How can I fight laziness?

    Lazy people will never amount to anything in life. However, laziness can be defeated once a few changes have been made in your mind.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#}. Many people lack sleep constantly, since they stay up too late and get up too early to prepare for work. These people have little motivation once they arrive home. Laziness works hand in hand with a lack of motivation and a tendency to put off things. By adjusting your sleep schedule to provide a few more hours of meaningful rest, you can fight laziness throughout the day.

    Another way to fight laziness is to change your mind from passive to active. Some people treat their lives as if they were pushed from task to task. Others take a more protective approach, viewing each task as a challenge they must overcome alone. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    Some people fight laziness by removing the temptations(诱惑) that surround them. A television in the living room may provide entertainment, but watching too much TV often contributes to laziness. Create a reward system for yourself, just as parents do for a child to promote responsibility. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}Spouses(配偶) and children may all have different energy levels, but laziness can be spread if not dealt with immediately. To fight household laziness, lead by example. Be the first to collect and wash dishes after a meal. Others in the home may eventually follow your example and perform their own task. It is difficult to practice laziness when you are surrounded by motivated people.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} enough exercise and a balanced diet can help you to develop a healthy lifestyle, thus enabling you to have more energy and help lift your spirits.

Grandparents Answer a Call

    As a third generation native of Brownsville, Texas, Mildred Garza never planned to move away. Even when her daughter and son asked her to move to San Antonio to help their children, she politely refused. Only after a year of friendly discussion did Ms Garza finally say yes. That was four years ago. Today all three generations regard the move as a success, giving them a closer relationship than they would have had in separate cities.

    No statistics show the number of grandparents like Garza who are moving closer to the children and grandchildren. Yet there is evidence suggesting that the trend（趋势）is growing. Even President Obama's mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, has agreed to leave Chicago and into the White House to help care for her granddaughters. According to a study grandparents com., 83 percent of the people said Mrs. Robinson's decision will influence the grandparents in the American family. Two-thirds believe more families will follow the example of Obama's family.

    “In the 1960s, we were all a little wild and couldn't get away from home far enough or fast enough to prove we could do it on our own,” says Christine Crosby, publisher of Grand a magazine for grandparents. “We now realize how important family is and how important it is to be near them, especially when you're raising children.”

    Moving is not for everyone. Almost every grandparent wants to be with his or her grandchildren and is willing to make sacrifices, but sometimes it is wiser to say no and visit frequently instead. Having your grandchildren far away is hard, especially knowing your adult child is struggling, but giving up the life you know may be harder.

    Knowing how much her own children loved presents at Christmas, Ann Sutton always tried to seek help for one or two poor families. With a social worker mother, the Sutton children had inherited her commitment to service, and knew never to take their good fortune at Christmas for granted. This year, Kinzie, her seven-year-old daughter was thrilled that Santa Claus would make a special visit to a 22-year-old mother named Ashley who worked in a factory raising her 12-month-old son by herself.

    The phone rang on Sunday. A representative from a local organization was calling to say that the aid Ann had requested for Ashley had fallen through. No Santa Claus, no presents, nothing.

    Ann saw the cheer vanish from her children's faces at the news. Without a word, Kinzie ran into her bedroom. She returned, her face set with determination. Opening up her piggy bank, she put all the coins onto the table: $3.30. Everything she had.

    “Mom,” she told Ann, “I know it's not much. But maybe this will buy a present for the baby.”

    At a breakfast meeting the next day, Ann told her coworkers about her daughter's story. To her surprise, staff members began to open their purses and empty their pockets to help Kinzie. By day's end, the story of Kinzie's gift had spread beyond Ann's office. She received a call from an unknown donor. If a seven-year-old could give everything she had, he said, he should at least match her gift 100 to 1. He contributed $300.

    On Christmas Eve, Ann drove through the pouring rain to the small trailer where the Ashleys lived. Then she began to unload the gifts from the car, handing them to Ashley one by one.

    Ashley was very moved. Reflecting on a little girl's generosity, Ashley says she'll one day be able to do something similar for someone else in need. “Kinzie could have used that money for herself, but she gave it away,” Ashley says. “She's the type of kid I'd like my son to grow up to be.”

