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failed El 3 times

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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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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sleep tourism

SINGAPORE – When civil servant Jill Sim, 27, goes on vacation, one thing takes priority over sightseeing or dining at highly rated restaurants: Sleep, and plenty of it.

This shift in vacation philosophy took root in 2019, during a trip to Seoul she took after graduating.

“We had no itinerary to chase,” says Ms Sim, who travelled with her university friends.

“We’d sleep in till 10am and take our time to get ready. When we felt sleepy, we’d head back to the bed and breakfast for a nap before heading out for dinner. Some days, we were even back by 8pm to go to bed early.

“I realised how well rested I felt on the trip. I was fully present for all conversations and activities. To date, it’s one of my favourite holidays.”

Ms Jill Sim began steering clear of busy holiday itineraries in 2019, and says the added downtime allows her to truly unwind on her days off. PHOTO: COURTESY OF JILL SIM

Mr Nazir Nathaniel Hub-Khan agrees that sleep has become a non-negotiable aspect of his holidays. “I typically take five to six vacations a year. Most of these vacations begin with a day or two of rest to adjust to time zones and to relax before diving into activities,” says the 28-year-old project management officer.

He recounts a particularly memorable holiday in Bali in December 2019.

“I extended my stay to explore Uluwatu after celebrating New Year’s Day with friends. Despite initially planning to explore private beaches, the rainy weather allowed me to rest in the villa with its big, comfortable bed,” he says

Mr Nazir Nathaniel Hub-Khan always plans for one or two days of rest during his trips abroad. PHOTO: NAZIR NATHANIEL

Ms Sim and Mr Nazir are among a growing number of Singaporean travellers who are on a quest for quality sleep and relaxation.

Be it a weekend trip in South-east Asia or a longer stay in far-flung locales, fans of the trend say sleep-centric getaways offer a temporary respite from burnout, affect their mood and stress levels positively for months, and allow them to return to work with renewed energy.

According to a Travel Trends 2024 Report published by travel search aggregator Skyscanner, sleep is a top priority for Singaporean travellers planning their next getaway. Some 23 per cent list it as a key activity, surpassing interests in water sports, wildlife spotting and snow sports.

This inclination towards prioritising rest is likely to persist, as 39 per cent of travellers from Singapore report improved sleep while on vacation.

As a result, more hotels around the world are offering amenities and services designed to promote restful sleep. For instance, luxury hotel chain Six Senses has sleep programmes, ranging from one night to one week, at several properties around the world.

India-headquartered market research company HTF Market Intelligence reported in 2023 that the sleep tourism market is poised for significant growth, with a projected increase of over US$400 billion (S$539 billion) – or nearly 8 per cent – in value between 2023 and 2028.

Similarly, hotels in Singapore are expanding their sleep-focused offerings beyond calming interiors, blackout curtains and designer mattresses.

Rest, reimagined

At Conrad Singapore Orchard, which opened in Cuscaden Road in December, the Sleep-to-Wake Ritual elevates the traditional nightly turndown service into a mindful experience.

The programme, which is complimentary for guests, includes pre-sleep teas crafted from local botanicals such as hibiscus and pandan, a pre-recorded guided sound bath on TV by Singaporean yoga practitioner Azmi Samdjaga and an extensive pillow menu.

Guests can also join a Morning Intention session – an hour-long wellness activity by the pool which offers a rotating schedule of activities such as yoga and cold plunges.

Those staying in suites and executive rooms also receive a calming shower steamer on the first night.

Conrad Singapore Orchard’s complimentary Sleep-to-Wake Ritual includes wellness sessions by the pool. PHOTO: CONRAD SINGAPORE ORCHARD

Conrad Singapore Orchard’s cluster operations general manager Oscar Postma says: “The Sleep-to-Wake Ritual is supposed to encourage our guests to carry forward the simple, mindful habits they engage in, ensuring a lasting positive impact even after their stay with us.”

Room rates at Conrad Singapore Orchard start at $450 a night.

Shangri-La Singapore, also in the Orchard area, launched its Better Sleep Package in January. Guests who book this two-night programme will receive an hour-long neck and back massage; a three-course in-room dinner for two; as well as a Better Sleep Amenities Set with a pillow spray, shower gel and bath soak from British skincare brand This Works.

They can also partake in a Music for Mindfulness session, which is the result of a collaboration between local arts company The Teng Company and university Singapore Institute of Technology.

Noise-cancelling headphones offer a 50-minute musical voyage integrating ancient Chinese music therapy philosophies with the science of binaural beats, where two slightly different frequencies are played in each ear, leading to the perception of a single new frequency tone.

This phenomenon is said to create a mental state conducive to relaxation, meditation and stress reduction.

The package will be offered till the end of March and starts at $480++ a night.

Hotels such as Shangri-La Singapore and Como Metropolitan Singapore have begun offering audio experiences to help guests sleep better. PHOTO: SHANGRI-LA SINGAPORE

Meanwhile, the Como Metropolitan Singapore enhances the bedtime experience with a five-minute meditation practice on in-room televisions, guided by mindfulness expert Tan Cheen Chong.

