1 . If you are experiencing physical symptoms that could indicate burnout, consider seeing your primary care doctor or a mental health professional to determine whether they are driven by stress or rooted in other physical condition, Dr. Dyrbye said. Don’t just take no notice of the symptoms and assume they are _________.

“It’s really easy to _________ your own symptom, especially in our culture, where we are taught to work hard,” Dr. Gold said.

If it is burnout, then the best solution is to _________ the root of the problem. Burnout is typically recognised when it is job-driven, but chronic stress can have a variety of _________ — financial problems, relationship difficulties, and caregiving burdens, among other things. “Think about the pebbles in your shoe all the time that you have to _________,” Dr. Maslach said, “and brainstorm ways to _________ some of them, at least some of the time. Perhaps you can ask your partner to help more with your toddler’s bedtime routine, or get takeout when you’re especially busy so you don’t have to plan dinner, too.”

Despite popular culture coverage of the issue, burnout can’t be “fixed” with better self-care, Dr. Maslach said — in fact, this _________ only worsens the problem, because it lays the blame and responsibility on those with burnout and implies that they should do more to feel better, which is not the case, she said. However, some lifestyle _________ can make burnout less likely. Social support, for instance, can help, Dr. Gold said. This could include talking to a therapist or meeting with friends (even if over Zoom). It may also help to _________ mental health or exercise benefits offered by your employer. Sleeping more can help too — so if you’re __________ from a lack of sleep, talk to a doctor about possible treatments, Dr. Bennett suggested.

When burnout __________ job-related difficulties, it may help to request better working conditions. Dr. Maslach suggested brainstorming with co-workers and presenting your __________ with ideas that would help — like providing quiet areas for breaks and personal phone calls, creating “no meeting” days so that employees can have more time to __________, or ensuring that there’s always coffee in the break room. Even small changes like these can reduce the risk for burnout if they fix a problem people __________ at work every day. “It’s the lasting job stressors that make people really __________ after a while. They don’t have the right equipment, they don’t have the things they need, they don’t have enough people to do the work,” Dr. Maslach said.

3 . In a culture obsessed with measuring talent and ability, we often overlook the important role of inspiration because of its complicated nature. Its history of being treated as supernatural hasn’t helped the______. But as recent research shows, inspiration has a major effect on important______.

Inspiration is the springboard for creativity. Being in a state of inspiration ______the creativity of writing samples across scientific writing, poetry and fiction. Inspired writers are more ______and productive, and spend less time pausing and more time writing. The link between inspiration and creativity is in line with the surpassing aspect of inspiration, since creativity involves seeing possibility beyond existing restrictions.

Inspiration facilitates progress toward goals. In a recent study conducted by Marina Milyavskaya and her colleagues, college students were asked to report three goals they intended to_______ throughout the course of the semester. They then reported on their progress three times a month. Those who scored higher on the Inspiration Scale displayed increased goal progress, and their progress was a ______of setting more inspired goals. ______, people who were generally more inspired in their daily lives also tended to set inspired goals, which were then more likely to be successfully achieved. ______the relationship between inspiration and goal progress was mutual: goal progress also predicts future goal inspiration. Finally, inspired individuals reported experiencing more purpose in life and more gratitude.

Inspiration increases______. In another study, those who were exposed to Michael Jordan’s greatness experienced higher levels of Positive Affect, and this increase in Positive Affect was completely explained by their score on the Inspiration Scale. This inspiration was not______ though, foretelling positive well-being (e.g., life satisfaction) three months later!

Inspiration was more strongly______ future than to present satisfaction. The extent to which inspiration lasted was explained by self-reported levels of purpose and gratitude in life.

These findings show that inspiration______ a lot, which may put the burden on someone to become inspired and helpless to do so. The writer Elizabeth Gilbert rightly expresses this ______in her inspiring TED talk. I agree with Gilbert that one should not put______ on oneself to become inspired. These key scientific findings suggest that inspiration is not______— it happens. Knowing this should free you from the pressure to make inspiration happen.

4 . The way of recording things has never ceased to develop. In the 1980s, as sales of video recorders went up, old 8mm home movies were gradually replaced by VHS (video home system)tapes. Later, video tapes of family holidays lost their appeal and the use of DVDs ______. Those, too, have had their day. Even those holding their childhood memories in digital files on their laptops now know these files face the risk of ______.

