‘Reflection in action’

This term grabbed me in the first part of M.K. Smith’s Chris Argyris: theories of action, double-looped learning and organizational learning. Peter Senge explains how Argyris introduced him to the process of, I guess, continuous awareness of the motivations behind your own behaviour, particularly when it comes to addressing problematically repetitive behaviour.

By contrast, this reminded me of the first reading in the Writing Media Texts course: Sari Smith’s Journals and Notebooks. When I read this article six months ago, it opened my mind up to the idea of writing with no audience. Through a process of sketch writing, the writer is at liberty experiment by streaming ideas, in a sort of big to unleash their creative subconscious and practice skills freely.

I feel I’ve always been very wary of who is ‘reading’: Do you like my blog? Do I sound like a moron? Is this photo stupid? Was that story line a total cliche?

I had never really kept a journal or notebook like that where I was just streaming ideas and testing the boundaries of my skills and creative practice. But I think this is an integral part of learning about media ‘writing’ – e.g. photography, video, sound – most of which is relatively new to me.

Alternatively, the idea of ‘reflection in action’ requires constant awareness and questioning of practice. While it doesn’t necessarily refer to creative outputs for an audience, there is some crossover in terms of self-awareness and the impact of your actions and habits.

Having quite consciously worked through both approaches in my media practice, I don’t think that ‘reflection in action’ is ultimately the most effective approach. Sometimes it helps to simply allow yourself to behave and interact in ways that are organic and free-flowing.

But there also comes a time when it’s important to reflect on things and ensure awareness of how you operate – be that socially, professionally, creatively etc.

Like most things, everything in moderation.