Tag: productivity

The Secret to Achieving More in Life

April 2, 2015 Personal Branding 17 comments

The Secret to Achieving More in Life
Courtesy of Providence Counselling

Do you know what’s the best way to hack your life to achieve more?

Nope, it isn’t multitasking.

By now, you would have heard experts telling us that task switching leads to lower levels of concentration, flow, and efficiency. The time needed for us to “restart” each time we switch from activity A to activity B is actually counterproductive.


Five Ways to Boost Productivity of SME Retailers

March 26, 2013 Business and Management 1 comment

boosting-sme-retail-in-singapore

Oh the woes of the SME retail sector in Singapore. I’m sure you’ve read or heard about them.

Demanding consumers. Price competition. Sky high rentals. Relentless staff turnover (up to 300% a year in extreme cases). Difficulty in hiring. Competition from big chains. Rising utility costs. Increasing costs of goods. Growing transportation costs.

The list of problems faced by SME retailers is seemingly endless.


Four Tools to Improve Productivity

March 7, 2013 Business and Management 3 comments

Four Tools to Improve Productivity
You need the right tool for the job (Swiss Army knife courtesy of Victorinox)

Productivity is one of the main prerogatives for Singapore’s service-based and export-driven economy.

Unfortunately, it is also one of the toughest challenges to surmount.

As I’ve blogged previously, addressing our productivity challenge entails understanding what it means. This involves studying how man, method, machine, material and other means are combined to generate wealth for the enterprise in the most effective and efficient manner. Through the careful analysis and diagnosis of problem areas, organisational productivity issues can be resolved.


Whither Productivity?

March 1, 2013 Blog, Business and Management 1 comment


Din Tai Fung is a paragon of productivity (courtesy of Aroma Cookery)

Business as usual can no longer work in Singapore. We desperately need to change.

While we’ve enjoyed modest economic growth of 1.3% in 2012, and are estimated to experience 1% to 3% GDP growth this year, labour productivity declined by 2.6% last year. This wiped out productivity gains of 1.3% the year before, with the impact felt across manufacturing, construction and services sectors. Only the Info Comm sector experienced growth.


How to be Extremely Productive

August 29, 2011 Blog 2 comments


Unfortunately, most of us do not have 8 arms (Source of image)

From organisational speed, let’s move on next to individual productivity.  Once again, Harvard Business Review’s Ideacast features good ideas worth considering.

In “Productivity Secrets of a Very Busy Man“, Bob Posen, a senior lecturer at Harvard and executive chairman of a major investment firm, offers some great tips. Other than holding down two jobs, Posen sits on a few boards and manages to write a couple of articles a year.