ATTENTION
This content is recommended for 30~60 minute sessions. Note that tutors may not be familiar with the content. Make sure you consult with your tutor before using this material. 

[P1] You might not need a study to convince you that reading the news in the morning can depress you all day, but if you want research to back up your instincts, it exists. A recent study found that just three minutes of negative headlines in the morning was enough to make you grumpy for eight hours.

[P2] Which seems like a pretty compelling reason to swear off the news. But what if, for whatever reason, you just can’t? Maybe you work in media, investing, politics, or some other industry where staying informed is essential for success. Or maybe you’re simply a responsible citizen who hates the idea of going to the polls or engaging in debate without knowing all the facts (in which case, God bless you!).

[P3] Is there a way to stay both informed and sane despite the avalanche of alarming news lately? Yes, answers the always enlightening Oliver Burkeman in the UK Guardian. In a recent column, he suggests a dead simple hack that will get you all the necessary facts and analysis without the accompanying panic attack.

Time is the best test of importance.
[P4] Burkeman begins his piece with a simple premise. The problem with the news these days is that there is just too much of it, which it makes it exceedingly hard to sort developments that actually matter from the cacophony of pointless but alarming noise. He writes:

[P5] I’m increasingly convinced that the real cause of headline anxiety isn’t learning about worrisome new developments. Rather, it’s not knowing which new developments will prove to have been worth worrying about. Of the 45 troubling things you saw on Twitter this morning, two or three may prove to be signs of the rise of fascism/the destruction of the environment/the collapse of Brexit Britain. Yet the rest won’t.

[P6] So how can you separate the truly meaningful from the momentarily terrifying but ultimately trivial? Traditionally, Burkeman points out, news organizations had a simple way to do this: they waited awhile before publishing a story to see if it had legs. Time is the perfect tool for separating the relevant from the irrelevant. These days, the voracious demands of social media and cable news, make it impossible for media companies to do that anymore.

[P7] But just because they can’t, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Burkeman offers this dead simple suggestion: just “consume the news a day or three later than everyone else.”

[P8] How do you practically accomplish that? It’s up to you, but his strategy is “promiscuously cruising the web, saving umpteen articles in a ‘read later’ app (in my case Evernote, though you could use your browser’s bookmarks). By the time I read them, the time filter has worked its magic: a small proportion of them stand out as truly compelling.”

[P9] The appeal of this approach is that it splits the difference between sticking your head in the sand and becoming obsessed with each momentary twist in a story. You don’t have to give up your curiosity or even your long-standing morning news browse. All you have to do is delay reading articles you bookmark for a day or two (even eight hours would probably help). That should automatically gain you the anxiety-reducing perspective of time.

Source: https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/a-simple-trick-to-stay-informed-without-getting-stressed-by-headlines.html

1. Summarize the article in your own words.
2. Do you also feel overwhelmed by the amount of news every morning?
3. What is the trick that Burkeman suggests?
4. Are you conscious about the information you are consuming every day? Share your thoughts with your Cambly tutor!

ATTENTION
This content is recommended for 30~60 minute sessions. Note that tutors may not be familiar with the content. Make sure you consult with your tutor before using this material. 

[P1] What does the fossil fish, scientific method, aromatic chemistry, and the periodic table all have in common? If you guessed mentally challenging subjects, you’re correct. Well, partially. What’s missing? All of those discoveries came while the individual was sleeping. More specifically, their insights came through dreams.

[P2] There are many opinions and thoughts about dreaming. Sigmund Freud’s popular theory revolved around dreaming being about a repressed longing (i.e. providing an area to sort through unresolved repressed wishes).

[P3] While sleep in general–and especially dreaming–is a great mystery that’s just now starting to be unraveled, there’s evidence that dreaming is beneficial to your emotional intelligence and overall productivity. Deep sleep can provide you with two benefits, in particular:

1. It can help you resolve difficult conflicts.
[P4] Let’s face it, the workplace can be stressful and mentally demanding at times. Between high stakes presentations, team meetings, and aiming to hit financial goals, there are ample amounts of opportunities that can drain your emotional and mental energy.

[P5] These numerous and unpredictable scenarios are a perfect recipe for you to conjure up anxiety and heightened emotional feelings which can affect your relationships with peers along with the quality of your work. REM sleep (where dreaming occurs) happens to be the only time when your brain is nearly devoid of noradrenaline (an anxiety-triggering molecule when its levels are high) according to a 2011 Frontiers in Neurology article. While this is going on, key emotional structures of your brain are reactivated during REM sleep.

[P6] In simpler terms, your brain is re-processing stressful, intellectually demanding, and sometimes painful memories from the workday in a safer environment due to the noradrenaline not being involved. A big part of emotional intelligence is effectively perceiving, expressing, understanding, and managing your emotions along with the emotions of others.

[P7] In order to effectively do this, you have to ensure that you’re effectively processing your myriad of emotions on a daily basis which is where dreaming comes in hand. As this 2012 study published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience suggests, a lack of REM sleep in humans is associated with enhanced emotional reactivity from a behavioral and neural level. This simply means that your ability to absorb stressful and difficult moments decreases which leads to a decreased ability to learn and move on from those particular moments.

2. It can help you become more resourceful and creative.
[P8] In REM sleep, your memories blend together. Just as you inundate your blender with a plethora of vegetables and fruits, your brain is the same way while it’s dreaming.

[P9] While dreaming, your brain is inundated with an assortment of facts, figures from the day, financial numbers, policies from work, and meshes them with commonalities from the existing knowledge you have which leads to a smarter and more emotionally equipped individual ready to handle the next day.

[P10] In this 2007 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A., participants were taught a series of facts. Some were tested on the facts before going to sleep. Others were tested after a full night’s sleep. Others still were tested after a 60-90 minute nap, which included REM sleep.

[P11] The full night’s sleep and nap groups performed much better than those who were awake and sleep deprived. Maybe it’s just me, but this seems like an obvious result. Of course, understanding that sleep is important is one thing. Your next step is to effectively integrate it into your current operating system–which will make you a more creative and resourceful individual.

Source: https://www.inc.com/julian-hayes-ii/think-just-sleep-on-it-is-dumb-advice-science-says-it-actually-improves-your-emotional-intelligence.html

1. Summarize the article in your own words.
2. What are the two benefits of sleeping? How does it help emotional intelligence?
3. What is REM sleep? Explain the concept in your own words.
4. Are you concerned about the quality of your sleep? What do you do to improve the quality of your sleep? Share your thoughts with your Cambly tutor!