I look back, you're wonderful

THING 5: REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

On first glance, reflective practice, for me, sounds like something I kind of left behind in education.  In work it is one of those things I associate with project management (managing anything of any sort is still fresh to me) but through this blog I am beginning to see that I practice reflectively already.  From being part of a project, rather than managing it per se, and actually doing something, seeing how it works (or more helpfully how is doesn’t) in order to review it, problem solve and make better for the future.  I remember absolutely loving comprehension at school, and in some way I see reflective practice in a similar way, but writing up ‘reflections’ in a professional context is something I’m still working on and this blog (a tool for reflective practice) is already doing that in a more informal way.  I like the idea of breaking something down into parts; simple, concise and understandable. 

The other day at work my manager asked for a review of a project we’d be working on recently, and although it didn’t have to be formal, I was stumped at knowing what to write because I hadn’t noted down what I’d been doing/changing/facing problems with at the time it happened. 

      Rule #1 of reflective practice: Write stuff down. 
And know that it doesn’t have to be a million pages long in marvellous prose, but just something short and sweet.

So, I gave it a whirl trying to analyse the project retrospectively.  At first I couldn’t get the grey matter whirring, then I decided to write firstly what the aim of the project was, and what we hoped to get out of it and then make a bullet list of all the things what went right (mainly wrong).

Rule #2: Evaluate: Pros and Cons.  
What worked/sucked. Did I learn anything (soft/hard skills) and would I do it again? Did it take too long, why?

Then I looked at this negi-list and thought, I can’t complain this much and offer nothing to the table so I tried to take a step back and think if we could do it all again what different and more efficient approaches could be taken (if any) and can we compromise the project in its current state.

Rule #3: Apply what’s been learnt.

Here’s the hard part right? It’s all good and well talking about world peace, but can it be achieved that’s the BIG QUESTION.

So in the sense of reflecting upon a project at work, I think I can handle it.  The other times I would seek to reflect upon what I’m doing is when I’ve been on a course, at a conference or other event.  Now, I’ve been on quite a few things that have been beneficial to my working practice and have genuinely been proper interesting but until this blog I’ve had nowhere to reflect up on what I learnt so I can look back and think ‘ah, yeah I’m utilising this skill and that experience blah blah.’ 

Funnily enough, and one of the reasons (yes really) why I’ve held out on writing this Thing, I’ve just returned to work after 2 days of symposium madness and need to write a report on it for other departments to see.  I’m really going to be honing in on this ‘reflective writing’ stuff in order to get the best out of the notes I frantically scribbled away throughout the days (and I might even write a short blog post on it too).

Reflecting on reflection:

Problems:

• Time (or lack of).
  
• Effective writing (knowing what to write down and how to do it well).
  
• Applying what has been learnt and practicing what’s being preached.
  

Rewards:

• Learning to think objectively about experience.
  
• Puts the control back into your own hands regarding what you learn and how you learn from it (your development).
  
• Shows the world that I am doing stuff! Being pro-active and responsive! Yeah!
  
• Allow you to step back and see what kind of work you are doing, and how well you are doing it (or at least are will to try to be better)
  
• This, in turn, will help with job applications and boost your self-worth; by analysing skills and experience in order to justify work experience over professional qualification (in my case atleast).
  
• Obviously, it’s going to help with my communication, blogging and writing skills.
  

Well, the good seems to outweigh the bad (for once): BONUS.