The hotel, which opened in September 2023, has a Sleep Dreams package, a four-day, three-night retreat starting at $1,450 a guest.

Rooms come equipped with a Sleep Hub, a device that plays low-frequency sound waves to encourage deeper, more restful sleep. The hotel says the method is backed by more than a decade of research, development and testing by Britain-based sound technology company Cambridge Sleep Sciences.

Guests will also receive a kit of sleep amenities containing a sleep balm, room spray and an eye pillow.

Democratising sleep

Sleep-focused stays are not exclusive to high-end accommodation.

Kinn Studios, a boutique hotel at 69 Keong Saik Road, offers an affordable alternative. Room rates start at $140++ a night.

The hotel, which opened in November 2023, focuses on mental well-being through a collaboration with Safe Space, a mental health service provider in Singapore.

New boutique hotel Kinn Studios has partnered Safe Space, a mental health service provider in Singapore, to offer video call sessions with therapists-in-training. PHOTO: KINN STUDIOS

Until Sept 30, Kinn guests can dial in for video-call sessions with Safe Space’s therapists-in-training. They also get a 10 per cent discount on sessions, which start at $80 for a 60-minute slot.

The boutique hotel offers guests a Pocket Serenity wellness booklet featuring nuggets of affirmation and personal journaling prompts to help them mentally declutter for a stress- and anxiety-free vacation. The sessions can be accessed by scanning a QR code in the booklet.

The idea of a sanctuary was conceived by hotel founder Chayadi Karim, who noticed more solo travellers seeking refuge at Kinn Capsule Hotel – the precursor to Kinn Studios – in South Bridge Road.

“Since the burnout epidemic has been quite prevalent, we felt it was our chance to focus on wellness and mental health,” he says.

“Kinn Studios is designed as a haven, a retreat where guests can escape the hustle and bustle. After all, people are finding it increasingly difficult to switch off from the stresses of everyday life, impacting their night-time routine and sleep.”

Guests of Kinn Studios receive a pocket serenity wellness booklet that they can take home. PHOTO: KINN STUDIOS

The hotel’s marketing manager Samantha Loh, who initiated the partnership with Safe Space, says: “Travelling often triggers my anxiety, whether it’s because I’m in an unfamiliar country or I struggle with sleeping alone in a room. You can sleep all you want, but you never feel quite mentally rejuvenated.”

Ms Antoinette Patterson, co-founder and chief executive of Safe Space, says the collaboration has garnered positive feedback, with the service receiving 24 calls for counsellors to date.

“December was a busy month for us, with stress and personal matters topping the list of concerns among callers from Kinn,” she adds.

Bedtime stories

For those who think sleep-cations can work only in remote locations with patchy access to Wi-Fi, think again.

For Ms Sim, bustling cities with accessible activities and convenient transport offer the ideal backdrop for a restful holiday. Her favourite destination? London.

“There are so many interesting F&B establishments, theatres and immersive experiences within arm’s reach, and they are evolving all the time. I don’t have to spend time travelling out of the city and can sleep as much as I need while still having a blast when awake,” she says.

She adds that she does not mind revisiting familiar destinations, and often limits her schedule to no more than two major activities a day.

Many hotels now offer massages as well as yoga and meditation as part of their sleep packages. PHORO: SHANGRI-LA SINGAPORE

Her sole sleep ritual involves using earplugs to ensure uninterrupted slumber, a practice she reserves exclusively for travel.

Meanwhile, Mr Nazir’s sleep must-haves are a quiet atmosphere, a bathtub to unwind in and a cup of hot tea at the end of the day. He dislikes spontaneous housekeeping and avoids rooms near common areas.

Reflecting on earlier travel experiences, Ms Sim has found new purpose in her vacations.

“Previously, I’d be up by 8am, on my feet most of the day and back in the hotel only at 10pm. While it was fun, I’d also find myself more exhausted after the trip than before, which didn’t feel like what a vacation should be,” she says.

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adult parenting

NEW YORK – American parenting has become more involved – requiring more time, money and mental energy – not just when children are young, but well into adulthood.

The popular conception has been that this must be detrimental to children – with snowplough parents clearing obstacles and ending up with adult children who have failed to launch, still dependent on them.

But two new Pew Research Center surveys – of young adults aged 18 to 34, and of parents of children that age – tell a more nuanced story.

Most parents are, in fact, highly involved in their grown children’s lives, it found, texting several times a week and offering advice and financial support. Yet in many ways, their relationships seem healthy and fulfilling.

Nine in 10 parents rate their relationships with their young-adult children as good or excellent, and so do eight in 10 young adults, and this is consistent across income.

Rather than feeling worried or disappointed about how things are going in their children’s lives, eight in 10 parents say they feel proud and hopeful.

“These parents, who are Gen X, are more willing to say, ‘Hey, this is good, I like these people, they’re interesting, they’re fun to be with,’” said Professor Karen Fingerman at the University of Texas at Austin, who studies adults’ relationships with their families.

