Donald Trump has been known to do it in the middle of the night. Kim Kardashian has done it more than 22,000 times. Many people don't understand why you would want to do it at all.

    We're talking about tweeting and, unlike posting your entire life on Facebook, this social media activity demands a particular set of skills.

    Why use Twitter? It's a way to have a one-on-one virtual connection with your heroes and anybody who interests you. Likewise, you can share your life and views with an almost limitless number of people. And it all has to be done within the limit of 140 characters of text – plus photos, videos and links – which really helps you focus your mind.

    Katy Perry has the most Twitter followers, with 95.6 million of the micro-blogging site's 317 million monthly active users. Justin Bieber isn't far behind with 91.5 million, followed by Barack Obama and Taylor Swift with around 83 million each. The heaviest hitters of Twitter are pop stars, heroes of sport and other celebrities. But you don't need to be famous to create a buzz with the right tweets at the right time.

    In fact, Katy Perry is a great example of how to do it well. She has a bubbly tweeting style that mashes up chat about her tours and her music, insights into her emotional roller coaster over the US election, and playful descriptions about her daily life. "Done with my Christmas shopping", she tweeted, and posted a link to her Instagram page that featured crazy gadgets like a "pet emergency jacket" and a "chocolate donut camera".

    To get started on Twitter, pick a simple, memorable user name like @KatyPerry, post a short profile and choose a photo. Some tips: post your own photo (not a photo of your dog, it's not Facebook) and don't be an "egg person" – referring to the absent egg-shaped image when a user hasn't posted their own picture. In that case, Twitter won't get you any followers or respect.

    Then, it's time to start tweeting by sending your updates ("what's happening?") and following people. Building up an army of followers can take time. Generally, the more people you follow and the more you tweet, the more followers you'll get. To become a Twitter star, you need to carve out a reputation for posting original, eye-catching tweets on trending topics – and maximise your visibility by mastering the use of hashtags.

    Twitter Analytics will show you how your tweets are performing and who is following you – right down to their age category, country, income bracket, gender and interests. If your popularity is flagging and your Twitter ego is keeping you awake at night, you can turn to the business of buying thousands of "followers" from online sites. But do be ware – there may be a lot of fake profiles in there and, at the end of the day, it'll feel like paying a crowd of people you don't know to come to your birthday party.

    Happy tweeting!

    China is using travel as an important tool to help strengthen its economy. At the recent First World Conference on Tourism a Chinese official spoke about the government's plan for using tourists and the money they spend. The head of China's National Tourism Administration, Li Jinzao, said that China plans to send 150 million travelers along what he called the “One Belt, One Road”. In the next five years, these tourists are expected to spend $200 billion, he said. This spending estimate is likely to raise expectations among countries along the ancient Silk Road, which links China to its neighbors.

    China has reasons to feel it can use tourism to influence the foreign policy. Governments across the world are changing their immigration(移民) rules to welcome the growing numbers of Chinese tourists. Chinese citizens are now going to places where in the past Chinese rarely went. Marketing expert Michel Gutsatz said that among Chinese travelers, South Korea and Thailand are popular destinations. Outside of Asia, he said, Chinese are more likely to visit Europe than North America. These changes, he said, are the results of young Chinese travelers, who spend more and travel independently.

    Spending by Chinese tourists has lifted the economies of several Asian countries, including Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. It is expected that the number of Chinese traveling overseas to reach 242 million by 2024. In a single year, that number would be equal to the total number of tourists received by Germany, Iran, Indonesia and Egypt combined.

    China is now the biggest business travel market in the world. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) recently announced that China has overtaken the United States in business travel. Chinese spent just over $290 billion. This year, GBTA predicts that the Chinese business travel market will grow over 10 percent, while the US business travel market will grow less than 2 percent.

    Someone sent me an email urging me to acquire a lot more resources, suggesting could do so much more good if I had an 8 or 9 figure net income of 6 like I've been doing for years. He claimed to have acquired a great deal of wealth himself and found it highly beneficial to fueling his path with a heart.

    As I consider his suggestion, I find myself not having much clarity(清晰的思维)as to what I'd do with I million or 10 million more money flowing through my life. I put so much attention on creativity, fulfillment, exploration, relationships, etc. that I find it difficult to intelligently imagine how more financial resources could provide extra fuel for that, except in small ways or in ways that aren't particularly meaningful to me.

    Lately I've been considering what it would be like to deliberately reduce my income for a while and see if I could live on much less，just for the experience. What if I capped my net personal income at $10,000 per year, for instance? That isn't such a big deal to me, though, since I already went through a period of low income like that during the 1990s, and I learned that I could still do what I love regardless of income.

    I've never worked in a business environment-the only job I've ever had was working for $6/hour in a video game store while I was in college. So I've never seen how larger operations allocate resources. That's probably why I haven't pushed myself to acquire more. As I mentioned in my book. Money and Your Path With a Heart，my main financial goal in life was to make money irrelevant in my life.

    I'm not interested in building an empire. What interests me is exploring personal growth and sharing what I learn along the way. In some ways I feel that acquiring and acquiring and allocating more resources could become a big distraction. I'm already doing what I want to be doing, so why rick distracting myself to acquire more resources, especially when I lack the idea about how I should treat such resources? I like having freedom and flexibility，and I don't really see how more resources would meaningfully improve that.

    Once I was troubled by tourists to do a favor for them—take their photos. Sometimes they complained that the photos I took were not good.

