The chemist with no RATS The hospital with no beds
Every productivity system stops working eventually and there’s nothing you can do about it
Alexey Guzey – “You’ve most likely tried the pomodoro technique. You set the timer for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break, then set the timer for 25 minutes again, then at some point you take a longer break and so on. I predict that pomodoro technique eventually broke down for the following reasons:
- you stopped adhering strictly to 5 minute breaks and they started turning into 6-7-10-15-20-or-more minute breaks
- you’ve gained an aversion towards 25 minute timers, even while remembering that you should set them, and started finding excuses like “oh this task is too short”, “oh i don’t need a pomo right now”, “i will wait till round time (:00 or :30) and start the pomo then” and these excuses started happening more and more frequently
- you started to outright forget about pomodoros, instead just doing your stuff the old way and once in a while realizing that you should’ve been running a pomodoro
It seems that every productivity trick / system stops working in exactly the same way I described above. Most productivity tricks develop aversion around them. All of them lose salience. The only way to avoid encountering problems with productivity is to make the stuff you want to be doing in the long-term to be the most exciting stuff you can do at any moment in time, which is perhaps possible if you, e.g. work at a startup, but is untenable in almost every situation…”
This seems to be a common infliction in many work places in 2020s … Good bosses retire and tend to be replaced by resume writers ✍️ … For almost two years, couches have been cubicles. Colleagues are instant message avatars. And people are reconsidering how much they should have to put up with from a boss.
“The tolerance for dealing with jerky bosses has decreased,” observed Angelina Darrisaw, chief executive of the firm C-Suite Coach, who saw a spike of interest in her executive coaching services last year. “You can’t just wake up and lead people,” she added. “Companies are thinking about how do we make sure our managers are actually equipped to manage.”
Our expectations of how we are treated are changing, and it’s obviously changing for the better.
Bosses who intimidate and humiliate staff have been put on notice, as management experts say companies and employees are losing tolerance for workplace bullies.
James Hardie’s CEO sacking highlights falling tolerance for workplace bullies
Alexey Guzey – “You’ve most likely tried the pomodoro technique. You set the timer for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break, then set the timer for 25 minutes again, then at some point you take a longer break and so on. I predict that pomodoro technique eventually broke down for the following reasons:
- you stopped adhering strictly to 5 minute breaks and they started turning into 6-7-10-15-20-or-more minute breaks
- you’ve gained an aversion towards 25 minute timers, even while remembering that you should set them, and started finding excuses like “oh this task is too short”, “oh i don’t need a pomo right now”, “i will wait till round time (:00 or :30) and start the pomo then” and these excuses started happening more and more frequently
- you started to outright forget about pomodoros, instead just doing your stuff the old way and once in a while realizing that you should’ve been running a pomodoro
It seems that every productivity trick / system stops working in exactly the same way I described above. Most productivity tricks develop aversion around them. All of them lose salience. The only way to avoid encountering problems with productivity is to make the stuff you want to be doing in the long-term to be the most exciting stuff you can do at any moment in time, which is perhaps possible if you, e.g. work at a startup, but is untenable in almost every situation…”
This seems to be a common infliction in many work places in 2020s … Good bosses retire and tend to be replaced by resume writers ✍️ … For almost two years, couches have been cubicles. Colleagues are instant message avatars. And people are reconsidering how much they should have to put up with from a boss.
“The tolerance for dealing with jerky bosses has decreased,” observed Angelina Darrisaw, chief executive of the firm C-Suite Coach, who saw a spike of interest in her executive coaching services last year. “You can’t just wake up and lead people,” she added. “Companies are thinking about how do we make sure our managers are actually equipped to manage.”
Our expectations of how we are treated are changing, and it’s obviously changing for the better.
Bosses who intimidate and humiliate staff have been put on notice, as management experts say companies and employees are losing tolerance for workplace bullies.
James Hardie’s CEO sacking highlights falling tolerance for workplace bullies
Misinformation is a pandemic that doesn’t have a vaccine
CNET – “Conspiracy theories and misinformation about QAnon, COVID-19 and 2020 election fraud took a deadly turn in 2021. As bad as things were last year, experts worry it’ll get worse in 2022. “I think we’re going to see an acceleration and expansion of the conspiracy theories,” said Mike Caulfield, research scientist at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Republic. “They’re going to go bigger, they are going to play even more loosely with the truth.” This expected ramp-up could mean a widening divide among Americans, more outlandish ideas being shared and, as shown in this past year, potentially more lost lives. We’ll see a real-world test of how bad this could get with the approach of the 2022 midterm elections, around which misinformation peddlers are expected to continue their onslaught on the truth. One reason it could get worse is that the federal governments and techcompanies aren’t getting ahead of the problem. “We are still very much in a reactive mode, and until we get ahead of some of this, we can expect each cycle to be worse than the last,” Caulfield said. There is good news. This can be fixed, but it’ll take some effort.
