A 1969 letter has been found down the back of a sofa.

The sheet was discovered by Peter Beckerton, while he was repairing an old piece of furniture for a customer. It is dated February 23, 1969, and appears to be written by an 11-year-old girl.

In the letter the schoolgirl writes: “In 1969 the telephone was a square box thing with a resiver [sic] on top of it. But now it is still a resiver [sic], but you can see the people you are talking to, for there is a screen where you can see the people. It is a bit like a television."

Peter said, “When I found it I couldn’t believe it. Looking at it today she’s got a lot of her predictions (预测) kind of right—but in her childish way she thought it would all happen in ten years. I just wanted to share it in the hope that maybe the author might see it and recognize it.”

The letter is unnamed but comes complete with a teacher’s corrections and comments in red pen—including the comment “Good”.

It begins: “The year is 1980. Here I am twenty-one years of age. I remember when I was 11 years old and I was at school ...; things have changed since then. For instance, television has changed. In 1969 it was a square box with buttons in front of it. Now it is a big screen with buttons on your chair arm to switch it on and off.”

The schoolgirl imagines that she is a married bank worker. She says in times past she would have “prepared tea” ready for her husband to come home. But she adds: “Now all we have is a piece of chewing gum (口香糖). You may think that we have not enough to eat but you are wrong. You chew this gum and you can feel the food going down. You can also taste it. There is no messy washing-up to do afterwards.”

She imagines that the doors of their home are “electric” and opened and closed by pressing a button.

A Japanese Technique for Overcoming Laziness

Almost all of us set ourselves a new goal, but often fail to achieve it in the end. 【小题1】 Most of the time, it is because we try to do too many things in a short amount of time.

If this is something that you often come across, you are not alone. This is where the concept of Kaizen comes into play. It is a one-minute principle developed by Masaaki Imai. The roots of Kaizen are in the words, “kai” meaning “change”, and “zen” meaning “good”. 【小题2】

At the center of this concept is the idea that you should practice doing something for only a minute, every day at the same time. The method is to break your lazy type of thinking, in that it should not be any trouble for you to do a task for just 60 seconds. 【小题3】 After all, it is not as if you are being asked to do something for 30 minutes every day, just 60 seconds.

The underlying belief is that the more you do it and experience joy during your practice, you will more naturally want to continue doing it the next day. In time, you can ramp up (增加) your task from 1 minute to 2 minutes to 5 minutes and so on. 【小题4】

What you need to realize is that, the smaller challenges, when combined with continuous effort, are more rewarding. 【小题5】 It is the small victories that are more likely to occur with Kaizen, which will help encourage you to keep going.

My younger daughter, Lauren, has a new car and she has managed to keep it spotlessly clean since she bought it in July.

Lauren’s old car was messy. It was essentially a large garbage dump on wheels. I must admit that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree because until I got my present car, all of my many automobiles had been messy too.

The worst thing about her car was that it took on water every time it rained. No one could ever find the source of the leak (漏洞), which created a pool on the floor of the front passenger side.

Four years ago, I got a new car. I turned over a new leaf and, for the first time since I got my driver’s license, cleaned up my act. I gave my old car, which contained old leaves, to my wife, who in turn gave her car to Lauren. It’s the one Lauren was driving – and filling with so much stuff that there was barely enough room in the back seat for her little dog, Maggie – until she got her new car.

A few weeks ago, Lauren decided to go car shopping. She went to a Volkswagen dealership because she had her eye on a Jetta. She had her other eye on my wallet.

Anyway, she saw a 2005 model, which was shown to her by an automotive associate named Anthony. He spent a lot of time with Lauren each of the three or four times she visited the dealership, let me test-drive the car when I went to see it, and didn’t put any pressure on any of us. In short, Anthony gave used car salesmen a good name.

But he was no match for Lauren when it came to negotiating the price, which he lowered to what she said she could afford and not a penny more.

So now, at 25, which is half the age I was when I cleaned up my act, Lauren has done the same. Her car has been clean for almost three months. Even the dog is impressed.

The downside is that my wife’s car is messy. And she wants a new one, too.