Digitising historical documents brings huge benefits—files can be ______ and distributed, reducing the risk of their entire loss through physical damage caused by fire or flooding. And developing digital versions reduces ______ on the original items. The International Dunhuang Project, ______, has digitised items like manuscripts (手稿) from the Mogao caves in China, enabling scholars from around the world to access records easily without touching the real items.

But the news that the Ministry of Justice of the UK is proposing to scan the 110 million people’s wills it holds and then destroy a handful of ______ after 25 years has shocked historians. The ministry cites this as a way of providing easier access for researchers. But that only justifies digitisation, not the ______ of the paper copies. The officials note the change will be economically efficient (saving around £4.5m a year) while keeping all the essential information.

Scholars ______. Most significantly, physical records can themselves carry important information — the kind of ink or paper used may be part of the history that historians are ______. and error s are often made in scanning. Besides, digital copies are arguably more ______ than the material items, just in different ways. The attack from the Internet on the British Library last October has prevented scholars from ______ digitised materials it holds: imagine if researchers could not return to the originals. Some even think digitised information can easily be lost within decades no matter what ______ are put in place.

The government says that it will save the original wills of “famous people for historic record”, such as that of Princess Diana’s. However, assuming that we know who will ______ to future generations is extraordinarily proud. Mary Seacole, a pioneering nurse who now appears on the national school course in the UK, was largely ______ for almost a century.

The digitisation of old documents is a valuable, even essential measure. But to destroy the originals once they have been scanned, is not a matter of great ______, but of huge damage.

I offer to pay you $200 in one year if you give me $190 today. Good deal or bad deal? It’s the kind of math problem you might encounter in real life, _________, say, whether the cosecant (余割) of a 30-degree angle is 1 or 2. You can imagine students _________ their spirits and paying attention when they realize that they need to know algebra (代数) to avoid being cheated on a loan. Math and personal finance make a _________ fit. Students grasp concepts in math much better when they see how those subjects _________ their daily financial lives.

A survey in 2022 funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that 61 percent of parents of students said math education should be “relevant to the real world” _________ that only 21 percent said it was. The drive for relevance goes beyond K-12 education. Some of America’s top universities are _________ personal finance into their curriculums.

Harvard has a personal finance course in the _________ department that’s taught by John Campbell, a past president of the American Finance Association. “_________, personal finance was regarded as a very sort of hands-on skill that you might teach to people who were going to a technical high school,” he told me. “There is, I would say, a modern movement to _________ of personal finance as a subject with actually a lot more intellectual content.”

In most high schools, personal finance classes are light on math, and math classes are __________ in personal finance. The FiCycle curriculum has plenty of each. “The personal finance component is incredibly __________ for our high school students,” Philip Dituri, the director of education at Financial Life Cycle Education, who has a doctorate in math education, told me. He believed that quite a lot of students would be stimulated by the __________.

There is a __________ standard for personal finance education that was put together by the Council for Economic Education and the JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy. It emphasizes how to __________ one’s finances. FiCycle focuses more on the underlying concepts. It’s about “how and why individuals and households transfer consumption over time,” Financial Life Cycle Education says.

In conclusion, the integration of math and personal finance in education is not just an academic pursuit, but a __________ necessity for students to guide their real life. It is time for educational institutions to take note and adapt their curricula to better prepare students for the financial challenges of adulthood.

6 . Alipay, the digital payment arm of Chinese financial technology company Ant Group, is allocating more resources to roll out translation services in 16 languages, to ensure foreigners in China can use mobile payments without any hurdles.

Alipay’s move comes amid China’s intensified efforts to further improve foreigners’ payment _________ in the country.

Alipay has allowed foreigners in China to link their _________ bank cards, including Visa and Mastercard, to its mobile payment tool, greatly streamlining (精简) the payment processes, said Zhu Xugang, director of the cross-border business at Ant Group.

Users of 10 overseas e-wallets are also able to use their familiar home e-wallets on their own phones by _________Alipay QR codes, to enjoy seamless mobile payment experiences across Alipay’s vast merchant network.

According to Alipay, foreigners can use the app to complete payments at restaurants, hotels, scenic spots, convenience stores and supermarkets, as well as for ride-hailing, shared bikes, buses and other public _________services in China. The newly _________ multilingual app includes English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese.

The mobile payment app has also _________ the single transaction (交易) limit for overseas travelers using mobile payments from $1,000 to $5,000 and lifted the annual cumulative transaction limit from $10,000 to $50,000.

The State Council, China’s Cabinet, published a guideline on improving payment services and _________ payment convenience in early March, a move to better meet the _________payment needs of the elderly and foreign visitors.

