no tech for 1 year

SYDNEY – The handwritten letters from our 13-year-old daughter sit on our coffee table in a clear plastic folder.

With their drawings of pink flowers and long paragraphs marked with underlined and crossed-out words, they are an abridged, analogue version of her spirited personality – and a way for my wife, Diana, and me to keep her close as we watch TV and fiddle with our mobile phones.

They would not exist, of course, if Amelia were home with us in Sydney. But she is hundreds of kilometres away at a uniquely Australian school in the bush, where she is spending her whole ninth-grade school year without the Internet, a phone, a computer or even a camera with a screen.

Our friends and relatives in the United States can hardly believe this is even a possibility. There, it is considered bold just to talk about taking smartphones from students during class time.

Here in Australia, a growing number of respected schools lock up smart everything for months. They make tap-and-swipe teens learn, play and communicate only through real-life interaction or words scrawled on the page.

“What a gift this is,” we told Amelia, when she was accepted, hesitated, then decided to go.

What I underestimated was how hard it would be for us at home. Removing the liveliest member of our family, without calls or texts, felt like someone had taken one of my internal organs across state lines without telling me how to heal.

Yet, as we adjust, her correspondence and ours – traveling hundreds of kilometres, as if from one era to another – are teaching us all more than we had imagined. The gift of digital detox that we thought Australia was giving our daughter has also become a revelatory bequest for us – her American parents and her older brother.

Something in the act of writing, sending and waiting days or weeks for a reply, and in the physical and social challenges experienced by our daughter at a distance, is changing all of our personal operating systems. Without the ever-present immediacy of digital connection, even just temporarily, can a family be rewired?

Amelia is at Timbertop, the ninth-grade campus of Geelong Grammar, one of Australia’s oldest private schools, which has made outdoor education a priority since the 1950s.

The idea was to build courage, curiosity and compassion among adolescents, and their ranks have ranged from the children of sheep farmers and diplomats, as well as Britain’s King Charles III. He spent a semester at Timbertop in 1966 and later said it was “by far the best part” of his education.

The year is meant to be difficult.

Before we dropped Amelia off in late January, we received a video from Timbertop showing teachers sitting at picnic tables in the sun, warning that confidence and personal growth would come only with struggles and perseverance.

Within 24 hours, we started to understand what that meant. Not for Amelia. For me and Diana.

A few days in, I also could not avoid tough questions about myself. Was the fact that it was so hard to lose contact a comment on my over-involved parenting? My own ridiculous addiction to tech-fuelled immediacy? Or both?

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“Withdrawal” was a word we heard discussed in Timbertop, or “TT”, circles.

In Amelia’s first letter, arriving after a week that felt like a year, we could certainly see the symptoms. She was anxious about friendships, wanting them to form as quickly as they do on Snapchat.

In her Timbertop interview, when asked about homesickness, she had bluntly said “that is the least of my worries”, but, in fact, Amelia missed us – even her brother. Her early letters to us and to him made clear that she found the intensity of her emotions surprising.

Diana and I wrote back right away with encouragement.

The experiences Amelia told us about, including the occasional mention of a class in positive psychology to identify personal strengths, spoke to the importance of play and pushing adolescents into environments where they can learn they are far more capable of managing risks and taking on tough tasks than they (or we) might think.

But I was also starting to find value in the retelling, in the slow sharing of our lives by analogue means – in the letter writing itself.

Seeking more insight, I reached out to John Marsden, former head of the English department at Timbertop and a best-selling young adult novelist who later founded his own experiential learning school north of Melbourne, Australia.

He laughed when I asked about the meaning of letters. “It’s been happening for thousands of years,” he said. “It is just new for this generation.”

He went on to suggest that what I was discovering in our letters might, in fact, be something significant – what he often tells parents they should aim for in their own families, in their own ways.

He called it a “gradual divergence”.

Amelia’s experience involves not just the luxury of removal – the taking away of social media. It also includes an addition, something the letters capture and embody: the gift of agency.

Far from home at 13, in a messed-up world, she has landed where there is intellectual space and the means to practise a method for asserting and exploring who she is and wants to become. She has found a room of one’s own.

I am tempted to send her a letter detailing my discovery. Maybe this time, I will write it by hand. Better yet, maybe I will let her tell me what she thinks when she gets the urge. NYTIMES

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water

SINGAPORE – Wet weather and cloudy skies provided Singapore some relief recently, but this does not mean your children should put away their water bottles.

Rain or shine, it is important to stay hydrated and it is not just to keep one from feeling thirsty, says dietitian Chong Yan Fong from the Nutrition and Dietetics Department at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH).

A fun fact to share with your kids is that 70 per cent of the human body is made up of water.

When they do not drink enough fluids, they can struggle to concentrate and stay alert in class, which affects their learning. They are also likely to feel more tired and irritable, she adds.

In some cases of mild dehydration, they may feel more thirsty, have dry mouth or skin and suffer from headaches and constipation.

Ms Chong points out that water – the main property of blood – is essential to help carry nutrients and oxygen to cells in the body, support the immune system, digest food and flush out waste materials.

The body loses water throughout the day and it should be replaced constantly, even on breezy days or when a person is not exercising.

During rainy weather, most people tend to feel less thirsty as it seems that the body does not need water to cool itself down.

“But your body is still losing moisture. Not drinking water or drinking less because you do not feel thirsty increases the risk of dehydration,” she says.

If fluids are not replenished in time, dehydration can progress from mild to severe, leading to rapid breathing, increased heart rate, dizziness, seizures and loss of consciousness.

Parents and caregivers should be mindful to get the younger ones, who cannot verbalise if they are thirsty, to drink regularly, especially if they are sick or out in the heat playing.

Children are more prone to dehydration, as their bodies are not as efficient at cooling down as those of adults. Encourage them to take water breaks every 20 to 30 minutes when they are active outdoors.

How much water should kids drink?

The amount of fluids that children need daily depends on various factors such as age, weight and physical activity levels.

They may also need to drink more when they are ill, for example, when there is severe vomiting or diarrhoea, and when they take certain prescribed medications such as diuretics.

Generally, the colour of kids’ urine can help determine if they are drinking enough.

“If they are urinating several times a day and the urine is pale and odourless, it is a good indication that they are well hydrated,” Ms Chong says. “Medium-dark yellow urine which smells suggests they need to drink more water.”

While needs vary between individuals, here is a recommendation of how much fluids a healthy child should take daily. One cup is 250ml.

One to two years old: four to six cups

Three to six years old: five to seven cups

Seven to 12 years old: seven to nine cups

13 to 18 years old: nine to 12 cups

Adults: eight to 10 cups 

Sugar-sweetened beverages, including bubble tea and sports drinks, are best avoided. They are not as effective at hydrating your body, do not provide nutrition and can contribute to excess weight gain and tooth decay.

“Encourage your children to choose water instead of sugary drinks. It is extremely important to adopt healthy eating habits from young,” Ms Chong says.

But what if your kids do not like the taste of water? Here are five simple and healthy ways to encourage and increase their fluid intake.

1. Infused water

Add fruit to water to give it a boost of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. PHOTO: PIXABAY

Add natural flavours to water by adding fruit, vegetables or herbs that your children like.

Try different combinations of ingredients to give water a boost of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.

For example, try adding sliced strawberries and basil leaves; cucumber, mint and lime; grapefruit, orange and rosemary; or passion fruit and pineapple. Serve the beverage chilled.

2. Frozen fruity cubes

Freeze diced fresh fruit or 100 per cent fruit juice with no added sugar, and add the cubes to a cup of water.

The cubes give the water a hint of fruity flavour and provide small amounts of vitamin C. The variety of colours will also entice children to drink up.

3. Yogurt fruit popsicles

Add diced fresh fruit into small containers or popsicle moulds, fill with plain low- or non-fat yogurt and transfer to the freezer until set.

An alternative method is to puree your choice of fruit – for example, berries, banana or mangoes – with yogurt and divide them evenly into the moulds before freezing.

Get creative with your children and involve them in the preparation.

These popsicles will not only cool them down, but also offer a good mix of protein, vitamins, minerals and probiotics.

4. Fresh fruit

Offer fruit such as watermelon, oranges, peaches, papaya, pineapples and strawberries, which have high water content.

Whole fruit has fibre, vitamins and minerals. It is preferable to fruit juices which contain concentrated sugars and less fibre. Fruit juices can also be acidic, which can increase the risk of tooth decay.

If your children crave juices, look for those labelled with no added sugars or are freshly squeezed. Consider diluting them with water to reduce the acidity and sugar content.

5. Milk

Calcium is the key building block for strong, healthy bones and teeth, and is especially important during childhood and teenage years.

Low-fat milk as well as unsweetened, calcium-fortified dairy alternatives such as soya, oat and almond milks are good calcium sources.

Drinking milk is a good way to ensure adequate calcium and fluid intake.

