Passage Two

29. A）They often feel insecure about their jobs.

B）They are unable to decide what to do first.

C）They are incompetent to fulfill their responsibilities.

D）They feel burdened with numerous tasks every day

30. A）Analyze them rationally.

B）Draw a detailed to-do list.

C）Turn to others for help.

D）Handle them one by one.

31. A）They have accomplished little.

B）They feel utterly exhausted.

C）They have worked out a way to relax.

D）They no longer feel any sense of guilt.

答案

29. [D] They feel burdened with numerous tasks every day.

30. [B] Draw a detailed to-do list.

31. [A] They have accomplished little.

原文

Many days seem to bring numerous tasks and responsibilities, all of which apparently must be tackled right away. You spend a day putting out fires, but by the end of the day, you haven’t accomplished any of the really important things you set out to do. In desperation, you draft a “to-do” list. But most days, you can make little progress with it. When you look at the list each morning, a big fat cloud of doom is right at the top—those difficult, complex, important tasks that are so crucial to get done and so easy to avoid. Plenty of us create a “to-do” list to address feelings of being overwhelmed, but we rarely use these tools to their best effect. They wind up being guilt-provoking reminders of the fact that we are over-committed, and losing control of our priorities. According to Timothy Pikle, professor of a psychology at Carlton University in Ottawa. People often draw up a “to-do” list and then that’s it. The list itself becomes the day’s achievement, allowing us to feel we’ve done something useful without taking on any real work. In fact, drawing up the list becomes a way of avoiding the work itself. “Too often, the list is seen as the accomplishment for the day, reducing the immediate guilt of not working on the tasks at hand by investing energy in the list,” says Pikle, “when a list is used like this, it’s simply another way in which we lie to our selves.”

Questions 29 to 31 are based on the passage you’ve heard.

Question 29. What is the problem that troubles many people nowadays according to the speaker?

Question 30. According to the speaker, what do many people do to cope with their daily tasks?

Question 31. According to psychologist Timothy Pikle what do people find by the end of the day?