As for the adult children, she said: “You get advice from a 50-year-old with life experience who is incredibly invested in you and your success.”

Also, these close relationships do not seem to be holding back young people from reaching certain milestones of independence.

Compared with their parents as young adults in the early 1990s, they are much more likely to be in college or have a college degree, Pew found. They are somewhat more likely to have a full-time job, and their inflation-adjusted incomes are higher. They are much less likely, though, to be married or have children.

Experts say contemporary hyper-intensive parenting can go too far – and has only become more hands-on since the young adults in the survey were children.

Young people say their mental health is suffering, and recent data shows they are much more likely to say this than those before them.

Some researchers have sounded alarms that one driver of this is children’s lack of independence, and that overparenting can deprive children of developing skills to handle adversity.

The new data suggests that, indeed, young adults are more reliant on their parents – texting them for life advice when older generations may have figured out their problems on their own. But the effects do not seem to be wholly negative.

Prof Fingerman and her colleagues have found that close relationships between parents and grown children protected children from unhealthy behaviours, and young adults who received significant parental support were better able to cope with change and had higher satisfaction with their lives.

It was a finding “we just couldn’t believe the first time”, she said, because of the assumptions about over-involved parents.

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Both things can be true, said Associate Professor Eli Lebowitz, director of the Program for Anxiety Disorders at the Yale Child Study Center – “that they do rely a lot on their parents, and they do get a lot of positive support from them”.

In previous research, parents often expressed ambivalence about their continued involvement in their adult children’s lives. But the Pew study suggests that has changed, Prof Fingerman said, perhaps a sign they have come to embrace it.

Among parents, seven in 10 say they are satisfied with their level of involvement in their grown child’s life. Just 7 per cent say they are too involved, and one-quarter would like even more involvement.

Young adults say the same.

Ms Adriana Goericke, from Santa Cruz, California, texts with her daughter Mia, a college sophomore in Colorado, a few times a day. They share pictures of their food, workouts or funny selfies.

When her daughter asks for advice, mostly about navigating friendships and dating, her mother said she sees her role as a sounding board: “She knows I’m not going to try and run her life, but I’m always there if she needs me.”

Ms Mia Goericke has seen friends who cannot solve problems or make small decisions on their own, but she said that is different from asking her mother for help.

“She will usually ask me what my goals are and try to understand my thinking rather than just tell me what to do,” she said. “It’s like an incredible resource I have at my fingertips.”

When baby boomers were growing up, there was a belief, rooted in the American ideal of self-sufficiency, that children should be independent after age 18. But that was in some ways an aberration, social scientists said.

Before then, and again now, it has been common for members of different generations to be more interdependent.

Ms Cathy Perry, 66, said she has a very different relationship with her sons, 32 and 36, than she had with her parents when she was that age.

They all live in the St Louis area and text on a family group chat several times a week. Her older son shares updates on his children, and asks for advice on his career, finances and home remodelling.

As a young adult, she lived an 11-hour drive from her parents, and calls were charged by the minute. “I feel that I have a much closer and more open relationship with my kids, where they are more free to express their opinions on things I might not agree with,” she said.

Open, emotional conversations have become more of a priority for parents, research shows. Prof Lebowitz said: “They may be the first generation of adults who have parents who actually grew up with the mindset of talking about this kind of stuff.” NYTIMES

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be present for your child

Over the past few weeks – and not for the first time in recent months – the topics of mental health and fertility rates appeared in close quarters in the news cycle.

In and of themselves, the stories were not linked – but deducing as much would be missing the point. By now, one can say with a certain level of unambiguity: There is a correlation between the two.

In January, findings from two studies saw young people continuing to grapple with the lingering impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, worries over grades, employability upon leaving school, and so on. Worryingly, the most common area of concern across all respondents was burnout.

In February, Parliament was told that Singapore’s resident total fertility rate dropped below 1 for the first time in its history.

And news out of South Korea around the same time also mirrored the stark realities both societies will face. There, the fertility rate dropped to a record low of 0.7 in the second quarter of 2023; another report highlighted the alarming trend of suicides among Korean youth.

A stressful environment

There is both a linearity and circularity to the issues at hand. To be in a constant state of mental flux all through adolescence and into adulthood will likely imprint a pessimistic view of life and the future.

In such a scenario, marriage and rearing children are the last things on young people’s minds. A common refrain is: “How can I bring children into this messed-up world?”

But people also choose to marry and have kids for many reasons, be they cultural, personal or even economic – regardless of mental well-being. Yet those who begin a family without addressing mental health concerns could, in turn, saddle the next generation with similar issues.

For when dealing with the exigencies of work and running a household, families – breadwinners, notably – can lapse into a fraught crisis mode. This can make for very stressful situations, which in turn creates a poor environment for children.

Leaving children to their own devices is not a new phenomenon. The term “latch-key kid” was coined decades ago and identified a neglected group of young people who had to fend for themselves while their parents were at work.