In his study, The Perfect Storm: A Subcultural Analysis of the QAnon Movement, Chris Conner, visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University of Missouri, Columbia, argues that people who support the QAnon conspiracy theory do so because they mistrust the government and public officials after social systems in the US have failed them — whether through economic hardships or a lack of proper mental illness coverage. This leaves believers feeling alienated and dissatisfied with how their lives ended up. If these hardships aren’t addressed, many will continue to go further down the rabbit hole. Others could end up martyrs for what they believe to be a just cause. “What’s going to be productive is listening to these people and taking them seriously about what it is they were responding to,” Conner said…”
CNET – “Conspiracy theories and misinformation about QAnon, COVID-19 and 2020 election fraud took a deadly turn in 2021. As bad as things were last year, experts worry it’ll get worse in 2022. “I think we’re going to see an acceleration and expansion of the conspiracy theories,” said Mike Caulfield, research scientist at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Republic. “They’re going to go bigger, they are going to play even more loosely with the truth.” This expected ramp-up could mean a widening divide among Americans, more outlandish ideas being shared and, as shown in this past year, potentially more lost lives. We’ll see a real-world test of how bad this could get with the approach of the 2022 midterm elections, around which misinformation peddlers are expected to continue their onslaught on the truth. One reason it could get worse is that the federal governments and techcompanies aren’t getting ahead of the problem. “We are still very much in a reactive mode, and until we get ahead of some of this, we can expect each cycle to be worse than the last,” Caulfield said. There is good news. This can be fixed, but it’ll take some effort.
In his study, The Perfect Storm: A Subcultural Analysis of the QAnon Movement, Chris Conner, visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University of Missouri, Columbia, argues that people who support the QAnon conspiracy theory do so because they mistrust the government and public officials after social systems in the US have failed them — whether through economic hardships or a lack of proper mental illness coverage. This leaves believers feeling alienated and dissatisfied with how their lives ended up. If these hardships aren’t addressed, many will continue to go further down the rabbit hole. Others could end up martyrs for what they believe to be a just cause. “What’s going to be productive is listening to these people and taking them seriously about what it is they were responding to,” Conner said…”
Australia's leading forum for investigators of serious crime
The Management of Serious Crime (MOSC) program is Australia's highest level training course for:
- the sharing of skills, strategies and techniques needed for dealing with serious crime
- the sharing of information about new and ongoing challenges and issues raised by serious crime
- the creation of collaborative national and international networks to overcome serious crime
Each MOSC course is based on a current policing issue. Presenters and keynote speakers are drawn from Australia and overseas. They represent a wide range of expertise, and provide a unique opportunity for MOSC participants to engage in face-to-face interaction with experts in the field.
The program deals with management practices as they apply to the investigation of serious crime. The emphasis is on practical ideas for an operational environment.
The program examines and challenges conventional attitudes to the day-to-day applications of lateral and critical thinking, negotiation, communication, and team building theory.
Sessions analysing critical operational reviews, accountability, and the specific leadership issues faced by investigation managers are presented during the program.
MOSC gives law enforcement practitioners the opportunity to establish lasting relationships with people from many international and local agencies.
Vision and Philosophy
Vision
To promote a continued commitment to investigational excellence by creating a national and international law enforcement practitioners' network.
Philosophy
MOSC is dedicated to providing an appropriate forum for senior investigational practitioners to share their skills and experiences in the management and leadership of serious and complex criminal matters.
Who participates?
The multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency MOSC program attracts a wide range of people involved in the fight against serious crime.
Participants include:
- senior law enforcement practitioners who lead and manage serious crime investigations with AFP and State and Territory agencies
- members of international police services
- members of Commonwealth investigative agencies
- members of other government agencies with an interest in serious crime
- parties with an interest in the theme of a particular course
More than 1300 law enforcement officers have completed a MOSC program. These graduates continue to share their skills and experiences in the management and leadership of serious crime investigations.
New York Times, ‘We Threw Out Any Plans We Had’: C.E.O.s Are Forced to Embrace Uncertainty:
Business leaders are trained to “shoot, move and communicate.” But the pandemic has called on them to rewrite the leadership playbook.
In normal times, there are few words that C.E.O.s like more than “certainty.” Certainty allows executives to issue sales forecasts with oracle-like conviction. Certainty instills leaders with the confidence they need to invest $500 million in a new factory, or spend $20 billion buying a competitor. Certainty gives them the verve they need to preside over virtual town hall meetings with their employees and discuss race relations, furloughs, remote work and more.
The Tax Office is warning self-managed superannuation funds of a major crackdown over reporting breaches and targeting people who set up a fund to illegally withdraw their retirement savings, as the agency beefs up its compliance of the $860 billion sector.
Assistant commissioner Justin Micale told AFR Weekend that “illegal early release” was the biggest area of concern for the SMSF enforcement team.
He said the ATO was also paying “close attention” to people promoting illegal early access schemes, who would potentially face bigger penalties than those who actually withdrew their super.
Where we see any level of promotion, the sanctions and the actions that we would look to take in that circumstance would be quite significant,” Mr Micale said.
Superannuation can only be withdrawn when fund members reach the preservation age, based on their date of birth, and have either retired or are transitioning to retirement.
Only now, a lot of people don’t seem to care. I am amazed at the trust so many people put in what the government tells them.
“Major Reforms Have Been Driven by Crisis”
Issues in Science and Technology: “Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome charitable foundation in the United Kingdom, discusses the state of the COVID-19 pandemic and what society must do to prepare for future global crises. As an infectious diseases specialist and director of Wellcome, Jeremy Farrar was among the first people in the world to learn about the emergence of COVID-19. Before helming Wellcome, one of the world’s largest philanthropic funders of science, he spent 18 years leading the clinical research unit at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Vietnam, where he contributed to pivotal advances in understanding tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid, dengue, and influenza.
He is a member of the UK Vaccine Taskforce and the Principals Group of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator and the WHO’s R&D Blueprint Advisory Group, and until November 2021, he served on the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. His new book, Spike: The Virus vs. The People, written with Anjana Ahuja, provides a gripping account of how the pandemic unfolded. Issues in Science and Technology editor Molly Galvin recently spoke with him to get his thoughts on the future of the pandemic, the status of science in society, and the uniquely globalized challenges of COVID-19 and climate…
