When should you move quickly and when should you pause to reflect?

This study of professionals (including engineers, architects, managers, and therapists) seeks to understand how professionals problem solve and learn. Schön explains a concept called “reflection-in-action,” meaning improvising and thinking on your feet. “Reflection-on-action” happens after coming to a solution or finishing a task. His conclusion? Reflection-in-action is its own form of experimentation practiced by the best professionals.

Under time constraints, participants who iterated multiple times, and tested these iterations, performed better on a problem-solving task than those who spent longer on one version. The effect of iterating is strong: even those without prior task experience did better in the iteration condition than those with prior task experience in the non-iteration condition.

This study explores how an active mental break unrelated to the task at hand might improve creative performance. Participants completed a classic creativity task and interspersed their work with different types of breaks. Those who did a simple mental activity in between work spurts reported greater mind wandering and did best on their creative task. These mind-wanderers outperformed those who completed a demanding activity or simply took a full break.

The study uses three tasks to explore whether multiple goals across those tasks elevates creative performance. Participants who could choose what tasks they worked on and when—and set goals for all three—did best. Even if it seems like a lot to juggle, setting goals and giving permission to toggle between them may boost performance.

During an observation of teams during a design challenge, researchers inventoried how teams spent their time. They had four main areas of activity: naming, framing, moving, and reflecting. Reflecting throughout the challenge could move teams quickly to their next action, asking questions such as: What did we learn? or What was important?

Team reflexivity is the act of deliberate collective reflection on how a team is working. This study of 98 health care teams examined the practice and effect of team reflexivity on innovation. The findings suggest that team reflexivity is linked to team innovation. Reasons why might include discovery of models and adaptations shared across the group, that allow teams to better learn and develop.