Let’s take five!
By Ken DiPrima
Nothing is working right for me today. Everything I do seems to turn out wrong. Why did I get stuck with this lousy assignment? Why is everyone so cranky? How come my computer isn’t working?
Time Out! Don’t be rash! Count to ten! Step away! Clear your head!
We all know life isn’t perfect. Everyone has days when things don’t turn out as we hoped, whether we’re at home, at work, or doing something recreational for fun. And when things aren’t going our way, it’s time to take a step back and reflect.
Anne Lamott, a blogger from Salon, wrote, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” And research backs her up. By taking a few moments to reflect on what has occurred, before getting angry or having an inappropriate response, you will have a much clearer perspective of the situation. Perhaps you had been selected to tackle a difficult job because you were best qualified to execute the task efficiently. You may discover that the reason things didn’t go as you had hoped was simply because you weren’t executing it correctly.
A recent paper published by Harvard Business School researchers Francesca Gino and Gary Pisano, along with their colleagues, revealed that by taking the appropriate time to reflect on our work, our job performance would greatly improve in the long run.
They discovered that by reflecting on what we’ve done, we would learn how to do it more effectively the next time around. “Now more than ever we seem to be living lives where we’re busy and overworked, and our research shows that if we’d take some time out for reflection, we might be better off,” says Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino, who co-wrote the study.
The study revealed that reflection is a powerful mechanism behind learning. Some significant concepts they discovered include:
- Learning from direct experience can be more effective if coupled with reflection-that is, the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience,
- Reflecting on what has been learned makes experience more productive, and
- Reflection builds one’s confidence in the ability to achieve a goal (i.e., self-efficacy), which in turn translates into higher rates of learning.
There are tangible and measurable benefits to be gained from reflection. Study participants who were asked to reflect on their work in a test increased their performance in subsequent tests by almost 23% more than the control group,
who simply re-took the test. It’s proven that we learn more and perform better, with greater self-confidence, when we take time to reflect on our work.
So, take the time to reflect on a daily basis. You will gain a better understanding of your options, and hopefully choose actions that will make you more productive. Even just 15 minutes of reflection each morning can help you achieve your goals. So the next time you feel rushed, overwhelmed, or you are not getting the results you desire, stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. Your computer does it automatically when it re-boots, and so should you.
