How a Weekly Review Can Help Identify What's Working, and Pivot When It's Not

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.

• Seneca

A weekly review is, in name, a simple task, but the difficulty lies in one’s ability to conduct it.

As someone with ADHD, that consistency part is… challenging to say the least. I first learned about a weekly review some years ago, and I’ve conducted less than twenty since.

I like to think of it as a mix between an After Action Review from the military, and a Sprint Retro, from Agile.

Unfortunately, what seems simple can be challenging to keep up with.

The weeks seem to blend together after a time. Doing this over the last month has allowed me to identify ways to improve.

My Process

• Create a weekly review doc in Obsidian

• Review the week in the bullet journal and correlate items with daily notes in Obsidian

• Move anything of note to the weekly review doc

• Move anything of note to the Brag Doc

• Reflect on the distractions sections of the daily notes and bullet journal

Reflection and Planning

There wouldn’t be much of a point to the review if it wasn’t something you could use to change your trajectory.

Throughout the week, I’ll write down what distracts me. During the weekly review I will attempt to identify a solution for the following week.

This could mean:

• Blocking time on the calendar

• Closing Slack and setting Do Not Disturb on my devices

• Leaving my phone in another room.

Regardless of the issue, being able to identify and improve, even by a tiny amount, means growth towards what I truly want to be doing. Not wasting time on things I shouldn’t.