There are so many interesting and creative hobbies that can improve your life and make you smarter.

【小题1】 As the saying goes, reading gives us somewhere to go when we have to stay where we are. It enriches your knowledge and makes you feel better about yourself. Learning a new language is a most unique and challenging hobby. It enables your brain to perform better, improves your memory and reduces the risk of brain decline. 【小题2】

Playing chess makes you smarter by exercising both sides of your brain. 【小题3】 And it helps improve your memory and builds your self-confidence.

Writing makes your brain work. 【小题4】 Writing things down can improve your emotions and your ability to communicate with others and it will make you a more interesting person.

Exercising regularly keeps both your body and your brain functioning. A good blood circulation in your body means a good blood circulation of your brain, which means an increased brain function. 【小题5】

Learning to play the piano or any other musical instrument teaches you patience and perseverance because it takes a lot of effort and a lot of time.

What do you do at the end of the day when you’re finished with work and at last have some time for yourself? How you spend your free time can have a big effect on your mental health. Hobbies can help you relax and ease pent-up (被压抑的) stress caused by all that time in the office or in front of the computer.

But, interestingly, how you spend your free time can also affect your work performance. Researchers at the University of Sheffield’s Institute of Work Psychology in the UK found that developing hobbies can improve your confidence about how well you perform your job. But there is one warning: Your hobby has to be significantly different from what you do from 9-to-5 work.

To study the connection between work and leisure activities, researchers employed 129 people who worked and were actively involved in hobbies like rock climbing, playing football, musical theater and singing. They had them complete surveys to see how serious and committed (投入的) they were to their hobbies and how demanding their jobs were. Then, each month for seven months. participants were asked how many hours they spent on their hobbies and how they rated (评估) their ability to perform at work. Researchers found that if people have hobbies similar to what they do at work and that they do in an intense (高度集中的) way, their-on-the-job confidence can suffer. It’s likely because their work and leisure time have the same mental and physical demands, so they’re always feeling drained.

Those playful recreations act as a barrier between their professional and personal lives, giving them rest time to “recharge their batteries”, said the lead researcher Ciara Kelly. “When we feel like we have the confidence to deal with challenges in our jobs. We’re more likely to be able to build a sustainable (可持续的) job and remain healthy, productive, happy and employable over our lifetimes. It’s important to consider how our leisure activities might play a role in that process. So it’s important that you should make the best of your spare time and choose a hobby that benefits your job.”

Some people love eating food right after it is cooked. I prefer food just taken out from the freezer. Fruit, candies, nuts, chocolate, cake with buttercream frosting(糖霜), even peas, all of them taste delicious when frozen. In fact, I often eat them that way.

I was a kid when I picked up the habit. In my family, lots of things were thrown into the freezer — finally, two freezers — to prevent them from going bad. Among them were some of the candies my sisters and I had collected on Halloween.

If we eat when they are still warm, we’ll find ourselves taking the cookies more than we should. It’s better if we can put them into the freezer and wait. That way we’ll eat less and enjoy them more because they are hard and chewing becomes a slower, more patient effort. That’s the point about frozen buttercream frosting. Put it in your mouth at room temperature, and it’s gone very quickly. But when it’s frozen, you can enjoy the taste much longer as it melts(融化) in your mouth.

The freezer treats a lot of fruit kindly. Take frozen grapes for example, I keep a bowl of grapes in my freezer. They become a little icy, and somehow their sweetness is improved. They are perfect and healthy dessert(点心). This is the same with oranges, apples, bananas…You might think bananas would get super­hard when frozen. Wrong! They become cool, creamy and sweet. If you have wisely covered some or all of the bananas with melted chocolate before putting them into the freeze, they will have a double taste.

As long as you aren’t eating anything that truly has to be hot, go ahead and experiment.