Enjoy it chilled to beat the heat. Depending on your child’s age and needs, include two to three cups of milk a day as part of a balanced diet.

However, milk-based beverages containing added sugars, such as malted drinks, milkshakes, smoothies and iced chocolate, should be limited.

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Sun protection a must, regardless of weather

Apply sunscreen with an SPF level of at least 30 and broad spectrum protection when heading outdoors with your child. PHOTO: ST FILE

Sunscreen is not just for sunny days. You and your child should apply it even when the weather is cool as the sun’s harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays can still cause damage.

“Being geographically located one degree from the Equator, Singapore receives a large amount of sunlight throughout the year,” says Associate Professor Mark Koh, head and senior consultant from KKH’s Department of Dermatology.

UV radiation is a part of the sunlight spectrum and is made up of three parts – UVA, UVB and UVC.

UVA and UVB can reach Earth in significant amounts, as opposed to UVC, which is mostly absorbed by the ozone layer.

Prolonged exposure to UV rays can lead to sunburn and cause premature skin ageing.

In the long run, frequent sunburns are known to increase the risk of developing melanoma, a cancerous type of mole, as well as other forms of skin cancer.

Apart from its effects on the skin, excessive long-term sun exposure can lead to eye problems, such as cataracts, and suppression of the immune system, which reduces the body’s ability to fight infections.

Prof Koh says sun protection should ideally start at birth.

Infants below six months old should not be exposed to direct sunlight, as sunscreens are generally not indicated to be used on them.

Babies older than six months need sun protection measures when they go outdoors. Choose a sunscreen with SPF level of at least 30 and with broad spectrum protection that covers UVA and UVB rays. Reapply it every 30 to 60 minutes.

If your child’s skin turns red and itchy after using sunscreen, it is best to consult a doctor.

During extreme hot weather, children with eczema should avoid going outdoors as excessive sweating can irritate their skin condition.

Prof Koh says they can take short cool baths twice daily, but avoid using harsh soaps and bubble baths. Follow up with applying moisturiser.

To further relieve the itch, consider using a moisturiser that contains low concentrations of menthol or place the moisturiser in the fridge.

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Muhammad Fathullah Asfa Muhammad (Rmps) <muhammad_fathullah_asfa_muhammad@students.edu.sg>

gen z richer

Generation Z is taking over. In the rich world, there are at least 250 million people born between 1997 and 2012. About half are now in a job. In the average American workplace, the number of Gen Zers (sometimes also known as “Zoomers”) working full-time is about to surpass the number of full-time baby boomers, those born from 1945 to 1964, whose careers are winding down. Gen Z is also grabbing power: America now has more than 6,000 Zoomer chief executives and 1,000 Zoomer politicians. As the generation becomes more influential, companies, governments and investors need to understand it.

Pundits produce a lot of fluff about the cohort. Recent “research” from Frito-Lay, a crisp maker, finds that Gen Zers have a strong preference for “snacks that leave remnants on their fingers”, such as cheese dust. Yet different generations also display deeper differences in their personalities, in part due to the economic context in which they grow up. Germans who reached adulthood during the high-inflation 1920s came to detest rising prices. Americans who lived through the Depression tended to avoid investing in the stock market.

Many argue that Gen Z is defined by its anxiety. Such worriers include Professor Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, whose new book, The Anxious Generation, is making waves. In some ways, Gen Zers are unusual. Young people today are less likely to form relationships than those of yesteryear. They are more likely to be depressed or say they were assigned the wrong sex at birth. They are less likely to drink, have sex, be in a relationship – indeed to do anything exciting. Americans aged between 15 and 24 spend just 38 minutes a day socialising in person on average, down from almost an hour in the 2000s, according to official data. Prof Haidt lays the blame on smartphones and the social media they enable.

His book has provoked an enormous reaction. On April 10, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders echoed Prof Haidt’s arguments as she outlined plans to regulate children’s use of smartphones and social media. Britain’s government is considering similar measures. But not everyone agrees with Prof Haidt’s thesis. And the pushing and shoving over Gen Z’s anxiety has obscured another way in which the cohort is distinct. In financial terms, Gen Z is doing extraordinarily well. This, in turn, is changing the generation’s relationship with work.

Consider the group that preceded Gen Z: millennials, who were born between 1981 and 1996. Many entered the workforce at a time when the world was reeling from the global financial crisis of 2007-09, during which young people suffered disproportionately. In 2012-14, more than half of Spanish youth who wanted a job could not find one. Greece’s youth unemployment rate was even higher. Britney Spears’ Work Bitch, a popular song released in 2013, had an uncompromising message for young millennials: if you want good things, you have to slog.

Low unemployment

Gen Zers who have left education face very different circumstances. Youth unemployment across the rich world – at about 13 per cent – has not been this low since 1991. Greece’s youth unemployment rate has fallen by half from its peak. Hoteliers in Kalamata, a tourist destination, complain about a labour shortage, something unthinkable just a few years ago. Popular songs reflect the zeitgeist. In 2022, the protagonist in a Beyonce song boasted, “I just quit my job”. Olivia Rodrigo, a 21-year-old singer popular with American Gen Zers, complains that a former love interest’s “career is really taking off”.

Many have chosen to study subjects that help them find work. In Britain and America, Gen Zers are avoiding the humanities, and are going instead for more obviously useful things like economics and engineering. Among those who do not attend university, vocational qualifications are increasingly popular. Then they go on to benefit from tight labour markets. Young people, following Beyonce’s protagonist, can quit their job and find another one if they want more money.

In America, hourly pay growth among 16- to 24-year-olds recently hit 13 per cent year on year, compared with 6 per cent for workers aged 25 to 54. This was the highest “young person premium” since reliable data began. In Britain, where youth pay is measured differently, in 2023, people aged 18 to 21 saw average hourly pay rise by an astonishing 15 per cent, outstripping pay rises among other ages by an unusually wide margin. In New Zealand, the average hourly pay of people aged 20 to 24 increased by 10 per cent, compared with an average of 6 per cent.

Strong wage growth boosts family incomes. A new paper by Dr Kevin Corinth of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, and Dr Jeff Larrimore of the Federal Reserve assesses Americans’ household income by generation, after accounting for taxes, government transfers and inflation. Millennials were somewhat better off than Gen X – those born between 1965 and 1980 – when they were the same age. Zoomers, however, are much better off than millennials were at the same age. The average 25-year-old Gen Zer has an annual household income of over US$40,000 (S$54,500), more than 50 per cent above the average baby boomer at the same age.

Gen Z’s economic power was on display at a recent concert by Rodrigo in New York. The mostly female teenagers and 20-somethings in attendance had paid hundreds of dollars for a ticket. Queues for merchandise stalls, selling US$50 T-shirts, stretched around the arena.

Rodrigo will have no trouble shifting merchandise in other parts of the world, as her tour moves across the Atlantic. That is in part because Gen Zers who have entered the workplace are earning good money throughout the rich world. In 2007, the average net income of French people aged 16 to 24 was 87 per cent of the overall average. Now, it is equal to 92 per cent. In a few places, including Croatia and Slovenia, Gen Zers are now bringing in as much as the average.

Some Gen Zers protest, claiming that higher incomes are a mirage since they do not account for the exploding cost of college and housing. After all, global house prices are close to all-time highs, and graduates have more debt than before. In reality, though, Gen Zers are coping because they earn so much. In 2022, Americans under 25 spent 43 per cent of their post-tax income on housing and education, including interest on debt from college – slightly below the average for under-25s from 1989 to 2019. Their home ownership rates are higher than millennials at the same age. They also save more post-tax income than young people did in the 1980s and 1990s. They are, in other words, better off.

ST ILLUSTRATION: MIEL

What does this wealth mean?

It can seem as if millennials grew up thinking a job was a privilege, and acted accordingly. They are deferential to bosses and eager to please. Zoomers, by contrast, have grown up believing that a job is basically a right, meaning they have a different attitude to work. In 2023, Gen Zers boasted about “quiet quitting”, where they put in just enough effort not to be fired. Others talk of “bare minimum Monday”. The “girlboss” archetype, who seeks to wrestle corporate control away from domineering men, appeals to millennial women. Gen Z ones are more likely to discuss the idea of being “snail girls”, who take things slowly and prioritise self-care.

The data support the memes. In 2022, Americans aged between 15 and 24 spent 25 per cent less time on “working and work-related activities” than in 2007. A new paper published by the International Monetary Fund analyses the number of hours that people say they would like to work. Not long ago, young people wanted to work a lot more than older people. Now they want to work less. According to analysis by Dr Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, the share of American 12th-graders (aged 17 or 18) who see work as a “central part of life” has dropped sharply.

Another consequence is that Gen Zers are less likely to be entrepreneurs. We estimate that just 1.1 per cent of 20-somethings in the European Union run a business that employs someone else – and in recent years the share has drifted down. In the late 2000s, more than 1 per cent of the world’s billionaires, as measured by Forbes, a magazine, were millennials. Back then, pundits obsessed over ultra-young tech founders, such as Mr Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Mr Patrick Collison (Stripe) and Mr Evan Spiegel (Snapchat). Today, by contrast, less than 0.5 per cent on the Forbes list are Zoomers. Who can name a famous Gen Z start-up founder?

