Just thought I would share with you what has to be, for me, the quote of the week. Taken from the book Getting More, a beautiful book on negotiation by Stuart Diamond (emphasis mine): Lower your expectations. If you come into a negotiation thinking that the other side will be difficult, unfair, rude, or trying... Continue Reading →
Current affairs currently in my head, in a nutshell: Roy Ngerng criticises Singapore's CPF, likens it to schemes of questionable legality. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong sues him for defamation. Many citizens think this is a bad move. See also: Catherine Lim's open letter Among criticisms, Ngerng says government should make it easier for... Continue Reading →
This is a beautiful talk, one that addresses something I'd felt strongly about since I started thinking seriously about my professional life back when I was studying at Temasek Polytechnic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKHTawgyKWQ I remember sitting in the lecture hall, listening to an entrepreneur who had been invited to speak to us business students. During the Q&A,... Continue Reading →
Tired and socially exhausted after a very nice company dinner (a common predicament for introverts), I was looking forward to some me-time on the taxi home. But it was not to be -- the taxi driver was a little chattier than I'd hoped. Having seen me catch his taxi amongst a group of foreigners whom presumably were my colleagues... Continue Reading →
A lovely and interesting talk by Christopher Emdin on teaching. Although aimed at the teaching profession, I couldn't help but see how what he mentioned about teaching teachers to teach was applicable outside the profession. It is a talk about engagement; about keeping audiences entertained; about connecting with audiences. Those of us who often present in... Continue Reading →
So how does one go about convincing the inconvincible (actually a proper word as per Webster)? Contrary to popular belief, there's no need to resort to heavy artillery. Just an interesting new tool in thinking I just learned from the book Decisive by Chip Heath (great book by the way). The tool is this question:... Continue Reading →
I'm currently reading a nice little book called Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky that discusses at some length the difference between being a professional and being an amateur. And it seems that being labelled an amateur isn't really so bad at all, and may in fact be a good thing. One of the professional vs.... Continue Reading →
In my previous post I wrote about the trolley problem (aka "the train dilemma"). Though an interesting problem in its own right and one which rightly deserved its own post, it wasn't really just for the sake of interest that I wrote it. As regular readers of my site would know (yes, all 60,000 of... Continue Reading →
He looked at my screen, saw the first draft of an e-mail I'd been penning, and shook his head. It wasn't pretty. It didn't read well. The message that should have been communicated within the first line was placed below another eight lines of filler. And to think I'd been working on this for the... Continue Reading →
"So," he asked, "what should he do?" Straightforward as the question may seem, it was anything but. There were two tracks I could take: (1) the economic, rational track; or (2) the moral, slightly irrational track. I can't quite share with you what the exact nature of the discussion was, but the question would be... Continue Reading →
Donn, fragments 