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Reflectiveness 199

At certain times of the year, I take quiet time and think through what I
have seen. Then I let my mind wander around the parallels and meanings.
I often work by association.

There are two main aspects to the skill of reflecting: thinking about
your experiences, and thinking about the process of your learning.

Looking back and learning from experiences

Effective reflection requires you to be open and exploratory. It is also
important not to be defensive and not to take things personally.
There is a tendency not to bother to reflect on the things that
go well, because you are happy and already mentally moving on to
your next project. The same is true with regard to things that go
badly. For different reasons, you want to move on, to forget all that
happened, it fact to pretend it never happened.
It is slightly more common to take stock of challenging
assignments that you manage to complete. Something in the nature
of these, like a difficult walk up a mountain when you nearly get
lost in thick fog, induces camaraderie and sharing. It seems natural
and part of bonding to share your thoughts and feelings when you
have survived, just as it does back in the pub after an adventure on
a mountain.

What about you? Which kind of experiences do you find it easiest to reflect on: the ones that
have gone well, the ones that really challenged you, or the ones that went wrong in some
way? You may want to try keeping a learning log to explore your own experiences.

Later in this chapter there are some specific suggestions as to how
you might like to reflect on experiences and how you can overcome
the barriers to reflection that exist in most workplaces.

Looking back on how you learned something

In the context of learning to learn, it is your capacity to reflect on
how you went about learning something that you will find particu-
larly useful. If you are going to develop new techniques, you need