Gen Zers are also producing fewer innovations. According to associate professor Russell Funk of the University of Minnesota, young people are less likely to file patents than they were in the recent past. Or consider the Billboard Hot 100, measuring America’s most popular songs. In 2008, 42 per cent of hits were sung by millennials; 15 years later, only 29 per cent were sung by Gen Zers. Taylor Swift, the world’s most popular singer-songwriter, titled her most famous album 1989, after the year of her birth. The world is still waiting for someone to produce 2004.

How long will Generation Z’s economic advantage last? A recession would hit young people harder than others, as recessions always do. Artificial intelligence could destabilise the global economy, even if young people may in time be better placed to benefit from the disruption.

For now, though, Generation Z has a lot to be happy about. Between numbers at Madison Square Garden, Olivia Rodrigo sits at the piano and counsels her fans to be thankful for all that they have. “Growing up is (expletive deleted) awesome,” she says. “You have all the time to do all the things you want to do.”

The time and the money.

© 2024 THE ECONOMIST NEWSPAPER LIMITED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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girl math

SINGAPORE - When a friend attended the Taylor Swift concert in early March, it was “free”.

This was not because she did not shell out over $200 for the tickets, but because she paid for the tickets in July 2023, and hence no actual money was spent on the day itself.

And you’ve guessed it right if you thought this has to be “girl math”.

This was a buzz phrase in 2023, with the TikTok trend’s hashtag racking up views of over three billion. And while we might use the term less now, the sentiment behind it remains – the use of excuses for indulgent purchases.

I find myself indulging in girl math from time to time. If I resist the temptation to buy bubble tea today, I save $4.50, which means I am $4.50 richer and I can happily spend it on something else another day. In reality, my bank account sadly continues to hold the same amount, with no extra inflows just because I stopped myself from spending some money.

But this grows even more dangerous when it comes to bigger-ticket purchases. For instance, I spent $500 less on flight tickets than I thought I would because I got them during a sale. This means I can spend $500 more on accommodation and get a nice swanky place in the middle of town on my next trip.

It seems like I am just one of the many who are girl mathing. The term started making its rounds in July 2023 when New Zealand radio hosts discussed a dress that cost NZ$330 (S$268). Their conclusion was to divide the cost by three because the dress would be worn thrice, meaning the dress really cost NZ$110.

It is all tongue-in-cheek and in good fun, but girl math has its fair share of serious critics who brand it as irresponsible spending, or take people to task for using it to justify logical leaps in spending habits.

Many of us often try to give various reasons to justify our spending, even if these reasons do not make sense, said Mr Ian Tan, a lecturer in strategic communications at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at NTU. 

Girl math was a fresh spin on this behaviour, resonating with viewers because it exaggerates the quirky excuses we sometimes make for indulgent purchases, he said.

He added that the trend could have gained additional traction due to the post-Covid-19 period of revenge travel and revenge spending by many consumers.

But DBS Bank’s head of financial literacy planning Lorna Tan said that more importantly, it points to the influence of psychology on an individual’s financial choices, and the fact that people cannot separate emotions from decisions around money and investing.

“To reduce this bias, consider your finances holistically. This means understanding what your personal balance sheet is and being able to understand how one financial decision affects another. After all, money is money no matter where it’s from and where it’s lost,” she said.

With greater clarity on one’s financial situation, a person can build a plan that includes a realistic budget to better manage cash flows and achieve saving and spend targets, she added. Set aside at least three to six months of emergency cash, have adequate insurance and invest wisely for the mid and long term.

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OCBC Bank head of wealth advisory Aaron Chwee said that while some social media trends are just for kicks, having a warped or illogical basis for making financial decisions can have detrimental effects on one’s financial goals.

“For instance, if you believe that using cash to make a purchase is ‘free’ because your bank balance doesn’t drop, or if you go to a store and you don’t buy anything, you made money – well, you might need a reality check,” he said.

He noted that financial planning takes discipline and precision, such as consistently and accurately tracking expenses, so you know how much to set aside monthly for necessities.

“Only then will you be able to know how much you can afford to allocate to insurance, investments and other expenses,” he said.

But apart from the psychology of spending, girl math also takes on a social dimension because it plays on stereotypes of women being seen as impulsive and emotional, less able to handle money and unable to understand “cold, hard” finance.

In fact, the word “girl” already infantilises women, by referring to their supposed immaturity and frivolity when spending money.

In a way, girl math only makes sense to us because it speaks to cultural stereotypes that we already hold. It exposes those unspoken ideas and prejudices about gender and finance, but it also reinforces them through continuous usage.

But girl math at its heart is really gender-agnostic and also speaks to examples of “mental accounting” that have been around for a long time, said DBS’ Ms Tan.

For example, a man can say his car is “free” since he plans to use it daily for more than 10 years and it is his preferred choice over the inconvenience of not having a car and having to rely on other methods of transport, including private car-hire services, she said. A man can also say his Patek Philippe watch is “free” because he is merely looking after it for the next generation.

Hence, the term is really just the latest expression of the mental gymnastics people execute when they try to justify spending, and it became codified as a trend, thanks to platforms like TikTok. 

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Looking at data, it is also factually untrue that women’s spending habits differ significantly from men’s.

According to the 2023 OCBC Financial Wellness Index, a study which measures Singaporeans’ financial health, men and women had similar financial wellness scores. There was also an equal percentage of men and women citing “emotional” as their dominant financial personality trait, which measures an individual’s ability to separate emotions from financial decisions and assess whether they regret their choices.

“Thus, this gender stereotype is unfounded – from our index, we found that women ensure that they spend within their means, and they do not differ from men in the amount of unsecured debt they have accumulated,” Mr Chwee said.

He noted that regardless of gender, overspending is a negative financial habit.

“Everyone should spend within their means. It is important to cultivate a strong saving habit, in case emergencies like a job loss, urgent home repairs, or illness hit,” he said.

“But if you can plan your finances well, put aside sufficient emergency funds, invest for the future, buy adequate medical insurance and have some extra set aside to treat yourself to your favourite singer’s concert, then you can spend that extra budget without worrying about compromising your financial goals.”

Hence, my next trip overseas in June is not free just because I paid for the flight tickets last year. But if I have done my budget correctly and there’s money to spare, then the next trip will be guilt-free. And that’s not girl math, it’s just good maths.

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girl math v good math

SINGAPORE - When a friend attended the Taylor Swift concert in early March, it was “free”.

This was not because she did not shell out over $200 for the tickets, but because she paid for the tickets in July 2023, and hence no actual money was spent on the day itself.

And you’ve guessed it right if you thought this has to be “girl math”.

This was a buzz phrase in 2023, with the TikTok trend’s hashtag racking up views of over three billion. And while we might use the term less now, the sentiment behind it remains – the use of excuses for indulgent purchases.

I find myself indulging in girl math from time to time. If I resist the temptation to buy bubble tea today, I save $4.50, which means I am $4.50 richer and I can happily spend it on something else another day. In reality, my bank account sadly continues to hold the same amount, with no extra inflows just because I stopped myself from spending some money.

But this grows even more dangerous when it comes to bigger-ticket purchases. For instance, I spent $500 less on flight tickets than I thought I would because I got them during a sale. This means I can spend $500 more on accommodation and get a nice swanky place in the middle of town on my next trip.

It seems like I am just one of the many who are girl mathing. The term started making its rounds in July 2023 when New Zealand radio hosts discussed a dress that cost NZ$330 (S$268). Their conclusion was to divide the cost by three because the dress would be worn thrice, meaning the dress really cost NZ$110.

It is all tongue-in-cheek and in good fun, but girl math has its fair share of serious critics who brand it as irresponsible spending, or take people to task for using it to justify logical leaps in spending habits.

Many of us often try to give various reasons to justify our spending, even if these reasons do not make sense, said Mr Ian Tan, a lecturer in strategic communications at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at NTU. 

Girl math was a fresh spin on this behaviour, resonating with viewers because it exaggerates the quirky excuses we sometimes make for indulgent purchases, he said.

He added that the trend could have gained additional traction due to the post-Covid-19 period of revenge travel and revenge spending by many consumers.

But DBS Bank’s head of financial literacy planning Lorna Tan said that more importantly, it points to the influence of psychology on an individual’s financial choices, and the fact that people cannot separate emotions from decisions around money and investing.

“To reduce this bias, consider your finances holistically. This means understanding what your personal balance sheet is and being able to understand how one financial decision affects another. After all, money is money no matter where it’s from and where it’s lost,” she said.

With greater clarity on one’s financial situation, a person can build a plan that includes a realistic budget to better manage cash flows and achieve saving and spend targets, she added. Set aside at least three to six months of emergency cash, have adequate insurance and invest wisely for the mid and long term.

