Many people are busy all week yet can’t say what they accumulated toward. The missing piece is a review step — experience comes and goes without being captured. Review isn’t a play-by-play diary; it’s distilling the week into reusable judgment. A fixed 30-minute template is enough to get it running.
Four Questions Are Enough
Answer four questions each week:
- What I did: the week’s key output and progress
- What worked: which actions produced good results, worth repeating
- What didn’t: what wasted time, to avoid next time
- Next week’s focus: based on the above, the one or two things that matter most
Keep it short — a few sentences each. What matters is being consistent and honest, not eloquent.
Review Wins, Not Just Failures
Most people only reflect when something breaks, so they slowly become good at avoiding risk while losing track of “what was already right.” Review success too: why did this go smoothly? Turn it into a repeatable method instead of one-off luck.
Connect Review to Output
The good ideas that surface in review are often the next article, the next topic, the next improvement. As you finish, drop the writable ones into your topic bank and the doable ones into next week’s plan. That way review doesn’t just look back — it drives the next round of action.
Fix the Time, Lower the Bar
Put the review at a fixed time each week (say Friday afternoon) and treat it as a small, unbreakable ritual. The lower and more fixed the bar, the easier to sustain. Thirty minutes, four questions, one doc — this plainest system compounds remarkably over time.