TIME TO DECIDE

What is the right time to decide what to do in the future?

I think there is no right time to decide, because in your childhood you want to become something, as you grow your field of interest changes. Most importantly your wish doesn't remain the same life time, at every stage of life it will differ. When you explore many fields your interest will keep on changing. Whenever you decide what you want to become at that point only start preparing for that and that is the right time you can say. Off course, there is a limitation for this. If you are a hard worker it will take a long time, but if you are a smart worker you can finish the same task in optimal time.

Anytime actually, you can decide now, right now what you want to do in future, but the wish to follow up that decision is up to you.

Life changing decisions come from the most humbling moments in life, like when you are taking a dip or having a bath. 

If you mean matters such as education or decisions that may or may not shape your future, then I should say anytime that is well beforehand and can be easily planned.

You can go through much of life deliberately avoiding hard decisions. But sometimes you have no choice: the situation forces you to make a decision. Consider an example from the sport of mountain climbing.

Sooner or later, every mountain climber faces a dreaded section of slick granite that offers no ledges or cracks to grasp. When you climb such a wall, you can abandon the climb. Or, you can risk a move like "the pendulum". The pendulum works the way it sounds: as high above you as you can reach, you fasten a loop with a metal nut and slide the rope through the loop. Then you climb down a few feet, dangle on the rope's end, and try to swing across the sheer section. It takes nerve!

The author of Hebrews wrote to people who faced just a climactic, can't-turn-back decision. It involved not a mountain climb, but their entire future.

My motto is always: Whatever makes you feel bad, leave it. Whatever makes you smile, keep it. Have fun living it too. Follow your passion.

UNLIMITED TIME OFF

Critics say giving workers unlimited time off can actually deter them from taking holidays - so are minimum leave policies the answer? An interesting question by BBC-author Maya Yang... .

It reminds me on my own. For example, I decided to stop teaching. I found out, that from month to month, I really got only very limited time for myself and my family.

In 2014, the leadership at social media management company Buffer noticed something odd. Despite an unlimited leave policy implemented in 2012, employees were barely taking any holidays.

To encourage people to take more time off, Buffer – which employs remote workers globally, primarily in the US and Europe – introduced an incentive: a $1,000 annual holiday bonus to each employee (and an additional $500 per partner or family member). It was a roaring success. In fact, it was too successful, costing the company too much money. Buffer pulled the plug on the policy in June 2016.

Later that year, Buffer changed tack: instead of offering unlimited leave, it decided to strongly encourage employees to take a minimum of 15 work days off per year. Using an online planner, employees input leave requests and HR personnel track the number of days people take off via a collective calendar.

Buffer’s minimum leave policy is unusual, even for a tech company. Unlimited time off is a much more common perk among start-ups and other tech firms – but despite the name, unlimited leave can feel like anything but. Often, workers are at the mercy of their workloads, managers and company culture, a situation which can discourage people to take a fair amount of leave.

Could insisting that people take a minimum number of days off be a better way to ward off burnout? Well, maybe. Talking again myself: I am in the great situation deciding about my days off and and a maybe unlimited time off. Just to avoid a burnout... . How about millions of Filipino workers?

It's interesting to know, that  every country in the European Union is required by law to offer at least four weeks of paid holiday, with varying accrual policies per country (Austria takes the lead with 35 days of annual paid holiday). Similarly, in New Zealand, employers must provide employees with at least four weeks of paid holiday, not including public holidays or sick leave. Philippines is much more different. Yes, I know... .

While still staying in Germany, I had the pressure of needing to prove myself and the mentality that I shouldn’t take many days off. Most often, it’s up to management to create a culture where workers feel comfortable taking leave, says Sir Cary Cooper, an organisational psychology professor at the University of Manchester. Many bosses lack the social and perceptive skills to detect employee burnout and remind ambitious employees of the importance of taking breaks.

Creating choices? Why not. While minimum leave policies don’t operate solely on ‘trust’ placed in employees, it’s not a model that is feasible for all companies – for those with tens of thousands of employees, tracking individual and collective leave, let alone scheduling individual holiday check-ins and reminders, would be very difficult to scale.

Our limited time on earth

My column in Mindanao Daily, BusinessWeek Mindanao and Cagayan de Oro Times

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MOST of us tend to think of time as linear, absolute and constantly “running out” – but is that really true? And how can we change our perceptions to feel better about its passing?

