As 🇸🇬Singapore celebrated its 58th Birthday, I felt the urge to share a long overdue reflection. It has been a bit over a year since I was toiling away with the rest of the boys (and girls) at National Day Parade, and I would like to think that it was a formative experience that I had during my National Service days. Through the ups and downs, here are my 5 main takeaways while helping out in NDP Meal Operations 🍕.
Read on if you are interested! 😬
Table of Contents
- 5 Main Takeaways🎓
- My Personal Experience 💭
- Personal Reflections
5 Main Takeaways 🎓
I have decided to share a little about my personal experience because I think that it would be nice to build a community of like-minded individuals, who are passionate about learning and improving themselves. Concurrently, this serves as a promise to myself to practice what I preach, and to be more proactive in sharing my ideas!
Without further ado, here are some lessons I have learnt, which I hope it serves as inspiration to you:
The Benefits of Being Introspective🧐
Our experiences can be greatly enriched if we spend some time reflecting and introspecting objectively about the various milestones in our lives. Practising the habit of introspecting helps us to become more self-aware, and more objectively assess our strengths and weaknesses.
After Action Review (AAR): Assessing Personal Strengths and Weakness
| Strength: I think I am able to build decent rapport with my subordinates and teammates. | Steps to take: 1)💪Spend more time identifying their strengths and delegate tasks which they can excel in 2)🙂Work on building team morale more |
| Weakness: I tend to get anxious and panicky during periods of high stress. This results in me being less able to handle situations in a calm and collected manner, which is detrimental. | How to Improve: 1) 📃Prepare contingency plans beforehand to minimise hiccups and unexpected occurrences throwing me off 2)🧘🏻♂️Build healthy coping mechanisms to deal with high-pressure situations (Deep Breathing Exercises, learning to pace yourself and give yourself just a short while to think) 3)👀Ask for Advice/Observe how others are able to handle stress and learn from them 4)🚀Practice Makes Perfect: Accept and Embrace these situations as opportunities for growth instead of dreading it |
After some self-reflection , I could then better capitalise on my strengths as well as pay close attention to overcome my weaknesses for subsequent performances. This can also be used as an objective evaluation of how your plans were executed.
Of course, this is definitely easier said than done, but I truly believe it is worth the effort to try. The more we practice self-reflection, the better we get at it.
Sharing Our Ideas💡
Sharing our ideas allow them to be heard, improved on with healthy criticism, and work as stepping stones to bolster our confidence to generate more ideas 😄. Being someone who is more soft-spoken, I consider this a work in progress as I strive towards being more comfortable with voicing my opinions, and learning with deal with disagreements/confrontation better when it comes to opposing views.
Proper time management 🕰️
Looking back on this experience, I do realise that there were times where I doggedly pushed through and continued on the grind with my work, in turn forgoing productivity and inevitably added on to my stress levels. I realised that it is unsustainable and there is a need to manage time properly to reduce inefficiencies and set aside time for myself.
Especially under periods of high intensity, with high volumes of work to be completed, we should be more mindful of how we utilise our time. To-do lists were helpful for me, however, it was rather time-consuming in a sense where I would worry incessantly about the remaining tasks for the next day, and I think that will inadvertently spill into my time for rest.
Instead of compounding multiple tasks onto to-do lists, experiment with time blocking and prioritise time for rest and recuperation as well.
We could strive to maximise productivity and achieve a desirable outcome of catering adequate time outside of work, for our personal hobbies, to socialise with friends and spend time with family, etc.
“All Work and No Play makes Jack a dull boy” 😓
Put Down Your Ego and Ask for Advice 🫠
What I have learnt was that it is always better to clarify your doubts than to keep quiet about it. Perhaps it is my shyness/pride that held me back from freely asking – due to the “shame” of not knowing.
When I first started taking up this responsibility, the planning was extremely time-consuming because I did not acquire sufficient information from mentors and superiors who will likely have more experience doing so.
Through this experience, I learnt that I have to first get past my fear of failure and disappointment. I aim to leave no stones unturned – in my academic pursuits, in meaningful work/career, and in other aspects of life as well. Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”. Hence, we can grow and learn better by emulating positive aspects of those before us while seeking to refine our personal identities and contributions.
Some useful excel functions you can adopt
Being involved in the meal/logistics operations behind the scenes for National Day Parade 2022 also inspired me to further discover ways to automate processes and improve productivity.
Essentially, what I appreciated most was how having a time crunch with many work requirements to fulfil pressed me to think critically about how I can automate processes and cope with manpower shortage – by maximising output of work while minimising effort.
These examples are not in any way exhaustive, just wanted to share some useful tools I have found while using it as a complete newbie 🤩
Starting from scratch with Google Sheets
Along the way, I picked up many useful tools within Excel to speed up the process of data collection, and my confidence grew as I gradually thought of new ideas to improve different aspects of this work project I was embarking on.
