Reflection and Review
Habits automate behavior and free cognitive resources — but without reflection, they also automate your current level of performance. You reinforce what you already do rather than improving it.
"The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors."
Reflection and review is the corrective: a periodic check that keeps habits improving rather than ossifying.
Pat Riley's CBE Program
In 1986, the LA Lakers started 29–5 and were called the best team in basketball history. They were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs.
Riley responded by creating the Career Best Effort (CBE) program. He tracked every player's statistics back to high school to establish a baseline, then asked each player to improve their output by 1% over the course of the season. CBE tracked not just points and rebounds but "unsung hero" deeds: diving for loose balls, helping a teammate, drawing a foul by taking a charge.
The formula produced a single CBE score per player per game, compared against historical and league baselines. Riley posted top performers weekly and showed players whether their current numbers were above or below the same month the year before.
Eight months after launch: NBA champions. The following year: back-to-back.
The Lakers already had talent. CBE made sure that talent was compounding, not declining.
How to Review
Annual Review (December):
- What went well this year?
- What didn't go so well?
- What did I learn?
Count up: articles published, workouts completed, new places visited. Tally inputs, not just outcomes.
Integrity Report (June):
- What are the core values that drive my life and work?
- How am I living and working with integrity right now?
- How can I set a higher standard in the future?
The Integrity Report reconnects daily habits to identity. It is the moment to ask whether the things you do each day are still serving the person you want to become.
The Mirror Analogy
- Daily tracking is looking at your face from an inch away. You see every imperfection and lose the bigger picture. Too much feedback.
- Never reviewing is never looking in the mirror. You don't notice the fixable things. Too little feedback.
- Periodic review is the conversational distance. You see the important things without losing the view of the whole.
What Review Prevents
Complacency trap: Once a skill feels automatic, performance plateaus or slightly declines. Without review, you assume "more experience = more improvement." In fact, once you stop paying attention to errors, you encode them along with correct behavior.
Identity rigidity: The more sacred a belief is to you — the more tightly it's tied to your identity — the harder it becomes to grow beyond it. Annual reviews are the time to ask whether your current identity still serves you or has become a cage.
Paul Graham: "Keep your identity small." The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting.
Connections
- goldilocks-rule — reflection and review is how you stay calibrated to the Goldilocks zone over time; it surfaces whether you've drifted into boredom or overwhelm
- deliberate-practice — deliberate practice requires feedback; reflection and review is the feedback mechanism for habits operating below the deliberate-practice threshold
- identity-based-habits — integrity reports reconnect daily habits to identity; reflection is how identity stays flexible rather than rigid
- habit-tracking — tracking provides the data; reflection and review is what you do with it