    Now fellow travelers trouble me in a different way—with their selfie sticks (自拍杆). I fear my head will be knocked or my eyes poked (戳) by the poles with mobile phone cameras put on them.

    Admittedly, it is a good invention. With a cool $3, you can take solo or group photos without asking for a favor from strangers. But if you want to take your selfie sticks out to travel to the West, think twice. Selfie-sticks bans have been spreading in some of the world's important museums, galleries, parks and soccer stadiums including Disney. Visitors have to leave their selfie sticks in a locker before entering to protect paintings, individual privacy and the overall visitor experience.

    In China, selfie sticks are still widely used. People would do anything to take a perfect selfie and don't pay attention to their surroundings and other travelers. Many examples have shown things could go horribly wrong when people were taking selfies. For example, earlier this year, a starfish died at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum after a visitor took it out to take a selfie, and last year a criminal was caught by the Chinese police after the criminal posted a selfie of himself on Wudang Mountain and shared it on social media, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

    Thus, I strongly advise travelers not to take a selfie in a crowded public place, indoors or at any sensitive places such as cemeteries and memorial places, especially when the police are looking for you. If you are a die-hard selfie fan, there are some options cooler than a selfie stick. One is a waterproof (防水的) wrist-band called a “pop stick”. Just like the slap bracelets (手镯) we used to wear when we were kids, it unrolls into a stiff selfie stick. Another one is “selfie ring”, an accessory that helps you stick your phone to your hand so you can snap better selfies.

    Some young Cambodians are learning a new sport — skateboarding. The country's first skateboard park is located on the grounds of a local charity group at the edge of Phnom Penh, the capital.

    Sports like Khmer boxing and soccer are wildly popular in Cambodia. But Chea, who has been skating for 6 months, says skating has already become his favorite sport.

    The skaters are learning tricks like launching off a jump or half-pipe and flying through the air on their narrow wooden boards.

    A non-governmental organization called Skateistan Cambodia organizes weekly programs at the park. Skateistan started its work in Afghanistan years ago. Rory Burke is working with the group which expanded to Cambodia last year.

    Rory Burke points out, "Yeah, it's definitely not a typical Cambodian pastime (消遣). And I think the idea of 'why skateboarding is that it's not been done before here. We want to use skateboarding as something saying, 'Hey, this is new, this is something different. And that kind of itself becomes a little bit of hook. People see it and they think and they say, "Wow, 'what is that?', and they want to get involved. "

    Skateistan partners with local groups that work with young people. The park is on the grounds of the group known as PSE, where children attend school and learn a trade. There are almost one hundred twenty participants. They all come from troubled lives.

    Seventeen-year-old Sang Rotha is a student at PSE. "Sometimes I don't do well on subjects like math," he says, "I feel bad when I find it hard to keep up with my lessons. So that is why I skateboard—to improve my bad feelings. "

    He says he began skateboarding more than a year ago. Before he started training, it seemed very easy. But it was very difficult to learn tricks, and he got hurt a lot from falling off.

    Rory Burke says learning to deal with the difficulties is part of the lesson for these young skateboarders.

Humans' overconsumption of resources is a leading contributor to global climate change, says University of Arizona researcher Sabrina Helm. Therefore, it's increasingly important to understand the choices consumers make and how those decisions affect the health of a planet with limited resources. In a new study, published in the journal Young Consumers, Helm and her colleagues explore how materialistic values influence pro-environmental behaviors in millennials, who are now the nation's most influential group of consumers.

The researchers focused on two main categories of pro-environmental behaviors: reduced consumption, which includes actions like repairing instead of replacing older items; and "green buying," or purchasing products designed to limit environmental impacts. The researchers also looked at how engaging in pro-environmental behaviors affects consumer well-being.

More materialistic participants, the researchers found, were unlikely to engage in reduced consumption. However, materialism did not seem to have an effect on their likelihood of practicing "green buying." That's probably because "green buying," unlike reduced consumption, still offers a way for materialists to fulfill their desire to get new items, Helm said.

Study participants who reported having fewer materialistic values were much more likely to engage in reduced consumption. Consuming less was, in turn, linked to higher personal well-being and lower psychological suffering. Green buying—which may have some positive environmental effects, although to a smaller degree than reduced consumption—was not found to improve consumer well-being, Helm said.

The take-home message for consumers: "The key is to reduce consumption and not just buy green stuff. Having less and buying less can actually make us more satisfied and happier," Helm said. "If you have a lot of stuff, you have a lot on your mind," she said. "For example, it requires maintenance and there's a lot of burdens of ownership, and if you relieve yourself of that burden of ownership, most people report feeling a lot better and freer."

Helm and her colleagues additionally looked at how materialism affects millennial consumers' proactive financial behaviors, such as budgeting and saving. Examining financial behaviors alongside pro-environmental behaviors provides a picture of how young adults proactively deal with resource limitations in two contexts: environmental and financial, Helm said.

As expected, Helm and her colleagues found that those who reported having more materialistic values engaged in fewer proactive financial behaviors than their less materialistic counterparts (对应的人). The researchers also found that, consistent with previous studies, proactive financial behaviors were associated with better personal well-being, life satisfaction and financial satisfaction, as well as lower psychological suffering.

Understanding how materialistic values impact consumer behaviors, and how those behaviors in turn affect personal and environmental well-being, is important, Helm said. However, she acknowledges that for many consumers, shifting behaviors to be more financially proactive and consume less will be challenging.