While becoming 66 already, I use think about my age. Yes, it's only a number. I know.  “Time” is the most frequently used noun in the English language. We all know what it feels like as time passes. Our present becomes the past as soon as it’s happened; today soon turns into yesterday. If you live in a temperate climate, each year you see the seasons come and go. And as we reach adulthood and beyond, we become increasingly aware of the years flashing by.  

While keep on thinking about age and its consequences, I came along with Claudia Hammond, author of Time Warped: Unlocking The Secrets Of Time Perception.

She wrote that although neuro-scientists have been unable to locate a single clock in brain that is responsible for detecting time passing, humans are surprisingly good at it. If someone tells us they’re arriving in five minutes, we have a rough idea of when to start to look out for them. We have a sense of the weeks and months passing by. As a result, most of us would say that how time functions is fairly obvious: it passes, at a consistent and measurable rate, in a specific direction – from past to future.

Of course, the human perspective of time may not be exclusively biological, but rather shaped by our culture and era. The Amondawa tribe in the Amazon, for example, has no word for “time” – which some say means they don’t have a notion of time as a framework in which events occur. (There are debates over whether this is purely a linguistic argument, or whether they really do perceive time differently.) Meanwhile, it’s hard to know with scientific precision how people conceived of time in the past, as experiments in time perception have only been conducted for the last 150 years.

Physics tells a different story. However much time feels like something that flows in one direction, some scientists beg to differ.

In the last century, my very favored Albert Einstein’s discoveries exploded our concepts of time. He showed us that time is created by things; it wasn’t there waiting for those things to act within it. He demonstrated that time is relative, moving more slowly if an object is moving fast. Events don’t happen in a set order. There isn’t a single universal “now”, in the sense that Newtonian physics would have it.

It is true that many events in the Universe can be put into sequential order – but time is not always segmented neatly into the past, the present and the future. Some physical equations work in either direction. Here, I strongly agree with Claudia Hammond.

One aspect of time perception many of us share is how we think of our own past: as a kind of giant video library, an archive we can dip into to retrieve records of events in our lives.

But psychologists have demonstrated that autobiographical memory is not like that at all. Most of us forget far more than we remember, sometimes forgetting events happened at all, despite others’ insistence that we were there. On occasion even the reminder does nothing to jog our memories.

Several years ago, I started writing my biography. With Beethoven under palms. The great German composer and me under palms. Wow.  Meanwhile, I found out: as we lay down memories, we alter them to make sense of what’s happened. Every time we recall a memory, we reconstruct the events in our mind and even change them to fit in with any new information that might have come to light. And it’s much easier than you might think to convince people that they have had experiences which never happened. The psychologist Elisabeth Loftus has done decades of research on this, persuading people they remember kissing a giant green frog or that they once met Bugs Bunny in Disneyland (as he’s a Warner Bros character, so this can’t have happened). Even recounting an anecdote to our friends can mean our memory of that story goes back into the library slightly altered.

So we shouldn’t curse our memories when they let us down. They’re made to be changeable, in order that we can take millions of fragments of memories from different times of our lives and recombine them to give us endless imaginative possibilities for the future.

Thank you very much Claudia Hammond. I changed my opinion when it comes to time. My limited time on earth.

HOW MUCH IS YOUR STILL AVAILABLE TIME?

Almost 20 years ago, a good friend of mine gave me a book written by the founder of the Scottish Free Church, Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847). Chalmers treated this topic with plenty of flowering words. Yes, don't be afraid and do live for something... .

Human beings live, move and have to pass away - free from worries, but unknown and unnoticed. They live such an irreproachable life - reputable, but so incomprehensible and inscrutable. Chalmers was very right!

Why do people live like that even knowing they have to leave the  platform of life one day? Why are people sometimes afraid to live and  allow something or someone to block themselves? Still in my mind is one statement of Brother Francis Castro from the Little Brothers of  Jesus. I quoted it several times already: "I feel the burning flame
inside me that makes me jump out of the bed ... and hurry to work!" 

Life's quintessence can be also this: Kindness, by helping the blind man crossing a street; hospitality, by practicing generous reception of strangers and guests (my very first impression, when I step on Philippine soil for the first time in 1976!); helpfulness, by taking care of somebody, who is weak and dependent... .

Believe me: your moment of virtue will never be destroyed by time's storm.

From writer Tiffanie Wen I learned this: “It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson wrote that opening line for an essay in The Economist in 1955, but the concept known as ‘Parkinson’s Law’ still lives on today.

