The Importance of Planning and Reflecting

Listen to Nanon de Gaspe Beaubien Mattrick talk about the difference between accumulating and integrating new knowledge.

I was working in New York and I brought my mother along with me and I dragged her, she has so much energy, from 7:00 in the morning meetings to 10:00 dinners and she said to me, I find this very interesting, how fast you move from meeting to meeting. Do you ever take time to, I see you’re observing, you’re taking notes, but do you ever integrate all that information? And that’s something that I’m now paying a lot of attention to. Because I wasn’t. And a lot of that knowledge, once you accumulate it, and your able to reflect upon it and say, hm, how does this impact me, unless you integrate it, it’s lost knowledge. So that I’m really forcing myself, and I tend to, during the week it’s a little harder, but I make quick notes after a meeting, and on the weekend, I’m now taking the time to integrate. And to build on that, just after this women’s weekend, one of the things I grew up in my family, in the family business, was 5 year plan, 10 year plan. Now the pace at which we’re moving, in the internet world, that’s a little far ahead. I think more in 2 year to 5 year plan, and I realize that recently, with Beehive, I need to take a little time to write down a few ideas for my 5 year plan so I’m going to take that away as a takeaway from this weekend with all of these wonderful women, to reflect and put down pen to paper. All the research, Harvard Business School’s done a lot of, McKinsey, shows that people who plan get a lot farther than people who don’t plan. So just by setting those goals in your head, you’ll achieve more than if you hadn’t. So that’s something important to remember too.