Taking effective action on YOUR priorities won’t happen by accident. In fact, without a bit of planning, and some focused effort, it won’t happen at all.

I use three anchor activities in my week – the Workday Startup, the Workday Shutdown, and the Weekly Review – to keep me oriented in the right direction. This is part 3 of a 3-week series that highlights each of these “rituals.”

I fully expect your version of a Weekly Review to look different than mine, but here’s the goal: your Weekly Review should help you collect any “open loops” and close out your week with a complete clarity about the status of your projects and what to do next.

I schedule 90-minutes every Friday to tackle this review as close to the end of my work day as possible. It is ideally the last “official” thing on my calendar before my work for the week is done as it is designed to ensure I have absolute clarity about everything I’m working on, the next actions I need to take, and time blocked in the following week to make progress.

Like the Workday Startup and Workday Shutdown, my Weekly Review is driven by a checklist that I link in the recurring calendar entry.

This is a holistic process, so it incorporates reviewing all aspects of my life, not just “work.”

Here’s what I do to end every week:

Compare my work to my goals. I take a quick scan of my list of goals and compare them to the ways in which I invested my time. Was their alignment? Were there distractions? What can this teach me about how to do it better next week? (No judgment, just iterative progress)

Update my lists. I do a scan of everything on my projects and actions lists and remove anything I’ve completed

Collect. I do a “brain dump” to capture as much as I possibly can. I use a handy list of “triggers” derived from the book Getting Things Done (by David Allen) to get me started. I also review the photos and notes on my phone, review the past week on my calendar to see if I need to follow up or continue anything that is incomplete, look into the next four weeks on my calendar to grab anything I need to be aware of in the near future, and make sure any physical items (like mail, things that need to be filed, or random items I need to relocate) are in my in-box tray on my desk so I can deal with them. 

Process. Now I have to decide what each of these things is, and what I want to do about them. I determine what needs to be done, delegated, or deleted and then decide the next action for each of them. Then I review my project lists and ensure I have a next action for everything that is active.

Look for opportunities to delegate. Now that I know everything that needs to be done, I have to determine how much of it needs to be done by me. I review the work and fire off emails to my assistant, employees, and contractors about things I need them to handle on my behalf.

Plan the week ahead. With my projects and actions lists updated and some of the work already delegated, I take some time to determine how much capacity I have in the coming week and how to move my highest leverage work forward. I schedule time to work on the priorities I have deemed most valuable and fill as much of my week as is practical.

Reset my workspace. The last thing I do is a quick cleanup of my workspace. I leave it in the state that I want to find it in when I return next week. Ready for me to dive in. Sometimes it’s just a matter of straightening up, other times it’s an opportunity to leave myself a note to prime my progress tomorrow.

There are a few more steps in the process that relate specifically to my work, but that’s the gist of it. Your routine is going to look different, but I challenge you to consider how a block of time designed to help you gracefully wrap up your work week with purpose could change the game for you. What activities would help you close the books on the week knowing that nothing is left hanging and you are already primed for success next week?

How would a consistent Weekly Review help you make greater progress on your most valuable work?

The new year is right around the corner and I want you to start 2025 with complete clarity about how you want your business to work for you. Grab my new PDF, 3 Questions Every Small Business Owner Should Answer Before The End of the Year, and you’ll not only be primed to clarify how to get more of what you want from your business, but you’ll have a chance to grab 90-minutes of free coaching with me.