Kevin Low

When we were in school, we were taught to identify and solve problems. In our daily lives, we fill our minds with problems so that we can try and solve them. More than ever, a lot of these problems involve quite a bit of thinking. And so we try to deal with the problems by thinking harder. But we might be confused. Confused by the experience of being in school, and taking exams. We start to think that the testings of life is like sitting in an examination hall, given pen and paper, forced to think and recall facts, or looking through reference materials, looking for an answer.

Life sometimes throws us problems that we have to sit with. And to mull over; but to be willing to drop off the problem and not think about it for a while. Perhaps to let our subconscious take over instead. But during these periods, we need to be freed, our minds must get to relax. Yet in the high stressed, fast paced life nowadays, we don’t give ourselves much chance to. We are punishing ourselves all the time, stressing, straining.

It is not the weight of life’s problems, it is the length of time we’re holding it up in our minds and trying to get to an answer, trying to come to a point when we can toss out the problem from our backyard. How about leaving it in the backyard, sitting with it, and re-casting it as a part of the backyard landscape rather than a ‘problem’. Likewise, to not be too anxious to ‘get out’ of a situation (especially when it is not exactly life-threatening, just tricked into feeling so by our minds).

We need to graduate from school; and stop treating life as an exam. Because then we will never leave the exam stress behind.

When we make investments, part of the returns will need to be ploughed back into maintaining the asset so that it continues to operate well and bring returns. For stocks, that happens internally within corporations so that any returns you get are already net of those operations & maintenance type expenditure. For a property, things are a bit more complex since you do have to fork out some money in order to upkeep it, and that subtracts from the rental income you make.

When it comes to assets that do not yield financial benefits but things like convenience, efficiency and all, then things gets more complex. Because the cost of maintenance is explicit but the benefits from it would be less obvious. One example would be just washing a car. There’s little utility to washing the car other than the impression you give to others about you as a person; though of course, that could also be part of the reason you first got a car and that is an important benefit stream you want to be able to secure from your asset. Then you’d do the washing regularly.

From here you realise that your willingness to upkeep the asset really should depend on the stream of benefits you’re trying to derive from the asset. And these all should be worked out a bit more upfront when we are making the decision to first make the investment. Or perhaps the exact costs won’t be available but we should at least be aware of them.

Our lives consists of a lot of infrastructure investments; the relationships we have, the education we decide to take on, and these all takes maintenance. The choices that we have made do set the boundaries and constraints on choices we are going to make in the future. And therefore, it is important that the ability to upkeep those investments are considered before even starting.

Are we fast to assign blame and take credit?

What about giving thanks and accepting responsibility?

What about all things that were beyond control and a matter of serendipity? What about the times when we ‘lucked out’? How about those who helped us? The books we read, the people we spoke to, the landscapes we saw which inspired us.

We can be better people by being thankful people.

When I was in school and I was just ignoring all that nonsense my economics teacher was teaching in A Levels, and not giving standard answers to exam question. I insisted on spending space in my exam script ranting against the impracticality of the economic theory I was using to explain the real world phenomenon just paragraphs ago – demonstrating that I already know what they wanted me to show I know while also how I don’t agree with it.

In my heart then, I knew what I was trying to learn. In fact, I did my own reading, continued to score Cs an Ds on all economics papers until I reached A Levels. I went on to graduate from LSE with First Class in BSc Economics. I trusted in the process of learning, of reading up, studying, observing and thinking. I did not care to follow mere processes that enabled one to produce result in exams – I wanted to learn, not just be schooled.

Having grown up, I find it amazing I had that tenacity in my teenage. Perhaps it was the rebellious years but nowadays, when I achieve some minor success I’m swayed to start finding hacks to be able to achieve outcomes rather than just trust and follow a process. It is so important that we don’t hit ourselves too hard just because of an outcome even when we have followed the right processes faithfully.

I had a really unpleasant experience lately at a bank. I’ve been having issues with the online banking and I went to the bank branch to try and get it sorted, alongside a few other errands I need to get sorted at the bank anyways. The irony was that after quite a few tries and the bank officer had no luck solving my problem, they told me to sit there, provided me with a desk phone, dialled the hotline and got me to try and speak to the customer service operator on the hotline to get it sorted.

This was after waiting in the line for about 40-minutes to get to the bank officer in the first place. I went to the bank branch first thinking it would be less crowded especially during these pandemic times, only to realise despite the thin crowd there was still waiting because there was only one poor officer available to attend to people.

So as if it was not ludicrous enough, the hotline guy who was in the IT department thinks there was nothing wrong with my account. So they have to raise an investigation report and wait 2 days to get back to me. Total time on the call, about 20 minutes or so, including about 10 minutes of just being on hold.

I reflected deeply upon the people who falls through the cracks because of the giant bureaucratic system we have created for ourselves in this world to organise things. While it is hard to love it, I find it challenging to hate it because after all, these rich systems have delivered better lives to many beyond our wildest imaginations. Yet the experience of being stuck in a crack in the system with no one knowing how to help, really sucks.

Thanks for reading my rant.

