Praxium

Re-inventing education and making it relevant | www.praxium.co

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From planning menus to fine-tuning motorcades: MFA officers take challenges in their stride

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I was recently asked at a talk what I would say would be the worst thing that could happen to the young generation today, and my reply was that it’s not that they will be invaded or become poor, it’s that all of them as a cohort will sleepwalk through life: comfortable, not really aware of what’s really happening, not passionate about anything, then one day, they wake up and say, “What did I really do? Did I waste my life?” I don’t want to accuse them, because it’s completely unfair to them as young people who’ve grown up in affluent Singapore. We, in our generation, created the environment for them to live in an affluent context. It’s not hardly their fault. The consequence of this, though, is that they can be less aware of things, and so sleepwalk. When you look at young people in China, Indonesia, Burma, you see how hungry they are by necessity. We are not hungry anymore and neither should we be – but we must be hungry for something and this is the challenge for Singapore. It’s much easier to be hungry for something physical and then achieve it; it’s much more difficult to be hungry for something more amorphous, more social, hungry for a more purposeful life. My whole point to young people is: find a purpose.

Reflections with Ho Kwon Ping — Advisory

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But there’s a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn’t solve humanity’s problems. It was always naïve to think so. Technology is an enabler, but humanity has to deal with humanity’s problems. I think we’re both over-reliant on technology as a way to solve things and probably, at this moment, over-indexing on technology as a source of all problems, too.

Sundar Pichai of Google: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’ - The New York Times

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Conversations with Li Hongyi — Advisory

By Joyce Er and Mock Yi Jun Li Hongyi is Deputy Director (Data Science & Artificial Intelligence Division) at GovTech. He studied economics and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of ...

“ When you’re a student, there’s this mystique built around having a long professional career, and having experience. But having seen how many organisations and teams are run, if you can put together a school fun fair, for example, that is the same set of skills that you need to run an organisation. I’m not even kidding. It’s just making sure that you’re keeping track of what’s going on, ensuring that your team knows what to do, communicating openly and honestly, prioritising your goals. It’s the same thing.

I had a friend who was just inherently super organised. We were planning a trip to Costa Rica for our group of friends. She, for that trip, had put together a binder of arrival times, pictures of restaurants and contact numbers. And she did that because that was just the kind of person she was. None of that is inherently a super high intelligence task, but that one binder is more organised than some multi-hundred million-dollar projects I’ve seen, and this was for our little group trip to Costa Rica. If you can do that, then I think succeeding professionally isn’t as far away as you think. It’s not as mystical as you think. I think that was a big insight.”

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The paradoxical usefulness of ‘useless’ higher education

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The career advice I wish I had at 25

In the future, when we turn 50, we will each be given a ticket to a time machine and, just once, we will be able to go back in time and talk to our 25-year-old selves. Even then, time travel will be expensive and wreak havoc with frequent flyer programs.

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Marching to the beat of my own drum – Bold At Work – Medium

Recently, I attended the Design Your Life workshop by Bold At Work. Going in, I did not think I had many questions about my future career…

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This is 18 Around the World — Through Girls’ Eyes

What does life look like for girls turning 18 in 2018? We gave young women photographers around the world an assignment: Show us 18 in your community. This is 18 — through girls’ eyes.

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We don’t really question learning very much. As a result, it’s quite easy for us to Fail to Learn. As a reflection point for you, when was…

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Ever since graduation, people have been asking me: “What’s now?” My answer has been an unequivocal: “I don’t know.” I used to think that by the time I finish...

“Over the last year, I’ve bothered many people, both in industry and academia, with these questions, and I’ve been so lucky that some of them were kind enough to sit me down and share their insights with me. As their advice was extremely helpful to me, I thought they might be also useful for others who will one day have to go through the process that I did. This article is an attempt to put into words the overwhelming thought process that I went through and the advice that I received.”