I’m not sure if people recall this set of sticky notes. I kept this one from many years ago in one of the blog entries I wrote. And watching Soul (the movie) reminded me in part of these. That we’re so busy living in the past and future, that we think our purpose is in the future, or the past. That our spark is the one thing our life is for, so much we forget everything else in our life.
The recognition that being “in the zone” can be also about being a “lost soul” because of our obsessions can disconnect us from life. It’s being too caught up with something.
And we can interpret making the most of today as subjugating it to the future or trying to relive the past. But the spark, the personality we have, the ideals we might have had a glimpse of, are all not the purpose. The sense of purpose sometimes is not found to be lived out; but is found out in the living.
Does it always make sense to use a takeaway container or bring your own bag? Is it always sensible to replace every coal-fired power plant (which can sometimes last 50 years) with tonnes of solar panels which often only last 15-20 years. Are we producing too many reusable plastic cups and plastic bottles in a bid to reduce disposable ones?
Sometimes, using the ‘find and replace’ function in Microsoft Word and Excel can be costly. Likewise, if we often can’t just achieve sustainability with the standardised approach – finding that one substitute for each of the polluting, environmentally-unfriendly thing, and then replacing the unfriendly version.
It will take in-depth studies, more careful considerations, to find the right areas to invest, the loose brick to remove so that the old structures powering unsustainable practices would fall. All that is often worth it; to achieve long run sustainability.
What are your defaults in life? What do you fall back on?
Google announced (at least for the US) that they will show you the greenest rather than the fastest route when you search for directions on Google Maps. That’s powerful; and that’s also the method that companies including banks which are switching to ‘paperless’ statements are doing to their customers. First they made it an opt-in to have paper statements (ie. by default, you get electronic statements), and then they might even put a fee on paper statements down the road.
Maybe if we are not cutting plastic bags yet, we could make it default for shops not to give bags. Just pass the customer a product after check-out. Let the customer ask for bags. If they don’t ask, they don’t get the bags. Don’t let your staff ask if they need; let the customer know politely if they want bags, they need to ask. Use signs to tell them that.
Defaulting to the green option rather than the most convenient option works and is important. Make ‘bring your own containers’ default for takeaway by always asking customers if they have their own containers, then reminding them there’s a fee for the takeaway containers.
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
Unknown
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.
