A Weekly Review Will Make Your Days Run Remarkably Smoother

Think of it as a regular check-in with yourself

Herbert Lui
Forge
Published in
3 min readNov 13, 2020

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Woman going through papers and writing things down.
Photo: Morsa Images/Getty Images

Last year, I spent a lot of time feeling distracted. I never seemed to have enough time to do everything I needed to do, and I didn’t have a strong grasp on the big picture of my life.

As I wondered how I could feel a greater sense of control over my days, I remembered a practice I’d heard about years back: The Weekly Review, popularized by David Allen’s Getting Things Done productivity method. Basically, it’s the ritual of checking in with yourself every week and figuring out how to be more deliberate with your time.

Many ultra-productive people have written about their own versions of the weekly review: Michael Karnjanaprakorn, the founder of Skillshare, does one that ties into his New Year’s resolutions. Cal Newport’s weekly review is super flexible and matches the challenges of the specific week ahead (he writes that “the return on investment is phenomenal”). Lifehacker founder Gina Trapani’s review includes lots of concrete steps, and the productivity expert Tiago Forte keeps a weekly review checklist on a sticky note on his computer’s desktop.

I started doing my own weekly review, and it has since become my most foundational productivity tool. For me, each review is a reset…

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Herbert Lui
Forge
Writer for

Covering the psychology of creative work for content creators, professionals, hobbyists, and independents. Author of Creative Doing: https://www.holloway.com/cd