Month: July 2010

Lark-ing away to glory – BNET..

I’m a morning person. Like to get up around 6. Turns out my career is likely enhanced by my proclivity to be up with the roosters.

If you’re a night owl, on the other hand, you might be more creative and intelligent than us up-with-the-sun types, but your rhythms are out of sync with the corporate clock.

“When it comes to business success, morning people hold the important cards,” writes Christopher Randler in the Harvard Business Review article, The Early Bird Really Does Get the Worm. Randler is a biology professor at University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany

Randler’s research shows that morning people often have the following traits, which can lead to business success:

They earn better grades in school.
Early risers anticipate problems and act to minimize them.
They’re proactive.

Proactivity seems to be the key to all this. Morningsters are more likely to agree with statements such as “I spend time identifying long-range goals for myself” and “I feel in charge of making things happen.”

Evening people, while creative, intelligent, and funny, can also be pessimistic, neurotic, and depressed, according to Randler. They are also out of sync with the hours kept by business and schools, which are in full operation while they doze.

One can learn to become a morning person, but Randler is not sure that would lead to greater productivity.

“There’s evidence that something inherent may determine proactivity,” he says. “Studies show that conscientiousness is also associated with morningness. Perhaps proactivity grows out of conscientiousness.”

I don’t know what to make of this research. As a manager, should I be thinking of ways to get more productivity out of my vampires? How do I bring their attributes of humorousness, etc., into the entire organization?

I’ll have to sleep on that one. What do you think?
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Source: BNET

On being boring..

I just realized how rather boring I am. I’m not much the TV/movie/sitcom person, nor am I the big party geek and what’s worse, I actually really like the thought of working hard!

The thought of working continuously on a tough (and hopefully thought of as impossible) problem is something I find stimulating. And I’m happy with a week with lots of work, a good amount of football, a decent dose of Manchester United and an evening with friends.

While I obviously consider myself very normal (Duh..), I realize how boring I might seem. I’m already on the more boring end of the spectrum back in Singapore but here in Europe, gosh, I just look weird. We got out on an evening and it begins with me not drinking or smoking and after a whole day of training/working to do some research followed by wining and dining, a fellow associate was all set to explore the city (at 11 in the night with the day starting early tomorrow) and I obviously passed the opportunity and obviously found the prospect of blogging out my thoughts more tempting – so there you go.

That’s me in a snapshot. I guess I like things in boxes – for eg: this is an official trip so all focus is on work, staying fit, getting rest etc and would be completely different if I was out here on holiday. And as I’m looking around, I realize how much I take my own characteristics and habits for granted as the norm..

Having said that, I love the fact that I’m this boring because at the end of the day, this is what makes me tick and ready to go every day. The thought of meeting a whole bunch of exciting people, looking for ways to add value and maximize opportunities till when I’m in Zurich before heading back for a nice weekend to Singapore with friends, football, re-org and more work to do – now, that’s my kind of fun! :)

To the simple things in life, then.. :)

PIG and COW..

A man is driving down a mountainous winding road in his sports car. It is a beautiful, sunny day. He has his convertible top down, and he’s driving along enjoying the majesty of the environment.

He sees another car approaching, and as it gets closer, he notices that a woman is driving and she has her head out of the window. As the two cars come closer, he slows down and hears the woman yell “PIG!” The man quickly reacts by yelling back, “COW!” The lady’s car moves on up the winding road and the man continues on his way. As he picks up speed and goes around the next turn in the road, he runs right into a large pig!

When people yell, will you hear threats or opportunities?
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Wow! :)

Counteracting brain fry..

There are some days that are just heavy. More often than not, it is a result of one or a combination of a couple of the following –

1) Lack of sleep
2) Too much intellectually challenging activity
3) Information overload
4) Too many things to juggle at the same time..
5) An unclear priority list resulting in more stretch than necessary..

I’m on the information overload boat for today. Time for a nice bath and some shut eye so I can begin dreaming about what I learnt today.. haha.

Have a great day! And rest well to those in a similar boat! :)

The A380 flight and suite dream..

It was nice to finally fly on the A380 after hearing so much about it and while it largely justified the hype, I was reminded of a recent addition to my ‘101 things to do before I die’ list..

I generally go down to the SIA office in Chennai to meet two friends I made before I flew to Singapore on the SIA-NOL scholarship. And one of them showed me pictures of the A380 suites – for the first time ever on a flight, passengers could have a whole cabin to themselves with a comfortable chair, bed, television and practically anything else they desired. Here is a a picture –

(There’s a chair right behind which is not in view. Can be seen better in this video)

This comes at a cost, of course. A 12 hour trip from Singapore to London’s costs about S$ 24,000 (only).

So, here’s to doing this sometime soon.. ;)
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And on flight, one of our air hostesses was a real dynamo when it came to customer service. It was a fitting reminder of why a person pays so much to travel by Singapore Airlines..

Customer service – now there’s an idea!