The power of the weekly review (+ my step by step process)

The ever-wise James Clear has graced us again:

"Where you spend your attention is where you spend your life."

A very true statement. However, in order to spend our attention wisely and to where it matters most, we need to develop the awareness as to what is actually going on in our lives and how it all fits together. Every week we get hit by an onslaught of (planned and unplanned) tasks, obligations, errands and projects. If we don't regularly evaluate what's going well, where we can improve, and whether we spend our attention where it’s most meaningful to us, the daily grind will inevitably take over. And if it does, life feels more like it’s happening to us, rather than for us. We are no longer in the director’s seat, but are merely watching a movie.

And since I personally don't like this reactive mode for too long, I have decided years ago that I take 10 minutes to an hour every week to answer myself a list of pre-defined questions and do some mental house keeping. I look at it this way: If you have a garden, inevitably weed will grow among your beautiful flowers and plants. Now if you take the time to pluck out that weed once a week, it's still manageable. But with every week that you wait, the weed will spread.

Over time, it will take away the space for new seeds and beautiful flowers to grow. And within a year there might be very little left of your garden. I personally observe a similar pattern with our minds. If we don't do a minimum of maintenance every now and then, all kinds of loose ends and open feedback loops will accumulate and cloud our thinking, which can lead to ever surmounting anxiety.

So let me share with you my super simple process for a weekly review. I personally do them on Sunday evening, but you might prefer to do them on Friday before you leave work. If everything fails, I make it my duty to do it first thing Monday morning before I touch anything else, no exceptions!

My Weekly Review Process

First I do some housekeeping:

• Review last 2 weeks and upcoming 6 weeks in calendar - are there any meetings that I need to follow up on or upcoming events that need preparing?
• Process Email Inbox - get to Zero, meaning no more emails in the Inbox. Anything either is answered immediately, filed as a task or deleted/archived.
• Review and close all open browser tabs - I oftentimes have several tabs open that I wanted to get to eventually during the week. Now is the time to either put them on my reading list or take a deep breath and close them ;-)
• Process Physical Inbox - Look through all letters, papers and magazines lying around, in loose folders, desk, floor, bags, bed drawer. Pay bills, note any tasks that are due or need a follow up.
• Process To Do List - For every todo on that list define if I still want to do it, if I need to make it a project, and what the immediate next action is.
• Process Project List - I have a list of projects that are currently ongoing. I go through them and ask myself where I am stuck, if the next step is clear and what its relative importance is compared to all the others on the list.

Secondly, I ask myself a bunch of questions:

• How did my previous week go? The good and the bad.
• What did I do well? My wins.
• What did not go well? What didn't I do, who didn't I reach out to?
• Any significant events. Great moments with friends, family or breakthrough at work.
• What are my plans for the following week?
• How do I intend to take what I have learned from my previous week and do better next week?

And lastly, during the whole process, I look through this curated list of prompts and see if anything strikes a chord or is applicable to a certain project, task or challenge:

• Do you really need to think more, or is it simply a matter of doing the work?
• Look at each item on your to-do list and ask, "Is this truly necessary?”
• What would this look like if it were easy?
• What if you only had two weeks to finish this project?
• Think of the ultimate outcome you are hoping to achieve. Is there a path to accomplishing this where you would encounter less resistance?
• If we were meeting three years from today, what would need to have happened during that time for you to feel happy about your progress?
• What do I spend a silly amount of money on? How might I scratch my own itch?
• What are the worst things that could happen? Could I get back here?
• If I could only work 2 hours per week on this project, what would I do?
• Could it be that everything is fine and complete as is?

Now, I make it a point that I do the absolute minimum of at least doing my inbox zero, organizing all my tasks and projects and roughly plan the three most important things for next week. I never miss doing at least that. Sometimes the above takes 10 minutes, sometimes it takes 3 hours (especially if I haven't done a longer one in a while or there are a lot of moving parts in my life).

The consistency is important. Tend to your mental garden my friend 🌿

If you'd like to go deeper, I really like Tiago Forte's in-depth guide on weekly reviews.