When I reflect

The first time I came across a well argued reason to spend time on thinking was in John Maxwell's great book "Thinking for a change". He listed 11 thinking styles. Reflective thinking was one of them.



Personally to me this is the most important style to adopt.
I never realized what I was missing until I started to slowly develop the habit of reflecting.



Books that I used to read without as much as missing a beat spending time on reflecting, suddenly leapt to life.



True learning leads to behavioral change. But to effect true learning requires reflection.



When I started reflecting on, well, reflecting I realized other disciplines encouraged this as well. Being a project manager I give an example from this discipline. As part of the project management process an important step prior to closing a project is conducting a "lessons learned" exercise. All the team members gather and discuss all aspects about the project, what went right, what went wrong and what can be done better.



The reason it is so important to take time to reflect is that we live in a stimulii rich world. We are always doing something. We are working, reading, listening to the iPod, etc. I was once on a short plane ride when the guy next to me pulled out a small DVD player and spent the next 45 minutes watching a movie on it.



Maintaining a diary is a great way to practice the habit of reflection as is sitting still for 20 minutes. But the latter is so difficult especially when I have two very active toddlers.



I am still a long way from becoming a reflective thinker but I have come far enough for some observant people to remark that I am a reflective person. For me that is a great compliment.



It is from the habit of reflection that I have gained valuable nuggets of wisdom. For e.g. I think really well during unearthly hours between 11:30 PM and 3:00 AM in the night when most normal people are asleep.



Another example, I realized that to take my online business to the next level I need to divide my time across three categories: learning, thinking and doing. Learning is about picking Internet Marketing skills, thinking is about brainstorming ideas for traffic generation, content creation etc. Doing is about the mundane every day activities that I must perform to keep the lights on. I need to create a plan to ensure I perform activities across all these categories.



How valuable are these insights?



Is it worth the effort to take the time to reflect to gain such wisdom?



Reflect on this ...