1 . Some of the most successful people have done their best work in coffee shops. Pablo Picasso, JK Rowling, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Bob Dylan ---whether they’re painters, writers, philosophers, or singer-songwriters, people across nations and centuries have tapped into their creativity working away at a table in a café.

There are many ways coffee shops stimulate our creativity in a way offices and homes don’t. Research shows that the stimuli in these places make them effective environments for work; the combination of noise, visual variety and casualness can give us just the right amount of distraction to help us be at our sharpest and most creative.

Some of us put on our noise-cancelling headphones as soon as we sit down to work in a public setting. But background noise can benefit our creative thinking. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research showed that a low-to-moderate level of background noise in a place like a cafeteria can actually increase our creative output. Another study from 2019 had similar findings: the right amount of noise benefits our senses. And while that right level of noise is different for everyone, audio (听觉的) stimuli in the background also help us improve decision-making. So, the jazz music, light conversation and noises from coffee bar workers aren’t vexatious —they could help you come up with your next masterwork.

Also, one thing that can make working from home and the office dull is the unexciting visual environment. “Visual stimulation has an effect on peoples creative thinking process. Coffee shops generally have visual stimuli,” says Sunkee Lee, whose research suggests that visual variety “helps you to think outside the box”. Korydon Smith, who co-wrote a recent article on the benefits of working in coffee shops, says, “People come and go. The daylight changes. The colours of food vary. These activities inspire our brains to work a bit differently than at home”.

And while the typical coffee shop user might be a lone worker, experts say these café settings can also benefit work groups who are brainstorming. “There is an implied formality when gathering on office-based or digital meeting platforms. By contrast, there is an air of informality when meeting up at a bar or café. Agendas are not required to meet someone for coffee, but are inbuilt in a scheduled meeting, virtual or otherwise, which can kill creativity,” says Smith.

3 . Is forgiveness against our human nature? To answer our question, we need to ask a further question: What is the essence of our humanity? For the sake of simplicity, people consider two distinctly different views of humanity. The first view involves dominance and power. In an early paper on the psychology of forgiveness, Droll (1984) made the interesting claim that humans’ essential nature is more aggressive than forgiving allows. Those who forgive are against their basic nature, much to their harm. In his opinion, forgivers are compromising their well-being as they offer mercy to others, who might then take advantage of them.

The second view involves the theme of cooperation, mutual respect, and even love as the basis of who we are as humans. Researchers find that to fully grow as human beings, we need both to receive love from and offer love to others. Without love, our connections with a wide range of individuals in our lives can fall apart. Even common sense strongly suggests that the will to power over others does not make for harmonious interactions. For example, how well has slavery worked as a mode of social harmony?

From this second viewpoint of who we are as humans, forgiveness plays a key role in the biological and psychological integrity of both individuals and communities because one of the outcomes of forgiveness, shown through scientific studies, is the decreasing of hatred and the restoration of harmony. Forgiveness can break the cycle of anger. At least to the extent the people from whom you are estranged accept your love and forgiveness and are prepared to make the required adjustments. Forgiveness can heal relationships and reconnect people.

As an important note, when we take a Classical philosophical perspective, that of Aristotle, we see the distinction between potentiality and actuality. We are not necessarily born with the capacity to forgive, but instead with the potential to learn about it and to grow in our ability to forgive. The actuality of forgiving, its actual appropriation in conflict situations, develops with practice.

4 . One of my bad habits is saying “busy” when people ask me how I’m doing. Sometimes it’s because I actually am busy, but other times it’s because that’s what I think I’m supposed to say. That’s what important or promoted people say.     1     So why are we so proud to talk about how busy we are all the time?

In 2016, researchers conducted a study to figure it out.     2     And interestingly, these status attributions (归属) are heavily influenced by our own beliefs. In other words, the more we believe that one has the opportunity for success based on hard work, the more we tend to think that people who always skip leisure and work are of higher standing.

That’s why we feel like we have to appear busy, and there’s a real perception that if someone is knee-deep in meetings, emails, and stress, then they’re probably a big deal.     3     According to a recent study, one in five highly engaged employees is at risk of burnout.

    4     It sounds self-righteous (自以为是) and sets the wrong tone. Phrases like “I have limited access to email” and “I’ll respond as soon as I get back” sound like you’re being held against your will from working as opposed to making the most of your time off.

That’s why we recently launched the Out of Office Email Generator, a free tool you can use before your next long weekend or trip.     5     Managers need to think twice about emailing their teams on the weekend and talking about how busy they are, and so do leaders.

