Make a Wish List

Most of us know of New Year’s Resolutions, where one sets intentions for the year ahead. But too often, people make their resolutions     1     — “I will no longer eat biscuits left at my desk”— and then feel unhappy. In the cold month of January, the last thing you need is to     2     your energy further by setting up a series of battles with yourself. And if you break a resolution, you feel     3    , which is a rubbish way to start the year. What you need instead are things to look forward to.

So instead, try a wish list. This involves writing down 100 things you would like to do in the year ahead. The items can be enormous or tiny, ranging from “Climb Everest” to “buy a new pencil sharper”. The main thing is that at some point it has     4     to you as something that you would like to do.

The key here is — write it down.

Do you feel any resistance to the ideas? If so, ask yourself why. What is wrong with     5     what you would like to do? Try not to say to yourself: “I can’t I don’t have the money/time/energy/skills.” Just write it down.

It helps to be     6    , so rather than “Get outdoors”,     7     a place you would like to visit. And take your time when creating it — a wish list is not built in a day. Think about it, polish it and     8     it.

Finally, you have your list. And what a work of beauty it is. Here are all the things that you would like to do. Remember to     9     them up where you can see them; let yourself consider how they can be accomplished. You’ll be amazed that so many of your dreams can be realized though the simple trick of writing them down and     10     to them.

Happiness is not natural.It is a here human construct. A state of contentment(let alone happiness) is     1     by our genetic design because it would lower our guard against possible threats to our survival.

Chasing happiness is like chasing an elusive ghost, but the positive thinking industry claims to know its secrets.Self-help was popularized by Norman Vincent Peale, a colorful American pastor,       2    by several Republican presidents, including Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. He invented “positive thinking'", a concept now deeply embedded in our culture and steadily growing in influence.The global personal development industry was valued at S38.28 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a rate of 5.1%.

Popular films and books are full of     3     inspirational statements about how all you need to do is believe in yourself and then you'll be able to achieve anything in life. This is simply, and obviously, not true. I don't think there is a need to explain that many obstacles and misfortunes in life are inevitable, or unsurmountable. Our ancestors knew this, and many philosophical and religious traditions are based on the     4     that being alive is a very challenging task,which comes with significant amounts of suffering. It goes without saying that we should do all we can to maximize our sense of well-being and minimize our suffering, but the end result cannot be a state of     5     happiness.We are not designed that way.

The self-help genre is not a homegeneous beast, however. It is,in fact, ironie how self-help books on happiness and those on how to make it big in life are lumped together in the same bookshop shelves, given that many of the former tell us that caring too much about the latter is the main     6     to happiness.

The inevitable clash between mandatory     7     and the realities of our existence comes with a heavy psychological price. It could be argued that positive psychology blames those who are suffering for their     8     ,as it is based on the misconception that unhappiness is entirely avoidable.It follows therefore that an unhappy person must be inadequate and incompetent.Positive psychology encourages people who are struggling with a particular goal to persevere in the face of unfavorable odds, which is much more     9     psychologically in the long run than accepting defeat.

I believe that coming to     10    with life as it is,and not the happiness industry tells us it could be, will make us happier, and we will feel more at peace with ourselves and with the world. Unfortunately, the devil always has the best tunes.

6 . On Jan. 3, a netizen (网民) nicknamed “Programmer Humor” published a short story on his micro-blog. It said that there was an old lady who swept nearly every inch of his Internet company. When she passed by a programmer, she took a look at the codes on the programmer’s computer and kindly reminded him, “Be careful, the stack is overfilled!”

Certainly, it is a casual and fictitious (虚构的) story made up by the micro-blogger. However, no one would have guessed that the short blog would eventually cause the first great Internet meme (网络快速爆红现象) of 2011 in China. Suddenly, the mysterious “Sweeping Old Lady” is showing up nearly everywhere and reminding professionals of their mistakes. From 8 a. m. on Jan. 5, some netizens collected stories of the “Sweeping Old Lady” and found she had appeared to give advice in 150 kinds of careers. A netizen even said he had met with a similar situation in real life.

