Without Reviewing, Effort Alone Won’t Move You Forward
> Source: Compiled from online materials
---
Business Thinking — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
> Editor’s Note:
> Churchill once said: "Never waste a good crisis."
---
In challenging times, economic and social pressures reveal weaknesses that prosperity tends to hide. These moments call not only for accepting reality but also for actively improving efficiency and spotting opportunities to change the status quo.
One powerful tool for doing this?
Structured review and reflection — distilling the lessons of the past to guide future action.
---
I. Why Review Matters
1. Avoiding Low-Level Repetition
- For adults, 70% of learning happens through workplace practice, 20% through communicating with others, and 10% through formal education.
- Practice alone doesn’t guarantee skill growth — aimless repetition leads to naïve practice.
- Deliberate review is what allows practice to evolve into genuine improvement.
> Key takeaway: Without review, years of effort can become low-level repetition.

---
2. Giving Meaning to Success and Failure
- Liu Chuanzhi integrated the review methodology inspired by Zeng Guofan into Lenovo’s core corporate culture.
- At Lenovo, leaders are judged not only by results but also by their ability to learn from process and outcomes.
- Failure is tolerated if causes are identified and corrections made.
- Success without understanding “why” cannot reliably be repeated.
---
II. The Review Triangle — Record, Reflect, Extract
To make review part of daily life, follow the Review Triangle:
Step 1: Record
- At day’s end, write down:
- People you met
- Conversations you had
- Work done
- Emotions felt
- Record everything faithfully. Avoid mental shortcuts — memory distorts facts.
- Honest recording is the foundation for meaningful reflection.

---
Step 2: Reflect
- Analyze what happened:
- Identify causes and consequences
- See patterns in actions and emotions
- Challenge judgments — are they temporary or habitual?
- Use tools like AiToEarn官网 to pair personal review with analytics, content sharing, and feedback across platforms.
---
Step 3: Extract
- Boil your reflection into one clear, actionable sentence — your personal principle.
- Criteria for a good extraction:
- In your own words
- Specific and applicable
- Easy to remember
- Directly changes your behavior when recalled

---
III. Characteristics of a Good Review
- Play the movie back — mentally replay events in sequence.
- Focus on yourself — genuine review is self-criticism, not external blame.
- Review for yourself — be honest, not performative.
- Review your pain — Pain + Reflection = Progress.
- Drive and accelerate action — results matter more than words.
- Constantly question assumptions — dig for underlying principles and challenge them.

---
IV. Criteria for Effective Review
- Ability to Look Back — connect new learnings to practical application.
- Ability to Reflect — reverse-trace results to the actions and beliefs that caused them.
- Self-Examination — go deeper to identify mental “bugs” and remove destructive patterns.

---
V. How to Practice Review Step-by-Step
Use a daily–weekly–monthly–yearly structure to create a feedback loop.
---
1. Daily Review
Ask:
- What did I achieve today?
- What did I learn or realize?
- How can I adjust tomorrow?
Tips:
- Fix a set review time.
- Differentiate review logs (short, quick) from review journals (deep analysis).
- Benchmark against principles like Kazuo Inamori’s Six Practices or Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits.
---
2. Weekly Review
- Key events: Summarize major wins, challenges, and conversations.
- Work principles: Update your methods and action guides.
- Values check: Ensure tasks align with your mission and vision.
- Plan next week: Prioritize but avoid overload.
- Update principles library: Keep core guiding rules relevant.

---
3. Monthly Review
- List key events
- Identify your best task and most improvable task
- Note your most significant gain
- Review habits and emotional state
- Track risks and progress toward annual goals
- Seek feedback from a trusted coach
- Draft next month’s action plan


---
4. Yearly Review
Perform a three-dimensional analysis:
- Past achievements and core lessons
- Life history and growth milestones
- Future vision — ultimate goals, legacy, and priorities
- Key users/customers: their pain points, your solutions
---
VI. Conclusion
In The Little Prince, it’s said: “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Continuous structured review sharpens inner vision.
Clarity of heart is what brings clarity of perception — insight, more than knowledge, drives transformation.
---
✅ Action Prompt:
Starting today, choose one review method — daily log, weekly summary, or monthly deep dive — and keep at it for 30 days. Notice patterns emerging, refine them into principles, and act on them.
---
Do you want me to also create a visual one-page template for daily/weekly/monthly reviews that you can print and use directly? This would make the whole system more practical and easier to adopt.