How I Handle My Attention
Recently, I started to feel pressed. Having to work two different jobs, plus writing and working on personal projects is difficult.1.I would wake up earlier. I would separate my day into 3-4 different pieces and try to fill them with various projects until I realized that it just doesn’t work. Why? Because time management is not as important as attention management.
I learned a few things:
Focusing on a task is returning to it every 48 hours.2.
There is a cap of two different tasks that you can do within a single day. I learned that it’s not the work that exhausted me the most, but the switching between different types of work.
3.And personal projects should be taken care of on my own time (e.g.,on weekends and holidays).
The more creative a task is, the earlier you should work on it. I am a morning person, so I try to write before breakfast.
4.Just telling yourself to do a specific activity five minutes longer than usual can help create stillness, and it leads to high-quality focus.
Attention is a rare resource. It’s only the deep focus, the “deep work”, as Cal Newport calls it, that leads to high-quality results and productivity.5.You’ll thank yourself later.
A.Stillness breeds focus.
B.Workweek should be for work.
C.Devote 2020 to mastering this vital skill.
D.If it takes longer, it’s not in the “focus zone”
E.Stay quiet, and I found myself deeply focused.
F.What matters today is where we focus our mental energy.
G.So I started to apply the old time-management techniques to myself.
We all use different ways to remember ideas, facts and things we need to store. Remembering is an extremely important part of our learning experience. Information process, storage and recall（回顾）encourage purposeful learning.
But the brain doesn’t store everything we want or need for future use. It makes choices and tends to remember information that forms a memorable pattern. Things you learned recently can be particularly difficult to remember because they haven’t taken root in your mind.
“Forgetting allows us to remember what is really important to our survival. We forget much of what we read, watch, and think directly every day.” writes John Medina in his book, Brain Rules.
How do you avoid losing 90%of what you’ve learned? An inspiring writer and speaker Zig Ziglar once said：“Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.”
Repetition has been a remembering skill for ages. When you hear or read something once，you don’t really learn it-at least not well enough to store the new information for long. The right kind of repetition can do wonders for your memory. People learn or remember better by repeating things or getting exposed to information many times. Others repeat particular steps or processes deliberately a number of times or even years to become better at certain skills.
Daniel Coyle explains in his book, The Little Book of Talent：“...closing the book and writing a summary, even short ones, forces you to figure out the key points, process and organize those ideas so they make sense, and write them on the page. When you pick it back up weeks later, reread all of your notes or highlights to strengthen the ideas even further.”
People learn by repeating things. Better learning is a repetition process. Every time we repetitively access something we already know, we increase the memory’s stored value.
1.Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
A.The brain tends to store 90% of the things we learn.
B.The fresher the information is, the easier to remember.
C.Thinking is more important than remembering in study.
D.The brain tends to choose and keep what it thinks important.
2.How does the writer prove his opinion?
A.By giving examples. B.By listing numbers.
C.By borrowing words of experts. D.By providing scientific finding.
3.What does Daniel Coyle want to say in his book？
A.You can’t pay too much attention to repetition.
B.Summarizing is a very effective learning tool.
C.Forgetting forces human brain to make choices.
D.Regular repetition helps to form good habits.
4.What may be the purpose of the last paragraph？
A.To summarize and stress his opinion. B.To ask the readers to use the skills to learn.
C.To introduce his opinion and attract readers. D.To tell readers to increase the value of memory.
5.Which do you think is the best title of the passage？
A.How the Brain Works B.Reading for More
C.Fighting Against Forgetting D.Repeat to Remember
A UPS (United Parcel Service) driver Ryan Arens was making his rounds near a pond in Bozeman, Montana, when he heard a sound. “Like a cry for help,” he told the Dodo. It was December 2019, and about 15 feet from the frozen banks was the source of that cry-a struggling dog with half of its body underwater, trying to stick to a thin layer of ice. How she got there no one knows, but an elderly man was already on the scene, determined to save her. He’d entered the pond in a rowboat and was trying hard to cut the ice with a rock to create a path to the dog. It was slowly going, and Arens,44, thought he stood a better chance.
“Animals are my weakness,” he told the Great Falls Tribune, explaining why he took off his clothes without hesitation, even though the temperature was in the 30s, and took over the rowboat.
His heart beating wildly, Arens slid closer to the dog and used the other man’s rock to smash away at the ice. He gave one too strong hit and slipped off the boat, falling into 16 feet of icy water.
He resurfaced in time to see the dog going under. Using nervous energy to keep warm, he swam about five feet toward her, took hold of her collar, and pulled her to the ice. He then lifted the dog into the boat and slid it back to the shore, where anxious bystanders carried the dog to the home of the elderly man, a retired animal doctor. Once in the house himself, Arens jumped into a warm shower with the dog until they both felt warm. A few more minutes in the pond，the doctor told Arens, and she would have likely suffered cardiac arrest(心脏骤停).
The next day, Arens was back working in the same neighborhood when the dog’s owner came over to thank him for saving Sadie. “Would you like to meet her?” he asked. He opened the door to his pickup, and immediately out raced Sadie. She went straight to Arens, leaping on him and bathing him in wet kisses. “That special delivery”，says Arens, “was the highlight of my UPS career.”
1.What happened to the dog?
A.It lost its way home. B.It was caught in an accident.
C.It fell into a pond. D.It was trapped in a truck.
2.What does the underlined sentence in Paragraph 2 tell us?
A.He can’t help helping animals in trouble B.Dogs are too weak to stand the cold.
C.He is good at raising weak animals. D.He is too weak to save the dog.
3.What was the weather like when it happened?
A.Warm B.Cold C.Cool D.Hot.
4.Who saved the dog in the end?
A.The animal doctor. B.Ryan Arens
C.A bystander. D.A reporter.