While there are similarities, there is a divergence today in how children typically would react to their situation. Unfettered access to social media and the Internet would likely perpetuate an already isolated existence.

Identifying these pitfalls is a good start in helping parents deal with supporting their children’s mental and emotional development.

There are no shortcuts here: You have to be there for them. And you also have to bear in mind you are their parent, not their friend. So, parent them.

This golden age of labels, sound bites, hashtags and buzzwords has suffused the bylanes of parenthood with terms like helicopter parenting, overparenting, tiger mums and dragon dads and so on.

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While the tiger mum is reviled for her tough, binaristic methods, she is admired for her effectiveness in producing tangible results. The helicopter parent, on the other hand, is lampooned for being overbearing, meddlesome and a way-too-active participant in the child’s lives.

One presumes the perfect parenting elixir lies somewhere in between the above two avatars and the hands-off, laissez-faire route. And the key here is to be present, but that doesn’t necessarily mean having to be around physically.

The need for structure

It can mean ensuring a structure is in place for your child to thrive in, such as a well-rounded after-school programme that includes sports, music or art, or even designing a home routine that can combine fun with homework.

Having a daily structure helps children no end as it improves mental bandwidth by removing decision-making. This sense of being under control can be empowering as a mental safety net, with the child secure in the knowledge there is some guidance in her life.

And one of the areas where structure is a boon in children’s lives is sports. Now, sports can be dismissed as frivolous in school. How many times have we been told there’s no future in them, and to focus on grades?

Yet sports are a fantastic way to thrive within a structure: the rigour, discipline and mental fortitude required to excel in them give easy spillover benefits to one’s studies and life. Because when all you do is practice and gym sessions, homework can be a welcome distraction.

It is also where the parent has to be the primary driver in the child’s success. Sport is one of those pursuits where if you miss out on those early, formative years, the chances of making it big are virtually nil.

Singapore’s latest sporting star comes in the unlikely form of Shannon Tan, who claimed the Magical Kenya Ladies Open on her Ladies European Tour debut. Her parents quit their jobs and moved with her to Australia when she decided she wanted to be a pro.

No half-measures, just a family pulling out all the stops to ensure one of them hits heights of achievement her talent deserved.

Footballer Aymann Aris, 13, who recently moved to Portugal to try and make something of his talent, spoke about the “family project” where his father quit his job to follow him to SC Salgueiros.

From Richard Williams to Jorge Messi and Ted Beckham, sports are full of celebrity parents: They are not props. They are integral parts to their children’s success.

On both the men’s and women’s tennis tours, pick out the players who move with an entourage that also includes their parents and then compare their success with the players that fly solo. The difference is startling.

So, besides routine and structure, here’s another thing sports mums and dads do well: honest, daily conversations and clear communication.

Prescriptive chats are done by coaches in gyms and on the playing field; or in classes by teachers. Children don’t need another “you do what I tell you to do” environment at home.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t have frank, boundary-setting, goal-focused discussions with your kids. It needs to be done – and that is what really involved parents do well.

Mental health is a looming crisis, if it isn’t already one. One of the key ways to mitigate this is to talk to your children – and to reassure them that no matter what, no matter how tough the day is, they will come home to a loving family where there will always be a parent, a guardian or a responsible adult to guide them.

Ask what they did in school, who they hung out with, what they ate during recess, what they remembered about their lessons. Be nosey – they might think it annoying, but in time, they’ll know you did it because you cared.

Also, as a parent, wouldn’t you want to know what your child did for eight, 10 hours a day? As we spend a sliver of our day with our children, it is nice to get a mental picture of how their day went.

Is all this then overparenting? Is it being a noisy human helicopter? Well, if it is… we’ll take the label. After all, the results speak for themselves.

A wise soul once said: “You won’t regret the things you did, but you will regret the things you didn’t do.”

You have a short window of time and opportunity within which you can shape your children’s lives and future.

If you can, be overly present.

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“去除心灵的爱欲，训练好的饮食习惯…”

星云大师说：分享信息：现代人生活节奏快，压力增加容易产生坏情绪，其实可透过饮食调整，提升心灵免疫力，如补充ω-3脂肪酸、色胺酸、维生素B群、维生素C、钙和镁，这些营养素都能促进心情愉悦，减少压力。

ω-3脂肪酸是组成大脑及神经细胞与传导的重要成分，因具有抗氧化、清除自由基能力，可增加血清素的分泌量，改善忧郁。可补充植物来源的ω-3脂肪酸，主要常见于黄豆制品、胡桃、坚果等。色胺酸在调节睡眠上扮演重要角色，有助人体保持放松，常见食物如毛豆、南瓜籽、传统豆腐、鲜奶、鸡蛋等，都含有天然的色胺酸。维生素B群／钙／镁可维持神经系统的稳定性，如糙米、薏仁等全谷类，或绿叶蔬菜、豆类、牛奶等，有助于降低焦虑感。

