How much have you retained and reflected?

During first days of a new year, people often try to reflect what happened in the last 12 months. Some find great lessons learned, and some find…nothing. If you are the latter, you are not alone. To reflect on something, in this case a 365-day journey, it means you think deeply about it and hope to take out something meaningful. So why can’t you reflect effectively? Its because you don’t retain much. Let’s try an example of reading. Suppose you finish 12 books last year (more maybe more). Be honest, how much could you remember from a single book? What were the greatest points? What really stand out from that book? What were the key reasons? Could you able to write them down by memory?… If the answers are mostly NO, you don’t retain that much. It’s funny when many people do something called book-challenge or whatever it is. They try to commit to a quantity of books they have read and post them on social medias. Really, what’s the point? It’s not about how many books have you read. It is really about how much have you retained thoroughly. I mean, if you even read 52 books a year and win the challenge but retain not much, then you only read one book called “Wasting time”. The book example could apply to whatever content you consume everyday: news, movies, textbooks, classrooms…

In this internet era, it is easy for people to get caught up in the content matrix. We have so many choices and of course, quantity does not mean quality. Fake news, lame movies, lousy books… are wasting our limited time. I believe the most important skill that we should build to have a good life in this crazy world is the ability to retain and reflect. Once you can retain, then you will have something to reflect. And during that reflection, you can double-retain what is meaningful to you. The open and connected world with growing opportunities are sometimes our enemy. We have so many choices to consider and our ambitions keep us move forward that we forget to retain and reflect. Again, if you live 30 or 40 years without good retainment and reflection, isn’t it a waste of time? Life cannot be measured by how many degrees you have, how many working years you accumulated or how many books you have red, it is how much in-depth knowledge and skills you have retained. Better late than ever. Let’s start a new year 2019 with better retainment and reflection.

Cheers,

#reflection