Not only Tiffanie Wen - also I think about it every time I have a deadline. How long it takes me to write a story will by and large depend on when my deadline is and how much time I have until then. In his somewhat satirical essay Parkinson uses the example of an elderly lady writing a postcard to her niece. Since she has nothing else to do with her time, the otherwise simple task takes up her entire day.

Get more subordinates, create more work. When you have a deadline it’s like a storm ahead of you or having a truck around the corner. It’s menacing and it’s approaching, so you focus heavily on the task.

Can ‘menacing’ deadlines cure dallying?

So if the wider points Parkinson was making about bureaucracies still stand up today, what of his enduring first line? Today, while some researchers might chuckle at the mention of the ‘law’ that has come to mean so much more than its original intent, there’s also no doubt they know what it is referring to. Is there some truth to the notion that without strict time constraints, we waste time and our work takes longer to complete?

Humans have a limited capacity for memory, attention and fatigue – or mental bandwidth, according to Eldar Shafir, a professor at Princeton and co-author of Scarcity, a book that looks at the psychology of having less than we need and how it drives our behaviors. “Because our attentional capacity is limited, we divide it sporadically any way we can as we run through everyday life,” he says. But sometimes, of necessity, we need to knuckle down.

And there’s always the chance that rushing to accomplish something in too few hours can have drawbacks as well, particularly if your deadline is set by somebody else. “If your deadline is too short and you’re panicking, you will have sacrificed other things and you might work inefficiently, and things might go badly anyway,” he says.

“People like to say if it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done. But research shows people’s productivity is not linear,” says Elizabeth Tenney, an assistant professor at the University of Utah’s Eccles School of Business who has written about time pressure and productivity. “When people sit down to do a task, they’ll put in a lot of effort initially. At some point there’s going to be diminishing returns on extra effort. To optimize productivity, you need to maximize benefits and minimize costs and find that inflection point, which is where you should start to wrap up.”

That might not mean taking up the full time allotted or working all the way up to your deadline, she says. “Cut yourself off rather than keep tinkering for all time.”

Hurry, jump out of the bed, now!

Just in time?

SAT, FEBRUARY 25, 2017 BY THE MINDANAO DAILY MIRROR LEAVE A COMMENT

IN MY OPINIONKlaus Doring

At least when it comes to policy towards Asia, US President Donald Trump is becoming a little bit more dependable it seems, says German TV- commentator Frank Sieren.

It’s rare, that I agree with my fellow German media friends. Yeah, sometimes, we also meet on a different level. Yes, this time: it was a close call, but US President Donald Trump seems.

Donald Trump  has come to his senses just in time. He had already spoken to over 20 heads of state before deciding to put a telephone call through to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping last week. This was too late considering China’s economy is already stronger than the US’ in terms of purchasing power, China contributes four times more than the US to the global economy, China has the largest global population and is the fourth-largest country in terms of area after Russia, Canada and the USA. The Chinese government had every right to take offense but it stayed calm, even as it made clear behind the scenes that there were certain limits that should not be overstepped.

These limits would have been overstepped if Donald Trump had not called Xi before receiving Japanese President Shinzo Abe and certainly if he had not confirmed officially that he would honor the “One China” policy after hints that he would not in the past. He also, in a press conference, said that the phone call had been “very warm.” His willingness to back down is perhaps surprising, but it seems that Trump is going to play it cool from now on. It was also clever to not say a word about thorny issues such as the South China Sea territorial dispute, or the trade surplus.

Before the phone call, the US president involved his relatives to lessen the blow to China. In a first for the White House, he sent his daughter and her five-year-old Arabella to a New Year’s reception at the Chinese embassy. Moreover, a video of his granddaughter singing “Happy New Year” in Chinese went viral. The New York Times said this was a “diplomatic coup” on the part of Arabella, even if it did come two weeks too late.

It seems as if Trump is dealing with foreign policy in the same way as he does business: He sees how far he can go before having to backtrack, as he has done now with regard to China, NATO and Canada. He has also been reasonable with regard to North Korea, barely reacting to Kim Jong Un’s attempt to attract attention through missile tests. Internationally, there has been some relief that his non-reaction was as balanced as it would have been before him. In any case, his unusual behavior – tweeting, blustering, playing golf with Abe, let alone having his granddaughter play the diplomat – is keeping his opponents on their toes.