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Women hit back with ‘boy math’ after men miss the joke about ‘girl math’

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OCBC Bank head of wealth advisory Aaron Chwee said that while some social media trends are just for kicks, having a warped or illogical basis for making financial decisions can have detrimental effects on one’s financial goals.

“For instance, if you believe that using cash to make a purchase is ‘free’ because your bank balance doesn’t drop, or if you go to a store and you don’t buy anything, you made money – well, you might need a reality check,” he said.

He noted that financial planning takes discipline and precision, such as consistently and accurately tracking expenses, so you know how much to set aside monthly for necessities.

“Only then will you be able to know how much you can afford to allocate to insurance, investments and other expenses,” he said.

But apart from the psychology of spending, girl math also takes on a social dimension because it plays on stereotypes of women being seen as impulsive and emotional, less able to handle money and unable to understand “cold, hard” finance.

In fact, the word “girl” already infantilises women, by referring to their supposed immaturity and frivolity when spending money.

In a way, girl math only makes sense to us because it speaks to cultural stereotypes that we already hold. It exposes those unspoken ideas and prejudices about gender and finance, but it also reinforces them through continuous usage.

But girl math at its heart is really gender-agnostic and also speaks to examples of “mental accounting” that have been around for a long time, said DBS’ Ms Tan.

For example, a man can say his car is “free” since he plans to use it daily for more than 10 years and it is his preferred choice over the inconvenience of not having a car and having to rely on other methods of transport, including private car-hire services, she said. A man can also say his Patek Philippe watch is “free” because he is merely looking after it for the next generation.

Hence, the term is really just the latest expression of the mental gymnastics people execute when they try to justify spending, and it became codified as a trend, thanks to platforms like TikTok. 

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Looking at data, it is also factually untrue that women’s spending habits differ significantly from men’s.

According to the 2023 OCBC Financial Wellness Index, a study which measures Singaporeans’ financial health, men and women had similar financial wellness scores. There was also an equal percentage of men and women citing “emotional” as their dominant financial personality trait, which measures an individual’s ability to separate emotions from financial decisions and assess whether they regret their choices.

“Thus, this gender stereotype is unfounded – from our index, we found that women ensure that they spend within their means, and they do not differ from men in the amount of unsecured debt they have accumulated,” Mr Chwee said.

He noted that regardless of gender, overspending is a negative financial habit.

“Everyone should spend within their means. It is important to cultivate a strong saving habit, in case emergencies like a job loss, urgent home repairs, or illness hit,” he said.

“But if you can plan your finances well, put aside sufficient emergency funds, invest for the future, buy adequate medical insurance and have some extra set aside to treat yourself to your favourite singer’s concert, then you can spend that extra budget without worrying about compromising your financial goals.”

Hence, my next trip overseas in June is not free just because I paid for the flight tickets last year. But if I have done my budget correctly and there’s money to spare, then the next trip will be guilt-free. And that’s not girl math, it’s just good maths.

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SINGAPORE – When Ms Ang Li Khim received her O-level results in early 1989, she found that she had failed the most important paper, English.

“When I got the result, I went home, covered myself with a blanket and cried. I didn’t know what to do,” recalls the alumnus of Thomson Secondary School, which was later renamed North Vista Secondary School. 

It was a big setback for the then 16-year-old, but she refused to let failure define her.

The one-time vegetable seller is now DBS Bank’s regional head of technology for the Institutional Banking Group and looks after about 1,000 staff globally.

She steered the launch of cross-border PayNow initiatives that allow Singaporeans to pay for purchases in Thailand, India and, soon, Malaysia.

She is also heavily involved in DBS’ ongoing initiative to strengthen its technology resiliency, which aims to provide a higher degree of “service availability” of key services to customers.

And she did all this without a degree.

Speaking to The Straits Times at 7.30am on a Friday because of her packed schedule, the 52-year-old is jovial and energetic despite the early hour.

Her late father, a Republic of Singapore Navy regular who was educated up to Secondary 2, was the family’s sole breadwinner. Her illiterate housewife mother would supplement the family’s income by taking on home-based jobs, such as sewing or fixing broken toys.

Ms Ang, a middle child with two siblings, started doing part-time jobs from Primary 4, earning $2 a day running errands and packing goods for a neighbourhood bookstore.

She took Chinese as a first language in Peiying Primary School for about 18 months until her parents moved to a three-room flat in Ang Mo Kio. She then switched to Jing Shan Primary School, where English was the first language.

But because her family spoke Teochew and Mandarin at home, she could not catch up and struggled up till secondary school.

Her natural talent leaned towards mathematics and accounting. In her teens, she took apart her family’s fridge to find out the source of the sound emanating from it. Panic set in when she could not get it to work again.

“I was afraid my mum would scold me, so I told her the fridge was spoiled,” she says with a laugh. “I’ve liked to solve puzzles and problems from a young age.”

 Ms Ang Li Khim working overnight with her team members to run system upgrading as part of DBS’ technology resiliency uplift programme. PHOTO: DBS

Her D7 fail grade in English left her at a crossroads. “I was quite lost. All my friends advanced their studies, and I was left behind,” she says.

Not wanting to redo her Secondary 4 year in school, she became a manufacturing operator for about a year while waiting to resit her O-level English exam, which was held annually.

She needed the money for night school fees of around $200 a month, knowing that her father’s salary of about $800 a month was barely enough for the family’s basic expenses.

When she failed the English exam yet again, she worked at her aunt and uncle’s vegetable stall at a wet market. That job gave her time to attend night school to obtain diplomas in computing and accounting over the next two years as she worked out what career she wanted to pursue.

In all, she took the O-level English exam four times over six years before finally scoring a C6 pass in 1993.

The previous year, she had graduated with diplomas in management accounting from a private school and computer studies from the former Informatics Education group. She reckons that because her diploma classes and assignments were in English, they boosted her fluency and helped her pass.

Along the way, she also worked as a data entry clerk at an aerospace engineering firm, translating physical asset registries into computerised ones, before landing a job as a contract programmer at National Computer Board in 1992.

She later obtained professional certifications from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT based in Britain.

In 1996, she joined Standard Chartered Bank in a system support role. During her 17-year career there, she was posted to its China office to run its country technology department for four years from 2009.

She returned to Singapore in 2013 to take care of her ailing father, who died three years later. The singleton also joined DBS as a vice-president in 2013. She was promoted to senior vice-president by 2016, executive director in 2019 and managing director by 2021.

Not having a degree has not affected her prospects, she feels. “When you love your job, you will be given the opportunity to prove yourself and advance in your career.”

She says she has made the most of each job she had by finding new ways to motivate herself.

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As a data entry clerk, she set targets on how many pages she would finish a day. When she hawked vegetables, she prioritised sales of highly perishable bundles of spinach and kang kong to avoid having to pack them in ice for the next day.

She thinks her “never say die” attitude and “can-do spirit” made her stand out in a sea of degree-holders eager to fill her shoes.

“If you believe in yourself and you have what it takes to succeed, people’s perceptions of you as a non-graduate don’t matter,” says Ms Ang, who does not rule out doing a degree after retirement, just for the experience.

Her persevering nature has not gone unnoticed. Ms Ang was featured in Singapore Computer Society’s Singapore 100 Women in Tech 2023 list. The annual accolade is a partnership between the society, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and SG Women In Tech, an IMDA initiative.

Over the last three decades, she has seen Singapore’s computerisation and digitalisation journey up close, first as a blue-collar worker and then as a technology leader. It has taught her that every role, no matter how small, is important.

“You need everybody to play their part to get things done. Not everyone’s pace is the same, but give them space. People will do good when they’re in the right place,” she says.

The pandemic hastened digitalisation and people’s expectations have now changed, she says. More people are using their smartphones as cashless wallets and digital payments are now a part of daily life, from paying for kaya toast in the morning to using a ride-hailing app at the end of the day.

“Technology is just like water and electricity. It has to be there,” she says.

“What we want is to provide a stable and resilient environment, so that people don’t get caught in situations where they’re not able to execute a task or fulfil their wants.”

This means she often pulls long hours and is on-call for system maintenance on weekends. But she says: “It makes the job more fulfilling because you’re impacting people’s lives.”

At the same time, she recognises that seniors, like her 75-year-old mother, are often intimidated by the dizzying speed of change. Because her mother cannot read, she would memorise the sequence of screens to withdraw money at the automated teller machines, only to be caught out when the screens change and have her ATM card forfeited.

“When I look at her, I feel that for the elderly, we really need time and patience to help them embrace technology,” she says.

Ms Ang, seen here during a trip to Iceland in 2012, de-stresses from her fast-paced job by taking holidays. PHOTO: COURTESY OF ANG LI KHIM

Ms Ang, who de-stresses by playing the Pokemon app and visiting exotic destinations from Iceland to Tibet once or twice a year, thrives on the fast pace of her industry.