维生素C是一种强效的抗氧化剂，有助于减轻压力、活化免疫力，柑橘类水果和番石榴都是丰富的维生素C来源。营养师提醒，除了增加快乐营养素外，避免高糖、高油脂的地雷食物也很重要。营养师建议，每天早晚1杯奶、每餐水果拳头大、菜比水果多一点、豆蛋一掌心、坚果种籽一茶匙、三餐至少有一餐吃全谷类杂粮。

我们能建立均衡且多样化的饮食习惯，注重摄取各类营养素，有助于提升心灵免疫力，增强应对生活压力的能力，让心情更加稳定和愉悦。

·十事

饮食最主要的目的，是为了维持身体的健康。但现代人习惯挑肥拣瘦，使得文明病猖獗。所以我们吃东西不一定要贪图美味，应该把它当成如服药健身一般，要吃得卫生和健康。过去有人把健康的饮食之道，规范成十事，分别是：少肉多菜、少杀多放、少盐多澹、少糖多果、少食多嚼、少车多走、少愤多笑、少忧多睡、少言多行、少欲多施。

现代人为了口腹之欲，把许多野生动物都摆上餐桌，而且连濒临绝种的动物也不放过，“以食造罪”到了无以复加的地步，这样的食物，会让我们快乐吗？所谓“欲知世上刀兵劫，但听屠门夜半声”，一些人只贪图饮食享受，面对不断的天灾人祸、生灵不安，难道真的都没有一点觉省吗？

·不挑

对于食物，我们要去除心灵的爱欲，训练好的饮食习惯，不要挑食，也无需高价美食，养成有什么就吃什么。古人对于日常所需，都指示子孙要惜福，不但日用要节省，饮食要澹泊，尤其不能暴殄天物。

所谓“朱门酒肉臭，路有冻死骨”，当然，现在已经不是这种时代了。但是现在的社会失序、残杀事件层出不穷，不能说与饮食没有关系。在加拿大的人民，即使钓到了鱼，如果没有一尺长以上，他们是不会烹杀煮食，一定要放回河里，以护生命的成长。世上不少护鲸协会都用种种方法去影响临海国家，呼吁大家共同抵制、处罚滥补鲸鱼的国家，为的是要维持生态的平衡，不要让稀有动物在我们这一代绝种。

我们不能把自己一时的口腹之乐，建筑在其他众生的痛苦身上，如此有损自己的阴德、寿命，这是必然的因果。饮食的意义，以自然的五谷杂粮为主，适时、适度，方能生活均衡。

calling as a nurse

Singapore has responded to the acute nursing shortages in recent years with aggressive recruitment and retention strategies targeting both local and foreign nurses.

Health Minister Ong Ye Kung has announced a slew of initiatives and efforts to recruit more in the past year, in addition to granting permanent residency status to about 700 nurses each year from 2018 to 2022.

“Foreign healthcare workers are an integral part of our healthcare system, and for those who become valued members of our healthcare community and demonstrate commitment to Singapore, we have been and are prepared to grant them PR status,” he said in Parliament last July. 

More recently, on Feb 20, Mr Ong unveiled Angel – or Award for Nurses’ Grace, Excellence and Loyalty – a retention scheme benefiting about 29,000 nurses with bonuses of up to $100,000 each spread over 20 years.

Expanding our nursing pool is undoubtedly necessary, given Singapore’s ageing population and escalating healthcare demands. 

Singapore has ramped up nursing numbers quickly – the Ministry of Health announced 5,600 nurses accepted offers to work in the public healthcare system in 2023. This is an impressive number, considering the public sector had about 23,720 registered nurses as at 2022.

The critical questions then are how quickly, how safely, and in what number new nurses, especially those from abroad, can be safely absorbed into the health system. 

The answers can help set limiting rates on nursing recruitment as we cannot compromise patient care in the pursuit of “spreadsheet ambitions”.

Determining the pace of absorption is a delicate balancing act, requiring real-time calibration to ensure both immediate needs and long-term sustainability are addressed. 

Tough to hit the ground running

Foreign nurses, and health professionals more generally, can’t be expected to “hit the ground running”. 

Nursing demands emotional intelligence, critical thinking and technical skills, necessitating a robust support system for newcomers. For foreign nurses, beyond clinical training, training requires cultural orientation to help them adjust to Singapore’s healthcare environment, healthcare expectations and societal norms. 

The role of nursing can vary greatly across countries. In the Philippines and India, both source countries for Singapore’s foreign nurses, it is common for patients’ family members to remain at the bedside and actively contribute to fulfilling the patients’ fundamental needs, including providing hygiene care and assisting with feeding. 

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Here, however, nurses are tasked with providing comprehensive care, encompassing all aspects of patient support, from medical to basic daily needs.

Little wonder that foreign nurses intending to leave the profession say they find nursing in Singapore challenging, according to a recent local study on current and former nurses conducted in Alexandra Hospital. 

These professionals must navigate not only the complexities arising from cultural and linguistic differences but also adapt to the distinct expectations and responsibilities accompanying the practice of nursing in Singapore.