A friend decided to leave the education sector. He got a job offer but had to start at the new place when the school holiday starts. He asked the school if he could start in the new place while continue holding on to the job to finish serving his notice period (which was 2 months, now one of which is during the school holidays).

The school said no. The school said they are not allowed to hold another full time job during school holidays. And teachers, unlike other employees do not have annual leaves. As school holidays are not annual leaves and teachers are supposed to be ready to be called back for contingencies, the period during the school holidays cannot be used to offset the notice period.

One could say that every teacher entered into the contract knowing those policies and terms. Except this friend probably did not. The principal said it’s the policy and common practice. The HR said nothing but deferred to the leadership and school policy. No one wanted to set a precedent. Using school holidays to offset the notice period is abusing the system? Maybe they were worried about finding a replacement in time for the teacher during school holidays?

I’m not sure if a school isn’t taking good care of their teachers, parents can really trust them to take good care of their kids. I think the expectations that the system took on is way too much; and they are just loading it on to the teachers, without giving them more resources to cope with their own mental and financial well-being.

Honestly, it doesn’t help that Human Resources with school are just administrative people who are not doing their part to defend their people and upkeep morale. HR needs to get better.

Do people actually think learning stops in school?

Sometimes, I do suspect that people at work have decided if they had not learnt something in school, they do not know how to do it, they’re not going to do it.

More likely, it is the HR and the employer that is treating their job candidates as that sort of people. And it perpetuates; that becomes the exact sort of people they hire. The ones who checks the boxes and no more; the type that has the paper relevance but not the real world relevance.

HR needs to get better.

Your life has a limit, but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger.

Zhuangzi

Having had the chance to be schooled, taught the virtue and importance of academic success, it is easy to think that the pursuit of knowledge is in itself a good end. Learning of course is a virtue and part of the whole process of growth. But it is probably important to recognise that knowledge is unlimited; and in fact, even the pool of useful knowledge that we can access in our lifetime is infinite. And so all the more wisdom is so important, the ability to discern, to make decision when rules are unclear or not prescriptive.

Setting up for ourselves the ability to take on knowledge and see immediately how they apply rather than just take it at face value is such a valuable habit.

The post I wrote yesterday about emotional proofreading is so much about the ability to communicate not just clearly, but to provide more certainty. If the plan for a face-to-face chat is for someone to take you through some materials, then say so. The use of power and authority in the workplace can be intimidating particularly when we bring to our workplaces echoes of our experiences in school when we receive a marked assignment with a poor grade and the words in red ink ‘See me’.

This psychological safety at work is completely underrated especially in Asian working cultures as something that helps us all thrive. There’s this sense that work is about being serious, about casting aside one’s emotions like a stoic, and that displaying emotions, especially panic is bad. The thing is that feeling the emotion and being able to flag it out isn’t the same as expressing it and going hysterical. Yet people are unwilling to even name or admit to feeling what they exactly feel.

Then something is wrong here. Being able to communicate emotions, clear the air properly and eliminate tensions are important. I’ve been in workplaces where the boss actually thinks some kind of tension in the air is good and keeps everyone on their toes. Eventually, we had meetings that were just pre-rehearsed and almost staged because the tension was so much no one could really be creative and think on their feet. Genuine brainstorming was replaced by people just rattling off points that were prepared before hand.

Without clear communication and ability to project certainty for the people, the office descended into lots of mind-reading, guessing what the boss wants or how a presentation ‘actually’ went. There were multiple versions of the same event as experienced intellectually, emotionally, as witnessed physically and so on. People just weren’t the best versions of themselves anymore. It was sad that several different people were actually seen as incompetent rather than being unable to function in such a dysfunctional environment.

“Can you arrange a time to come and see me?” shoots the reply from the boss after you hands in a piece of work. You then feel your heart rush, and you look through your bosses’ calendar and it is so packed; you have no choice but to book the Friday 6pm even though you had wanted to meet your spouse for dinner that night after a busy week. The email sure felt important. You spent the whole week being uncertain and anxious. Was the piece of work good or bad, or what did you do wrong? Why did the boss want you to see him?

You meet the boss down the hallway and you tried to smile; he didn’t smile back – in fact he looked like he didn’t see you. And you thought about the email you received.

When Friday comes, you shuffle into his room; and he thank you for the hard work and told you he hasn’t got a chance to look at it because of his busy schedule. He appreciates that you’ve set a time to meet with him and take him through the work. You have a whole mixture of emotions welling up inside you but quelled it and just went through a quick 10 minutes presentation to run the boss by the work. He is happy with it, thanks you again and tells you he’s going to use it for next Wednesday’s reporting meeting. Then he tells you to have a good weekend. You look at your watch, 6.30pm and then call your spouse. What a week.

I went through a couple of Liz Fosslien’s talks and a lot of parts about teaching leaders to reduce uncertainty and anxieties for their staff relates to these sort of experiences as I described above. She advocates what she calls ’emotional proofreading’ one’s email before it gets sent out because it saves the staff a lot of unproductive anxieties and creates unnecessary stress. We have seen her ‘No Hard Feelings’ cartoons around and you probably really like it. I think I’ll have much more to write about their ideas.