Tag Archives: psychology

Healthy competition and values

I was put in a system where we were regularly assessed relative to our cohort, made to feel anxious about our position amongst our peers, and put in an artificial environment where we were taught to improve through ‘healthy competition’.

The society’s definition of healthy competition does get out of hand. Guardian recently ran a piece commenting on the number of ‘Forbes 30 Under 30’ featured people who landed in jail or at least trouble with the law.

It’s not just that competition gets out of hand but a question of what kind of values we are sending young people into the society with. Beyond the glamorization of the ideas around hustling and ‘faking it till you make it‘, there is clearly a lack of clear direction on the moral boundaries that should govern the claims made by companies to get ahead in terms of creating investor interest, or customer demand. Is it not time we draw a line, and re-align definition of success with actual activities that will move society and the world forward?

Transition from truth

We learn things in school only to learn at the next level of school that what we had learn was not exactly true. Each time, our simplistic view of reality gets increasingly replaced by a more sophisticated and nuanced view of the world. But not just that; there are ‘truths’ we learnt in school that eventually gets surpassed by new findings and they become untrue.

Or take for example some theories and ideas in social sciences; they evolve with our understanding of society, culture and economics – which means they’re not as timeless and can shift from being once true to becoming untrue. (In economics, an example would be the Phillips curve relationship between inflation and unemployment – a relationship that broke down the more Central Banks tried to take advantage of it.)

So how do we know and observe when a piece of idea, knowledge or conventional wisdom makes that transition from being truth? What measures can we take to insulate ourselves from that? How should we think about ‘truths’ we hold dear to our hearts or subconsciously in our minds?

Going back to objectives II

What happens when people at the ‘grassroots’ level of a system tries to solve a system problem, or deal with the symptoms and consequences of a systemic issue? How often have we asked this question and consider how pervasive such a problem archetype is in our modern society?

Corporate change and transformation department should be framing questions this way to uncover projects they can work on. Far too often, there are departments operating at ‘corporate’ or ‘strategic’ level of the company just trying to find easy-wins lurking around the organisation to create some kind of change project. The small projects that affect one or two stakeholders can be better dealt with by themselves. Collecting problem statements on the ground may not be the best because ‘the ground’ tend to contextualise problems within their own scope of work or scope of influence. When they do point out something that is more systemic, it is overwhelming or that they point to merely a symptom of underlying problems.

The corporate strategy department needs to hunt down problem statements by considering first what is the objectives that the company is trying to achieve overall, and what are some of the internal elements of the company that is hindering it from achieving its objectives. That would be more useful corporate change. Solving problems that prevent what existing department perceives as hindrance from them doing ‘their work’ may not always be optimal because ‘their work’ can be a function of the existing silos of an organisation and not exactly meeting the overall objectives of it.

Going back to objectives

What happens when you are ‘stuck’; what exactly does it mean to feel stuck. Is it more about not making progress? If so, then progress towards what? You can’t get stuck if there’s no sense of destination you are trying to get to. And having no destination is not the same as being stuck. Because not knowing where you want to go means it’s perfectly fine wherever you are! Stop thinking like you need to go somewhere if you’re alright with here and now.

If you’re not alright with here and now, and unsure where you need to go, then it’s not about getting out. It’s about figuring where you want to go. And figuring out where you want to go has more to do with rethinking about your objectives. Your objectives for life, for lifestyle, for your work, your career, your relationships and all. Reflect on what is it about the here and now that is uncomfortable; consider what you know you want, and what you don’t know you want.

The same applies to problem-solving. When you feel that you’re not progressing towards the solution, and hence ‘stuck’, it’s time to revisit the objectives. What are you trying to do exactly? Have you contextualised or defined the problem in a way that narrows the solution set such that you are missing out things that can get you your objectives anyways. For example, if you are looking to hammer a nail into the wall, and you contextualise the problem as you “needing a hammer” then you essentially ruled out solving the problem by using any other equipment.

Revisiting objectives helps; and that’s also why it is sometimes difficult to deal with higher level issues by contextualising a problem within a silo-ed context. That would be a good topic of discussion for another day!

