Category Archives: Life

I was pondering over the way a market tries to get players hooked on things. Obviously it’s great for people to like your product, to keep using it and even getting others to use it. It’s great if it generates recurring revenue for you. And it’s important that the products don’t last too long, so that you will spend more money on it. It might mean more innovation that is real and good, but it can also be just superficial innovation that adds on unnecessary bells and whistles.

And of course, I was wondering whether such addiction can still be considered a consumer preference. Does it mean people really want to spend all their time doom-scrolling through instagram just because they do it? Just because people are manipulated psychologically to take certain actions does not necessarily mean they are just acting out of their preferences. Yes people have choices and this is not a debate about free will. My concern is more whether the market is here to serve consumers or if consumers are here to serve the market.

Because we are training generation after generations of consumers. People who would aspire new things, who wants to spend more to relieve their stress. People who buys new toys to pamper and reward themselves after working so hard, only to realise they have to work harder to pay for the stuff they bought themselves. Now if people have pretty weird preferences and the market serves them, that is fine unless in the course of it, others get harmed. But when the market has a role in shaping preferences, that preferences are actually endogenous in the market, then it makes sense to question what do we really want our markets to do, and to set the rules of the market in a way that honours our intention and the objective.

We don’t want markets to take a life of their own and starts sticking their ugly heads everywhere.

I’ve been thinking about the fundamentals of economics and how optimisation and computation of equilibrium in economics assumes a closed system. And the problem is that the economy is an open system – new products and services keeps getting created. New business models comes into play that puts a price not just on the product or service but also the time dimension of when you consume or how you consume it. These complexities cannot be easily modelled.

But above all, the basic premise in economics that consumer preferences is the main driver of the market is flawed. At the heart of economics and the understanding of scarcity is that the world’s limited resources meets our unlimited wants – and the market is the device that makes the allocation so that things are optimised (based on whatever ways we weigh various preferences). In this line of thought, consumer preferences are supreme. But are they?

Just by mere observation one realises that the firm (ie. the producers) invest into marketing, branding and promotions in order to create wants. At the same time, there are addictive substances that also generate cravings and skew the preferences of people who have had a taste of it to begin with. Addiction either by chemistry or psychology is a channel by which the market can turn back to alter consumer preferences for its own goals. Therefore, it is important for us to recognise and understand what is the problem we are getting the market to solve when we simply leave things up to the market.

Making new friends can be pretty exciting; the prospects of that friendship and the form it’ll take being something you anticipate as you discover new things, common interests etc. And there is plenty to ask, plenty to discover, new context to dive into. Yet at some point we entrench our biases about people, we classify them into “that kind or this kind” of person, and then we are off to try and find new friends.

Same with business prospects, sometimes having done business with a person we think we’ll checked that box, we already know and satisfied the need. We don’t try and seek how we can serve this prospect better, discover other problems we can solve for them. And build deeper, better relationships.

Because maybe finding out something new about your old friend is only interesting rather than exciting; and getting more business from an existing client doesn’t feel as much like you’re growing the business than if you get a new client. I don’t know if that’s some kind of psychology of novelty. But I know the ones who win tend to be the ones with deep relationships and networks which are not superficial.

Do you brush your teeth daily? And make sure you wash your hands before every meal, and each time you used the toilet, etc. Observing good hygiene is going to keep you well in general but if you are taking on other habits or a lifestyle involving lack of exercise, smoking or overworking, you’ll still be falling sick.

The problem with commercialisation and the marketing world today is everyone is trying to punch above their weight, everyone is trying to scream that they are the most important thing, almost the only thing you should care about. And it can make you FOMO but that FOMO can just be about maintaining hygiene.

For example, halitosis is a made up word for bad breath to make it sound like some kind of illness or disorder or condition. Is it going to ruin your life? It sure does from the perspective of Listerine or Oral B. But if you’re spending every waking moment wondering if people are noticing your breath then you’re barely living even when you’re breathing.

We need to start caring more about our health rather than hygiene. Automate hygiene and make habits out of them, evaluate their importance based on the greater purpose they serve in your life. These are things related to our personal development, our portfolio of skills rather than appearing like we are working while working from home (the notion of “face time” in Asian work places before Apple made it something else). Health is about considering our mental health and actual personal sacrifices before saying yes to things. It is about learning to say “no” and doing so properly, graciously without guilt the society tries to instill into us.

Don’t be fooled into thinking hygiene is health. There are far more important things in life than what you might be obssessing over.

I went to London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) more than 10 years ago. And I read Economics there. I actually applied only to that university. Okay, I did apply also to Harvard, Yale and Princeton because they offered need-blind financial aid but I did not get in. No, this is not to brag about my qualifications. But one of the things I love about the LSE is the motto of the school, “rerum cognoscere causas” (latin for, ‘to know the causes of things’).

The LSE renders the proper English version of the motto as “To understand the causes of things”. And the original latin phrase was actually from a line in a poem book ‘Georgics’ by Virgil: “Felix, qui potest rerum cognoscere causas” (‘Fortunate, who was able to know the causes of things’). Fortunate indeed; yet this world is perhaps ridden with misfortune.

