Plagiarism is the act of representing another person’s words or ideas as your own. The offense may be as small as a sentence copied from a book. Or it may be as extensive as a whole paper copied—or bought—from somebody else.

Intellectual dishonesty is nothing new. The only difference now is that the Internet has made it much simpler to steal other people’s work. Yet the same technology that makes it easy to find information to copy also makes it easier to identify plagiarism.

Teachers can use online services that compare papers to thousands of others to search for copied work. The teacher gets a report on any passage that is similar enough to suspect plagiarism. These services are widely used. Turnitin.com, for example, says it is used in more than 100 countries and examines more than 130,000 papers a day.

Professional writers who plagiarize can be taken to civil court and ordered to pay damages. In schools, the punishment for cheating could be a failing grade on the paper or in the course. Some schools expel plagiarists for a term; others, for a full academic year. Some degrees have even been withdrawn after a school later found that a student had plagiarized.

Accidental plagiarism can sometimes result from cultural differences. At Indiana University in Bloomington, 60 percent of students who use the Office of Writing Tutorial Services are non-native English speakers. The director, Joanne Vogt, says some have no idea that copying from published works is considered wrong. She says students from China, for example, may think they are offending readers if they credit other people’s works. They believe that educated readers should already know where the information came from.

The more you give credit, the less you risk charge with plagiarism. Any sentence taken directly from a source should appear inside quotation marks. And even if you put those sentences into your own words, you should still give credit to where you got the information.

There is a photo in my collection that I pull out from time to time to remind myself of an old vacation. It’s a picture of me from the late 1970s on a bench in London’s Victoria Station, my head resting against a wall, eyes closed with tiredness, clothes messed up.

I used to love that shot. It was evidence of my leisure time, of travel, of interruption from the office: miles covered, sights seen, train stations raced through, goals achieved.

However, as I leave work to hit the vacation trail this summer, I take along something extra. This traveling companion has a habit of ruining trips with feelings of guilt—the guilt that comes from attempting to vacation while thinking of the job.

The conflict between the time we want off and the guilt we feel when we actually give in to leisure is a long-running battle that has gone too far, driven by an over-scheduling craze. It has made many feel as if their free moments are a form of truancy (玩忽职守).

It’s hard to take it easy when you’ve been programmed not to. We have been taught for generations that work is the only goal.

Time that is unfilled is evil, we are led to believe, and unplanned enjoyment should be avoided. This is reinforced today by a workplace culture that wants you to believe that advancement depends on your staying on the job.

Research now shows, however, that leisure time can do something job advancement and money can’t. Leisure activities increase your desire to work leadership skills, your sense of awareness and your ability to change. Free time also promotes a positive mood and sense of well-being, because it develops self-worth. Deep down, everyone knows we need time off to make our lives better.

On holiday, using your productive output as a measure of yourself doesn’t work. This is because a vacation isn’t about output; it’s about input — exploring, learning, reflecting. The magic of a holiday is in the experience itself. This is the same as life satisfaction; it can’t be measured, only felt.

The best part of a vacation isn’t going somewhere else; it’s being where you are, fully involved in the experience.

Do you find it difficult to put down your mobile phone? If yes you are not alone. These days, many people can’t live without their phones. They reach for them as soon as they wake up in the morning. They keep checking their apps, such as QQ and Wechat, to get the latest news.

It may be difficult for these people to give up the bad habit, so Google developed an app called Dashboard to help them. This app helps users manage (管理) the time they spend on their phones. First, Dashboard allows the users to look at their phone habits. For example, users can see how many times they have unlocked their phones, how many times they have checked their apps, and how much time they spend on each app each day. Once the users see this information, they will be able to make some changes.

They can set a time limit (限制) for how long they can use each app every day. After they’ve hit the limit, they won’t be able to use the app until the next day. What’s more, Dashboard can help keep the phones silent when users put their phones down, so they will use the phones less. If you truly want to make full use of your free time instead of spending hours using your phone, this new app is just a good choice. After all, controlling yourself and having a strong will can help you most.