Category Archives: Life

We can make appraisals better. Less personal, less likely to be emotionally charged. It should not be about you, it should be about the role, the responsibilities assigned. The reframing will help us approach it more objectively and use it more wisely.

Appraisals should be about identifying fit for a role/responsibility package that comes with the job. It works both ways. When hiring, the bosses or supervisors do not have perfect foresight what the role and work will entail and so they might be shooting blindly in the way they write the job description or qualify the candidate. Likewise, when applying for the role, one can’t quite really know if the job is what he or she expected it to be like.

The appraisal should be done quarterly or half-yearly, focused on looking at the contents of the job role and package of responsibility, then discussing the fit, and direction it should move. If the role is too big, responsibility too heavy, then there might be a need to reduce the load and role. People grow, they step into new stages of life, and they deserve to be in roles that match those needs. Let’s stop restricting ourselves to that unidirectional notion of ‘career progression’ and force everyone to climb the ladder a workplace lays down.

Yes my blog have existed for quite some time and I’ve imported quite a fair bit of writings I did from previous websites I ran (eg. ERPZ.net) on this blog so there’s a fair bit of content you can look back to. But this domain, and the website in its current form has only been running for 1 year!

And this website really started because I launched my coaching practice, and decided that I want to help the people around me learn to write their own stories. This site is also a personal endeavour to keep myself engaged with writing, to share my ideas, with the world. And since the beginning of 2021, it’s been great. I’ve been writing every single day, sharing random thoughts and ideas but all converging towards the idea of creating a future that we want to be part of.

The thing is that we can only either create something for ourselves, that we want, or to create something to serve someone else. Like Seth Godin mentioned in The Practice, you can choose to do one or another but if you try to do both, you’re basically forcing everyone to like what you like. I don’t pretend that the future I’m trying to create is one that everyone will like; but I do welcome all on this journey with me, for yourself, to care about the future, to care about serving others and our future selves enough. That humankind can even have a future, and to move forward.

It might be useful to teach college graduates or even teens to identify, and account for things in our lives. To account for whether they can be controlled, or influenced, or not at all.

Too many of us live our lives thinking we can control everything. This happens at the level of governments, corporations, and even individuals. If we just take a moment to reflect and recognise how poor even our self-control is, we’d realise that trying to exert control over things typically end up with misery.

And that’s why being obsessed with outcomes is very toxic. And at an individual level, attempting to control outcomes in order to emerge as the champion often can have bad results for the society as a whole. As a society, we can invest more into how to encourage a different culture; not one where individuals all grasp at things but aspire to be something, for the community.

We are a few more days from the mandatory theory tests for food delivery riders here in Singapore starts. The tests will cover maintenance and handling of the various e-mobility devices (mainly scooters) for the riders and also safety when riding.

I think exams and theory tests are good for propaganda. After all, propaganda involves repeating things to people and what better way than to test them on it so they have it in their minds all the time. They are also good for things where people must regurgitate to someone else. But these theory tests are not so good for things that are practical. It is hard to declare someone capable of performing first aid just because he completed a theory test with flying colours.

Likewise, you might prefer the surgeon who has performed more surgeries than one who has repeatedly scored better than him on theory tests. But why do we continue to trot out these sort of tests and credentials?

It’s to create deniability; to say it’s been checked so we’ve done our part. Why we do this to ourselves, I’m not sure. Better perhaps to change the culture from one that is focused on grasping for individual credentials to one that is about caring for people.

There was a time when information and knowledge are scarce. And misinformation is rife because there are people who are uneducated and ready to believe in those who might appear more knowledgeable. And then qualifications and credentials started to make a bit of a difference because it helps to refine the signal a bit and tell the noise apart.

Yet when more and more people get qualified and the pool of unqualified people shrinks (eg. More people have gone through mass education), scammers begin to pray on the ones who are slightly knowledgeable or even the worldly-wise. It is better to know nothing and hence choose not to engage with a scammer than to know a little and get led on.

At the same time, the signal starts getting mixed up with much more noises. For example, you could have passed an exam because you memorised solutions rather than really knowing how solutions work and solving them at the exam. You can think of more situation of such noises crowding out the genuine signal.

Since a college degree is more common, it is harder to justify paying a college graduate more. And then brand name colleges starts to get prized even more and we’ve an unhealthy dynamic going for us.

So we are back to fundamentals, where we try to make learning and education democratic, where it is less about paper qualifications. And we try to make the formal systems less about exams but more about proving oneself. We see big tech firms requiring talents looking to provide training themselves and picking talents in a whole new space. It’s almost like when Sabermetrics was first discovered and undervalued players were being picked up more.

Better to start creating new games to play than merely just figuring out rules of others’ games.

When I look at my dog, I wonder if she cares about what I think of her. I happen to sometimes think she is a little spoilt, manipulative, overly skittish. I also wish she knows that I care for her, that it bothers me she is often scared of me for no good reason. Humans as social animals happen to operate a level of functioning so sophisticated and high that it often borders on leading to malfunction.

We seem to care so much about other people’s thoughts (of ourselves) that our minds are constantly seemingly wondering about that. And as social creatures, we want that approval, even subconsciously. And we will gravitate towards fulfilling their expectations. We might even allow our emotions to rise and fall on the opinions of others.

