Spring brings new energy and life from the harshness of winter, and transits towards the sunny summer time where we start thinking of going on breaks and to the beach. We return in late summer into autumn where we start prospecting for work again, and then working on them towards winter where we enter into a brief year-end break before looking forward to springtime again.
And there are proper working hours – sensible ones that works with our daylight: 8am to 6pm. Rest day on Sunday.
There are costs to these cycles. Days are shorter in winter, and maybe a bit too long in summer. There are times when you want to grab some food while feeling still awake late in the day in summer but then shops are going to be closed. At the same time, you can’t ski in summer; while being at the beach in winter would be really miserable. It means that different business activities in different parts of the economy would be in lull versus thriving at different times of the cycle.
Yet these costs doesn’t have to be mitigated; they can be leveraged into strength. In Singapore, what we pride upon – being almost on 24/7, having a strong nightlife while keeping streets really safe, yet continuing to be productive through the day, and keeping all of these on through the week, through the months and through the year. During festivals, even Chinese New Year when supermarkets now choose to close only for a few hours or half a day at the most. We leveraged on the fact we have people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds hence allowing staff of different ethnic group to keep activities on.
All of these were thought of as ways to mitigate the costs of cycles. But did we ever had to do that? Or it’s too much?