Reflection Is an Underrated Engineering Skill (Here’s How I Practice It)

Source: Dev.to

Why Reactive Reflection Isn’t Enough

I used to end my weeks with a list of commits and a vague sense of progress. When things went wrong, I couldn’t explain why.

In my early days as an engineer, the rare moments I truly reflected on my work were after an incident. Our team would gather, dive deep into the event, identify the root cause, and extract learnings to avoid similar issues in the future. These incident retrospectives are valuable, but they are reactive rather than proactive. Waiting for an incident to reflect means we miss opportunities to improve before problems arise.

My Journey with Proactive Reflection

I decided to track how I think—not just what I ship. This shift changed me as an engineer, for the better.

• Pause between commits – I started taking a moment to consider what went well and what didn’t.
• Align with career goals – Regular reflection helped ensure my deliverables matched my long‑term objectives.
• Impact on promotion – My reflective practice was a major contributor to my job promotion last year, as it let me understand my impact more deeply and communicate it clearly to my manager.

My company even encouraged engineers to submit a weekly activity report via Slack that included a reflection, showing that this practice is gaining recognition at the corporate level.

How I Incorporate Reflection into My Workflow

I share one reflection prompt per week in a small newsletter, along with my own reflection and insights generated by Jot’s Reflection Engine. No hacks. No hot takes. Just a single question worth sitting with and pondering.

Homework

If you had to pick one question to reflect on this week, what would it be?

With that question in mind, spend some time reflecting on it. Feel free to share your reflections in the comments, and I’ll reply with a free reflection insight and score generated by Jot’s Reflection Engine.