The best weight you’ll ever lose is the weight of other people’s opinions

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That sounds like a normal way to live. How can you ever even expect to be freed of the influence of others? After all, you’ll always be a function of the society, culture, upbringing and environment that you exist in. The main challenge perhaps, is when we end up becoming anxious about the life we are living in a bid to satisfy everyone’s expectation. Remember, living for everyone, is living for no one.

Should we be more concerned about losing competitiveness or creativity? Singapore just lost its top spot in global ranking for competitiveness and the explanation was ‘unfavourable geography’. It really wasn’t clear how geography was factored in but Asia certainly got a beating (maybe with the exception of China) probably because of the pandemic. Europe nations topped the ranking – they’ve been jostling with Singapore all the while anyways.

For most of our nation-building days, the objective was never topping rankings or rising up league tables. Those were by-products. It was always about bettering the lives of people. And our metrics were simple: home-owners as percentage of population, median income levels, access to clean water and electricity, etc. All of the progress on these simple metrics helped us get on rankings and league tables, which is really testament to the zeal and passion of our founding fathers and civil service.

But somewhere along the lines, we got lost in trying to get ahead in the race, to be better along the old metrics. And we forgot perhaps what we were bettering our lives for to begin with. We wanted to free our people from the constraints of a wretched existence without clean water or electricity, without a safe place to live in, without income security. We knew that improving their lives itself, making people more productive would help the society progress and move towards prosperity.

But maybe at that point, we didn’t expect ourselves to be addicted to prosperity, that we crave for access to luxuries for all, to desire better housing beyond top of the world public housing. Building a society where everyone is on an escalating escalator sounds good – until we pose the question, “where is the escalator heading to?”

To me, we should be more concerned about the lost of creativity. We should not feel pressured to prepare ready-made solution for everyone to get on the escalator, to have a sure formula or pathway to success. We should be expending our resources to enable people to find different escalators, to identify the various heights they want to reach and be able to reach them. Open up pathways, encourage the creativity and innovation; not just getting them to jostle on the same path.

I wrote about bioplastics and other biodegradable plastics and the environmental impact. And I also mentioned that you probably need to re-use paper bags way more times in order for it to be environmentally friendlier than plastic bags. That does mean that if you’re using a paper bag for a brownie as opposed to a small plastic bag, the environmental footprint of the paper bag might be more. Of course, that is mitigated perhaps by the fact it is made from recycled paper, and it can be used additionally to wipe your mouth, albeit with slight discomfort – something you cannot achieve with plastic (which probably would only make it oilier).

But here’s the news, or maybe not-so-new: Plastics can be recycled and they sometimes are but globally, less than 10% of plastics ever produced are recycled. For most countries, in most parts of the world, it is still cheaper to make fresh and new plastics than to recycle old ones. The economics didn’t work, even when we were told there will be recycling. NPR together with some other journalist outlets studied this in the US. They realised that the industry pushed for the impression that plastics will mostly be recycled because that helped to sell plastics. There are old(ish) articles discussing the cost of recycling plastics.

So let me just repeat my prescription again; let’s just cut single use plastic – cut it all out. Let us be forced to find alternatives; because as long as it is convenient to use plastics, we will pay for it – whether with money or sacrifice to the environment.

I think the ability to build a sustainable business around a cause is remarkable; and to have this cause to preserve the earth and ensure we all have a shared future is truly worthwhile. Truth is often more complicated than a simple rallying call or a catchphrase however.

Recently a friend asked if it is more carbon intensive to produce biodegradable plastic bags compared to ordinary plastic bags. And whether it is worthwhile especially in Singapore where most waste are incinerated. The truth is, paper bags need to be reused at least 3 times compared to a plastic bag in order to be more environmentally friendly. And since in Singapore, we typically reuse plastic bags at least once (except maybe those used to hold food), paper bags are not more environmentally friendly. As for those compostable bags, or plastics that dissolves in water, and so on, it depends on the manufacturing processes and the energy intensity.

For those that have more complex processes and takes up more energy, then it might be more carbon intensive, particularly if they are actually produced in developing countries where the generation mix of the grid-drawn electricity leans heavily on coal. So truth is complicated, but then I think any businesses looking to drive forward the movement of getting people to care more about the environment is worth applauding.

So just a note here that this conversation by the friend was sparked off by telobag.

At work we were musing about the sheer number of ex-corporate people who went on to do something different: selling coffee, fixing bikes, cycling in Latin America, settling down in some secluded island. And there’s this dream of starting a bed-and-breakfast somewhere remote, perhaps by a beach, perhaps in the mountains, we’ll grow our own food and embrace sustainability. And all that. It can be pretty romantic, the idea of being back to nature, being subsistence even, spending last, consuming less.

I thought about the persistence of such dreams over the past 2-3 generations. Modernity wrecks havoc on our soul in many different ways. 2 generations ago, it was the world wars; and in the last generation, there was much violence in the form of hidden repression: within corporations, amongst societies. Then the current generation had almost an entire decade lost from the financial ravage of the Global Financial Crisis and then now a Global pandemic.

The dream persisted because we all desire to create a safe space; not necessarily one we have so much control in but where we find ourselves better able to let things go. It is the psychological kind of freedom we crave, away from wars, repression or the violence of competition.