; responsibility and the reasons behind rules are stressed; children are given an appropriate level of autonomy (自主权).

In the study, about 52 percent of the dads exhibited above-average levels of authoritative parenting. A key finding is that over time, children raised by an authoritative father were significantly more likely to develop persistence, which leads to better outcomes in school.

This particular study examined 11 to 14-year-olds living in two-parent homes. Yet the researchers suggest that single parents still may play a role in teaching the benefits of persistence, which is an avenue of future research.

5 . With the young unable to afford to leave home and the old at risk of isolation(孤独), more families are choosing to live together.

The doorway to peace and quiet, for Nick Bright at least, leads straight to his mother-in-law: she lives on the ground floor, while he lives upstairs with his wife and their two daughters.

Four years ago they all moved into a three-storey Victorian house in Bristol — one of a growing number of multigenerational families in the UK living together under the same roof. They share a front door and a washing machine, but Rita Whitehead has her own kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room on the ground floor.

“We floated the idea to my mum of sharing a house,” says Kathryn Whitehead. Rita cuts in: “We spoke more with Nick because I think it’s a big thing for Nick to live with his mother-in-law.”

And what does Nick think? “From my standpoint, it all seems to work very well. Would I recommend it? Yes, I think I would.”

It’s hard to tell exactly how many people agree with him, but research indicates that the numbers have been rising for some time. Official reports suggest that the number of households with three generations living together had risen from 325,000 in 2001 to 419,000 in 2013.

Other varieties of multigenerational family are more common. Some people live with their elderly parents; many more adult children are returning to the family home, if they ever left. It is said that about 20% of 25-34-year-olds live with their parents, compared with 16% in 1991.The total number of all multigenerational households in Britain is thought to be about 1.8 million.

Stories like that are more common in parts of the world where multigenerational living is more firmly rooted. In India, particularly outside cities, young women are expected to move in with their husband’s family when they get married.

6 . During an interview for one of my books, my interviewer said something I still think about often. Annoyed by the level of distraction（干扰）in his open office, he said, “That’s why I have a membership at the coworking space across the street — so I can focus”. His comment struck me as strange. After all, coworking spaces also typically use an open office layout（布局）. But I recently came across a study that shows why his approach works.

The researchers examined various levels of noise on participants as they completed tests of creative thinking. They were randomly divided into four groups and exposed to various noise levels in the background, from total silence to 50 decibels（分贝）, 70 decibels, and 85 decibels. The differences between most of the groups were statistically insignificant; however, the participants in the 70 decibels group — those exposed to a level of noise similar to background chatter in a coffee shop — significantly outperformed the other groups. Since the effects were small, this may suggest that our creative thinking does not differ that much in response to total silence and 85 decibels of background noise.

But since the results at 70 decibels were significant, the study also suggests that the right level of background noise — not too loud and not total silence — may actually improve one’s creative thinking ability. The right level of background noise may interrupt our normal patterns of thinking just enough to allow our imaginations to wander, without making it impossible to focus. This kind of “distracted focus” appears to be the best state for working on creative tasks.

So why do so many of us hate our open offices? The problem may be that, in our offices, we can’t stop ourselves from getting drawn into others’ conversations while we’re trying to focus. Indeed, the researchers found that face-to-face interactions and conversations affect the creative process, and yet a coworking space or a coffee shop provides a certain level of noise while also providing freedom from interruptions.