Furthermore, new foreign nurses are typically younger and may be living abroad away from their families for the first time, which can be a major stressor in itself.

A high-touch onboarding process

Public healthcare institutions in Singapore have been mindful of these challenges and implemented strategies to integrate new nurses. Every new nurse undergoes an onboarding process lasting three months, which includes in-house courses, and a probation period of at least six months.

Through this period, new nurses are paired with experienced preceptors, ensuring a one-to-one mentor-to-nurse ratio, to provide personalised, on-the-job mentorship. This adds to the already heavy load of the experienced nurses and nursing leaders have to watch for burnout and stress in their existing staff too.

Recognising the unique acculturation challenges faced by foreign nurses, some public health institutions offer additional support. Expanded programmes deepen their understanding of the local culture and dialects, thereby facilitating a smoother transition into the Singapore healthcare environment.

Fostering a supportive and inclusive work environment that values diversity and the contributions of all staff members is also essential. For foreign nurses, creating a sense of belonging and community, a necessary partial substitute for the family, is vital for their integration and retention. 

The public healthcare clusters have formal initiatives intended to achieve these goals. For example, the National University Health System (NUHS) staff go through the Arbinger Institute’s “The Outward Mindset” workshop designed to promote empathy for colleagues and mutual support while SingHealth has a funded acculturation programme that gives nurses a chance to bond and interact.

These are useful but will be ineffective if patients and their families do not play their part. 

In 2023, the Ministry of Health reported that “almost one in three healthcare workers in Singapore witnessed or experienced abuse at least once a week”. This is frankly deeply embarrassing and reflects poorly on us as a society. We can and have to do better.

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Retaining nurses

We need to recognise that monetary incentives, while important, are not the sole factor in retaining nurses. Nurses motivated by a sense of purpose exhibit increased productivity and a lower propensity to leave their positions. 

Author Daniel Pink of the best-selling Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us describes motivation as being driven by autonomy, mastery, and purpose. This concept resonates particularly with the younger generation of nurses, who aspire towards a broader range of experiences and opportunities for career progression. 

Consequently, the healthcare system must commit to nurturing the professional growth of nurses by providing avenues for ongoing education, specialisation, and advancement within the profession.

The introduction of Advanced Practice Nurses (APNs) can help. It represents a significant step up in professional development and specialisation in nursing. 

APNs are registered nurses with a minimum master’s degree qualification in nursing, who are legally able to diagnose and manage patients’ treatment plans, prescribe medications, and perform procedures within their scope of practice. 

Singapore has a national target of 700 APNs with prescribing authority and career paths for other nurses keen on specialist practice, administrative leadership, education or research. 

Regardless of whether a nurse aims to become an APN, a manager, a clinician, or a researcher, it is crucial for the health system to diversify and enrich the experience of nursing as a profession and to loudly celebrate them. 

By implementing such measures, the healthcare system can significantly improve job satisfaction and foster loyalty among nurses. 

This, in turn, would lead to lower turnover rates and contribute to the development of a more stable and seasoned workforce. A 2023 review of 345 research papers from European Union and non-EU countries explored the main factors influencing job retention among nurses and physicians. One was career development. 

A 2021 review of nine studies across five countries – Britain, Jordan, Greece, Australia and the Netherlands – found nurses’ participation in continual professional development increases their motivation and commitment to work, which leads to higher retention and better work performance. 

Measure outcomes of hiring more nurses

The challenge of integrating and retaining new nurses is not a trivial one, especially when 60 per cent are foreign.

Hopefully, more Singaporeans will see nursing as a viable career.

Attracting the requisite numbers and putting in place retention schemes are necessary but insufficient to ensure better patient outcomes. 

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With more nurses hired in 2023, we should measure the success of recruitment and retention efforts together with metrics of patient safety and clinical quality. 

The Ministry of Health should take the lead here, to collate and report the outcomes. Metrics such as medication errors, patient falls, hospital-acquired infections and critical incident reporting could serve as vital indicators for policymakers and institutional leaders to gauge the appropriate pace of nurse absorption.

Former Singapore president Halimah Yacob once said: “Save one life, and you’re a hero. Save a hundred lives, and you must be a nurse.” 

This statement is not merely a tribute to nursing but should be seen also as a call to action.

Nursing’s success in recruitment, safe onboarding and retention benefits Singapore immeasurably. Let’s all play our part.

Associate Professor Jeremy Lim is with the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. Dr Brigitte Woo is a research fellow at the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

50 is a new one for sg woman

SINGAPORE – Since hitting her 50s, Ms Hazel Sam has tried improvisational theatre, graduated with a Master of Science in wealth management and formed a community for people aged 50 and up that now has 400 members.

The 53-year-old financial planner created the Project 50 group on the Meetup app in 2021. She had been moved to action after reading The 100-Year Life: Living And Working In An Age Of Longevity, authored by London Business School dons Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott.