5.What can we conclude from the end of the story?
A.Sadie went to live with the person who saved her.
B.The dog owner was not a responsible master.
C.Dogs should be kept indoors in cold weather.
D.Arens was proud of what he had done.
Staying-at-home proves to be effective in slowing the spread of the virus, but loneliness can be tough for many. Luckily, in the age of social media, we are never truly alone. And with the extra time spent indoors, artists are stepping up to help us all with the following clubs.
Drawing from Distance by Sarah Beth Morgan
Let’s shine some light during this trying time and encourage social distancing! I’m starting this tomorrow myself -but from what I offer, take whatever you please. No rules! Just have fun!
Stayathome Art Club by Carson Ellis
Hello! I’ll be posting art homework here every weekday morning when I can. They’ll be designed for kids and grownups alike. Here is your first homework: Draw a picture of yourself from the shoulders up. You can follow some useful examples. If you want to share or see other people’s self-picture, use these hashtags: #Stayathomeartclub# QACselfportrait
30-Day indoor Art by Danielle Krysa
One month of avoiding crowds? I’m in! I challenge you to use this time inside to make one piece every day from now until mid April. Please join me in playing around with some painting ideas that have been rolling around in my head but haven’t found their way onto paper yet. Stay at home, make art, save someone’s life.
DIY from Illustoria Magazine
We have been so inspired to see our community come together to provide easy art projects for families during this stay-at-home-time! DIY is actually a fantastic way to spark your imagination without breaking a sweat. A video every day will teach you how to DIY something.
1.What do we know about Sarah Beth Morgan?
A.She is a strict artist. B.She aims at training more artists.
C.She prefers to work at home office. D.She will provide a wide range of choices.
2.What are you expected to do if you join Stayathome Art Club?
A.Hand in homework every day. B.Share other people’s pictures.
C.Draw a picture of yourself. D.Show up in person occasionally.
3.What does “spark” in the last paragraph probably mean?
A.set off B.set down C.set aside D.set about
4.Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
A.All the artists are in support of the stay-at-home policy.
B.Carson Ellis asks the members to draw a picture of her.
C.Danielle Krysa invites artists to put her ideas on paper.
D.People in a community will come their DIYs.
5.What do these online art clubs intend to do?
A.To provide chances for people to learn arts.
B.To advertise their clubs to attract more members.
C.To help people stay creative and connected while at home.
D.To help people learn more skills to enrich their lives in their spare time.
阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。续写的词数应为120左右。
On December 16, 2008, Randy Heiss was hiking in Patagonis, a town near the US-Mexico border when he noticed there was a red balloon. He walked towards it, and found the balloon’s string was attached to a piece of paper. “Dayami”, it read on one side, in a child’s writing. Heiss turned the paper over. It was a numbered list, all in Spanish.
Heiss suspected that a child had tried to send Santa Claus a Christmas wish list by balloon, something he used to do himself when he was a kid. Nobody had ever returned his letters, but he wondered whether he could find the girl who had sent this one. It would be difficult, but Heiss had a few clues. About 20 miles to the southwest, was the city of Nogales, Mexico. Based on the blowing wind, he was pretty sure that’s where it came from.
Heiss brought the note home to his wife, who is fluent in Spanish and helped him translate the list. They found that Dayami had asked for a doll, a dollhouse, clothes and art supplies. Heiss then posted about his search on Facebook, attaching photos, hoping some of his friends in Nogales might know the girl’s family, but with no success. Heiss worried that time was running out before Christmas. On December 19, 2008, he sent a private message to Radio XENY, a radio station in Nogales.
The next morning, Heiss got a message from Radio XENY: They had located Dayami, an eight-year-old girl whose parents were killed in a car accident. They would arrange a get-together with Dayami at the radio station. So they bought just about everything on Dayami’s list.
Paragraph 1:
Then the Heisses drove for 45 minutes, crossing the border into Nogales.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Paragraph 2:
Ten years later, Heisses received a phone call from Dayami.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My dad was a farmer. He never regarded anyone as a ______. He could really talk to any person, and his favorite thing to do was to ______ their income. Once we were at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and my dad was sitting with me as I was waiting for my ______. A Russian woman who could not speak a word of English sat next to my dad, but that did not ______ him. At last, he found out her business, how many children she had and of course how much she made.
I was a shy person and used to be somewhat ______ by this. My mom was a very ______ person as well, so she was ______ by this too. But my mom told me a story about how she was in the doctor’s office with dad and ______ he was his usual self-talking to others all the time in the waiting room. My dad even started talking to a young man in a wheel chair who could neither ______ nor move his arms or head. He ______ could do nothing. But my dad still kept asking him questions and finally got the young man to smile in ______. And he carried on like that with the ______ man until he was called back to the doctor’s office. Then the father of the young man came over, ______ my dad’s hand and said, “Thank you for ______ to my son, most people just turn away when they see him.” Hearing that, I realized that my father’s ______ of talking could make a difference.
1.A.leader B.partner C.visitor D.stranger
2.A.look into B.set down C.find out D.add to
3.A.boat B.flight C.train D.ferry
4.A.attract B.shock C.encourage D.stop
5.A.embarrassed B.touched C.excited D.frightened
6.A.outgoing B.private C.honest D.active
7.A.moved B.inspired C.bothered D.threatened
8.A.whether B.when C.why D.how
9.A.act B.smile C.talk D.drive
10.A.gradually B.actually C.entirely D.merely
11.A.conclusion B.surprise C.power D.response
12.A.confident B.disabled C.nervous D.disturbed
13.A.shook B.struck C.rubbed D.scratched
14.A.sticking B.opening C.speaking D.reacting
15.A.love B.way C.content D.tone
