Reflection Markers

The power just went out.

This is what I mumbled to my wife at 3 AM the other night. The fans shut off, the white noise, everything. The silence woke me up, as weird as that is. I also heard faint beeps echoing in other parts of the house.

We rarely lose power. Our power is all underground and on the same power grid as a local VA. If we lose it, it comes back quick. But the weird part is we’ve experienced multiple hurricanes here without the power so much as flickering. It was surprising.

It came back about 45 minutes later. And because I have the house loaded up with smart lights, one horrible side-effect is they come on full blast when the power comes back on. The kids were already up anyways, but it’s still a jarring way to wake up.

I was tired when the alarm went off at the real wake-up time. I came downstairs and meditated for 30 minutes like I always do. I let the kids sleep in.

During breakfast, I started to write in my journal. I was going to write about the power outage, but I was too tired. I just didn’t have the mental energy. So I just wrote “Power Outage” and left it so I could fill it in later.

Then I thought of something.

Since I started my new job almost a year ago, I stopped keeping to-do lists. Throughout my entire career, I’ve always kept a personal list of things I need to do. But, for some reason, I stopped doing it. I keep “Weekly Notes,” a simple list of what I’ve done, broken down by each day of the week. Something noteworthy happens, I add a bullet point. It could be a meeting or a bug I fixed or an idea.

I pause and put a marker.

It’s a point of meaning intended to force me to slow down, notice the moment, and express it in simple terms—like the “Power Outage” marker in my journal. It takes less than 10 seconds to do, but it helps me notice more. It’s a simple practice, but I believe it’s a big reason my intuition has improved. If you externalize an experience and mark it, you position yourself for later reflection. That reflection helps you better understand the work you’re doing. If you move from task to task without thinking, you miss the moments to reflect.

Intuition develops when you slow down to notice and draw meaning from experience.

In this way, we can express intuition as:

Intuition = Experience × Attention × Reflection

The experience is what happens.

The attention is our observation of it.

The reflection is how we derive meaning.

In systems designed for speed, we need time to slow down and reflect. You want to move fast enough to make progress, yet slow enough to learn from the experience.

Reflection Markers are a lightweight record of an experience worth returning to.

They contain three things:

1. Marker — What happened?
2. Annotation — What mattered?
3. Signifier — Where should it go?
   1. 💭 Think — Take it inward
   2. 💬 Talk — Take it outward
   3. ⚡ Act — Take it forward

The Principle

Experience doesn’t build intuition; attention to experience does.

The Practice

Run an experiment this week to create Reflection Markers in a weekly note.

1. Create a note file for the week.
2. Create a section for each day.
3. Write a bullet point for each marker.
4. Add context with annotations.
5. Make decisions with signifiers.

Example

Here’s a real example from last week.

The Marker: What happened?

Shipped a fix for a modal styling bug.

The Annotations: What mattered?

Shipped a fix for a modal styling bug.

• Expanded the scope to clean up the labels.
• Noticed Claude repeats the same bug.
• Thought about Claudes sharing context.
• Talked about solutions to the team.
• Added a Linear ticket for the idea.

The Signifiers: Where should it go?

Shipped a fix for a modal styling bug.

• Expanded the scope to clean up the labels.
• Noticed Claude repeats the same bug.
• 💭 Thought about Claudes sharing context.
• 💬 Talked about solutions to the team.
• ⚡️ Added a Linear ticket for the idea.

Inward. Outward. Forward.

I really like the framing of the signifiers:

1. Think — Take it inward
2. Talk — Take it outward
3. Act — Take it forward

You think about it internally. You wrestle with thoughts, ideas, and tensions in your mind. I like to read, walk, and write. That’s my flywheel of thinking.

You bring it out into open discussion. You talk to your colleagues and others. The ideas mix with the air to collect new perspectives. I like to talk individually and in small groups to see how an idea feels and grows.

You bring it out into open discussion. You talk to your colleagues and others. The ideas mix with the air to collect new perspectives. I like to talk individually and in small groups to see how an idea feels and grows.

Then you do something with it. You design a small experiment to test and learn. I like to frame a clear experiment designed to test an idea in the smallest way. I observe the results to inform future thinking.

Intuition + Integration + Iteration

This is the formula underneath my entire working philosophy. Even when I don’t see it, it emerges. Reflection Markers are just another expression of the formula. Simple practices, done intentionally, cultivate the environment for critical thinking to thrive.