The book got her thinking about how to live the second half of her life in a more thoughtful manner.

“(Project 50) was a very raw attempt to rally my peers to a community where we can discuss topics of purpose, health, wealth and relationships,” she wrote in a LinkedIn article.

“The intention was to create a safe space to talk through what we need to work on to make our 50s productive and inspiring, thereby making better life decisions. The premise is that when we are well, we will have the propensity to give back and pay forward to society (or simply to people around us), beyond ourselves.”

Six people turned up for the inaugural meet-up in February 2021 out of a maximum of eight allowed under social distancing measures then. Members pay for their own food and drinks and are not allowed to solicit business, among other guidelines.

Now, its monthly meet-ups attract around 30 on average and have gained such traction that its members also run peripheral activities that include retro nights, mahjong sessions and hikes. Its oldest member is 74.

Ms Hazel Sam formed Project 50 for people over 50 to find friends. The Meetup group has grown to 400 members since 2021. ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE

“People our age come with a lot of war stories and when we sat down and spoke, I realised we have so much to learn from one another. Every one of us has something we have mastered or grieved over – a lot of war scars – which is quite inspiring,” she tells The Straits Times.

In 2024, she intends to take up a dance class. Perhaps the tango, she muses.

“If I’m not scared, I’m not growing,” says the mother of three children aged 22 to 25.

Ms Sam epitomises the spirit of today’s 50-something women who, unlike their mothers, are ramping up for a second adulthood filled with purposeful pursuits.

The 50s can be a period of transition and confusion for them, both in their working and personal lives, as they are too young to retire but are often considered past their prime by society.

A survey by the Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations (SCWO) and market researcher Milieu Insight in 2022 dubbed them Tomorrow’s New Old and found they are willing to reinvent themselves and try new things.

The survey polled 500 respondents aged 52 to 62 and held focus group discussions with 20 female participants between 50 and 65 years old.

These women will turn 60 to 70 years old in 2030 when the re-employment age will be 70 years old.

Unlike the generations before them, they are better educated, more tech-savvy and therefore connected, and more adaptable in the workplace, the survey found. They want to “age fruitfully and meaningfully” while being financially independent, the report said.

“Higher literacy levels among women in Singapore and being more financially equipped (affordability) allow such women to aspire and actualise what they want recreationally, professionally and on the personal front,” says Ms Koh Yan Ping, chief executive of SCWO.

“Such women could have grown up seeing their mothers having had to give up opportunities in their careers or make sacrifices due to financial needs or restraints of fulfilling family obligations, or even due to patriarchy-related biases. These daughters and granddaughters are now spurred to be more driven to chase their dreams.”

Dreaming big at 50

Ms Simran Toor, chief executive of SG Her Empowerment, an independent non-profit organisation that aims to empower girls and women, says: “Reinventing oneself, switching careers or pursuing new passions at 50 is no longer viewed as a late-stage development.

“Given that our working lives can now span more than half a century, I believe it will soon be common for women to view midcareer or midlife changes as a means of sustaining their working lives and productivity, by focusing on what interests and inspires them. This is a boon for the many among us who took a back seat or time off work to raise a family or care for loved ones.”

Ms Salitha Nair, who is pursuing her PhD in Business Administration, says she has always wanted to further her education but was busy raising a family in her 30s and 40s. ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM

Ms Salitha Nair, 54, is one such example. The senior lecturer at PSB Academy decided to pursue a PhD in Business Administration with the University of Canberra in 2021, when Covid-19 raged. She is slated to graduate in 2025.

She thinks it is common for Asian women, especially, to lose their identities in their 30s and 40s as they juggle career and family responsibilities.

“This is something I have always wanted to do. But we play a lot of roles as women, being a mother, a wife and all that. So, it came to a stage where it was now or never,” says Ms Salitha, who has three children aged 18 to 27.

While she had accomplished much at work – she won a best lecturer award in 2019 through student voting and clinched PSB Academy’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2023 – the pandemic also made her pause.

“I had a lot of time to reflect. It kind of frightened me, because you have only one life. What is it you want to achieve?” she recounts.

Mindful of working both mind and body, she also started strength training and doing yoga regularly in 2023.

With their kids more independent, some women in their 50s are taking bigger risks with their careers, reinventing their corporate identities as they seek new and more purposeful challenges.

Ms Pang Sze Yunn joined brain health start-up Neurowyzr as its chief executive when she was 50. ST PHOTO: GIN TAY

Ms Pang Sze Yunn joined brain health start-up Neurowyzr in 2021 as its chief executive when she turned 50. It provides a digital neuroscience assessment called Digital Brain Function Screen that screens adults for early brain decline, to clients such as Sata CommHealth and Parkway Shenton.

The company was founded in 2019 by neuroscientist Nav Vij. Neurowyzr’s advisers include neurosurgeon Prem Pillay and Associate Professor Nagaendran Kandiah, director of the Dementia Research Centre at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University. It has over 15 clients in Singapore and is expanding regionally. Neurowyzr has attracted funding from Tier 1 investors such as Peak XV’s Surge and Jungle Ventures.