“In the technology world, no problem is repeated. It’s always a new problem that you have to use your experience to solve,” she says, adding that she is excited to explore how new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, can help.

She hopes her story will help those in despair because they cannot excel academically.

“It’s never the end of the world. Nobody gave me that advice back then, so I was very lost. So, I tell the youngsters that there are always other ways to do what you want and get what you need.”

This is the first of a limited series on inspiring women.

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money well spent

SINGAPORE – Some parents think that giving the kids a head start in life is to give them an edge in education by loading them with enrichment activities.

To that end, they spend much of the family’s disposable income on enrichment programmes in sports, music and schoolwork.

Unfortunately, there is no data to show that this leads to better life outcomes for the kids.

What if there were something that parents could give children that is proven to help them live healthy and happy lives?

In the bestseller by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, The Good Life (2023), the Harvard researchers share that teaching kids the value of good relationships is important. Such relationships are the strongest predictor of whether people will have happy and healthy lives as they age.

Waldinger and Schulz jointly lead the Harvard Study of Adult Development. The study, which has been running since 1938, is one of the longest-running studies of adult life, starting before World War II.

It is funded by the United States National Institutes of Health and focuses on participants’ health, habits and behaviours through time.

Originally, 724 participants were selected. Subjects ranged from disadvantaged families in Boston to Harvard undergraduates. Interestingly, US president John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated while in office, was one participant.

The study recruited only boys at first because Harvard was an all-male school at the time. As the study progressed, it incorporated the spouses of the original men, and eventually more than 1,300 descendants of the initial group.

Over the more than 80 years, the study has found that the warmth of relationships has the greatest positive impact on life satisfaction. Strong relationships trumped good diets and exercise as a predictor of longevity and life satisfaction.

Waldinger and Schulz point out that a review of 148 other long-range studies, involving 300,000 participants, confirmed the findings of their study.

They write that “people are terrible at knowing what is good for them”, spending too much time comparing their wealth and status with what others have.

Such comparisons happen because achievements can be listed on a curriculum vitae. Money can be counted and flaunted. The quantity of social media followers is highly visible. People chase the trappings of money and status because doing so allows them to feel like they are getting ahead.

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On the other hand, relationships are ephemeral and difficult to quantify, leading people to more easily neglect them.

The book relates the story of John Marsden, a study participant who became a highly successful lawyer. He was one of the most professionally successful members of the study, but was also one of the least happy with numerous broken relationships in his life.

Conversely, Leo DeMarco, another subject, lived an ordinary life as a teacher, scrimping and saving in his retirement years. But he is considered as one of the study’s happiest participants.

So how do parents teach their children about relationships? Much of what people expect from close relationships comes from what is learnt at home. The authors write: “Whatever the make-up of our family, it is more than a group of relationships; it is, in a very real way, part of who we are.”

In a chapter on families, Waldinger and Schulz have some advice on building strong relationships.

1. Acceptance

The book acknowledges that while families are foundational in terms of how children learn about relationships, they can also be a source of great pain. It recommends that even if a parent’s “childhood experience was incredibly rough, or even traumatic”, it is important to accept what has happened.

It adds that “a powerful, positive experience will have a corrective effect on an earlier, negative experience”.

It is never too late to work on rebuilding familial relationships and to create powerful positive experiences in the family.

Instead of passing judgment on family members, people should learn to accept them.

I learnt this lesson while my kids were still in primary school. I would push them hard in their schoolwork and assign additional assessment papers. If anything was not done to my satisfaction, I would scream at them and punish them.

My wife counselled that I needed to change course when she sensed that my boys would tense up around me and were starting to avoid me.

After we spoke, I realised the error of my ways. It took some time, but I was gradually able to stop shouting at my sons and came to accept their academic performance. I chose to preserve the relationship with my sons over pushing them to chase after grades.

It took work, but the relationship with them recovered, and they are still physically affectionate with me even though they are now much older.

ST ILLUSTRATION: MANNY FRANCISCO

2. Routine

It is important to establish family routines. Regular get-togethers, family dinners and holiday outings help to establish a rhythm for how a family gathers and spends time together.

The book points to how close families drift apart because of a lack of routines.

It describes how a study subject, Sterling Ainsley, was raised by his sister as a young boy and was very close to her. He fell out of touch with her over the years and they did not talk for 20 years. When the study coordinators asked about his sister years later, he did not know if she was dead or alive.

Where face-to-face contact is not possible, technology can help to bridge the gap.

In an age of WhatsApp and Zoom, there is no excuse not to have a chat group for family members or a regular family Zoom catch-up.

When one of our sons was overseas for a month-long course, we had a weekly call on Sunday nights.

I looked forward to them to get an update on what my son was up to. I thought the calls were a good warm-up for when the boys are at university, whether overseas or staying at a hostel in Singapore.

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3. Buried treasure

The authors of the book write: “Every member of the family has their own store of buried treasure, unique things that only they can provide to the family but that may be hidden in plain sight.”

Taking the buried treasure perspective helped me to be more intentional in my family interactions during gatherings with extended family.

During Chinese New Year, I discovered that my cousin runs a sizeable company selling commercial vehicles. She pivoted from car sales to commercial vehicles five years ago, and started from zero in an industry that is heavily dependent on relationships.

Our conversation would have never happened if I had kept to munching on tidbits while scrolling through my phone.

I was floored by her courage to take a mid-career leap into a different industry. She told me that for six months, she went door to door in industrial areas. She gave out 20 boxes of name cards, braving the rain and sun to establish herself with her new customer base.

I have known this cousin since I was a child, but have never had such an interesting chat with her until I went looking for buried treasure. What else have I been missing out on during family gatherings?

Abel Ang is the chief executive of a medical technology company and an adjunct professor at Nanyang Business School.

cancer taught me many things

Cancer taught me many things.

I first heard the word “cancer” applied to me 22 years ago this week, in a radiologist’s room as she peered at the grainy images on her screen during a breast ultrasound scan.

That was a lifetime ago, on the other side of the globe, in Boston, America. In the intervening years, so much has changed.

I am often in a pensive mood this week in March, at the anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. I feel a mix of emotions – sorrow at the past suffering; empathy for those living with cancer and other life-limiting conditions; relief that I survived; gratitude for the health I enjoy today; and often, a residual guilt at being a survivor of something that kills millions each year.

Cancer remains a leading cause of death worldwide. According to the World Health Organisation, in 2022, there were an estimated 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million deaths. The estimated number of people who were alive within five years of a cancer diagnosis was 53.5 million. 

I was among the lucky ones who survived cancer. I was diagnosed in 2002, at the age of 33. I was in Boston doing my master’s, and had access to very good care and experimental treatments that turned out to be successful. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d be alive, writing this. Such is life.

Two decades on, I have integrated the cancer experience into my growth journey. I am quite a different person because of it. I do not wish cancer on anyone; but I would go so far as to say that while being a cancer patient was difficult, going through cancer can have many positive outcomes. It can even offer gifts. 

While I use the somewhat controversial g-word in relation to cancer, I am in no way minimising the suffering and disruption that the disease can cause. Many people die from cancer, painfully. Some recover and never want to talk about it. Others make a career out of it – cancer survivors who enter the caring or medical field to take care of other cancer patients. Many others, like me, move on after cancer, but accept it as part of our lives that changed us. As a friend P put it, going through cancer taught her to be ready to support others in need. Lessons learnt are to be shared.

Here’s what having cancer taught me.

Accepting one’s limits

A cancer diagnosis stops you in your tracks. 

I had quite a Type A personality back then – driven, controlling, impatient with delays and slowness.

 Cancer strips you of a sense of control and makes you feel extremely vulnerable. You lie exposed in multiple scans and invasive tests. The treatment is debilitating. You lose your hair, you have weird-coloured pee, ulcers erupt everywhere, your energy levels plummet. You have no choice but to accept your physical limits. 

Post-cancer, I made conscious decisions to step away from high-stress career roles. I chose to work on the features and commentaries desks, rather than the news desks. I was fortunate to have bosses who gave me roles I could do well in, but did not push me to take on more than I could handle. Meanwhile, I managed my own ego and ambition, and focused on being happy in the roles I had. 

A friend, C, went through a similar transformation. “I adapted to a less stressful life as my world view shifted to treasure the time I have, invest in meaningful work and relationships and live life with no regrets.”

On accepting physical limits, she put it this way: “Cancer taught me to listen to my body – rest when I am tired, be kinder to myself and know it’s okay to not oblige or please people. Health is wealth. I have come across too many people who shared that they had symptoms or signs prior to seeing a specialist or being admitted for some condition, but they ignored it. I think it’s important for us to listen to our bodies. I am now much better at tuning into my body. I will ‘obey’ and rest when my body sends me signals.”

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Learning to face your own fears

Cancer – or any serious illness – forces you to face your fears of pain and dying.