Thanks in part to politics, social media and perhaps lack of academic integrity, we lack a good understand of cause and effect. We confuse correlation with causation, and we are quick to attribute causes to a limited number of things, overlooking other partial causes which are just as important. This is similar to the behaviour of blaming things or others for a mistake. All of these, perhaps to gain a sense of control over the world.

We ought to do a better job helping ourselves and kids understand cause and effect better, and that may even make them better people, less eager to blame, more curious about the world.

So today is the 202th consecutive day I’m posting on this site. Since the beginning of 2021, I’ve been posting on my blog every single day. I was inspired by Seth Godin and probably quote him more often than anyone else in my writing. Many of the themes that I dwell on has some of his ideas as undertones.

Why did I pick this day to reflect about this? No real reason other than the fact that it’s been more than half of the year – something I couldn’t imagine when I started out. Or maybe, it’s because I just finished The Practice. And Seth is right that if you commit to show up consistently and demonstrate to yourself you can, it’s more about just putting one feet ahead of another and going on and on. More often than not, you build readership drip by drip rather than expect a post to go viral. And I’m not here to create viral content.

More important that I continue to echo the themes of sustainability, of creating a future, and working out the story that we’re going to tell ourselves to build the world we want to live in. So what keeps me writing? I’ve something to say, and I believe in that abundance of ideas that Seth keeps on going back to. And if you believe in that too, feel free to drop me a note to share your thoughts, sign up to my mailing list, or follow my instagram, or just this blog.

I had no idea that ‘snafu’ was an acronym until today as I write but I did see it quite a bit in writing. I never looked up the dictionary for its meaning but from its usage, I reckon it meant some kind of screw-up or mess. As I looked it up, my interpretation isn’t too far; it meant a chaotic mess or confused state.

What is interesting is the original ‘meaning’ of that acronym used in the Second World War. It meant ‘Status Normal: All Fouled Up’ (yes the F word was something different but I’m just not going to write it here). The US Marine Corps used it to indicate that something is fouled up, but completely within expectation.

So does fouling up seem foul to you? Or do you always expect everything to be going right, rosy all the way? As reality certainly seem otherwise, it often makes sense not only to evaluate your experiences against past observations and to fine-tune your expectations according to facts. In fact, updating expectations are just as important as formulating them. Above all, dealing with ‘snafus’ are probably more useful than just knowing how to b*tch about them.

NUS Business School professor predicts a resignation tsunami and while I’m not sure if the society is prime for such an act of “rebellion” against traditional employment, I’m very sure there’s a mental health crisis driving this.

The pressures of the sandwiched generation, the rising cost of education of kids, the broken promises of how a degree can translate into “good jobs” and the shattered illusions of what a “good job” really entails. All of these conspire to run down an entire generation of Singaporeans wearied by crisis after crisis (GFC, the aftermath, Covid, lockdowns).

To keep calm and carry on, to maintain a stiff upper lip, may amount to Boxer’s response to just about everything in Animal Farm. If this generation is just seeing drifting from job to job in search of the ideal job as the approach to solving their mental health and happiness challenge, that’ll be losing this opportunity for change.

The alternative is to rewrite the narrative we inherited from the boomers, to develop a vision for the future we want to create rather than passively receive what is prescribed. Or worst, to game the system and perpetuate the status quo.

I wonder how a successful pessimist would be like. Would he be gloating his failure to foresee his success? Or to delight in the fact success has its serious pitfalls which needs to be managed delicately. What exactly would be a pessimistic response to success? It could be just denial, or the recognition that successes doesn’t teach us anything that helps us improve while actually failure does (though an optimist is more likely to see that).

There’s so much contradiction within being a pessimist when it comes to living life. Do you celebrate the downside of things you have foreseen and prepared for? Or do you celebrate the bullets you dodged? Or success? And what is it about success you celebrate? The transient nature of it? What drives him/her? What does he/she really want out of life?

He (or she) probably doesn’t exist. So choosing to be skeptical about things and paying careful attention, doing due diligence and all is important. But to consistently play the pessimist is simply not the pathway towards attaining success.

We were having a meal and then she said that I made a statement, which I don’t recall making. So first I denied having made that statement; and when she insisted, I tried to explain my perspective on the topic and what I really meant (assuming I had really said those words). She wasn’t interested in all that because to her, I was already being defensive and was twisting things in order to be ‘right’. She kept quiet.

So I stepped back and remind myself there was no point doubling down on mistakes, not to mention trying to clear up something as convoluted as the above. I asked myself if I entertained the possibility I was ‘wrong’, if I had to change my course, would I? Is there a point in trying hard to be right? What test am I sitting for here?

In life, it’s really important to be right in terms of making good judgments. But for most part, you don’t make things right through arguments, or your words, you do them with your deeds. So when you discover some truth, double-down on it. And how about mistakes? Take action to move forward from them; if you have to rectify, go for it, if you should be leaving it alone in order to go forward, then do so! Just please don’t double-down on it.