Advice for our Younger Selves

Source:  Pixnio

Christian Jarrett reported recently in BPS Research Digest about a new study by Robin Kowalski and Annie McCord, published in the Journal of Social Psychology. The paper is titled, "If I knew then what I know now: Advice to my younger self."  The scholars examined what advice people above the age of 30 would give to their younger selves. Jarrett explains the findings:

Their findings show that people’s advice to their younger selves is overwhelmingly focused on prior relationships, educational opportunities and personal worth, echoing similar results derived from research into people’s most common regrets in life. Moreover, participants who said they had followed the advice they would give to their younger selves were more likely to say that they had become the kind of person that their younger self would admire. “…[W]e should consult ourselves for advice we would offer to our younger selves,” the researchers said. “The data indicate that there is much to be learned that can facilitate wellbeing and bring us more in line with the person that we would like to be should we follow that advice.” 

The two studies followed a similar format with the participants (selected to be aged at least 30 years) asked to provide either three pieces or one piece of advice to their younger selves; to reflect on whether following this advice would help them become more like the person they aspire to be or ought to be; whether they had actually followed the advice later in life; to consider a pivotal event that had shaped them in life, especially in light of the advice they’d chosen to give their younger selves; and to reflect on what their younger self would make of their current self. Participants mostly gave themselves advice around relationships (“Don’t marry her. Do. Not. Marry. Her.”), education (“Go to college”), selfhood (“Be yourself”), direction and goals (“Keep moving, keep taking chances, and keep bettering yourself”), and money (“Save more, spend less”).

I enjoyed digging into this paper because I think it has important implications regarding the value of self-reflection.  Several years ago, I heard former Baxter Healthcare CEO Harry Kraemer, now a professor at Kellogg, discuss his nightly routine of self-reflection.  Each night, Kraemer takes a few moments to think back to how he conducted himself throughout the day, both in his professional and personal life.   Kraemer has developed a set of useful questions to use during this reflection time:

1. What did I say I was going to do today in all dimensions of my life?  What did I actually do?
2. What am I proud of?  What am I not proud of?
3. How did I lead people?  How did I follow people?
4. If I lived today over again, what would I have done differently?
5. If I have tomorrow (and I am acutely aware that some day I won’t) and I am a learning person, based on what I learned today, what will I do tomorrow in all dimensions of my life that are important (as a father, as a leader, as a son, as a spouse, as a spiritual person, etc.)?

I cannot say that I have Kraemer's discipline for daily self-reflection, but I have taken to trying to take some time every few weeks or months to consider these questions.  While I would benefit from pondering these questions more often, I do think that even the occasional time to reflect has been extremely helpful.  This research certainly bolsters Kraemer's argument and makes me want to try to make more time for reflection on a more frequent basis.  

Why We Need to Reflect

In my last blog post, I discussed several reasons why organizations don't learn effectively from experience. New research from Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano & Bradley Staats demonstrates that reflection proves critical to personal and organizational improvement. These scholars have published a working paper titled, "Learning By Thinking: How Reflection Improves Performance."    They argue that we can't simply rely on learning by doing.  We have to reflect upon that experience to learn effectively.  They conducted a series of studies to examine the role of reflection in the learning and improvement process.   They conclude the following:

In our daily battle against the clock, taking time to step back and engage in a deliberate effort to learn from one’s prior experience would seem to be a luxurious pursuit. Though some 9 Data show that between 1973 and 2000, “the average American worker added an additional 199 hours to his or her annual schedule—or nearly five additional weeks of work per year (assuming a 40-hour workweek)” (Schor, 2003: 7). In the meanwhile, between 1969 and 2000, “the overall index of labor productivity per hour increased about 80 percent, 27 organizations increasingly rely on deliberate learning tools, as in the case of after-action reviews and post-mortems (Catmull, 2014), there has been little effort to encourage individuals to take the time to think about the past, rather than to do more and more. Articulating and codifying prior experience does entail the high opportunity cost of one’s time, yet we argue and show that thinking after completing tasks is no idle pursuit: It can powerfully enhance the learning process, and it does so more than the accumulation of additional experience on the same task. Performance outcomes, we find, can be augmented if one deliberately focuses on learning from experience accumulated in the past. Results from our studies consistently show a significant increase in the ability to successfully complete a task when individuals are given the chance to couple some initial experience with a deliberate effort to articulate and codify the key lessons learned from such experience. 

Do You Have a Mistake Diary?

The Wall Street Journal reports on an interesting new leadership phenomenon.  According to this article by
Rachel Silverman, "Some self-aware managers are trying out “mistake diaries” or “failure reports” to help minimize the chances that a problem happens twice – and to help foster an environment where it’s OK to try and fail."  

Silverman describes the efforts of Meebo co-founder Elaine Wherry, who has kept a mistake diary for a number of years.   Silverman writes that, "Using a series of sketchbooks, she started taking notes and making drawings to record her mistakes – such as time-management problems and hyper-perfectionism — as a personal way to remember them."   Wherry has even shared her "most common blunders" with her staff, since she noticed many young new employees making many of the mistakes that she had made earlier in her career.  (Take a look at a video created by Elaine Wherry by clicking here). 

Everyone should note the importance of reflection as a tool for improving as a leader.   We can't just focus on what's next, on the newest pressing problem.  We have to find a way to carve out some time for reflection if we are to improve and develop.   Of course, finding that time can be difficult in hectic schedules that many leaders keep.  So, before thinking about crafting a mistake diary, you have to take a hard look at your schedule.  Blocking out some time for reflection is hard, but necessary, if we are to identify and learn from our mistakes.