In this blog post about the art and act of reflection, this interesting idea:
A key mental move here is pre-hindsight: It’s much easier to explain a past event with hindsight, than it is to predict something in the future, or notice something unexpected – the past is concrete and easy to reason about, the future is abstract and harder.
But this is just a state of mind!
For example, when I am writing an email, I often realise a mistake or missed detail just after I click send. Absolutely nothing has actually changed, but the email goes from a future thing to a past thing.
And often this mental shift can happen deliberately – take something vague and fuzzy that my mind wants to flinch away from, and make it concrete.
For example, I find it hard to notice mistakes when I make them, but easy to answer “what was the biggest mistake I made this week?” – the key is to make not answering not an option, and to implicitly assume there was a mistake.
– "On Reflection", Neel Nanda.
I avoid being with my own thoughts for large stretches of time because there are unresolved background issues I haven’t tackled yet. And my mindfulness practice is long enough for tactical daily equanimity but too short to either work through those unconfortablenesses or to consider the past, whether immediate or long term.
As a result, while I can plan any given work day well and set goals over a quarter or year, life in the medium term – in weeks – slips through the cracks.
I think the act of reflection, especially structured reflection, may help me be deliberate about this medium term. Perhaps I’ll try it this year.