Ms Pang, 53, a former diplomat who was the first female political secretary at the Singapore embassy in Beijing, recalls a mentor advising her “to be the first to do things that need to be done”.

Her former job as head of home care services at NTUC Health had exposed her to the harsh reality of life for people who suffered brain-related conditions such as dementia or stroke, as well as their caregivers.

“We go for health screenings, but we never check our brains. Yet, the brain is probably the most important organ of your body that you want to take care of. This job is very meaningful for me because it’s something that needs to be done that I can be the first to do,” says Ms Pang, whose varied career includes stints in global companies like Microsoft and Philips.

She was also a council member in the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Longevity from 2019 to 2020.

“It’s a very multifaceted job, which I think suits women very well because we’re very good at multitasking. We are the ones who know exactly where the kids are every day while keeping a full schedule at work,” adds the mother of three children aged 13 to 16.

Reinvention is key

Adeline Tiah, who quit her corporate job in her 50s and wrote a book about reinvention, says women in their 50s still have much to offer society. ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG

In a Vuca world that is more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous than ever, constant reinvention is one of the keys to remaining employable and nimble, says Adeline Tiah, author of Reinvent 4.0 – Your Keys To Unlock Success And Thrive In Uncertainty, published by local publisher Candid Creation Publishing.

Her book took nine months to write and is available at $28 on her website (soarcollective.asia/reinvent-4-0). It was launched at the end of 2022, when a wave of tech layoffs hogged the headlines, validating her message of reinvention.

She has sold over 600 copies to date, not including figures from Amazon.com or downloads on Kindle.

Tiah is a living example of all that she preaches. The certified executive coach, who is in her 50s, quit her marketing role in a fintech company in 2022 to start Soar Collective Asia, a coaching and mentoring practice.

She describes the transition as “very smooth” as she had coached as a side hustle for seven years.

Today, she has a “portfolio career” that includes being a start-up mentor, an adjunct lecturer at the Singapore University of Social Sciences’ School of Business and a board member of a non-profit organisation.

“A coach asked me a transformative question in 2022: ‘What would an 80-year-old Adeline thank me for what I do today?’ That question got me thinking – I still have a long runway to work, I wanted to build something bigger than myself, instead of working for shareholders.” 

She developed a coaching framework from her book and now runs programmes for individuals as well as organisations seeking to imbue their employees with a transformation mindset.  

“When people in their 50s come to me, asking how do they find jobs, I say: ‘Don’t think about looking for a job, think about what problems you can solve.’ If you shift the mindset, your mental model changes, and then you help the employer see the value you bring to the table rather than seeing your age. There’s a lot of reframing required,” says Tiah, who has a son in his early 20s.

Ms Nicole Cheong, 51, has reframed her mindset in her current role as an associate cyber-security specialist at Red Alpha Cybersecurity.

She ran a ballet school for almost five years before selling it off in 2020, when Covid-19 hit, to spend more time with her three children, now aged 10 to 19.

“It’s time for me to make a contribution back to society. There’s still gas in the tank and tech is something I’ve always been very passionate about,” says Ms Cheong, who used to work as a systems analyst with HP. She took a break in 2007 to take care of her children for about eight years before becoming an entrepreneur.

She is now studying for OffSec’s Offensive Security Certified Professional certification, part of the company’s Alpha Specialist Training Programme, and will go on to do an industry placement of three years.

Ms Nicole Cheong shaved her head when she was 50 and joined a cyber-security company in 2023. ST PHOTO: SHINTARO TAY

While the learning curve has been steep, “I’m quite in love with it,” she says, adding that she hopes to work in planning and consulting in cyber-security law.

Ms Cheong, who shaved her head at age 50 because she was tired of tying her hair up and colouring her roots, has not personally faced ageism in the networking sessions she has attended to find a placement.

Still, she knows that dark clouds loom large over her age group.

Older women are stereotyped as slow, less productive and less adaptable, says Ms Toor, citing a Singapore Alliance for Women in Ageing (Sawa) report released in May 2023.

They are also often perceived as being caregivers and lacking in digital skills. The report, which polled 170 women aged 55 and older, was a response to what Sawa saw as a gap in the Singapore Government’s White Paper on Singapore Women’s Development in March 2022.

“These perceptions are really out-of-step with today’s realities, and we need a mindset change across society to promote more positive representations of women over 50,” Ms Toor says.

Ms Cheong is optimistic about her career prospects. “Why would somebody hire a 50-year-old over a 20-year-old? I would think it is really the lived experience, which gives you a broader perspective. You won’t get that from a fresh graduate. So, don’t discount yourself,” she says.

Tiah, who says she now prioritises “people KPIs” (key performance indicators) rather than revenue KPIs, adds: “I believe life begins at 50. This is a time when you’re old enough, with a wealth of experience, and young enough to learn new things.

“It’s no longer about achieving material success but about how you do things differently to make an impact and achieve significance”.

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