Category Archives: Life

What is time-wasting to you? I realise that perspectiv matters a lot when it comes to this. But as this article in The Economist suggests, there are some perhaps universal time-wasters in the modern day office worker’s life: logging in, mistyping, deleting emails, scheduling meetings that eventually gets cancelled or rescheduled, looking for available meeting rooms. All of these are often ridiculous. Most of the time, technology plays an important role in both time-wasting and time-saving.

I spend time to write for this blog daily – is that a waste of time? Perhaps so to some people in my circle, including some loved ones. But for me, it’s an investment, a training that I sorely need, and the development of a positive habit. On the other hand, I think that time spent making small talk to ease into a meeting is a waste of time but I’m too culturally attuned to do otherwise, plus it doesn’t help I happen to be naturally curious and happy to make conversations.

As I enter a stage of life when time becomes so much more precious, I need to guard it more carefully, and make sure I’m not wasting time. But that’s only possible when I know what are my objectives.

In accounting, goodwill is when a business has somehow paid the past owners a price over the book price of the original business and now capitalises this premium in the books of the acquired business. At the same time, we may say we do things out of goodwill, basically for free or token, as an act of kindness towards people. Most of the time these are towards strangers, or clients, customers. It may or may not involve expectations for reciprocation.

Now the last part of the previous paragraph is the part that I think is the most tricky thing about goodwill. There’s a sense, in our modern world where there is always a chance of repeated interaction, that goodwill is worthwhile and also worth multiplying. At some point or in some way, it gets reciprocated in profound ways. Some might think of it as Karma – or at least just the positive sort of it.

What I think is strange is that the use of the term goodwill in accounting or business may have contaminated our sense of what it really is. I personally identify the non-business ‘goodwill’ to be something in a spirit of generosity and giving, whereas in business and on commercial basis, goodwill is treated like an asset, something that is supposed to bring value – therefore the returns that reciprocation of a kind gesture might bring.

Maybe it’s me thinking too much about semantics – but it matters.

Probably the last thing I imagine myself writing about on my blog is a movie I just watched but I’m going to do just that. Given my track record for reading movie synopses in lieu of watching them, it might be surprising that I actually enjoy movies very much. Perhaps it is precisely because I’m such a critic that I don’t want to waste my time on a movie that is not worth the while.

Which brings me to Top Gun: Maverick. Honestly, it was done so well. The script was well written, the words exchanged carefully thought out, and the emotional content was properly executed through the movie even as the fighter jet cockpit scenes created so much tension as you watch the fighter pilots move through simulated navigation across the landscape. It was one of those movies where the story honestly did not matter as much as the manner the situation and characters were portrayed.

Entertainment have become so much of a staple in our modern lives we sometimes get desensitized and forget the art behind it. Top Gun: Maverick reminds me of it very strongly. Those days when I actually studied film critique and consider various aspects of what a film is about.

When was the last time you reviewed your life, your goals, activities or take stock of how you’re spending your time? I’ve been so busy most of this while, working on my coaching, consulting and also sharing ideas on my blog I haven’t really done a quick review even of how I’m allocating time across my activities.

One thing that becoming a consultant made me do is to really value my time and take proper stock of how I’m spending it. It forces me to consider if the activities I’m engaging in is really worth my time. I also started thinking about the marginal value of each hour outside my usual work time.

Given the value of the time I have outside work, I have to perform my work more efficiently in order to gain more space and engage really in the stuff that gives us life satisfaction and not just the ‘value’ as defined by work.

Labour markets are very tight now and with the rate of job transitions that people have now, it should be more and more interesting for labour economists to start studying the markets and understanding if they are working efficiently, and if not, what are the distortions. While I may say distortions, they are not in and of themselves a bad thing. They actually often help us to achieve certain goals by triumphing over shortcomings in our culture. But it is important to understand their impacts anyways.

One of the distortions to labour markets is the fact that companies offer salaries to new hire based on the market rates but then give pay raises by performance. In other words, even if a staff is not performing well, typically if his experience and skills are becoming more and more scarce in the marketplace, his pay does not rise if he stays where he is. Therefore, he would switch to get a higher pay. The company which loses him has no one else to blame than their system.

At the same time, those people who performs well, but yet their skills are becoming more and more common in the marketplace, would enjoy pay raises while incoming labour supply gets lower starting wages without affecting this “top-performer”. The company justifies its decision that this person is tried and tested, have been delivering value to the company (never mind the fact actually they could have replaced him with someone cheaper and have equal skill). So he stays in the company and draws the higher pay.

In the first case, you observe that salary offered in the market tends to be higher than the prevailing salaries being paid to existing staff. As the recruiter only observes the information from newly offered salaries, the new offers tend to be higher than the actual salaries being paid out on average. In the second case, you’ll observe that people in their roles are paid pretty well while the new offers in the market tends to be quite low in comparison.

Such is a cultural distortion that may have to be corrected by increasing awareness, as well as improvements in HR.