As you feel angry at the way your body has betrayed you, your mind may go into overdrive, sussing out how to cheat death, how to outwit the illness, how to beat this new enemy. I often fight uncertainty with knowledge – and so I read up a lot on breast cancer. But reading about the worst-case scenarios, and knowing the details of how breast cancer can metastasise and kill, was too harrowing. This was not just head knowledge; I was reading about my possible future. 

Despite my insatiable intellectual curiosity about life, I realised that there were some things I didn’t want to know, at least not at that point. I had come face to face with my own mental limitations. Many nights, as my active mind careened ahead of me into a catastrophic future, I would make myself stop thinking, wrestling the galloping mind to a halt. 

The tools I used to bridle my mind were the time-tested ones used by generations of spiritual teachers. Meditation helps you silence the mind – sitting still and becoming aware of the breath brings your mind down from its self-induced terrors, back to the body, to be centred. Contemplative exercises like yoga and swimming were also useful. Practices like journalling, and talking to a therapist or empathetic loved ones, can also help.

When life’s terrors loom large in front of you, you can turn away in fear; you can rage and hope to bash your way through; or you can learn to turn towards the terror and face it. As you sit face to face with the fear, you may see its contours better. You see through the smokescreen that the monster of fear casts a bigger shadow than is merited, and that what you thought was a Woolly Mammoth is in fact a small puppy of whimpers that needs to be hushed by nurturing, not battled and bludgeoned to death.

After I found out the cancer I had was stage 2, and there was a good chance I would survive after five years, my mind went on to the future. What if I survived this bout of cancer, only for it to recur and spread? 

Some nights, the terror solidified into a knot in my stomach that kept me awake, and I would lie in bed cold with fear. And then, one day, I decided to practise what I had read about, and do the counter-intuitive thing of leaning into fear, not running from it. 

I methodically imagined myself being sick, having cancer again, and dying, painfully. I breathed through the rising sense of panic. I observed the thrashing of the heart, and the way the mind tried to skitter away from the thought of death. I gently – if one can be gentle when imagining oneself dying – observed my emotions and tried to keep calm. Over time, I could spend more time thinking about dying before the terror struck. 

Eventually, I learnt to live with the fear of dying from cancer, and the fear of recurrence, holding it lightly without clutching at it, and without flinging it away. There is still discomfort – as I write this, there is a quaver of the heart. But it is not front and centre of my thoughts. 

Death after all is part of the experience of living. Every day, 1 per cent of our cells die and are replaced. Scientists call this “turnover”. Tiny cells in the blood live three to 120 days. Cells lining our gut typically live less than a week.

In 80 to 100 days, so many cells die and are replaced, it is equivalent to being a new person. 

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When the past is over and the future is uncertain, you have only one option, which is to focus on the present and live in it. The Buddhists are wise in teaching the importance of living mindfully and being attentive to the here and now. 

There’s the story of a boy caught on a mountain, with a tiger behind him and a tiger ahead of him on the path. He steps out onto a ledge, to find a peach hanging from the tree. He plucks the fruit and eats it with relish. Life is good. The past and future may be littered with tigers, but here at this moment, life is delicious and sweet. And when he finishes his peach and walks on, he may find that the tiger on the path ahead has wandered off, leaving the way clear. There is no point in dreading the future or letting the past trap us; the only reality is the present, and the key to happiness is to live in the now.

Over time, these practices I began during my cancer journey – of meditation, letting go, living in the present – became integrated into my daily life.

Moving on from cancer 

Cancer is such a big experience, some people want to forget it and never talk about it again. Others stay stuck with it and remain a victim, or patient, long after the disease is gone. They stay in crisis survival mode, and may become over-vigilant about avoiding cancer risks. Family members may continue to mollycoddle the cancer survivor. 

It takes discipline and courage to break out of that victim trap, and to reclaim your identity as a whole, healthy person (albeit living with limitations) in the land of the living.

One milestone event for me was the year I turned 50, when I overcame my limiting beliefs about my own physical fitness to take the Camino de Santiago trail. Together with a group of five friends from school days, we walked the last 120km of the famed pilgrimage trek in Spain. It took us six days through incessant rain, through verdant fields, up and down some hills, on cobblestones, through cow-dung-riddled villages. It was tough for me, but I made it. Since then, I’ve been leading a more active life. 

This morning, on the 22nd anniversary of my life post-cancer, I am out on the nature reserve trail by 6.30am. The Australian summer is giving way to autumn. The air here in Perth is chill and crisp, a welcome respite from the 35 deg C heat of previous weeks.

My mind goes back to a lifetime ago, on the other side of the world, when I first found out I had cancer. I send my 33-year-old self a loving embrace. The cancer journey will be tough, but you will be fine, I say, adding a prayer for all others on this journey. 

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What are the stories you want to tell with your life?

Successful workplaces are usually characterised by good communication. Bosses provide a clear sense of where they want the firm to go; employees feel able to voice disagreements; colleagues share information rather than hoarding it. But being a good communicator is too often conflated with one particular skill: speaking persuasively.

In a paper published in 2015, Dr Kyle Brink of Western Michigan University and Dr Robert Costigan of St John Fisher College found that 76 per cent of undergraduate business degrees in America had a learning goal for presentation skills, but only 11 per cent had a goal related to listening. Business students were being schooled to give Ted talks rather than have conversations.

That may have costs. Another study, conducted by Dr Dotan Castro of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his co-authors, found that when people felt listened to by those in supervisory roles, their creativity and sense of psychological safety improved.

A focus on talking is understandable. The set-piece moments of careers, like job interviews and big presentations, are about transmitting information. The boss gets to be at the podium, the minions get to be in the audience. Videos of someone giving a speech are much more shareable than someone silently nodding. But interest in what makes everyday communication tick has also risen, as the importance of teams grows and as conceptions of leadership increasingly emphasise softer skills.

Recent research by Dr Beau Sievers of Stanford University and his co-authors asked groups of MBA students to discuss the meaning of ambiguous film clips. The presence of people perceived to be of high status seemed to impede consensus: these folk spoke more and were readier to reject the explanations of others.

Groups that reached consensus were more likely to have a different character in them: People who were well-connected but not dominant, who asked lots of questions and who encouraged interaction. They made everything align – even the neural activity of their groups.

Dr Sievers’ research features in Supercommunicators, a new book by Mr Charles Duhigg, a journalist at the New Yorker. Mr Duhigg looks at how some people forge stronger connections with others and at the techniques for having better conversations. His canvas ranges more widely than the workplace but some of its lessons are applicable there.

One chapter tells the story of the Fast Friends Procedure, a set of 36 increasingly intimate questions that are particularly effective at turning strangers into friends. The questions were first put together in the 1990s by Dr Elaine Aron and Dr Arthur Aron, two psychologists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Their survey was designed for the lab, not the workplace. You should not suddenly start asking new colleagues what their most terrible memory is or how they feel about their mother. But if it is important to build team connections fast, then – Britain, look away now – reciprocal moments of vulnerability do seem to help.

Another chapter looks at ways to bring together people with diametrically opposed views, in this case Americans on either side of the debate over gun control. The difficulty here was in persuading people that they were genuinely being listened to, not dismissed as gun-toting loons or lily-livered liberals. Mr Duhigg describes an approach called “looping for understanding”, in which people ask questions and then repeatedly distil their understanding of what they have heard back to their interlocutor.

Polarised beliefs of this sort are rare inside firms. But looping techniques still have their place: when there are long-running conflicts between individual employees, say, or in negotiations and mediation processes.

Mr Duhigg’s advice can seem obvious at times. And his examples do not always translate to the workplace. Sometimes it is more important to make a decision than to excavate everyone’s point of view. Reaching consensus is vital on a jury but less necessary in a corporate hierarchy. There really is a limit to how much vulnerability you want from a leader.

But his book is a useful reminder that demonstrable curiosity about other people’s experiences and ideas can benefit everyone.

Asking questions, not cutting people off, pausing to digest what someone has said rather than pouncing on breaks in a discussion to make your own point: these are not enough to qualify someone as a supercommunicator. But in plenty of organisations, they would still represent good progress. © 2024 THE ECONOMIST NEWSPAPER LIMITED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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why lose tperer at work

Awareness days are meant to remind people of important causes and desirable behaviour. Among other things, February sees the International Day of Human Fraternity, World Day of Social Justice and – everyone’s favourite until it became a bit too commercialised – World Pulses Day. International Day of Happiness falls in March; you have to wait until November for World Kindness Day.

Anger is far too objectionable to be celebrated with a special day of its own. There is an anger-awareness week in Britain, but the emphasis is on controlling tempers, not giving in to them.

Yet in the workplace, as elsewhere, anger is more ambiguous than it seems.

Its destructive side is obvious. Furious people are not much fun to work with, and less fun to work for. A short-fused boss is likely to instil fear among employees and to discourage people from speaking up. Anger can also engender poor performance.

