One valuable lesson I've picked up from Prof Ellen Langer's books on Mindfulness is the importance of contextualization. How does A fit into B? Does it mean that we should always adhere to the same action when a particular scenario strikes? How does the environment affect the outcome? It's vital, Langer writes, to set issues into context; one must be wary of falling into a trap of doing things mindlessly. The same action to a same trigger stimulus in a different context may yield very results that are poles apart. In essence, how do we 'put things into perspective'?
Sounds rather silly to state this out? Well, not really. It's actually harder to practice it than it is to understand it. For one, setting issues in context means treating every situation as a different one, and we may not apply the 'tried-and-tested' response to all similar situations. Two, acknowledging different situations may mean that we have to seek new ways of problem-solving. That not only takes time, but effort.
Take for example, preparing a background paper. The writing should ideally cater to the audience – what would the reader require this information for? How may the reader utilize the information? What level of detail is required for the reader to understand? But more often than not, we don't put that much thought into the piece of work. It may be due to time or resource constraint, but it's also true that sometimes we have no idea who the end user may be, or we do not know enough about the end user and hence there is no way of catering to the reader. Still, we should acknowledge the merits of contextualization, and then work on catering to that need.
Me? Still working on it. It's going to be a lifelong pursuit. hahaha
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