laremy.sg

A long time ago, a friend asked why we write ‘Absent with Apologies’ on minutes.

“If it were me, I’d write it as ‘Absent with Glee’ instead,” she said, “because I’d much rather be absent from a meeting than in it!”

Thenceforth, I decided that if I were to ever run a company or an organisation, my first mandate would be to instruct my minute-taking minions to only ever write ‘Absent with Glee’ instead of ‘Absent with Apologies’.

Otherwise, they’d find themselves the next ones listed under the ‘Absent with Apologies’ column at the next meeting.

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‘Absent with Apologies’ makes sense, because it’s much more polite than just being plain ‘Absent’.

But I’ve been absent from this space with both apologies and some degree of glee, because I’ve been busy, mainly with work.

On that note, I thought I’d share with everyone something that transpired in the classroom today – this is one of those things that has resulted in my absence.

If I can refer you to the picture above again, you can see I’ve listed out some principles for good idea design, especially ideas involving getting human beings to carry out things you want them to do.

I decided to write this down today because:

• I found myself repeating stuff I had said before yet again because the kids hadn’t really understood what I was telling them. Or perhaps what I was telling wasn’t making sense.
• This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I think this is one of the easiest ways to understand what makes ideas work.

For those of you without image suppork, what is written on the board in the pig-ture is as follows:

Mr Laremy’s Principles for GI = EE.

1. Human beings are animals (piglets) – regulations/processes are needed (DON’T ASSUME THEY WILL DO IT).
2. Human beings are like currents – they follow the path of least resistance (MAKE IT EASY FOR THEM TO DO IT).

From (1) and (2): [Create] INCENTIVE [for them to do what you want them to do].

If you [yourself] won’t carry out the idea, don’t suggest it!

I hope there’s some kind of ‘meta’ element to this i.e. I hope what I wrote on the board fulfills those two principles.

In any case, the juxtaposition of the student and the ideas on the board is quite unfortunate, but you have it on good authority that this is her default look… LOL.

Elyot: (seriously) You mustn’t be serious, my dear one; it’s just what they want.

Amanda: Who’s they?

Elyot: All the futile moralists who try to make life unbearable. Laugh at them. Be flippant. Laugh at everything, all their sacred shibboleths. Flippancy brings out the acid in their damned sweetness and light.

Amanda: If I laugh at everything, I must laugh at us too.

Elyot: Certainly you must. We’re figures of fun all right.

– Noel Coward, Private Lives.

Also relevant:

…we have to…be able to laugh at ourselves – because if we can’t laugh at ourselves when you (sic) are standing on a pedestal (sic), somebody is going to knock you (sic) down.

– Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister’s National Day Rally Speech 2006.

From a book I got at a book swap I went to over the weekend:

There was a story which my father and mother used to tell people about me when I was a child. They had said to me one day, “Today we are going to take you to school.” At the end of the day they asked me, “Did you like school?” I said, “I loved it.” The next morning they got me up early. When I asked why they were doing that they said, “You have to go to school.” And I said, crying, “But I went to school yesterday.”

– V. S. Naipaul, Half a Life, p. 22 (my emphasis).

My Facebook-verse and Twitter-verse were abuzz with people asking for invites to Google+ today.

I didn’t ask for one because I know from my own usage patterns that I’m not an early adopter of technology; I wait and see what happens and whether a certain product is useful to me before I start using it.

So I did the next best thing – going to read up on what Google+ is all about and what people have been saying about it.

What I found out startled me somewhat: the concept of Circles is very akin to something I mentioned some time back in a post.

BTW please don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that Circles is my brainchild or that the team plagiarised my idea, etc.

The only pleasure I’m getting out of this is knowing that I don’t need to do the work, but I can forecast trends as good as any Lee can.

I’m being tongue-in-cheek, in case you didn’t get it.

In other news, not everyone thinks Google+ is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

In the last few years, I’ve noticed a trend: most students don’t know how to compose e-mail messages, even if their lives depend upon it.

That’s quite a pity, because this is actually a compulsory skill taught at the ‘O’ Level. Specifically, it’s taught in the English Language Paper 1, in Section 2, or the Situational Writing section.

Perhaps it’s not made so explicit i.e. perhaps teachers don’t teach students how to write e-mail messages per se.

But I know for a fact that teachers do prepare their students to write formal letters – the structure of which can be used in e-mail messages.

So it’s either one of two things:

• Most people need to be taught specific actions for each scenario in life, or
• Most Singaporeans have been taught to the test so much that the ability to transfer and/or apply knowledge learnt in class has been lost entirely on them.

In any case, I’ve also learnt that if people make mistakes and aren’t corrected at specific points in their lives, they go through the rest of their lives carrying said mistake(s) with them.

THEREFORE!

So that I don’t need to keep on repeating myself over and over again, this is the Mister Laremy guide to crafting an appropriate e-mail message!

(Round of applause, please.)

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Dear student,

Thank you for your e-mail. Please take note of the following:

1. For future correspondence, you must include a salutation that addresses the recipient of your e-mail or letter e.g. Dear Sir, Dear Madam, Dear Mr Laremy, etc.
2. You must also include a paragraph or two of text that explains the purpose of your message. A blank e-mail message literally does not say anything.
3. Use a valediction or a sign-off appropriate to the content and tone of the message e.g. “Yours sincerely” or “Sincerely” since you are a student writing to a teacher, in this case.
4. An example of how you can craft a simple but appropriate e-mail message:
   

   “Dear Mr Laremy,

   I have attached my assignment to this e-mail.

   Thank you.

   Yours sincerely,
   A. Long-Suffering Student”

5. Other things that you will find useful:
   • If your work is late, you must start off your letter by apologising for not being able to meet the deadline and then requesting for an extension to the deadline.
   • I believe you mean to use the word “deadline”, not “dateline”. Please consult a dictionary to ascertain the meanings of the respective words.
   • When you write to teachers, you cannot adopt a superior tone in your e-mail because we are not your subordinates. This means that I have a bit more leeway in terms of using phrases like “Please take note” – but you don’t.
   • Neither can you adopt a familiar tone with teachers in your e-mail – we may be friendly, but we are not your friends.
6. If you’re not convinced, or you don’t see how knowing this will help you in life, you may want to refer to this website.

Have a great day ahead.

Thanks,
Laremy