Anyone who has ever been riled by a rude e-mail or uncivil colleagues knows how in such circumstances, suddenly nothing else matters. Every spare bit of cognitive power is redirected to thinking of devastating put-downs from which the offender will never recover; other tasks can wait.

In one paper on the effects of rudeness on medical professionals, Arieh Riskin of Bnai Zion Medical Centre in Haifa and his co-authors describe a training exercise in which teams of Israeli physicians and nurses treated a mannequin of a baby.

The teams were joined by someone billed as a visiting expert from America, who offered studiously neutral comments to some groups and made unprompted and disparaging remarks about the quality of medical care in Israel to others. The teams that had suffered rudeness performed significantly worse.

Being angry all the time is bad news for individuals and organisations alike. But so is being tremendously satisfied by everything all the time.

Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford University who teaches a course on how to acquire power, reckons that displaying anger is an important skill for those who want to rise up the corporate ladder. It is associated with decisiveness and competence (though angry women are more likely to evoke negative emotions among other people than angry men do).

Doctors who get angry if they are challenged about their medical advice are not judged to be less competent; if they show shame, patients take a dimmer view.

Anger can have a galvanising effect in specific circumstances. A study by Barry Staw of the University of California, Berkeley, and his co-authors analysed half-time team talks by college and high-school basketball coaches in America, and found that expressions of negative emotions such as anger and disappointment were associated with better second-half outcomes – up to a point. When coaches reached the bulging-eyeballs stage, rage started to have the opposite effect.

There are similar nuances in negotiations. A paper by Hajo Adam of Rice University and Jeanne Brett of Northwestern University found that as people got more upset, they were more likely to extract concessions. But being too angry was seen as inappropriate. And although displays of anger can work in one-off negotiations, they also invite retaliation in subsequent interactions.

Anger has different effects on different types of people. Agreeableness is one of the “Big Five” personality traits recognised by most psychologists. Agreeable sorts value cooperation and courtesy; disagreeable ones are more cynical and more comfortable with conflict.

In an experiment by Gerben Van Kleef of the University of Amsterdam and his co-authors, teams comprised of agreeable and disagreeable people were given feedback on their performance by an actor.

The words were the same each time, but in some instances the actor looked and sounded happy and in others they looked and sounded angry. An angry evaluation spurred the more disagreeable teams to do better than a happy (or poker-faced) one; the reverse applied to the more agreeable teams.

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By now the problem should be obvious. Anger involves a loss of control. But to be effective in the workplace, it needs to be carefully modulated. That means volcanic people need to find ways to rein themselves in before they spew invective everywhere.

It also means that equable people need to learn to let fly occasionally. If there is room in the calendar for International Jazz Day, then there is certainly a case for World Calibrated Displays of Anger Day. © 2024 THE ECONOMIST NEWSPAPER LIMITED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

anxious at work

There are plenty of reasons employees might be feeling more insecure at work these days: fears that generative artificial intelligence could wipe out our jobs; mass layoffs; the rise of remote work and, with it, ever-shifting return-to-office policies. It’s not surprising that rates of workplace stress and anxiety have measurably increased post-pandemic.

And some employers prefer it this way.

London’s Bayes Business School professor Laura Empson, author of Leading Professionals, has repeatedly called out elite companies for intentionally recruiting and hiring what talent professionals have called “insecure overachievers” – talented, hard-working people driven by their fears of inadequacy.

That’s because such employees can be a dream to manage: A boss’s role might consist of simply aiming them in the right direction and watching them excel.

Never finished proving themselves, these ambitious strivers look to their employers for affirmation. They take comfort in working for brand-name businesses, finding the prestige reassuring. The strong company cultures at elite institutions initially feel comforting – there’s a reason “cult” and “culture” stem from the same root word.

They are self-motivating and self-disciplining. They “never rest on their laurels – or even rest”, as Professor Empson has written. Employers love their commitment.

Ms Morra Aarons-Mele, author of The Anxious Achiever, adds: “There is a sense that anxious achievers will deliver because they feel like their self-worth is on the line.” That can spur incredible results.

But anxiety can also sometimes get in their way, Ms Aarons-Mele says, driving them to a level of perfectionism that results in fuzzy priorities and missed deadlines. “Sometimes anxious achievers can trip themselves up,” she says. “And I speak from experience.”

If you fall into this camp, you may already be recognising yourself. Maybe you get glowing performance ratings yet worry you’re about to be fired. Maybe you think your family’s affection or approval hinges on your success. Maybe you feel the need to over-deliver to justify how much you bill for each six-minute increment. Maybe people tell you to “lower your standards” or “remember what’s most important”. And maybe burnout is starting to feel like a way of life.

But even if this sounds familiar, says Insead business school professor Svenja Weber, it’s a mistake to put the focus only on employees, rather than workplace dynamics; stress and anxiety can spread like weeds in companies with up-or-out policies and hard-to-measure outcomes.

“If the only results that matter are tomorrow’s, and if you are only as valuable as clients and colleagues judge you to be, then being an insecure overachiever is not a pathology,” she writes in an article co-authored with colleague Gianpiero Petriglieri. “It is a necessity.”

Freeing oneself isn’t as easy as quitting. Too often, insecure overachievers replicate the conditions they fled – something Prof Empson admits happened to her when she left investment banking and strategy consulting for academia. It’s the only way they know to be successful.

Professor Weber says: “If we really want to look at change, we need to understand our complicity in the status quo.”

It can be hard to tell where company culture ends and our own choices begin. Workers conform to the culture and, in so doing, strengthen it.

Prof Empson tells a story of a board meeting she attended where a London-based organisation was discussing its corporate wellness initiative and the problems of employee burnout. Although the meeting overlapped with one executive’s family vacation in Australia, he set an alarm for the middle of the night and called in. The irony was lost on the people in the room, even as the exhausted man fell asleep – as made clear by the snoring emanating from the speakerphone.

“The important thing is to flip it so that you are no longer a victim of the dynamic,” says Prof Empson. “Then you can start to make choices.”

That might include recasting a colleague who works long hours not as competition, but as inefficient. Or recognising when anxiety is driving unrealistic standards. On days when you’re convinced you’re utterly failing, try looking at the data: What does the evidence say?

Even better would be for managers and senior executives – and clients, who have the most leverage – to question their own assumptions. Does this project truly require three months at the client site? Do all-nighters really pay off? A good boss dampens insecurities rather than heightening them. Instead of praising employees who over-deliver, managers should point out when a colour-coded spreadsheet or a 100-slide PowerPoint was a poor use of precious time.

It’s entirely possible to foster a culture that is both caring and high achieving; where tough feedback is delivered compassionately, and big goals are accompanied by high levels of support. Unfortunately for insecure overachievers, too many companies still don’t get that.

People can’t help but take work personally – it’s our career, after all. But the irony is that we might thrive more if we were capable of a bit more detachment. If our self-worth weren’t on the line. If we could let our insecurities motivate us just enough – but no further. BLOOMBERG

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Hokkaido tourism

HOKKAIDO – We were carpooling from the Asahikawa countryside to Mount Asahi, the tallest peak in Hokkaido, when our travel companion Yuko Malik, a Japanese tourist from Kumamoto, let out a yelp.

She had spotted a moving flash of black near the trees a short distance ahead. Winding through the mountains in Hokkaido’s remote wilds in June meant we were likely to come face to face with a wild and potentially dangerous beast.

At this point, we were halfway through our three-month backpacking and couchsurfing foray across Japan from April to July 2023. Having covered remote islands off Kyushu island in the south, we were traversing Hokkaido, the country’s northern wilds.

Save for a brief stopover in Hiroshima, we had intentionally skipped Japan’s oft-visited cities to seek a taste of life in remote communities and fringe cultures – life that is vastly different from what we are accustomed to in Singapore.

Beyond Hokkaido’s cities such as Sapporo and Asahikawa, the island is home to abundant wildlife such as Sika deer, red foxes and Ezo brown bears.

While planning to camp in Shiretoko, a remote peninsula on the island’s north-eastern tip with one of the highest densities of brown bears in the world, we received plenty of advice from locals and travellers alike to carry bear spray and bear bells at all times.

Completing the bend on the mountainous road, we slowed our vehicle, and there it was – a brown bear ambling along the middle of a road, in a world of its own.

Our initial shock gave way to fear and excitement, and we inched our vehicle forward slowly, as if to assure the bear that we meant no harm and wanted only to admire it from a distance. For about 30 seconds, it kept up its steady gait before it turned and saw us, then picked up pace and vanished into the foliage. It was clear we were in the heart of bear country.

Having opted out of cruising tours to spot brown bears in the wild, this unexpected sighting left us in awe. There is a majesty in observing wild animals in their natural habitat, which no guided tour or safari can match. This turned out to be one of many breathtaking experiences we would have during our five weeks in Hokkaido.

