Adopting a reflective practice: documenting learnings to inspire personal growth
The new year always prompts reflection, and it’s often the only time we take a moment to pause before moving forward. For a while now, I’ve been trying to adopt a reflective practice to regularly slow down, organize my thoughts, and hopefully grow as a leader and design practitioner.
When I first wrote about my reflective practice (part 1), I was worried people would think it was too structured, but it resonated with more people than I anticipated. Over the past year, I’ve been experimenting with how I document my reflections. I created a sort of “ReadMe file” or directory of learnings, which acts as a resource for inspiration and personal growth.
If you’re like me, and your brain often feels noisy, or you find yourself hyper-fixating on topics that take you down weird and wonderful spirals, I recommend documenting where that process takes you. I hope sharing how I’ve iterated on my approach over the years gives you a place to start.
I’ll break down my process into the following parts:
- Finding the right medium
- Structuring information
- Sensemaking
- Documenting to calm the mind
Finding the right medium
Everyone is drawn to different mediums for capturing learnings and ideas. It has taken me quite a few years to find the right tool for the job, and I’m sure I will continue to iterate as my needs change.
Like a lot of visual learners, I started sketching and documenting ideas in notebooks. Despite how much I love stationary and flipping through old sketchbooks, I often found myself in scenarios where I wanted to reference something from a few months ago, but my notebook was at home. In 2021, I digitized my learnings and reflections in Miro, so I could access my notes whenever I needed them. It quickly became a visual library of resources.
Miro was great until things started to get chaotic. By chaotic, I mean Prezi-level nausea. I found myself spending more time making my boards look aesthetically pleasing rather than reflecting on my cataloged learnings. If I’m honest, I enjoyed (and still do) creating a little ‘mind palace’ just for me. Nobody can judge how the information is structured; it simply doesn’t matter because I’m the only one reading it. I also didn’t tag things properly, making it hard to search for keywords. Building on what worked with Miro, I needed to find a better tool that could scale to meet my needs.
I decided to switch to Notion. Unlike Miro, Notion provides a visual hierarchy and structures information in a way that makes it much easier to navigate and search for resources. Migrating all of my documentation to a new tool was time-consuming. It probably took me a good month to transfer everything to Notion and create a new structure for sorting information, but it was worth it. Now I have all my ideas, plans, and resources in one place.
Determining the best tool may take trial and error, but it’s worth investing time into figuring out what works best with your process.
Structuring information
I still process information in a similar way as before, which I will outline below, but the fundamental shift is in the new information architecture.
I sort all of my categories on one page that I use as my main directory, similar to companies that use Notion for everything from Human Resources to design systems. Depending on the category, some pages are more free-form, and others continue to drill down into sub-sections.
For example, under the “Ideas” category (pictured below), I have a page for “Art”, which is a collection of images and words that inspire my artwork, in comparison to the “Practice” category, which drills down into pages of specific topics. My list of categories within the main directory continues to grow, which might be a sign that I need to nest things better, but it works for right now.
I process and structure information following three steps: capture, categorize, and contemplate. I would recommend figuring out what works for you, but here are some prompts for how you could sort your learnings:
Capture
Capture all the information in one place. Create a temporary holding space or backlog until you have time to sort the data. Some information needs time to digest, or you may still need to decide what category it goes into. I like to keep this information separate (to avoid dumping a bunch of links onto one page) until I have time to pull out key insights to inform future thinking.
Categorize
Categorize information into the right section so it’s easy to recall when you need to reference something. Once I’ve pulled out the key learnings from the information I captured in my backlog, I sort information into categories and subcategories. If the new information is a quote or a specific insight, I will categorize it straight away, and I skip the first step because I know where it should live.
Contemplate
Referencing your insights and contemplating how you can weave them into your practice takes time. Sometimes I won’t revisit my reflections for months, but my observations always become relevant at some point and inspire new ideas. The cycle continues to repeat, as I’ve illustrated below.
