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Excel Through Competition

As observed from Compete with Psych, I've always been interested in the factors that causes one to improve his/her performance at work or play. Competition is apparently one of the activity that can help one rise to his/her potential. It can, of course, worsen performance as well - it is a question of the stress threshold. Steven Landsburg discuss research into this area in his Everday Economics 'Department' at Slate.com.

What is suggested in Landsburg article, is that perhaps women cave in under pressure more easily than man; and often, being unable to take the pressure under more extreme work conditions, they opt out of it entirely, choosing not to take part in the rat race and thus rarely emerge in highly competitive environments like business.

Work? What work?

Of course, when you're sick of competition and tired of doing great, you can always decide to slack off. In this particular article on rising inequality of leisure time, Landsburg implies that folks are trading off income gains to receive huge gains in leisure time. I guess that could be very true for the bulk of the people in the population who fails to find work. One could think of this as a consolation; too often we hear people saying that no one would lie on his deathbed wishing he had spent more time in the office working (sensibly, most ordinary sane people would wished he/she had spent more time with the family). Unfortunately, Singapore seems to be a bad place for those who prefer to slack though - Channel News Asia just reported that our employment figures are rising and more people getting work to do.