    Once an old man rose early to read each morning. His grandson wanted to be just like his grandfather, so tried to emulate him every way he could.

    One day the grandson asked, “Grandpa, I try to read just like you do, but I don't understand most of it, and I forget whatever I do understand immediately I close the book. So what good is it for me to read?”

    The grandfather, who was putting coal on the fire, said, “Take this coal basket down to the river and bring me back a basket of water.”

    The boy did as told to, but the water leaked out before he could get the basket home.

    The grandfather laughed, saying, “You'll have to move a little faster.” This time he ran faster, but again the basket emptied. Out of breath, he decided it was impossible to carry water in a basket, and he went to get a bucket（桶）. But the grandfather said, “I want a basket of water instead of a bucket of water. You're just not trying hard enough.”

    The boy knew what he was trying to accomplish was impossible. However, he decided to show his grandfather a third time.

    The boy dipped the basket into the river and ran as hard as he could. With the empty basket, he gasped（喘气说）, “See Grandpa? It's useless!”

    “So you think it useless?” the old man asked. “Then look at the basket.” To his surprise, the boy found it washed clean of the dirty coal stains and now clean inside and out.

    “My child, that's what happens when you read the book. You might not understand or remember everything, but the words will change you inside and out. That is the work of reading in our lives.”

    David Rees runs a truly distinctive business. He charges customers $15 to shar pen their pencils to perfections, using a variety of tools.

    I know what you're thinking — is this a joke? The 39-year-old gets asked that question a lot. To clarify everything, he even created a special section on his website telling everyone he's actually providing a real service.

    You can supply your own pencil or you can have Rees sharpen one of his own favorite 2B pencils. After that, he mails it to you in a display tube with the shavings in a separate bag, and an authentic certificate which just happens to mention the pencil is so sharp as to be a dangerous object.

    To achieve the desired result, the master sharpener uses all kinds of tools, including general sandpapers, pocket knives and even a special $450 sharpening machine. "It depends on what the customer wants to use his/her pencil for," he says. "That determines the most appropriate pencil-sharpening technique.

    Some customers buy pencils as inspirational symbols while others buy them because of their special memories of classic 2B pencils.

    $15 to have a pencil sharpened is a bit expensive though, right? You're not the only one who feels that way, and David's unique business has really angered lots of people, who talk of inequality in America, saying it is so insane for the wealthy to pay $15 to sharpen a pencil. But others will say, "This is just our urge to put an end to the welfare state because new ideas arise along with the business."

    David admits his trade is sort of unusual. But there are those who actually value his service, as proven by the over 500 orders he has gotten.

    A study based on data gathered by a NASA sensor has revealed China and India, the world's two most populous countries, are primarily responsible for making the Earth greener over the past two decades.

    The study, published on Feb 11 in the journal Natural Sustainability, has found that since 2000 the Earth's green leaf area has increased by over 5 million square kilometers. That's an area equivalent to the total of the Amazon rainforests. "China and India account for one-third of the greening, considering the general idea of land degradation (退化) in populous countries from overexploitation," said Chen Chi from Boston University, lead author of the study.

    The effect mainly comes from ambitious tree-planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries, NASA said in a statement. China is the source of a quarter of the planet's increase in forest area, despite having only 6.6 percent of the world's vegetated (固定植被的)area, according to the study. Forest conservation and expansion programs account for 42 percent of the increase, and another 32 percent come from intensive agriculture of food crops, NASA said. While raising their green leaf areas, China and India have also greatly increased their food production through" multiple cropping" practices, where a field is replanted and crops are harvested several time each year. "Production of grains, vegetable, fruits and more have increased by about 35 to 40 percent since 2000 to feed their large population," NASA said.

    Over the past decades, China has made great efforts to green the land. In 1978, the central government launched a national-level forestation project-the Three North Shelterbelt Forest Program. By the end of 2017, the forest coverage rate among the regions in the project reached 13.57 percent, compared to 5.05 percent 40 years ago. In a greening project, Kubuqi Desert, seventh largest in the country, has seen one-third of its area covered by vegetation during the past three decades thanks to forestation efforts.