Chapter Twenty Two

Reflect Your Thoughts

The world has become so fast that people don’t find time to take care of their family. People don’t find time to think anything through other than their deadlines. People have become very busy indeed! Everybody says I’m busy. What is the solution? Why did God give us life? Is there any meaning to such a life where we constantly struggle for something which is found to be meaningless most of the time? In this regard, let us concentrate on the concept of reflective thinking as it provides solutions for several evils in society and pressures in today’s life.

What Is Reflective Thinking?

John Dewey coined the concept, ‘reflective thought’ in 1910 in his work How We Think for teachers. He defines reflective thinking as, ‘Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusion to which it tends’ (Dewey 1933)¹. However, the concept underwent a lot of modifications over a period of time. Reflective thinking sounds like thinking chair—a practice by John C. Maxwell that allows thinking through silently to clear the clutter and make decisions.

Reflective thinking is reflecting on what you do for your progress. It polishes your approach to reach your goals faster. It paves the way for your success. It is one of the ingredients that will encourage smart work and help you reach your goals.

Reflective thinking is beyond introspection. It involves analysing the current trends and patterns in your mind. It streamlines your mind by removing irrelevant and outdated ideas and insights, thus allowing more space to accept and accommodate new ones. It is like deleting the waste files and replacing them with desired files in a computer system.

Reflective thinking provides breathing space to your mind. As people find it hard to breathe properly due to pressures, they find it hard to think as well. Therefore, reflective thinking is an effective tool to reflect and think through for new ideas. It enhances your creativity. There is tremendous potential in this concept to utilize your vast human potential.

The book titled Consider: Harnessing the Power of Reflective Thinking in Your Organization is an interesting read on reflection. Author Daniel Patrick Forrester states², ‘Stepping away from the problem— and structuring time to think and reflect—just may prove the most powerful differentiator that allows your organization to remain relevant and survive…’.

Advantages of Reflective Thinking

If people spend a little time in reflective thinking, they can find their personal and professional lives to be more meaningful and productive. At times, people pursue routine activities without taking stock of the situation, resulting in outdated practices and a sense of ending up nowhere. Here are a few more advantages that arise from reflective thinking:

• Reflection makes life meaningful. We get out of outdated practices and habits.
• Reflection helps you analyse your areas of strengths and weaknesses. It helps you realize where you stand in terms of your performance. It provides you the right feedback. Like solitude, reflection helps you take stock of the situation.
• Reflection provides you with opportunities for growth.
• Whenever you face challenges, you can adopt this tool to find appropriate ideas.
• It removes confusion and clutter from your mind, thus providing you with clarity in mind.
• It helps in problem-solving.
• Above all, it manages your time effectively.

Hence, spend some time in solitude to reflect over your thoughts. Your mind goes for self-introspection and reflects your thoughts effectively for behavioural changes.

Daniel Patrick Forrester rightly refers to the importance of reflective thinking by referring to the story of Thomas Edison. It is believed that Edison often sat at the end of the pier for hours. He would sit with his fishing rod in hand, without any bait on his hook. Evidently, he did not want to catch any fish. What he really wanted to do was to ‘sit there uninterrupted, just reflecting on the issues of the day, on his work, or on whatever else came into his mind’. Edison knew that if it looked like he was engaged in fishing, no one would really bother him. All he really wanted to do was catch ideas’. To one friend Edison had said, ‘All things come to him who hustles while he waits. Your friend, Thomas Edison’.³ Therefore, it becomes clear that great people spend time reflecting their thoughts. We shall also discuss information overload in this regard that takes away a lot of our time and mind.

Information Overload

Nowadays, too much of information is dumped on us. Research shows that information overload costs the US economy a minimum of $900 billion per year in lowered employee productivity and reduced innovation. People often find it tough to differentiate between the chalk and the cheese. At times, irrelevant information takes precedence over the relevant information. In this context, let us understand what information overload is all about.

The term ‘Information Overload’ was coined by Alvin Toffler much before the internet revolution. It is about giving excessive information that clutters the human mind and confuses people. It prevents people from understanding the real content. Sometimes it deviates from the main topic and area of interest. John C. Maxwell reveals in his book Success—What Every Leader Needs to Know, ‘more new information has been produced in the last thirty years than in the previous five thousand’. He further adds, ‘A single weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than most people in seventeenth-century England were likely to encounter in their lifetimes’.

Similarly, while teaching it is essential not to dump too much information as it becomes heavy for the listeners to digest the content. Knowledge has to be imparted in a piecemeal manner, interspersed with breaks that involve humour, interaction and questioning. This leads to effective teaching.

Tips to Tackle Information Overload

It is essential to focus on what not to read. The process of elimination must start from your mind first. Declutter your mind by focusing on your main goals. Don’t deviate from your main goals. Focus is the key to success in this information world. You must also aim at the bull’s eye. Here are a few tips to help you tackle information overload:

• Learn to ignore irrelevant information.
• Narrow down your focus on the key things.
• A lot of rubbish is available in search engines. You must be choosy in picking up the content.

For freeing your mind from clutter, Jim Collins mentions an important insight in his book, Good to Great. Collins states that though most of us lead busy lives, our lives are quite indisciplined. ‘We have ever-expanding “to do” lists, trying to build momentum by doing, doing, doing—and doing more. And it rarely works’. Collins then talks about companies that have risen from the ‘good-to-great’ level. He says that such companies made ‘as much use of “stop doing” lists as the “to do” lists. They displayed a remarkable amount of discipline to unplug all sorts of extraneous junk’. Therefore, be careful in choosing the appropriate information as it saves your time, fine-tunes your mind and polishes your personality. Here are the tips⁴ that, when observed, will help lower information overload for everyone:

• Don’t email someone, and then two seconds later follow up with an instant message or phone call.
• Don’t combine multiple themes or requests in a single email.
• Make sure the subject of your email clearly reflects both the topic and urgency of the missive.
• Read your email before sending it to make sure that it is comprehensible to others.
• Don’t overburden people with unnecessary e-mail, especially one-word replies such as ‘Thanks!’ or ‘Great!’; use ‘reply to all’ only when absolutely necessary.
• Don’t get impatient when there’s no immediate response to your message.
• Keep your status up-to-date and visible to others, so that they know whether you’re busy or away.
• Recognize that the intended recipient of your communications isn’t a mind reader. Supply the necessary details in your messages so nothing is left to the imagination of the recipient.
• Recognize that typed words can be misleading in both tone and intent, so strive for simplicity and clarity in your communication.

Reflection and Contribution

Reflection is beyond introspection. It is an imaginative inquiry. Everybody must reflect as to how much difference is made to society. It is talking to oneself and one’s inner self. How far is an individual useful to himself and to others? What value is an individual adding? What difference does an individual make for others? If everybody reflects in this way, there will be all-round peace and prosperity.

Reflection paves the way for progress. It paves the way for success. It breaks the traditional barriers and limitations. It makes people stretch beyond their capabilities and competencies. It develops human potential. It raises your dreams and aspirations. It bridges the gap between the aspirations and the accomplishments.

Elbert Hubbard rightly noted, ‘The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia’. The human mind is a powerful device. It has a huge potential and man does not use it fully. Man must learn to use it properly. In addition, clarity of mind is the key to success in the contemporary world. By reflective thinking, you remove clutter from your mind and that helps you simplify and overcome many obstacles in your life paving the way for your success.

Victor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning long ago. Now it is time again to search for meaning in one’s life by introspection, removing clutter, managing time, caring for your family and friends, and making a difference to this great human civilization.