How to Make and Keep a New Year’s Resolution

Are you making a resolution in the New Year? You’ll give yourself your best shot at success if your goals are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound).

•Specific. Your resolution should be absolutely clear. Making a concrete goal is really important rather than just vaguely(含糊地) saying “I want to lose weight.” You want to have a goal: How much weight do you want to lose and at what time interval? 【小题1】

•Measurable. This may seem obvious if your goal is a fitness related one, but it’s also important if you’re trying to cut back on something, too. If, for example, you want to stop biting your nails, take pictures of your nails over time so you can track your progress in how those nails grow back out. 【小题2】

•Achievable. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have big stretch goals. 【小题3】 So, for example, deciding to save enough money to retire in five years when you’re 30 years old is probably not realistic, but saving an extra $100 a month may be.

•Relevant. 【小题4】 If you do it out of a sense of self-hate or a strong passion in that moment, it doesn’t usually last long. But if you build up a process where you’re thinking harder about what’s good for you, then you have a fighting chance.

•Time-bound. Like “achievable”, the timeline toward reaching your goal should be realistic, too. That means giving yourself enough time to do it with lots of smaller goals set up along the way. 【小题5】

If you’re building a habit, you’re planning for the next decade, not the next couple of months.

A new term has started in not only China, but also in Japan, the UK and Mexico. But as COVID-19 continues, how are these countries controlling the pandemic(大流行病)?

Since Aug 24, school has restarted in Japan. To help control the pandemic, some schools delayed opening school by one week, some schools divided their students into two groups for half a day twice a week and some schools tried hard to avoid the 3Cs(closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings). One solution was to open all the areas between classrooms and hallways to increase the spacing of desks.

Pupils are returning to school across the UK, even though new daily cases peaked at 54,674 on July 19 according to Reuters.

All young people aged 16-17 in England were offered a first dose(剂量) of a COVID-19 vaccine by Aug 23 to give them protection before returning to school.

The Department for Education said schools and colleges would be maintaining appropriate protective measures. Pupils will be encouraged to carry on the twice-weekly testing regime(管理制度). Schools will also take measures, such as opening windows to help keep children and staff safe.

“The huge expansion of rapid testing for those working in education is a milestone moment in our work to keep schools and colleges open for all,” said Education Secretary Gavin Williamson.

In Mexico, with temperature checks and open windows, millions of Mexican school children began returning to classrooms on Aug 30 after more than a year of distance learning. The government said the return would be “voluntary and safe”, saying it would adopt a mixed model with both face-to-face and distance learning. Mexican classrooms have a maximum of six students at a time, and desks are covered with plastic and spaced farther apart. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that more and more families will choose a “new normal” life, according to AP News.

How do companies decide who to send overseas? 【小题1】 Just find someone with the right background, ask them if they wanted to go, and that was it. So an engineer just needed to be able to offer the technical expertise required to do the job, a manager simply needed to know the right people, an accountant needed to know how the books worked and nothing else. If they could speak English, then they could probably do the job.

But times are changing. More and more overseas assignments are failing. The reason? Lack of intercultural competence. Companies have discovered that finding the right person for the job is much more than simply identifying the person who could have done the job if it had been in their home country. 【小题2】 And this failure is more than irritating. It costs companies a lot of money to replace someone who does not fit in.

So how do companies judge if someone has the right competence for a job in another country? 【小题3】 Are they interested in other ways of doing things? Can they see advantages and disadvantages, or only their own viewpoint? Sensitivity is a key factor too. Is the person able to deal with other ways of looking at a problem? How do they deal with authority? What about motivation? Are they willing to treat others with respect and understanding? Such questions can be answered partly by the use of questionnaires and interviews, but of course only real experience can give the final answer.

So what else can a company do to make sure that a person is right for an overseas assignment? 【小题4】 Experienced colleagues can also be used to ease someone through the first stages. And another key area is to make sure that the relatives receive similar backup and training: it’s no good having a happy employee who is under pressure from his or her partner to come home.