Actually, the “Sweeping Old Lady” is not new figure, but is based on the “sweeping monk (和尚)”in Louis Cha’s famous Kung fu novel of “Tian Long Ba Bu”. The “sweeping monk” is an old monk and does the lowest class of work in Shaolin Temple, but he is actually the No. 1 master in the noel both in Kung fu and in the study of Buddhism.

The “Sweeping Old Lady” is also a great modest master. Lots of netizens wish that they could have such a lady beside them to give them precious suggestions at a key time.

Although there may be 1,000 “Sweeping Old Ladies” in 1,000 people’s minds, it cannot prevent the “Sweeping Old Lady” from becoming the most popular figure on the Internet.

“Programmer Humor” said he is just a programmer in the real world and once he saw the story about the “Sweeping Old Lady,” he wrote it down in his micro-blog because it was funny. He never knew who the original writer of the story was and never thought the story could be so popular.

How Setting a Schedule Can Make You Less Productive

It can seem like there’s never enough time - not enough for sleep and not enough for play, and not enough for exercise.

There’s a relatively new term to describe this feeling: time famine, or the sensation of having too much to do without enough time to do it.

To structure what little time we feel we have, one strategy is scheduling. The idea is that scheduling will make us more efficient. But scheduling can sometimes backfire and actually make us less productive. In one study, attendees of an academic conference were asked whether they would go to the presidential address taking place about an hour later. Some said they would, and others said they wouldn’t. Those who planned to attend the address reported the hour leading up to it felt shorter. So the presence of an upcoming activity seems to have shrunk how much time people felt they had.

Why might this happen? It’s believed that when there’s an appointment coming, we direct our attention to it, whether it’s mentally preparing for it or simply dreading it. This makes the future appointment feel more substantial (重大的); as a result, the time interval leading up to the scheduled activity feels limited and insufficient. Time famine may partly lies in our own perception of what we feel can be done with the time we have.

But you still have the same amount of time leading up to a scheduled event, so time famine shouldn’t really matter, right? But it does. This feeling by itself can influence what people decide to do. When something is scarce, people consider it more valuable and are less willing to part with it. The same is true for time. If time feels limited, people are less likely to use it - even when it’s in their best interest.

If you love scheduling and planning out your days, a trick could be to schedule events or tasks back-to-back (连续地), which leaves you with larger amounts of unscheduled time. Several uninterrupted hours of unscheduled time will feel longer, especially if there’s nothing scheduled coming.

10 . Criticism is judgment. A critic is a judge. A judge must study and think about the material presented to him, accept it, correct it or reject it after thinking over what he has read, watched or heard.

Another word for criticism is appreciation. When I criticize or appreciate some object or another, I look for its good points and bad points. In reading any printed or written matter, I always have a pencil in hand and put any comments in the book or on a separate paper. In other words, I always talk back to the writer.

That sort of critical reading might well be called creative reading because I am thinking along with the author, asking him questions, seeing whether he answers the questions and how well he answers them. I mark the good passages to store them in my memory and ask myself about every other part and about the complete piece of writing; where, how and why could or should I improve upon it?

You might think that doing what I suggested is work. Yes, it is, but the work is a pleasure because I can feel my brain expanding, my emotion reacting and my way of living change.

Reading exercises is a great influence on a person. If pictures, still or moving, accompany the reading, the memory will retain the material for a long time.

Just as evil books can corrupt, so also can good books gradually work a change on a corrupt person.

Let's get back to the beneficial effects of thinking while reading. It helps us to enlarge our minds. We understand more about the universe, its people and many of its wonders. We learn to think and observe in new ways. We certainly do get a feeling for the language we are reading. All good writers in any language have been readers who read critically and continuously.