5 . Studies have shown the mere exposure effect, also referred to as the familiarity principle, inspires our decisions. It is a helpful psychological mechanism that helps us sustain our energy and focus our attention on other things. Getting used to new things takes effort and it can be exhausting. So unless we have a terrible experience, we are likely to buy from companies we’ve got used to. That is why companies spend so much money on advertising and marketing and why insurance companies openly charge existing customers more than new ones.

It’s not the case that we only desire things we already know. Some studies suggest when invited to share our preferences, we sometimes see less familiar options as more desirable. But when acting on that preference, we fall back to what we know. This might explain why sometimes the things we want and the things we do don’t quite match up. We might even return to companies that treated us poorly in the past or stay in bad relationships.

It’s easy to paint the familiarity principle as an enemy or something to battle as if it is something that holds us back from living our dreams. But this attitude might be overwhelming because it tends to encourage us toward big-picture thinking. Where we imagine that change requires a substantial dramatic swing that we don’t feel ready for. Some articles suggest the solution to familiarity frustration is complete exposure to novelty. While this can appear effective in the short run, we may only end up replacing one problem with another. It also risks overwhelm and burnout.

So what if we can work with the familiarity principle instead? Familiarity is something we can learn to play with and enjoy. It is a setting for creativity and a pathway to expansion. We can broaden the zone of familiarity bit by bit. If we think of familiarity as something that can expand, we can consider changing the conditions in and around our lives to make more space for our preferences to take root and grow gently. From here, we will start to make decisions, drawing from an ever-deepening pool of valuable options.

6 . It is challenging to teach children about seasonal foods in a modern-day grocery store (杂货店). Having lots of choices of fresh produce from all around the world means that a sense of the seasons is lost. That’s why I like being part of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Every week I receive a share of vegetables that comes from a nearby farm. I do not know ahead of time what I’m getting, nor do I have any say on what comes home; I take whatever was harvested earlier that same day, based on the week’s weather conditions, and use them to the best of my ability.

My kids have had a good knowledge of the supply of certain vegetables throughout the harvesting season. They know what it’s like to eat a lot of asparagus (芦笋) until they’re sick of it, only to move on to dark greens and leafy salads, then eggplants, and tomatoes, and finally the root vegetables that mark the arrival of cold weather.

The funny thing is, when you’ve eaten a ton of something for a few weeks, you’re ready to move on to the next crop (作物) and leave the other behind, but when its time comes the following year, the expectation will return. In this way, a CSA share creates excitement at vegetables that can’t be felt when everything can be bought all the time, as it is in a grocery store.

A farmers’ market can offer similar lessons in seasonality to a CSA, but it differs in that you have more choices about what you buy. A CSA share, however, only offers few kinds of vegetables and sometimes fruits, forcing you to work out ways of using them up. I enjoy this challenge because it tests my cooking skills and introduces my family to new and unusual vegetables. What’s more, it is glad to know I’m supporting local farmers by eating what they want to grow, not just what I’m used to eating.

9 . A digital footprint is a record of a person’s online activity, and it’s becoming more common for companies to perform social media checks before hiring people, Business News Daily reported.

When posting on social media platforms, some students don’t think enough about how it could affect them in the future. Sometimes students post reckless (鲁莽的) content to their social media profiles without considering the potential consequences: They could be creating a damaging digital footprint that may prevent them from getting hired.

Before determining who to hire, 70 percent of companies screen potential applicants and look at their social media, with 18 percent of employees losing their job due to their social media posts, according to a September 2022 study by CareerBuilder, a company that helps employers hire in the United States. “Sometimes some people’s social media tell a lot more about somebody than an interview,” said Rithika Mothukuri, a senior media studies and production major.

A 17-year-old lost out on a job opportunity after the company performed a background check and saw her videos on TikTok, Buzzfeed reported. Many of the videos shared overly personal stories, which was enough to cost her a job.

Therefore, students should ensure a search for their name doesn’t surface inappropriate content because even one unprofessional post could potentially ruin job opportunities. They should perform a digital declutter if there is such content though it may be very challenging to do that. So the most important is to refrain (避免) from posting content that contributes to a negative image in the first place.

“I never had anything controversial or something that could get me fired from a workplace or school or something, but there are many cases of that happening and we should be learning from their mistakes,” said Kieran Mc Carney, a junior social work major.

While having a clean digital is important, it’s also important that students avoid doing anything that can be considered inappropriate in their real life. In this way, even others cannot post inappropriate images or videos of them on social media.