ref:https://hbr.org/2017/07/the-more-senior-your-job-title-the-more-you-need-to-keep-a-journal

All of humanity’s problems come from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone - Blaise Pascal

This article makes a case for slowing down, thinking and interacting with thoughts to help learn and make better decisions. It further proposes journaling as a tool to help with this reflection. Talks about what aspects are best noted in said journal and what would best help with interrogating with these notes in the future. It is recommended that the journal be handwritten on paper - it is implied that engages more of the brain. I however think the benefit of portability, the benefit of automated feedback and the ability to share and search make me want my journals in electronic form. Maybe in the future I might write on paper when I am my own manager.

  1. The crux of the argument is that every event that is learning from should be journaled. There was a comment about seeing patterns from the written word, when its detailed enough.

  2. Engaging and interrogating with the thoughts and words are important to make the brain build connections between pieces of data. Such connections would help remember things and provide the compounded benefit of learning and connections.

  3. The journal should attempt to peel back the reason for the event and outcome, rather than just being a faithful reporter. Asking why for every event to pull back to the root cause or first principle would help make better connections and deeper learning.

  4. This would be the first step of learning, by thinking through the event and what can be changed or should be changed. A hypothesis that can help as a framework to address and respond to similar challenges in the future.

  5. I think it is also implied that this information should be reread infrequently to help reinforce and remind the learnings in the fog of memory.

  6. Often some of these events are unpleasant and we do not want to think further about this. But often there are learnings that are imbibed from these experiences. I think even when consciously not thinking through these experiences, such experiences for mould and build our thinking and responses. This means it makes better sense to clarify our understanding and thinking and take the time to correctly learn from such experiences.

  7. Do not wait more than 24hrs to journal and interact with the memory and learnings. Often the nuances and detail that is important is forgotten or missed in the fog of memory as time passes.

More learnings on leadership

  1. https://prasanthabr.github.io/long_form/leadership-tools/