As fans lay transfixed watching the battle for the US Open, it became apparent that there is also a changing of the guards in the tennis world. The champs are getting younger and younger. I am not completely writing Roger Federer off, but since last year, I felt that Roger's chances for a Slam win is higher if Rafael Nadal gets waylaid early. This happened in the French Open and also now in US Open when Juan del Potro gave Rafa no chance after his match with Gonzales.
But del Potro did not stop there. He went on to win it all. He is just 20 years old. Roger is just 27, still years before one's prime in other sports. They get younger all the time. Which makes me feel still older and older.
In the distaff side, 17 year old Melanie Oudin made a very good run for the crown, scoring upsets over people still under 25, before being stopped by Caroline Wozniacki, herself a teenager.
After an astounding streak of 22 consecutive Grand Slam semi-finals, is it now Roger, over and out?
A female office mate was rushed to the hospital yesterday after exhibiting signs of a stroke. She is just a couple of years older than me. She is the second or third colleague in recent memory to suffer such disease. While we continue to pray and hope for her full recovery, her predicament and the continuous prayers we offer for our ill parents, make me realize that we are irreversibly going into that part of aging demographics.
As I am wont to do, I googled what causes strokes. I came across this news that stroke may be striking at a younger age in the United States. Research on stroke patients at a St. Louis hospital between 1999 and 2008 found that 45 percent were under 65 and 27 percent were under the age of 55. Although they say it is hard to know from this single study whether this is a trend throughout the United States, I think this could be happening as well elsewhere. My female colleague is a year short of 50. The other colleagues I know are also below 65.
Suddenly, it's not just the white hairs we should worry about.
The above video shows Dan Pink talking about motivation and rewards at the TED conference. He argues that the traditional carrot-and-stick approach is only suitable for defined tasks with a clear set of rules to follow. However, rewards do not work for tasks that require any kind of thinking.
He says that for real change to occur employees need to have a sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy is the urge to direct our own lives; mastery refers to the desire to get better at something that matters; and purpose is the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.
"...There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. And here is what science knows. One: Those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are the natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. Two: Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity. Three: The secret to high performance isn't rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive. The drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things cause they matter...
"...The science confirms what we know in our hearts. So, if we repair this mismatch between what science knows and what business does, If we bring our motivation, notions of motivation into the 21st century, if we get past this lazy, dangerous, ideology of carrots and sticks, we can strengthen our businesses, ... and maybe, maybe, maybe we can change the world."