Last week, the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, _________a payment guide that provides foreigners with text and graphic __________ on using bank cards, cash, mobile payments and e-CNY in China, the latest step in the country’s push to optimize the payment experience for foreigners.

Wang Pengbo, a senior analyst at market consultancy Botong Analysys, said the intensified efforts to provide convenient payment services will not only __________ improve the living and consumption experience of foreigners in China and attract more of them to the country, but also promote the healthy and sustainable development of the payment __________.

Wang said the move demonstrates the country’s resolve to expand high-standard opening-up, __________ the online payment scenarios of Alipay are wide enough, with high usage frequency. So, what it should do now is to expand the scope of foreign bank card binding and improve and simplify authentication of new users, to provide more convenient payment services to foreigners.

Meanwhile, Chinese banks are taking measures to expand the __________ of overseas bank cards and facilitate their use of cash in the country.

Dong said more efforts are needed to expand the scenarios of various types of payment methods at tourist attractions, sporting events, transportation hubs, healthcare and beauty centers and other daily __________ sites.

7 . The disposable culture

The disposable (一次性的) culture started small. In1892 William Painter, founder of the Baltimore Bottle Seal Company, patented the bottle cap. The bottles were returned and refilled, but the bottle caps were ________. They only worked once. Painter’s chief salesman at the time was called Mr Gillette, who went on to apply the same principle to his own invention, the disposable version-cameras, contact lenses, barbecues- but the ________ has been taken a step further. For ________ reasons, most of the electrical equipment that we buy for the home is effectively disposable. This is because it is usually cheaper to ________ them than to mend them. This applies not just to radios and toasters, but also to fridges, televisions and dishwashers. We now live in a disposable culture.

Most people feel ________ this new trend. We know we should be reducing the amount of waste we produce and recycling as much as possible although despite all our efforts, landfill continues to increase. It’s hard to slip a CD player into the bottom of the rubbish these days without feeling ________ especially if you suspect that all it needs is a simple repair. But who ________ that sort of thing these days? And how much would they charge you?

With persistence, one may still ________ someone out there willing to make the necessary repairs to your broken bread-making machine, but even they will feel obliged to inform you that, given the likely price of the ________, you’ d probably be better off throwing away the old one and buying the latest model. To ________ that something should be mended even though that will cost more than a brand-new replacement is weird, to say the least.

This dilemma (困境) occasionally ________ the possibility of fixing the damaged goods yourself. If something is next to ________ anyway, why not take it apart and see if you can figure out what’s wrong? I have had particular luck with cheap, plastic, battery-operated children’s toys, where bad manufacture is usually the cause of the ________ and some strong glue or tape is usually all it needs to put it right. Small children tend to be impressed by this sort of thing, which is probably the only reason I bother. I wouldn’t suggest you attempt to repair your own microwave, although I managed it once. It was one of the most ________ experiences of my life a difficult success to mention in casual conversation, perhaps, but I’m still trying.

While some repairs are certainly beyond the ability of the ordinary consumer, many are unbelievably simple. Finding willing ________ may be almost impossible, but tracking down spare parts has never been easier now that you can look on the Internet. There are also hundreds of sites offering step-by-step instructions for making repairs.

8 . In Favour of Simple Writing

Do you edit text messages carefully before sending them? If so, you may be the kind of person who takes pride in _______ even the simplest message. If you do not, you may see yourself as a go-getter, one who values excitement and speed over _______: get it done decently now rather than perfectly later.

People are constantly receiving messages, from the mailbox to the inbox to the text-message alert. What to read, what to skim (略读) and what to ignore are decisions that nearly everyone has to make dozens of times a day. A new book titled All Readers are Busy Nowadays makes the argument for being the careful kind of _______, even in informal lines. The authors also present well-established _______ that have long been prized in guides to writing.

Take “less is more”. Most books on writing well advocate the advice to _______ needless words. The authors, however, have _______ the idea. In an email to thousands of school-board members asking them to take a survey, cutting the count from127 to 49 words almost _______ the response rate.

Keeping messages to a _______ idea—or as few as absolutely needed—helps ensure that they will be read, remembered and acted on. _______ the number of the available options has the same effect, too. A link in an email, ________, attracted 50% more clicks when presented alone than when it was sent alongside a second additional link.

Syntax (句法) and ________ matter, too. It is more ________ to adopt short and active sentences, with common words familiar to everyone. From Facebook posts to online-travel reviews, even brief, informal pieces of writing that follow these rules get more likes and shares.

