Why are some people more motivated to handle difficult things? And is there a way to make doing difficult things easy? To answer this question, we need to look at this: dopamine (多巴胺). Dopamine is often considered a pleasure molecule (分子). But that’s not quite what it does. Dopamine is what makes us desire things. And it’s that desire that gives us the motivation to get up and do things.

In fact, your brain considers something more important than others mainly depending on how much dopamine it’s expecting to get. If an activity releases too little dopamine, you won’t have much motivation to do it. But if an activity releases a lot of dopamine, you’ll be motivated to repeat it, over and over. So which behavior releases dopamine? Any activity where you expect there’s a possible reward releases it.

And in today’s digital society, we are flooding our brains with unnaturally high amounts of dopamine on a daily basis, even if we don’t know it. Some examples of high dopamine behavior include: visiting social media websites, playing video games, etc.

And you might think, “Oh so what? It’s not like it’s harming me in any way.” But you’d be wrong. Our bodies have a biological system called homeostasis (体内动态平衡). Whenever an imbalance occurs, our body adapts to it. Basically your brain gets used to having high levels of dopamine and those levels become your new normal. Thus you develop a dopamine tolerance. This can be a huge problem because the things that don`t give you as much dopamine don’t interest you any longer. That’s why people tend to prefer playing video games or surfing the Internet, compared to studying or working on their business.

But it is possible to make doing difficult things feel easier. Separate yourself from the unnaturally high amounts of dopamine, or at least expose yourself to it far less frequently. Only then will normal, everyday, low dopamine activities become exciting again and you’ll be able to do them for longer. That’s why you might want to limit your phone and computer usage, along with other high dopamine-releasing behavior.

We are all dopamine addicts to a certain extent. And that’s a good thing because dopamine motivates us to achieve our goals and improve ourselves. But it’s up to you to decide where you’re going to get your dopamine. Are you going to get it from things that don’t benefit you? Or are you going to get it from working on your long-term goals? The choice is yours.

An international research team has examined how English lessons in primary school affect language ability in this subject in secondary school. Children who started learning English in the first grade of primary school performed significantly better in listening and reading comprehension in Grade Nine than children who started in Grade Three. The study was a continuation (继续) of an earlier paper that had only covered the period up to the seventh grade and couldn’t find any such learning advantage.

The team headed by Professor Markus Ritter from Ruhr-Universitat Bochum (RUB) and Dr. Nils Jakel from the University of Oulu, Finland, deseribes their findings in System. The study included data from around 3, 000 students who participated in a long-term study conducted in Germany between 2010 and 2014. The same data had also been used in the previous study, the researchers had published the results of which in 2017. At that time, the new research had compared two groups, one of which had started English lessons in Grade One, the other in Grade Three. In grades five and seven, they had compared both groups in terms of English reading and listening comprehension. The new analysis contained another set of data collected in 2016 to measure the English performance of the same children in Grade Nine.

The previous study had found that children who had started English lessons earlier in primary school performed worse in reading and listening comprehension in Grade Seven than children who had not started English lessons until Grade Three. However, the new analysis showed that, in Grade Nine, the early starters in English performed better than the late starters in English.

“We believe the most acceptable explanation is that lessons following the transition (过渡) period in secondary school have been increasingly adapted to the needs of children who start to take English lessons at an early stage,” concludes Nils Jakel, formerly at RUB, now at the University of Oulu.

Additional background variables such as gender, language of origin or cognitive (认知的) abilities could not account for the difference between the poorer performance in the seventh grade and the late learning gains in the ninth grade.

Some people can’t wait for the lovely colors, cooler weather, and comfortable sweaters of autumn. But for a minority of others, the transition from summer creates worry and fear. We often hear about the short, cold days of winter causing what is known as seasonal affective disorder (情感障碍). Yet according to Carrie Landin, a psychologist with the University of Colorado Health Integrative Medicine Center, a significant number of people actually experience autumn anxiety.

For some people, autumn anxiety is triggered by environmental factors similar to what happens in winter: Decreases in daylight set off chemical changes in the brain. “Less daylight leads to lower levels of neurotransmitters (神经传递素) that control our emotions.” says Landin, “As these neurotransmitters drop, the body responds by increasing levels of cortisol. which release in situations where we perceive threat.” The result can be increased anxiety, sleeping difficulty, and depression.

It’s not just increasing darkness that can cause these symptoms. For people who feel this way every year, some of the reaction is psychological — Landin calls it anticipatory anxiety (预想性焦虑). When we know there’s the potential for stress ahead, we tend to anticipate the problems, feeling anxious before they even happen. Landin suggests. “Identify the causes and make a plan to manage them before you feel overwhelming. For instance, if you’re concerned about family issues and holiday parties, decide in advance that it’s perfectly OK to say no to some of them.”

Remember: While autumn may throw you a few tricks, there are plenty of treats to be found too. Embrace the present moment!