Shiretoko is home to one of the highest densities of brown bears in the world. PHOTO: LI-ANN TAN AND JON SONG

Off the beaten track in Obihiro

Obihiro, a city in Hokkaido’s south, is famous for butadon (grilled pork rice bowl) and Hokkaido’s only remaining Banei racetrack, where draft horses pull heavy iron sleds in contests of speed and strength.

Stopping over at the city en route to Shiretoko, we found ourselves guests of Russian spine surgeon Ivan Sekiguchi, 44, who has made Japan his home for the past 27 years. He first moved to Japan for its lively anime and manga culture, before settling down with a local.

Mr Sekiguchi has been hosting couchsurfers for 17 years and has a passion for off-the-beaten-track adventures. He makes use of any time he has away from the operating theatre to drive (sometimes for hours) to hidden spots, many of them unmarked even on Google Maps.

One night, he took us to a wild onsen in an abandoned campsite in the middle of a forest. We walked in close to pitch darkness for several minutes while Mr Sekiguchi chanted “kuma yo”, which translates to hello bear, to alert any bears in the area of our presence.

A startled bear is often the most dangerous, he said, and he did not want to take chances. The darkness and fear that gripped us made the five-minute walk feel like an eternity, but what we found left us breathless.

Lit only by a waning half moon, a gurgling river sandwiched two natural onsen pools. Egged on by Mr Sekiguchi, we gingerly dipped our toes in the mineral-rich, balmy waters and felt our nerves slowly melt away as we floated in a dreamy haze of bliss.

Over the next few days, he took us on more adventures, which involved climbing over padlocked gates to access abandoned railway tracks, and sealed-off sections of waterfall trails that had been destroyed by avalanches in past winters.

The host in Obihiro showed us abandoned railway tracks and spots that we would never have found in tourist guidebooks. PHOTO: LI-ANN TAN AND JON SONG

He even let us in on one of his favourite secret spots – a Japanese pillbox along Hokkaido’s south-eastern coastline, built to fend off American landings during World War II. Standing between the abandoned fortification and the ferocious ocean, we knew this was one of those moments and special places that could not be found in any tourist guidebooks.

Shiretoko, Japan’s last frontier

Often referred to as the wildest place in Japan, Shiretoko’s name is derived from the Ainu phrase “sir etok”, which translates to “the tip of earth”.

Shiretoko protrudes from the north-eastern tip of Hokkaido, surrounded by the Sea of Okhotsk, which also surrounds Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Its icy cold waters attract diverse wildlife such as brown bears, dolphins, whales and sea lions that travellers can spot on nature cruises along the coastline.

With the weather warming up during our stay, Shiretoko’s campsites had begun reopening to visitors and we decided to break out our camping gear too. While driving to a campsite located in Shari, the west side of Shiretoko, we took a break at the first michi-no-eki (roadside station) we came across.

Travellers who car camp can freshen up at the many michi-no-ekis, or rest stops, situated along Hokkaido’s highways and roads. PHOTO: LI-ANN TAN AND JON SONG

These rest stations are found along roads and highways in Japan, with restrooms and vending machines. Bigger rest stations sell food, drinks, fresh local produce and souvenirs, and have showers and Wi-Fi.

We found plenty of Hokkaido’s famed seafood and Shiretoko’s locally harvested kelp at the Shiretoko-Rausu roadside rest area (str.sg/JNeWZ), including live sea urchin – going at 550 yen (S$5) each – that we cracked open ourselves.

At a rest stop in Rausu, a town on the eastern coast of Shiretoko, get fresh sea urchin for 550 yen (S$5) each and cut them open on your own. PHOTO: LI-ANN TAN AND JON SONG

We arrived at the National Shiretoko Campsite just in time to catch a stunning sunset at Yuhidai Point. Paying 1,000 yen to set up our two-man tent for the night, we joined fellow campers at the edge of the camp grounds to watch the sun blaze a thousand shades of vermilion as it retired for the day.

That night, gazing up at the starlit sky against a chorus of Blakiston’s fish owls, we had to will ourselves back into our tent.

Starlit skies are a treat for those who choose to camp. PHOTO: LI-ANN TAN AND JON SONG

The next morning, passing an ashiyu (Japanese public foot bath) near the campsite, we met a young Colombian and French couple who had just arrived in Shiretoko and were resting their weary legs. We learnt that they had sold all their belongings in Switzerland and had been travelling around the world for two years on their bicycles.

“We hesitated before we sold everything we had, but once we did, we felt incredibly light,” they said.

Travelling with the couple for the rest of the day, we made one of the best food discoveries of our Japan voyage.

Tucked away in the Port of Utoro is a fishermen’s canteen run by their wives, which caters to fishing crew returning from the seas (str.sg/CBmm; the store operates only from April to November, when the weather is warmer). Locals and tourists have caught wind of its chirashi bowls and fresh seafood and since then, the shop has seen its customers multiply.

Our Singaporean foodie instincts kicked in and we queued 45 minutes for a salmon and ikura bowl at 2,200 yen and grilled hokke (cured Okhotsk Atka mackerel) at 1,500 yen that were well worth the wait.

We spent our second and last night in Shiretoko at its Rausu campsite, situated right next to Kumanoyu Onsen, which is frequented by local fishermen. Just like the locals, we took our baths in the onsen before settling back into our tent, this time pitched beneath dreamy, foggy skies.

Utoro boasts one of Japan’s largest salmon catches, and this fisherman’s canteen tucked away in its port ensured it lived up to its reputation with fresh salmon rice bowls. PHOTO: LI-ANN TAN AND JON SONG

A taste of Ainu in Asahikawa

Having lived for short periods in Indonesia with the Bajau tribe in Sulawesi and the Dani tribe in Papua, we were naturally intrigued by the Ainu culture in Hokkaido.

As luck would have it, we were travelling back to Sapporo through Asahikawa at the same time a traditional Ainu ceremony was being held.

The Ainu were the first people in Hokkaido, believed to have settled in the 12th or 13th century, and looked very different from their southerly neighbours. Ainu men sport huge, burly beards, while some women tattoo their lips black.

They are traditionally animists, believing that everything in nature possesses its own spirit. More than a century after Japan incorporated Hokkaido into its fold, indigenous Ainu have assimilated into modern Japanese culture.

Nupuri Kor Kamuynomi is a festival that takes place on Mount Asahi at the start of the hiking season as a prayer to the gods for the safety of hikers. It opens with Japan’s ancient art of taiko drumming. PHOTO: LI-ANN TAN AND JON SONG

Nupuri Kor Kamuynomi is a festival that takes place annually on Mount Asahi at the start of the hiking season, usually from mid-June to late September, as a prayer to the gods for the safety of hikers.

Descendants of the Ainu dress in traditional robes and perform folk songs and dance. We picked up torches and participated in a procession to set a giant bonfire alight, later dancing around it and chanting in a circle as part of the ritual.

A short bus ride from Asahikawa is Higashikawa, a small town becoming increasingly popular with migrants from other parts of Japan, who enjoy its flair for design, quaint cafes and supply of natural spring water from the Daisetsuzan mountains.

After a reasonably trying stint camping in tents and vehicles, we were happy to meet our couchsurfing host Mayuko Wakai, who welcomed us to her home in Higashikawa and dusted off her takoyaki (grilled octopus ball) machine for dinner. At 27, she had backpacked alone through 40 countries in a single year.

We enjoyed takoyaki parties with a couple of hosts while couchsurfing through Japan, including Ms Mayuko Wakai who welcomed us to her home in Higashikawa. PHOTO: LI-ANN TAN AND JON SONG

Returning to Singapore in July 2023, we thought our hyper-local adventure in Japan had come to an end when a message popped up on our phone a few months later.

A fellow Singaporean traveller had visited Kagoshima, in the Kyushu region, and met our host there. Connected by our one-of-a-kind experiences in Japan, we relived our memories over har cheong gai (prawn paste chicken) and Tiger beer in a kopitiam here.

Travel, for us, is about these chance meetings and discoveries, which lift a veil to people and their worlds.

Tips

Adventurous eaters can try traditional Ainu food such as bear meat and Ezo deer. Such wild game meat, also known by the French term “gibier”, used to be valuable sources of protein for the Ainu and are being revived as food options today. These animals are hunted periodically to prevent damage to forests and agriculture. We tried gibier dishes at izakaya Umizora no Haru (str.sg/cQY2) in Sapporo, which cost between 750 yen and 1,280 yen each, and found them delicious.

Shiretoko’s campsites close for about six months during winter. If you intend to camp, check online (str.sg/LGRk) for the opening dates.

Adventure buffs seeking a less commercial setting than ski hot spot Niseko should not miss the backcountry ski slopes of Asahikawa. Surrounded by the snow-capped Daisetsuzan mountain range, where snow starts thawing only in June, Asahikawa’s ski resorts remain largely untouched by mass tourism.

Li-Ann Tan and Jon Song are nomadic storytellers who spend more time abroad than in Singapore. They document their slow travels on their YouTube channel Another Life (youtube.com/@another-life), Instagram and TikTok (@anotherlife.world).

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