I found that time management and setting goals has been the one definitive thing that has made my business much more successful.

The thing is, I am not sure which area our government means when they mention that we are lacking in productivity. The example given was on the construction industry with our foreign workers’ productivity measured against other countries. That is quite a different topic.

Back to meeting ideas, my wife’s company has quite an interesting practice. No meeting should be scheduled for more than half an hour slot. That forces people to be more focus I guess.

Best practices are best only for the, usually unstated and unmeasurable, context where they were measured or deemed as best. For example imagine Singapore best practices in the civil service to work in Malaysia.

The world will have only one Microsoft and one Google.

The next big thing is unknown and unknowable.

Success is unique. Failure is common.

Key failure factors have statistical validity. Key success factors are fictional.

We cannot be Milan or London or Paris – we can ape them and seems to be like them, only superficially, for we cannot really be something we are not – we have to be Singapore, uniquely Singapore. However whether being Singapore makes money or not, is a different matter.

But we have to start at the hard but right place, and not try to be smart and try to short cut here and there, like the flawed golden parachute model of the civil service.

The productivity focus of the budget will fail for it wants to make the Singapore worker smart; for the problem is that we are already too smart for any real good.