Beijing understood Trump’s game and remained remarkably calm during the time of the provocation; it can afford to stay calm: The world is well behind China when it comes to trade. But Trump is under pressure – he has to deliver on promises regarding economic growth and jobs in the US. He will have to show his hand soon; there can be no bluffing with regard to China. The economies of the US and China are simply too interdependent now.

Games? We should take a watch.

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Email: doringklaus@g mal.com or just follow me in Linkedin, Twitter ot Facebook or visit www. germanexpatinthe philippines.blogspot.com.

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Is there still time for happy moments?

TUE, JULY 19, 2016 BY THE MINDANAO DAILY MIRROR LEAVE A COMMENT

IN MY OPINIONKlaus Doring 

Terror attack in Nice/France! Breaking news – just a minute ago. Coup in Turkey. Clashes in Kashmir.

From time to time I love silence. I need quietness. – Do you observe that we live in a real frightful loud world? At every corner of our daily life are innumerable chances of being covered up with sometimes unbearable din and noise. The loud outcry gives me the needle. We don’t have nerves of steel forever.

I strongly agree with Davao Acting Mayor Paolo Duterte prohibiting the conduct of street par-ties and concerts down-town during the Kadayawan festival next month. Yes, the order is consistent with the festival’s central theme this year – that is to focus on the plight of the 11 tribes of Davao City. Let’s get to know more the culture and traditions of the Lumads and Muslims.

Anyway, I am not really a fan of going out at night. If you ask me how to spend a lovely evening after a hectic and stressful and, especially, noisy day – plain and simple.

The nicest occurrence is the silence, the intimate taciturnity, which can even “weld” people or partners together. It might sound just like an idiomatic expression, but believe me; not being forced to talk is great! No, I don’t mean that we have nothing to say to each other any more – or, he or she won’t listen to a special reason…. I am talking about a deep understanding between people, who are together and are able to share time in quiet and silent happiness.

After a long and strenuous day, it is a real big comfort to sit and lean back, read all the (old!) newspapers and magazines from the last days and weeks while enjoying a glass of wine and a handful peanuts. A crossword puzzle is easier to solve while having a “silent” radio program in the back-ground, instead a “roars to hell” television show.

Try it. It’s indeed relaxing after traffic woes, the heat and dust of the day, telephones’ ringing, machine rattlings, meetings and never ending discussions. Why should we talk right now?

Feeling safe and secure, inseparable, indestructible with peace in our minds and our surroun-dings, this is what we really mean to each other, understanding without words. At home, some-where in the garden, at a beach – there are many wonderful places. And, suddenly out of the blue from the bottom of our heart and from the depth of comfort and ease, we might be able to speak about things, which couldn’t be discussed earlier. A good talk grows – but without compulsion or constraint or obligation, desperate or being forced.

Try it, and might feel like walking hand-in-hand on a lonely sand beach, such as “once upon a time” with our first partner. And, unexpectedly: we become silent again AND thankful for it.

We really seldom take a break. We spend too much time in this terrible and frightful loud world…

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Email: doringklaus@gmail.com or follow me in Facebook or Twitter or visit www.germanexpatinthephilippines.blogspot.com or www.klausdorings classicalmusic.blogspot.com.

Mindanao – Time To Talk About It

November 29, 2015/in becomingfilipino /by kyle

It didn’t take long. Within hours of an article being posted by a National Newspaper in New Zealand about a beauty queen (http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/74332702/kiwi-beauty-pageant-contestant-flees-philippines), Cagayan de Oro and Mindanao became a national talking point in the Philippines. Articles with most major national news sites and Facebook pages in the Philippines popped up pretty quick, discussing and highlighting the negative thoughts. The article and its stereotyping of Cagayan de Oro as being “worse then Afghanistan” and the negative experiences of a foreign beauty queen quickly escalated Filipinos to start to judge, debate, defend and get to the bottom of the statements made. It was a hot topic all over the country and of course here in Cagayan de Oro City, the place I call home in Northern Mindanao.

Yes, I am a foreigner living here in Cagayan de Oro. Although to be honest I don’t feel foreign here at all. I have lived here now on and off for over two years. I have become close with this community and am proud to call this city my home. Since day one I have always been aware of the advisories, negative issues and stereotypes that face the people here in Northern Mindanao and Mindanao in general. At first they definitely put a little bit of fear into my life. I was a little more cautious and fearful then my usual self. There are so many negative thoughts thrown around about Mindanao on a daily basis, through media, internet and in general chit-chat that it would be hard not to have a little fear when you hear that word.