This was one of the spreadsheets for data collection: For confidentiality purposes, I have omitted the personal particulars of individuals/parties involved.
SUMIFS
Function: Automate calculations for multiple rows of data (differentiating by type)
Example: =SUMIFS((Q21:Q), A21:A, *Caterer 2*, C21:C, “*Lunch*”)
Basically, this excel function is finding the total sum of values in row Q, when the columns fulfil two criteria:
- Value in Row A of the same column returns as the text *Caterer 2* (caterer type)
- Value in Row C of the same column indicates *Lunch* (meal type)
IMPORTRANGE
ImportRange is used for transferring a set of data from one google sheet to another.
Example: =IMPORTRANGE (GOOGLE SHEET URL, GOOGLE SHEET NAME! A1:A100)
This is useful when you have a master copy excel sheet, for you to derive entries from multiple google sheets/to populate multiple google sheets using one master sheet. It can be used in classrooms settings when students are permitted to edit certain sheets, while the teacher may have quick access to all the entries. Similarly, it can be used to tabulate information on finances, which I have been experimenting with as well.
EXACT
EXACT function is used to check if two different string(s) match.
Example: =EXACT(SUM(M20:O20)= SUM(Q20:R20), “TRUE”) OR =EXACT(A1,B1)
For example, I used it to tally and ensure that after categorising the meals into the different types (special dietary restrictions, vegetarian, halal, etc.), the numbers add up accurately to minimise and prevent any mishaps. These helps to reduce chances of human error and act as a safety net.
I believe this function can also be used to check if two single cells match with each other – which can be used to verify, for example, email address/personal detail submissions in form entries.
There are numerous resources online (that are much more well explained😅) to guide beginners on how to use and troubleshoot different tools/function in google sheets, excel and many other softwares, so do a quick search for them based on your individual needs!
My personal experience💭
When I first started my role in the army helping out with the National Day Parade, it was rather overwhelming and I was quite anxious as to whether or not I would be able to perform, given my lack of experience in the field of food catering.
Looking back, it was a logistically challenging operation and one where I had to juggle multiple hats. I definitely spent many late nights answering calls, giving in to last minute changes in schedule and requirements, organising and extrapolating the data collection process from multiple committees and liaising with different caterers to prevent meal fatigue. However, I think it was a blessing that I got to learn so many new things in terms of delivering under pressure as well as work on communicating better with my team and other relevant stakeholders.
Starting from a blank slate, I had to be resourceful and ask around fervently for guidance to start. In hindsight, it could have been better to take more initiative to ask for more advice, instead of wasting time initially being overwhelmed and trying to do everything on my own.
As most of the details are confidential (and also to not bore anyone reading this), I shall not delve too much in detail. It was extremely insightful to learn something that I have always thought myself to be quite rookie in 😅.
Overall Learning Experience
All in all, I felt that being able to work under the Meals Support Team was something which I found rewarding because of how it pushed me to become better at certain technical skills, and most importantly, in interacting with others & collaborating in a team.
While I do not picture myself performing this role in the long term, but I am glad I got to experience stepping foot into the logistical operations behind such a large-scale event in Singapore.
I share this not with the intention to brag, but in hopes that I can inspire others to continue to pursue things out of our comfort zones. I find it helpful to seek meaning in what we do by putting in effort, coupled with an optimistic and open perspective towards developing skill sets out of our primary forte, expanding our circle of competence.
Personal Reflections
After the hustle and bustle, on the eventful evening on 9th August last year, we have finally completed the last wave of meal distribution to working parties and volunteers involved in contributing to the success of NDP. My mind was still racing from the aftermath of rushing around to coordinate meal delivery at both the Float, and F1 Paddock, but I couldn’t help but feel a sense of bliss.
After dawn fell, we watched the magnificent display of fireworks🎇, heaving sighs of relief that our efforts have paid off and the job has been done. At the same time, I was hit with a twinge of sadness – knowing that I could have been at home celebrating NDP with my family.
One Year Later …
Fast forward to Year 2023, I relished in the simple pleasures of being in the comfort of my own home together with my family. While grateful for the opportunity, I was confronted with the reality that pursuing my passion abroad will inevitably result in these becoming less common in the near future.
Perhaps, in the endless grind towards achieving my goals and crafting out a future for myself, I may find myself distanced from my loved ones…
Will success matter if you have little time to share it with the ones you love? Will saving time and “being more productive” really matter if it comes at the expense of things you cherish in life? Knowing that these are all are intricately tied to the decisions I make, I sincerely hope that I will properly treasure the precious time I have with my family and friends, reflecting and reassessing my priorities as I venture through the different stages of my life ~
Hope you found this insightful one way or another! 🤠
🙂