What is the weekly review?
The Weekly Review is the secret to boosting your output, an essential component of your success and a competitive advantage for high-performing people.
The gift of clarity is the beauty of reviewing your week. Every week marks a new beginning—an opportunity to fall in love with yourself and all the possibilities surrounding your life/work.
It’s truly a magical moment, like looking at a crystal clear lake. Each week, everything is quiet and serene.
Working as a Corporate Communicator for an Ad Agency more than ten years ago, I realized how critical it was to have a clear picture of each project’s issues to make decisions. Having weekly reviews ensured that things didn’t get out of hand.
Your life will be much easier to manage if you conduct a weekly review. The review gives you a sense of direction and excitement for the days ahead. You build a sense of being grounded and centred. You understand your actions and where they are leading you.
However, I’ve noticed that reviews can be stressful for some people because they see all of their projects at once. Making decisions about “everything” can be exhausting.
In this blog, I invite you to try my simple bottom-up weekly review for a more organized and clear mind.
A weekly review is not an audit of your life.
In its simplest form, this practice is about ensuring you stay on track. Whatever that entails for you.
It’s an art, not a science.
The Weekly Review does not have to be an all-consuming task that eats up your time or energy. It is a simple yet powerful routine for organizing the things you are thinking or doing. However, not all reviews are equal.
Some weeks will be better than others. Some reviews will be positive, while others will be frustrating or distracting. Some will be more detailed than others. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll even miss a few, which is fine. They all have the potential to be great.
It doesn’t say that things will not improve. Rather, it means that you’ve decided to meet life exactly where it is right now, with all its imperfections.
Thinking that you have to review every single aspect of your life can feel daunting, especially if you’re not used to doing reviews.
For example, if you want to improve your relationship with your mother, a weekly review can help you remember to connect with her more frequently.
Or assume you want to get in shape but find dailyvery day difficult. Examining this habit can help you find more creative ways to achieve your goal.
The bottom-up approach to a weekly review
“The top-down folks like to plan and organize. They like to use maps and don’t shy from instruction manuals: they like to have an overview. The bottom-up people are just the opposite: they prefer to act spontaneously and try things out instead of reading & talking about them. They like to dive into a situation and experience it on their own.” – Dr. Martina Michalikova. Source
Instead of reviewing the big picture every week, start with a single project or area of your life. It could be something you want to focus on for the next week or simply something that stood out to you.
You can use this time to reflect on your accomplishments, evaluate your projects and obligations, and organize your workspace.
If you had less than 2 minutes to review your week, you could ask yourself: Which project do I believe will have the most significant impact if I complete it this week?
When you reflect on your endeavours, you gain confidence in yourself. When you feel better, you are more willing to get things done.
If you find this activity tiring, ensure it’s not too strenuous. It’s not about making rigid plans or life-changing decisions.
There’s a better way.
A bottom-up approach is an efficient way that doesn’t exhaust you right off the bat.
How to implement the bottom-up approach to the weekly review
Any options I’m sharing below can help you make this process less daunting.
Download your stream of consciousness
Begin with what occupies your mental space. Declutter your mind first. These could be tasks, projects or just everyday frustrations.
When you write down your worries, they tend to look small. This will help you put your problems in perspective. This clears the fog in your mind and helps you recognize your life patterns.
Having a clean first brain creates more energy and focus.
You also might want to write a paragraph or sentence summarizing your week, the people you met, the interests you picked on, and the ideas you had. There is no wrong way to go about this.
“During this week, I went to my brother’s baseball game, met up with friends, published a blog post, talked to ten prospects, and even made a fancy steak dinner for my partner that took a lot of preparation,” for example.
Imagine how powerful it will be to capture all 52 weekly summaries. You could write a summary of your entire year on one page! Consider how fast it would be to put that together. The possibilities for what you can create with your diverse pieces of knowledge are limitless.
Review your wins
Your accomplishments are worth celebrating. It demonstrates your bravery. So rejoice in your moments of triumph! Even the ones that feel incomplete, the ones that didn’t go quite as planned, or that took a lot of guts to attempt.