So where am I going with this?

Well the more I read articles and comments about this beauty queen, and the article written overseas. The more I see Filipinos take uproar about how ridiculous and overly negative the statements about Cagayan de Oro City and Mindanao were… The more I started thinking about it all.

It is a fact that Filipinos are interested in foreign opinions. Most of the time if there is an article of praise or criticism about the Philippines involving a foreigner they will be more popular. In fact I am living proof of that. I am aware that many people are probably intrigued about my opinions because I am Canadian and have no Filipino background. It provides a different insight.   Knowing this, I also have to be careful whenever I write or post and remember the effect it could have.

But when it comes to this “Mindanao Issue” and stereotypes. I have developed a strong belief on the topic. It is a homegrown issue that needs to be addressed in the Philippines first and foremost. What do I mean by “addressed in the Philippines?”

Let me share with you what happens often when I am outside of Mindanao travelling:

Filipino: “Hey Man! Where are you from.”

Me: “I am from Canada but I live in Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao (I will share this in Bisaya/Tagalog).

Filipino: “What! Abu Sayaff! Aren’t you afraid of the bombs! You shouldn’t be there! You will be kidnapped!

Me: “Excuse me. I have lived there for two years and driven around every province in Northern Mindanao on a scooter exploring. It is beautiful and I love living there.”

Filipino: “No it is too dangerous.”

Me: “Have you been there?”

Filipino: “No I wouldn’t go! Like I said, it is too dangerous, the people there are bad and Abu Sayaff and terrorists are there.”

I didn’t over-exaggerate this conversation what so ever. I have been to 32 provinces now all over the country on a scooter, including every one in Northern Mindanao. This is very common and something that happens all the time when the word “Mindanao” is mentioned and discussed with Filipinos from outside of Mindanao. Now I am not taking away from the fact that yes Abu Sayaff exists, yes bombs have gone off, and yes there are areas that are very tense, dangerous and best be avoided by people who are not local. But, those things are not representative of Mindanao as a whole. If you have lived here for a long time and travelled around you will soon understand that Mindanao is massive, diverse and home to many beautiful, safe and happy places to explore! Just like anywhere in the world, you just need to do a bit of research and take the necessary precautions.

I have written articles about this before. But this New Zealand beauty queen issue really opened my eyes to something else…

I am completely convinced that the first thing that needs to be tackled is this negative perception at home in the Philippines. To me, when someone responds to Cagayan de Oro, or Mindanao with the words “Abu Sayaff, kidnappings and bombings” that is the ultimate in extreme talk. That is the kind of talk that doesn’t educate, is very extreme, is unproductive and simply put… is dangerous.

Why is it dangerous?

Because it is preaching negativity without experience, discussion and knowledge.

Millions of foreigners will come to the Philippines every year for travel, adventure, and holidays. A vast majority of them will go to places outside of Mindanao due to advisories and safety concerns. Even though I personally believe that Northern Mindanao is no different then travelling other areas of the Philippines, I completely respect and understand how others can be deterred from coming here. I would never take offence to that. The travel advisories that exist have their purpose and I don’t take offence to making people aware.

But what I do take offence to…

The thought that if these millions of foreigners mention “Mindanao” during their holidays outside of Mindanao, there is a high probability that they are being responded to in such an extreme way.

Earlier I said:

“It is a fact that Filipinos are interested in foreign opinions. Most of the time if there is an article of praise or criticism about the Philippines involving a foreigner they will be more popular.”

Well with the newspaper article in New Zealand. That was the case. It was negative extreme talk about an area in the Philippines. It had to be addressed. But what hit me the most about it? Negative talk about Mindanao is already everywhere in the Philippines. It is incredibly common from Filipinos all over the country and world. That type of extreme stereotyping and generalizing happens all the time on a local basis. Filipinos do it everyday.

I strongly believe the only way it is ever going to change in a positive way is if Filipino media and Filipino people around the country start to discuss it, interact about it, and challenge it more. I’d love to see more headlines challenging perception and Mindanao, discussing it, educating and interacting about it. Not just when it has foreigner perception.

Yes I am a foreigner and it may sound ridiculous that I am writing about Filipinos, challenging Filipinos without foreigner perception. But in regards to Mindanao…

This country needs more of it.

I believe it is more damaging how Filipinos view Mindanao. Not how a national Newspaper in New Zealand does. I believe the only way to truly stop the blunt negativity is by Filipinos making it a national talking point not just when foreigners are involved.