If everyone is a busy reader, everyone is a busy writer, too. That may make it tempting to sent as many messages as ________ as possible and hope for the best. But from essays to text messages organizing dinner plans, devoting time to the needs of readers has provable ________. If you are so busy that you write an undisciplined message which readers scan, ignore and delete, then you might as well have not ________ it at all.

9 . Italy’s one-euro-home sales have been attracting a lot of interest over the past few years. Some towns like Mussomeli in Sicily and Zungoli in Campania have managed to _________ abandoned properties to foreigners pursuing the Italian dream. However, some have _________ to sell their empty homes. Among them is Patrica, a remote village of barely 3,000 residents located south of Rome, where more than 40 properties deserted in the early 1900s have been left _________.

In an attempt to breathe new life into the dying village, the town’s mayor Lucio Fiordaliso has been trying to _________ the success of other Italian villages who’ve put their empty homes up for sale for one euro, or just over a dollar. “The process is not _________. We first mapped out all abandoned houses and contacted the original owners to ask for permission. Only then can we place these properties up for sale with their _________, which makes the process very complicated.” However, the permission from one owner of the house sometimes is not enough for the sale of potential one euro homes. That is because most relatives sharing the same property often _________ one another for personal reasons or some hardly speak or know each other.

Another reason that the one euro plan never really started in Patrica could be due to the _________of its homes. Some of the houses are simply too neglected to sell, even if the owners were willing to agree to it. _________, Patric a local Gianni Valleco and his two brothers decided to place their parents’ abandoned home on the market to see what would happen. But they soon disappointedly found that the house was far from __________.

In the meantime, Fiordalis o has been coming up with new ways to __________ newcomers. He prompted several locals to entirely restyle their old family homes and put them to use after decades of neglect. “The mayor’s move finally gave us a good excuse to fully restore the property which had been sitting there __________,” says the locals. The mayor also decided to start operating some commercial activities like an B&B or a restaurant or a shopping center.

“There is __________, but then when many foreigners actually see the bad shape of the old homes they’d prefer to opt for turn-key apartments that are already restyled or in need of just __________ fixes,” says Fiordaliso. “So it’s much more convenient to buy one of these newer ones than __________ an old building in need of major reconstruction, where the final cost would end up being much higher.” Despite these challenges, Fiordalis o hasn’t given up on selling the town’s long forgotten homes.

10 . Picture this: you’re out to dinner with a friend who you know makes a lot more money than you do. When you open the _________, your heart sinks. There’s not a dish in sight that is less than $35, and even a soup is going to run you $18. You probably vow (发誓) to _________ dollar pizza slices the rest of the month to balance out this dinner. _________, this time, what if you just turned to your friend, closed the menu, and said, “Sorry, I have to be honest. I can’t afford this. Let’s go somewhere else?”

That’s the idea behind “loud budgeting”, a trend that could not only relieve you of the _________ burden, but help you deal with these sorts of stressful situations both mentally and emotionally. In an age when everybody is showing off nice things on social media and _________ to be something they’re not, it feels somewhat revolutionary to just tell the truth about what you can’t afford.

The term was first introduced by TikTok (抖音) comedian Lukas Battle. Battle explained his concept in an interview: simply put, loud budgeting is being _________ about what you do and don’t want to spend money on. Since his video, the concept has caught on rapidly among the _________, who are pointing out that it has come at a significant time when everything is uncontrollably expensive.

It’s not just a TikTok thing though. Even those in the financial services industry are on board with the _________. Nikolina Cuca, a financial advisor, says that she’s seen social media add pressure to her clients, causing them to spend _________ on luxury items. “There should be no shame about trying to match your spending to your means. This trend helps young people moderate spending by __________ the idea of living within budgets.”

Beyond just saving money, loud budgeting is also bringing people closer. Honest money talks lead to greater respect among friends and family. By __________ discussing money goals, people are creating stronger bonds based on mutual understanding for each other’s financial situations. And perhaps the most valuable part of the loud budgeting trend is that it provides a sense of __________. For example, if you tell a friend you are trying to cut back spending on drinks out, you are much __________ to stick with the goal than if you just keep it to yourself.

With its focus on being open, spending wisely, and building __________, loud budgeting is more than just a passing trend, but a cool way for the younger generation to __________ their finances. As more people adopt this approach, it is likely to stay a big part of how we handle money in the future.