The Things Successful People Do Differently

    Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive(直觉的) answer--that you are born with certain talents and lacking in others--is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

    1）Get specific.

    When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. “Lose 5 pounds” is a better goal than “lose some weight,” because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll “eat less” or “sleep more” is too vague--be clear and precise. “I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights” leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.

    2）Seize the moment to act on your goals.

    To seize the moment, decide in advance when and where you will take each action you want to take. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., “If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.”) Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

    3）Know exactly how far you have left to go.

     Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress--if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently--weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

    Planning a visit to the UK? Here we help with ways to cut your costs.

    AVOID BIG EVENTS     Big sporting events, concerts and exhibitions can increase the cost of accommodation and make it harder to find a room. A standard double room at the Thistle Brighton the final Friday of the Brighton Comedy Festival (19 Oct.) cost ￡169.15 at Booking.com. A week later, the same room cost ￡118.15.

    If you can be flexible and want to know dates to avoid -or you're looking for a big event to pass your time—check out sites such as Whatsonwhen.com, which allow you to search for events in the UK by city, date and category.

    STAY AWAY FROM THE STATION     If traveling to your destination by train, you may want to find a good base close to the station, but you could end up paying more for the sake of convenience at the start of your holiday.

    Don't be too choosy about the part of town you stay in. Booking two months in advance, the cheapest room at Travelodge's Central Euston hotel in London for Saturday 22 September was ￡95.95. A room just a tube journey away at its Covent Garden hotel was ￡75.75.And at Farringdon, a double room cost just ￡f62.95.

    LOOK AFTER YOURSELF     Really central hotels in cities such as London, Edinburgh and Cardiff can cost a fortune, especially at weekends and during big events. As an alternative consider checking into a self-catering flat with its own kitchen. Often these flats are hidden away on the top floors of city centre buildings. A great example is the historic O'Neill Flat on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, available for ￡420 for five days in late September, with room for four adults.

Membership Card

    Fighting Fit is a members-only club. When you first join, we give you a computerized card. It has your name, photo and membership number on.

    Please have your card with you every time you use the club. The card is for your use only, and there is a small charge to provide a new one if you lose it. Members are permitted to bring guests to use the facilities at the club. A visiting guest fee is charged for each guest.

    Fitness Programs

    Your Fitness Program includes a meeting with one of our skilled instructors. This will happen two or three weeks after you have joined. The instructor looks at your health, your current needs and the way you live, and organizes a program suitable for you.

    Gymnasium

    Our gymnasiums are the most modern in the area and have high quality exercise equipment. For safety reasons, you must wear sportswear and trainers while exercising, and please remember to take a small towel too. It is one of our rules that you wipe the equipment after use.

    There is no limit to how long you spend in the gymnasiums, but we ask you to respect other members by only spending 20 minutes on each piece of equipment. There are experienced staff helping you in the gymnasiums at any time.

    Locker Rooms

    We have large male and female locker rooms. Please ensure that your property is kept in your locker at all times. Any belongings which are found in a locker overnight will be removed and taken to Lost Property.

    Café

    The Café offers free tea, coffee and soft drinks.

    Suggestion Box

    Members' suggestions are always welcome, and the suggestion box and forms can be found at reception. We try to respond within two days.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) announced on November 23 for the first time that it has chosen not to name one single word of the year, but many words for the "special" year 2020. Describing 2020 as "a year which cannot be neatly summarized in one single word". OED said on Monday that there were too many words to sum up the events of 2020. From more than 11 billion words found in web-based news, blogs and other text sources, its lexicographers(词典编纂者)revealed what the dictionary described as "great shifts in language data and frequency rises in new words" over the past 12 months.

Most words of the year are coronavirus-related, including coronavirus, lockdown, circuit-breaker, keyworkers and face masks. The report said the word "coronavirus" dates back to the 1960s and was previously "mainly used by scientific and medical specialists". But by April this year it had become one of the most frequently used nouns in the English language, beyond even the usage of the word "time". It said use of the word "pandemic" has increased by more than 57,000 percent this year.

The revolution in working habits during the pandemic has also affected language, with both "remote" and "remotely" seeing more than 300 percent growth in use since March. "On mute(静音)"and "unmute" have seen 500 percent rises since March, while the words "workation" and "staycation" also increased drastically.

Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, said. "I've never witnessed a year in language like the one we've just had. The Oxford team was identifying hundreds of significant new words and usages as the year unfolded." "2020 has been filled with new words unlike any other," Grathwohl added.

The OED's announcement mirrored the huge influence of the COVID-19 on the people from all walks of life. To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States are racing against time to develop coronavirus vaccines.

In 2011, Nancy Ballard went for a routine check-up that turned into something extraordinary. In fact, she was carrying a painting of a plant she'd done when she arrived at her doctor's San Francisco office. "It would be great if we had artwork like that for our chemotherapy(化疗) rooms," the nurse said. Ballard asked to see one. 

She was shocked by what she found. The walls were dull and bare, and the paint was falling. It was a depressing room for a depressing routine—patients were restricted to chemo drips for perhaps several hours, often with nothing to look at other than those sad walls. Ballard didn't have cancer herself, but she could sympathize with the patients. "I couldn't imagine how anyone could even think about getting healthy in a room like that," she says. As it happened, Ballard's physician, Stephen Hufford, was ill with cancer himself, so finding time to decorate the rooms was low on his to-do list. So Ballard made it her task to brighten up the place. 

She started by emailing 20 local designers. "I wrote, ‘You don't know me. But my heart hurts after seeing these rooms,'" she remembers. She then asked whether they would donate their time and money to transform just one of Dr Hufford's rooms each. 

As it happened, six of them wrote back almost immediately. Six rooms got new paint, light fixtures, artwork and furniture. Dr Hufford was delighted. "All the patients feel relieved of the pain because of it," he said. He even noted that his own tone of voice was different in the rooms and that he was better able to connect with his patients. 

Ballard was so encouraged by the patients' reactions that she created a non-profit organization to raise money and decorate more spaces. Since then, she has worked on 20 projects, including one in Pennsylvania. "We were in Philadelphia for a ribbon-cutting(剪彩), and a woman was there on her third battle with cancer," says Ballard. "When she saw what we'd done, she said, ‘I'm gonna beat it this time. I thought I wasn't going to, but now I know I'm gonna beat it.'"

If you've ever seen a sparrow steal your dog food or a crow open a garbage bag, you get a sense of that some birds have learned to take advantage of new feeding opportunities—a clear sign of their intelligence. Scientists have long wondered why certain species of birds are more innovative than others, and whether these capacities stem from larger brains or from a greater number of neurons（神经元）in specific areas of the brain.

It turns out that it's a bit of both, according to a recent study by an international team that included members from McGill University published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The researchers used a new technique to estimate the number of neurons in a specific part of the brain called the pallium in 111 bird species. The pallium in birds is equal to the human cerebral cortex（大脑皮层）, which is involved in memory, learning, reasoning, and problem-solving, among other things. When these estimates about neuron numbers in the pallium were combined with information about over 4,000 feeding innovations, the team found that the species with the higher numbers of neurons in the pallium were also likely to be the most innovative.

"The amount of time chicks spend in the nest as their brains develop might also play a crucial role in the evolution of intelligence," says McGill University Emeritus Professor Louis Lefebvre who spent more than 20 years gathering examples of feeding innovations. "Larger species of crows and parrots, which are known for their intelligence, spend longer in the nest, which allows more time for the brain to grow and accumulate pallial neurons."

The results of the study help to deal with previously opposed views of the evolution and significance of brain size and show how a life-history perspective helps to understand the evolution of cognition.