Question

Have you ever wished for a thirty-hour day? Surely this extra time would relieve the tremendous pressure which we live. Our lives leave a trail of unfinished tasks. Unanswered letters, unvisited friends, unwritten articles, and unread books haunt quiet moments when we stop to evaluate. We desperately need relief.

But would a thirty-hour day really solve the problem? Wouldn't we soon be just as frustrated as we are now with our twenty-four allotment? A mother's work is never finished, and neither is that of any manager, student, teacher, minister, or anyone else we know. Nor will the passage of time help us catch up. Children grow in number and age to require more of our time. Greater experience brings more exacting assignments. So we find ourselves working more and enjoying it less. We are accuslomed to working without stop.

When we stop to evaluate, we realize that our dilemma goes deeper than shortage of time; it is basically the problem of priorities（优先顺序）.Actually hard work does not hurt us. We all know what it is to go full speed for long hours, totally involved in an important task. The resulting weariness is matched by a sense of achievement and joy. Not hard work, but doubt and misgiving (疑虑) produce anxiety as we review a month or year and become oppressed by the pile of unfinished tasks. We sense demands have driven us onto a reef of frustration. We confess, quite apart from our sins, “we have left undone those things, which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” To do the urgent thing or to finisnh the important thing, is a sharp question.

Several years ago an experienced cotton-mill manager said to me, "Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out of the important." He didn't realized how hard his maxim hit. It often returns to haunt and rebuke  me by raising the critical problem of priorities.

We live in constant tension between the urgent and the important. The problem is that the important task rarely must be done today, or even this week. The urgent task calls for instant action — endless demands, pressure every hour and day.

A man's home is no longer his castle; it is no longer a place away from urgent tasks because the telephone breaches the walls with imperious（专横的） demands. The momentary appeal of these tasks seems irresistible and important, and they devour our energy. But in the light of time's perspective their deceptive prominence fades; with a sense of loss we recall the important tasks pushed aside. We realize we’ve become slaves to the "tyranny（暴政） of the urgent."

51．The reason why we sometimes wish to have a thirty-hour day is that we       .

       A．have too much work to complete          B．need more time to enjoy our lives

       C．need longer hours to ease pressure        D．are used to working without stop

52．From Paragraph 3, we find anxiety increases when we         .

       A．stop to think about our dilemma            B．go full speed working at our task

       C．are doing meaningless things                 D．recall lots of unfinished work

53．The motto that hits the writer tells us        .

       A．to finish the urgent and the important thing

       B．to avoid the urgent pushing out the important

       C．the urgent thing shouldn’t be done instantly

       D．the important thing is different from the urgent

54．The writer presents the article to remind us that         .

       A．the urgent is not always to come first

       B．the problem of time shortage is tough

       C．the important is not always depressing

       D．the way to deal with the urgent is hard

Answer 1

CDBA