F# Major

Take a look at Peter Drucker’s Managing Oneself article from Harvard Business Review. Where do you fit in? What are your strengths? How do you perform? Are you a reader or a listener? Do you listen to understand or just to reply? How do you learn? And importantly, what are your values? Perhaps you should start putting your answers down on a piece of paper or an app or whatever you are comfortable with! Now read Greg McKeown's article, " If You Don’t Design Your Career, Someone Else Will ." Take a look at Greg's process...according to him, it changed his life. It just might change yours! The point is, take that first step. Learn to drive!

"...all of us now entrust the most private information about ourselves to the guardianship of public companies that have consistently proven themselves unworthy of that trust." More ... I'm not going to get into the personal nature of stuff that was leaked but how many more lessons do we need to be careful about our personal stuff?

Interesting analysis of changes seen in us over the last couple of centuries. The usual suspects of nutrition, physical activity, increased stress, etc. are all here but I wonder: is technology also contributing something here? Too much information but not enough knowledge? Is googling everything reducing our mental aerobic capacity?

The Global Competitiveness Report is out. From the website, it says "This year’s Report provides an overview of the competitiveness performance of 144 economies, and thus continues to be the most comprehensive assessment of its kind globally." Just how is this comprehensive assessment done? One of our national newspapers dedicated an article on the report's findings on Pakistan, which said "“The security situation remains alarming and Pakistan is the third least safe of all countries covered, behind only Yemen and Libya.” Can things like this be compared? Sure, we have our problems but third least safe? Makes me wonder if I should be scared to step out of my house? I personally prefer the Doing Business report. They explain what they look at, how they look at it, and if they will be changing anything.

When 2014 started, I began a little personal experiment to see how good people would be at remembering my birthday. Not very, I discovered. I'm not on Facebook so that goes against me, I'll admit. But when I make it a point to send somebody an email, sms, whatsapp message, the tone of the majority of responses has been ho-hum and hardly anyone has reciprocated by asking me when my birthday is. Apathy? Lack of manners? Something else? Is sending good wishes to people on their birthday falling out of favour? It makes me question renowned psychologist Matthew Lieberman who, in his book Social , said  that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental, more basic, than our need for food or shelter. Take a look at Peter Peter Drucker’s Managing Oneself article from Harvard Business Review. In fact, read it often! But here's an interesting snippet from the article: "Manners - simple things like saying 'please' and 'thank you' and knowin...