A new space

Something to be revealed perhaps a little later but I’ve just made a massive move to a new environment and new space in my life. I’ve uprooted myself and shifted to another country, one that is not unfamiliar but definitely new for me to experience work and life differently.

One of the reasons is to disrupt the patterns that had been laid down over the years, but more significantly during the pandemic. I had become somewhat imbalanced in terms of my life and focus. This is an attempt to restore the focus. Not by making things easier for me but actually by making it harder. Sometimes, I think reducing our ability to take on more allows us to be more focused on what it is we really need and want to hold on to.

The new space for my life hopefully also grants fresh ideas and inspiration especially to set me back on the path growth in multiple dimension rather than just striving in a single dimension in life.

Clumsy versus poise

Grace, elegance, poise, all somehow points to some kind of balance, or equilibrium whereas clumsiness implies a degree of imbalance, tension at play which can result in awkwardness.

In many things, we strive for the beauty that poise brings but in order to get there, we often have to go through the awkwardness and tension. It doesn’t mean things are going wrong, but the journey to an equilibrium is only possible along the lines of disequilibrium. It is a matter of whether circumstances naturally guides the state of affairs towards the equilibrium or that somehow other forces needs to be at work to enable it.

You don’t necessarily get to glide towards poise; and along the way, there’s going to be a lot of difficulties. The experts are able to make it look easy because they have been in that state of clumsiness for far longer, far more than you have been. If you’re not able to get through the awkwardness, there’s no way you’d be able to find your way to grace. Others have it easy not by going through more ease, but through more difficulty.

Means of life

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits made an astute observation that led to his exploration of habits and eventually the best-seller. He observed that people often had the same goals but they do not end up with the same results. This meant that goal-setting, while being an important first step, wasn’t what achievement is about.

Our culture sometimes seem to think that setting up goals is enough, that it would naturally push everyone or everything to place. That cannot be farther from reality; and having that sense of purpose for life isn’t exactly sufficient. We need to discover the means by which we fulfill our purposes and reach the goals.

What do you think are your means of life? Is it about money, resources? Financial wealth? Or relationships, connections, networks? What fuels you towards your life goals?

Demand side perspectives

The modern, capitalist, market economy is powered by demand. Demand for products, goods and services. And what drives these demand? Some would like to say, marketing, advertising. But more fundamentally, social comparison, desire for affliation/connection.

So the idea of market competition gets turned on demand itself. In other words, the seller turns to the buyer and say, “He’s got this, so you have got to get it.” This mechanism is so widespread and so completely ignored by economics that at a macro-level, it overturns more fundamental notions of allocative efficiency. The fact that demand is in itself premised upon the actions and long-term strategies of supply, makes the equilibrium in the market impossible to pin down.

There is no long term convergent points and what development has come to be is simply the ability for supply to generate more and more of its own demand.

Traffic jams

We spent more than 4 hours along a short 2km stretch of the Singapore-Malaysia second linkway last Saturday morning. It didn’t exactly feel that long as I was in good company and found it entertaining to watch how the buses, lorries, motorcycles and some defiant motorists use the left road shoulder as their fast-track lane.

It was interesting how some of the vehicles steered by really experienced drivers weaved in and out of the road shoulder and then moved to the middle lane at different points of time. The drivers were assertive but relatively patient, finding every opportunity they have to inch forward and wedge between the gaps between 2 cars in the adjacent lane.

There seem to be some kind of logic in the flows and it is questionable if there’s any kind of real queuing justice in the entire journey because there were merging and then diverging lanes. Fortunes of the vehicles could quickly change at these points. And everyone had to be on their toes.

It’s tiring to be driving in a jam because not only are you not making any progress forward but you’re competing to gain just tiny advantage and constantly watching that advantage to avoid losing it. I find this to be an analogy of living in Asia where there’s a lot of competition over very small rewards. Innovation is numerous and difficult to compare. There seem to be some invisible hand that is not just sorting and ordering of quality of ideas but who are behind those ideas. Who you are may determine if you would be penalised for using the road shoulder, and what you know might help you gain a small upper hand or two but overall, the society is held back by the cross-cancellation of the various innovative forces.