Reflection for improved performance

Regularly taking time to pause and then review and reflect on how you could improve, and then experimenting based on those thoughts is key to personal improvement and increasing productivity.   This technique has really been highlighted to me since starting to use Agile development methodologies like Scrum where at at the end of each sprint (short iteration period) a retrospective meeting is held.  These meetings allow those working on the sprint to pause, review and reflect on their performance during that sprint and to discuss how performance could be improved.  The regular retrospective meeting is in my mind one of the most important innovations introduced by Scrum and Agile, as otherwise retrospective activities were limited to once per development cycle after shipping the product.

I think that those short development iterations and regular reflection sessions at the end of each iteration introduced by Agile/Scrum are perhaps the two components of these methodologies that help drive process improvement the most, but they are perhaps also the easiest to overlook.  It would seem that the natural inclination for most workers (especially when stressed) is to not stop and think about how they are working, which means they do not truly understand their work flow and this limits their ability to improve their performance.

Some of the most productive individuals I’ve met, or have heard about, are those that regularly take the time to pause and think about how they are working not just about what they are working on and then experiment to improve.  This habit goes against the instinctual urge most of us seem to have when ‘busy’ which is to not stop to think about the how as we think we don’t have the time to spare.  This is a huge misconception, as taking time to pause and think about how we are doing things and how we can improve can yield large gains in terms of increasing productivity and reducing frustration.

Another overlooked aspect of reflection is that it can make a mundane repetitive task more interesting and stimulating by turning it into a personal challenge: can you tune your work flow and improve your performance on a set task?  For example, habit can even be applied to repetitive manual tasks like mowing the lawn: can I mow the loan in a shorter period, where can I save time or remove repetition?

In summary, pausing and reflecting during your working day and then experimenting to improve can help drive a habit of efficiency which will increase your productivity and potentially improve the development process for your whole team, and this is what all development efforts need to suceed.