In my coaching and mentoring work, I’ve seen that making time to reflect on a regular basis – whether it’s through weeknotes, journaling, retrospectives, or something else – is a valuable tool for personal and professional development. Making time to stop, catch a breath, and notice where you are can make a big difference to how you think and feel about your work.
Why and how reflection works
1. It helps you learn
A study (see the reading list) found that reflection helps people learn faster. It found that after an individual has some initial experience with a task, reflecting on that experience is more beneficial than accumulating additional experience. Reflection is a key component of continuous learning too. It encourages you to seek feedback, think about how you’re doing, and set new goals.
2. It promotes self-awareness
Taking the time to reflect and write gives you a chance to gain a deeper understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Giving yourself that space to become more self-aware is crucial for personal and professional growth.
3. It helps your decision making
Reflecting on past experiences and outcomes helps you identify patterns and insights, which can lead to better decision-making in the future. Reflective practice encourages a more thoughtful and deliberate approach to problem-solving.
4. It boosts creativity
Taking time to reflect can stimulate creative thinking. When you step back from daily tasks it’s easier to come up with new ideas. Reflection can break the cycle of routine and open up new possibilities.
5. It helps you manage stress
Regular reflection can help you to manage stress. When you stop to reflect, you can identify the things that are making you feel stressed. And if you can identify the trigger, it’s easier to come up with a strategy to deal with it.
So here are 10 questions to help you reflect. You can answer all of them, or just one. Some work well as solo exercises, others are great to do as a team. Remember that writing down your answers is an important part of the process – just thinking about it doesn’t have the same effect.
1. Where’s the joy?
What’s the most enjoyable professional experience you’ve had? What made it so good? How can you recreate some of that joy for yourself or others right now?
2. What can you learn from failure?
Skip this one if you know it’ll make you spiral, or just choose a minor failure instead. What’s the biggest or most significant professional failure you’ve had? What went wrong? What did you learn from failure?
3. What are your skills?
Think about the projects you’ve been working on recently. What went well? What could have gone better? What skills did you use? What skills did you lack? Use your answer to think about the skills you want to learn or develop in 2025.
4. What does success look like?
Imagine it’s the end of 2025 and you’re looking back and feeling delighted with how your working year went. What does that success look like, and what can you learn from that?
5. What’s holding you back?
What’s holding you back in your work? Think about internal things, like your skills or mindset, and about external factors, like the constraints of your role. Of the barriers you identify, which can you do something about, and which are outside your control?
6. How are your work relationships?
How would you rate your relationship with your team, peers, stakeholders, boss, clients, etc? Give each group a score from 1 (poor) to 5 (strong). Think about what’s working and what’s not. What do you notice about the most effective ways you’ve found to communicate, collaborate, give feedback, and more?
7. Is your schedule working for you?
Sketch out your typical working day. What daily habits, rituals or parts of your schedule help you feel relaxed, energised, focused or productive? What things make you feel rushed, stressed, tired, or under pressure? What could you add, and what could you take away?
8. How do you prioritise and take stock?
When and how are you currently prioritising your work, keeping track of your to do list, and keeping track of progress? Are these methods working for you? Is there anything new you could introduce to help, or remove to make things simpler or more effective?
9. What would swapping places teach you?
Imagine you wake up and due to some kind of Freaky Friday body swapping situation, you find yourself working in design/development/marketing/product/other stakeholder or peer team as appropriate. What do you think you’d learn about your content and your job from working a week in their shoes?
10. What’s on the horizon?
What are the most significant changes in the content landscape that you anticipate in the next year? Think about the context of your role and the organisation your work for, and the wider technical, cultural, social, economic context. How can you prepare for them?
Reading list
How to work smarter and with more satisfaction using reflection, CPD
Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance, Research Gate
Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle, University of Edinburgh
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection, HBR
PS At the time of writing, all my coaching spots are full. If you’re interested, you can put your name on the waiting list.
