On LEARNING TO BE REFLECTIVE by Peter F. Drucker

“At age twenty-two I became one of the three assistant managing editors. The reason was not that I was particularly good. In fact, I never became a first-rate daily journalist.

But in those years, around 1930, the people who should have held the kind of position I had – people age thirty-five or so – were not available in Europe. They had been killed in World War I. Even highly responsible positions had to be filled by young people like me.

The editor-in-chief, then around fifty, took infinite pains to train and discipline his young crew. He discussed with each of us every week the work we had done. Twice a year, right after New Year’s and then again before summer vacations began in June, we would spend a Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday discussing our work over the preceding six months.

The editor would always start out with the things we had done well. Then he would proceed to the things we had tried to do well. Next he reviewed the things where we had not tried hard enough.

And finally, he would subject us to a scathing critique of the things we had done badly or had failed to do. The last two hours of that session would then serve as a projection of our work for the next six months:

What were the things on which we should concentrate? What were the things we should improve? What were the things each of us needed to learn?

And a week later each of us was expected to submit to the editor-in-chief our new program of work and learning for the next six months. I tremendously enjoyed the sessions, but I forgot them as soon as I left the paper. Almost 10 years later, after I had come to the United States, I remembered them...

Since then I have set aside two weeks every summer in which to review my work during the preceding year, beginning with the things I did well but could or should have done better, down to the things I did poorly and the things I should have done but did not do.

I decide what my priorities should be in my consulting work, in my writing, and in my teaching. I have never once truly lived up to the plan I make each August, but it has forced me to live up to Verdi’s injunction to strive for perfection, even though ‘it has always eluded me’ and still does.”