By Danny Mucinskas
Every day, many of us are confronted with numerous responsibilities and decisions. In addition to the professional obligations, personal care needs, and family relationships we prioritize, today’s media and information environment is saturated and pervasive, driven by devices and social platforms. A 2022 survey of American adults by the American Psychological Association showed that a full 27% of respondents were feeling so stressed that they could not function. In the working world, Gallup has found that only a third of workers feel engaged in their work in 2024, while 1 in 6 are actively disengaged, largely due to a lack of clarity about roles, little feedback, and profound ongoing changes in working patterns. We might ask ourselves:
When we might feel overwhelmed, what practices can help each of us feel more grounded and prepared to take on new challenges?
When seeking to do “good work,” what day-to-day habits can support us in making ethical decisions with high standards?
How can we take advantage of “down-time” to pause, center ourselves, and prepare for the road ahead?
Learning to reflect more fully can help to answer these questions and more. As a practice, reflection allows us to take advantage of opportunities to stop and think introspectively, to develop connections, and to construct a path forward. Defined as “the process of engaging in attentive, critical, exploratory and iterative interactions with one’s thoughts and actions, and their underlying conceptual frame, with a view to change” (Nguyen et al., 2014), reflection can help people conceptualize and achieve goals, become aware of themselves as learners (Kiaei & Reio, Jr., 2014), and reinforce a sense of purpose (Kosine, Steger, & Duncan, 2008). Reflection is related to and overlaps with metacognition, or “thinking about one’s thinking” (Chick, 2013).
Much of The Good Project’s work has focused on cultivating a habit of reflection related to work, whether that is a profession, a hobby, a community position, or another role that we may hold. We know from research that reflection in the workplace is not only beneficial but necessary. Schools, companies, and other institutions involve people collaborating together. Because human behavior and organizations are complicated and multilayered, deep reflection is required by all of us in order to develop professional competence (Cattaneo, 2020) and to make career decisions (Bassot & Reid, 2013). Reflection can also support people in becoming self-aware, effective leaders (Kontostavlou & Drigas, 2021). In his book The Reflective Practitioner (1983), focused on professionals at work, Donald Schön proposed a dual nature of reflection for workers: reflection-in-action, which occurs within situations and involves immediate reaction and testing, and reflection-on-action, which involves revisiting an experience after it has taken place to understand what happened and what could have gone differently. The benefits of worker reflection are therefore manifold.
Students who are not yet workers also benefit from reflective practices. Activities that ask adolescents to reflect upon their future careers promote both career adaptability and well-being (Ran et al., 2023). A meta-analysis has further found strong evidence of metacognition’s positive effect on direct student outcomes in school (Perry, Lundie, & Golder, 2019).
Reflective capacities, then, are important for young people and older working professionals alike. Reflection allows each of us to build on our rich history of experiences through continuous consideration of our thoughts and actions, in the moment and retrospectively. Reflection reinforces the idea that we are all lifelong learners with room to grow as we come to understand ourselves more deeply.
The Good Project’s focus on reflection has also aimed to help people reflect consistently as a habit, or a regularly practiced routine, as opposed to occasionally or when it suits them. Regular reflection can become automatic when it is tied to a habitual ritual. For instance, actions like taking just a few minutes for daily individual journaling, or specific methods of debriefing in teams at the end of a meeting (to talk about what went well, what did not, and plans for the future) can become routine. These practices facilitate “thinking about thinking” in critical and attentive ways that meet the standard of reflection. Other habitual actions that support reflection may include use of mindfulness apps, reflective writing assignments in classrooms, or Socratic seminars that routinely ask learners to be intentional about how their ideas, thoughts, and behaviors are changing.
Furthermore, we have often spoken of the idea of reflection simply as a “Mirror Test,” or a chance to look at oneself in a hypothetical mirror, asking, “What do you see?” The answers to this question may vary widely from one person to another, involving aspects of identity, values, community affiliations, and life experiences that have influenced work. But collectively, thinking about each of these aspects of who we are and what we see when we examine ourselves can put our thoughts and actions into sharper focus, highlighting what we appreciate and what we would like to change by setting new goals or ideals.
Because The Good Project has focused so intently on cultivating reflective abilities, our curricular materials and lessons rely heavily on thought-provoking questions to encourage learners of all ages to reflect individually and in groups. For example:
In our lesson plans, we ask students to complete self-reflections that ask them to think metacognitively about their learning over the course of each one of the units.
Our dilemmas are intended as opportunities for people to work together to dissect a particular set of circumstances faced by another person before turning the lens inward to one’s own circumstances.
Our activity database contains a variety of journaling exercises asking people to write about situations in which they faced dilemmas or made a decision that they would like to change.
When we have used these materials with learners, or teachers have used them with students, we have often witnessed reactions that express appreciation for the chance to be introspective and to develop new insights. These reactions indicate not only that reflection is beneficial but can also be enjoyable and enriching. However, it is worth noting that reflection overload may be possible. For example, Tasha Eurich suggests that highly reflective people can sometimes experience negative emotions caused by constant and unproductive introspection that does not lead to any new insights. In such cases, we may need to shift from asking ourselves “Why?” questions to “What?” questions during reflective moments. This shift can lower stress and result in more solution-oriented thinking.
The ultimate goal of encouraging people to reflect, specifically on their working lives, is that they will hopefully be equipped with the ability to slow down, strategize, and make thoughtful decisions in their professional lives. In order to prioritize reflection, we must shift our mindsets and begin to view metacognitive practices not as a luxury but rather as a necessity for personal growth. The ability to reflect thoroughly is particularly crucial when circumstances become difficult or challenging, such as when our values are challenged or we feel torn between conflicting responsibilities. Too often in the rush of life, especially in today’s pace of quick attention spans, there is a temptation to make quick decisions. As an alternative, we advocate slowing down to take the time necessary to deeply reflect, practicing both reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action.
Through reflection, we hope that people will be able to do “good work” aligned with The Good Project’s framework that is excellent, ethical, and engaged for themselves and others. As author and educator Margaret J. Wheatley has said, “Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”
Below, we share some resources related to the concept of reflection and its practice:
Project Zero’s Thinking Routines, many of which are intended to help people to be metacognitive (e.g., “I Used to Think… Now I Think…”).
Shari Tishman and David Perkins’ episode on “The Power and Pleasure of a Pause,” which may be an opportunity to reflect, from the Thinkability podcast.
These activities specifically focused on reflection.