A few months ago, I ran a 5k on Stanley Park with my mother-in-law, who was visiting the city. I’m not a runner, so I was concerned about slowing everyone down.
She was wise to remind me of the importance of community and to celebrate even the smallest victories. “This isn’t about running fast. It’s about running together,” she’d say, and whenever I got tired, she’d say, “Let’s set a small goal, like passing that bench, and then we can slow down.” After passing so many benches and having the energy to push for one more, I felt great. Words of encouragement like “You’re doing amazing!” and claps after passing a bench were rewarding.
Assess your project milestones, even the ones which seem kind of invisible. Have you recently begun learning about a new tool? Or have you implemented something you’re learning from a course? All of your actions are accelerating your momentum and propelling you forward.
Give yourself an opportunity to be aware of what’s going on in your life to fill in any gaps and avoid misunderstandings.
You can see how far you’ve come when you compile your achievements. You can also retrace your steps and make a template from your wins so you can recreate them whenever you want.
Manage your knowledge
Your Second Brain is an area of your life that requires upkeep. Separate the important from the trivial and organize your physical and digital spaces to eliminate distractions and focus on the projects that are most important to you.
Doing so makes it easier to access your information on demand, helping you become a faster, more efficient creator.
This is your chance to identify opportunities and begin or complete projects with the knowledge you already possess.
Some of the things I do to manage my knowledge are as follows:
- Process inboxes, such as emails, desktop/downloads folder, or anywhere I capture information. File away notes you’ve received or gathered over the past week into their appropriate folder or page. I use the BASB framework called PARA, which helps me decide how I move information.
- Look at what’s ahead in my calendar to plan around time-sensitive events.
- Read journals to determine the common thread that runs through my days.
Get creative
You can always get creative with how you want to review your week.
I’m biased toward photography. I go about my life capturing the beauty of what’s happening around me. And I love picking a picture each week. A picture can tell our stories in ways words can’t. A reminder of how much we have to feel blessed.
This week, pick your favourite photo, piece of art, or even the funniest meme.
Just so you know, I don’t always stick to this list. After 15 minutes of journaling and project review, my intuition knows exactly what to do next. The goal is to allow myself to enter those first initial minutes of flow.
How to incorporate a weekly review habit into your life?
Habits are not easy to form. Our brains are hardwired to seek out familiarity. This means that we tend to do what we know, even if it is unhealthy.
After developing this habit for a few weeks, many of my clients have mentioned positive results in their daily lives, such as reduced stress levels. I also recommend beginning with small, manageable changes.
As you establish positive routines, you will notice patterns of behaviour that will help you become more productive and have a better relationship with getting things done. You have the keys to unlocking your full potential if you conduct regular reviews.
The more reviews you go through, the more at ease you will feel with them.
However, it is essential to note that a weekly review it’s not intended to fix everything. It may take several practices, but it will help you realize where you put your attention.
Don’t be too hard on yourself if the process is less than perfect.
The Setting
The setting is essential to me. I pay close attention to my surroundings to relax and focus. My goal is to create a sacred atmosphere.
I also play a variety of music without lyrics in the background, such as electronic ambient beats, jazz or classical.
Schedule it
I’ve been reviewing my weeks for many years now. Having a set day and time to do this is super helpful to me. Initially, Sundays were my best days to go through this activity. But now I do it on Fridays.
Whatever day you choose, make sure it’s consistent.
Find Accountability
If many things get in the way, such as time constraints, excuses, and other distractions, then ask someone to be your buddy for extra accountability. It will encourage you to keep going.
For two years, I’ve hosted a Weekly Review group every Friday at 10:30 am PST. We work together for 50 minutes with two 25-minute review sprints and a 5-minute break. At the end of the session, we share our experiences with the group, which is usually filled with gratitude for having this space available.
Most importantly, performing weekly reviews with others can be fun!
If you are interested in joining this group, let me know here.
Tools + Notion Template
One last thing! I made this simple Notion template you can use. It helps me get the most out of this habit. Will you duplicate this page into your second brain?
Your next move is to schedule a time to review your latest accomplishments and ensure that your projects and areas have the most relevant pieces of information you’ve been gathering.