Sensemaking
We are overloaded with so much information daily, and it can be challenging to figure out what to document. Consider what information you like to revisit, such as a framework you tried that you want to remember for future projects. I’ve noticed that I tend to capture two things:
- Reflections from work
- Learnings from books or articles
The two often shape each other and sometimes take me in strange loops. For example, I recently worked at a company offering psychedelic-assisted therapy for people living with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. During this time, I constantly documented learnings to build a better understanding of the therapeutic model and to ultimately design better products and services. I started by simply capturing information and prioritizing it in my backlog to read in my spare time. Once I reflected on it, I would sort it into the right category.
Over time, those learnings would start influencing each other. When we were exploring new services, such as psychedelics for end-of-life care, my learnings from before started to generate new interests and ideas. These new ideas took me down slightly divergent paths, like understanding what death looks like from the perspective of a mortician. You may think that’s a bit random, but this wonderful tangent helped me understand the whole system and look at the service from a new perspective.
When it comes to books or articles, I snap photos of pages, write notes, highlight quotes and sort them into the relevant section in Notion. Towards the end of last year, I finally read Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design by Kat Holmes and I noted insights in Notion as I read the book. Now, the next time I encounter a situation where I need to reference something I learnt about inclusive design, I can go right to the source and pull up the relevant insights.
Giving myself time to explore tangential topics with curiosity has been invaluable. Last year, I saw ALOK perform in Vancouver, and they said this quote that stuck with me:
“Creativity lives in the unfamiliar places of our minds.”
Structuring my learnings into a sort of “ReadMe file” for my future self is my way of tapping into a creative mindset and has become an essential part of my reflective practice.
Documenting to calm the mind
I keep returning to Donald A. Schön’s book, The Reflective Practitioner. If you haven’t read it, he talks about how we must ‘reflect in and on our actions’ by looking back at our work and experiments to grow and improve in all aspects of life, especially our craft.
I enjoy experimenting and documenting what I learn. With every experience in my career, I discover new insights I can take forward to help me grow as a leader and designer. However, recently I realized that I depend on this structure not only to grow as a practitioner but, more importantly, for my overall well-being.
Rather than letting the hamster wheel of thoughts run wild and distract me, I write them down and categorize them accordingly. It gives me a way to channel those unwieldy thoughts. I must admit, it hasn’t solved my problem of getting distracted from time to time. My partner often finds me deep in my own world, forgetting the bath water running or leaving the stove on — this happens more often than I would like to admit, but I’m getting better at finding ways not to get lost in it all. I’m also trying to appreciate the advantages of hyper-fixation and my love for learning.
Adopting a reflective practice helps me apply a “beginner’s mindset” to whatever I do personally or professionally. It challenges my mental models and biases by creating a feedback loop so that I reflect on what I’ve learnt or mindsets I’ve outgrown. In Michaela Coel’s book, Misfits, she beautifully articulates this need to find moments to reflect:
“What a brilliant thing, to discover we’ve been wrong about some things, what a brilliant thing it is to grow. We’re all gonna die. Instead of standing here, wishing for the good ol’ glory days, about the way life used to be before Mark Zuckerberg’s graduation, I’m going to try to be my best; to be transparent; to play whatever part I can to help fix this house. What part will you play?…Check if your house is in order, to better know who you are, how you are truly doing, and if there’s any part of your internal system that is faulty or in need of fixing.”
Out of all the habits I’ve acquired over the years, adopting a regular reflective practice has been one of the most meaningful, and it has changed how I show up. I hope this post has inspired you to create your own reflective practice. Let me know if you give it a go!
Happy reflecting!
Resources 📖
How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody by Abby Covert: I read this book years ago and still reference it from time to time. I love the way they describe making sense of complex problems.
The Reflective Practitioner by Donald A. Schön: As I mentioned in my last post, I read this book ten years ago, and it was pretty dated then; however, it still offers relevant framing on the concept of reflection.
Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit: A wonderful book that prompts introspection and encourages getting lost to come back to ourselves.
Unmasking Autism by Devon Price: I’ve included this book because it has given me helpful tips when it comes to hyper-fixation. I haven’t been tested for anything for reasons I won’t get into here. Instead, I try to appreciate the advantages and quirks of thinking and seeing the world differently and pick up tips and tricks where I can.
What I’m reading: I’m sure I’ve missed other resources that have inspired my reflection process through books that I’m reading, so I’m including my StoryGraph page.
