Google “Aaron Maniam” and the breadth of results that come up might make you wonder if there are several people with the same name. Aaron, 42, is a poet, a TED Global speaker with one talk that delved into the “Magic of Names”, a World Economic Forum Global Future Council member, a mentor for young writers, a PhD researcher in government digitalisation efforts, and more.
The Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) is also a career public officer pushing digitalisation efforts in the government.
Then, he reveals in this interview that he exercises about four times a week – a combination of yoga and high intensity workouts – and meditates twice a day for at least 20 minutes each time. After eight years of daily meditation, he can get in the zone even during a taxi ride.
He explains that these are all intentional efforts to keep him physically, mentally and emotionally strong enough to power through his work and volunteer commitments.
He says: “As I get more work and responsibilities, it’s important to be super-intentional about setting aside time for exercise.”
Especially now. The lover of words, who politely lays aside the oft-used “new normal” to describe the complexities of the world today, says: “A ‘new normal’ suggests that we reach a new equilibrium with a certain amount of stability. I'm convinced that we are going to live in what we call ‘the never normal’, where there is constant instability, constant change and transformation.”
(Find out why he thinks the future will be “never normal” and what he does at the MCI.)
Becoming Stronger Together
But to cope with these expectations in the “never normal”, keeping public officers physically, mentally and emotionally strong is very much on his radar.
As a member of Public Sector Transformation-People committee, Aaron aims to work through the committee to recognise that “every individual who works in government is a whole person”.
“They are not just here to do work. They bring their aspirations as fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children, friends,” he says.
In the context of COVID-19, the focus has very much been on mental wellness.
The Committee has been looking at how to adopt better general wellness platforms, where “people feel safe sharing that they are under a huge amount of stress, and need more support than they might have had before”.
In his case, Aaron holds “Ask-me-anything” sessions where team members have talked about issues they face beyond work. He tries to have in-depth individual talks with his staff three to four times a year.