A System To Finish Your Week Strong
How we finish our week is just as important as the routines and systems that we have built to maximize each day. While our morning, daily, and evening routines are the keys to consistently showing up every day, it is critical to take some time each week to reflect on how the previous week went, review our systems, and plan for the week ahead. Without this opportunity to refine and plan, we break the iterative approach that allows us to evaluate how we are doing and improve.
Preparation
Grab your favorite notebook, piece of paper, or digital document. I personally use a tool called Obsidian to manage much of my life.
System Steps
1. Pick your review day
This would generally be Monday morning, Friday afternoon, Saturday or Sunday. Choose whatever day works best for your schedule.
2. Measure progress
How are you progressing toward your goals? Adjust your scorecard(s) accordingly. While results are great (lagging indicators), we only have control over our inputs (leading indicators) so it’s best to track as many of these as we can to determine if they are having a positive effect on our results. For example, if you are trying to lose weight, you would not only want to track the number on the scale but also your calories consumed, macronutrients, days of adherence, etc so that you can determine what needs tweaking.
3. Evaluate your previous week
Each week, on your review day, spend some time thinking about how your week went. What went well? What didn’t go well? Did you consistently execute your systems and routines? What issues did you face? Were the issues within your control? If so, what do you plan to do differently next week? Are there any parallels with your recent week-end evaluations? Write all of this down in your document.
4. Adjust your systems and routines
Based on your progress and evaluation for the previous week, do you need to adjust any of your systems and routines? Perhaps you overslept a couple of days and need to start your bedtime routine a bit earlier? Perhaps the time you had planned to exercise isn’t working out because work or life keeps getting in the way. This is the most subjective part of the process but also extremely important. If you failed to do something the reasons could be highly variable. A good place to start your analysis is to make sure you have a compelling reason for doing the thing that you want to do and reduce friction as much as possible. You can read more about doing this here.
5. Set a focus for the week ahead
If there were things that didn’t go well last week that were within your control then it is probably a good idea to focus on correcting them in the week ahead. Make that focus a theme for your week to get things back on track. If things are going well, you can keep your existing focus or decide you want to progress in a different area by starting or refining a system or habit.
6. Plan for the week ahead
A great week starts by having a great plan that is in alignment with your vision, goals, and values. A great productivity strategy is to structure your day with deep work time blocks that will allow you to focus on different types of work based on when you are most capable of doing that type of work. You can read more about how to do this here. Each week evaluate your task list and schedule tasks into your deep work blocks on your calendar. This way, when it is time to execute, you don’t have to try to figure out what you should be working on. You just show up and execute.
Final Thoughts
Just like a great morning routine starts the night before, a great week starts the week before. Each week, we have the opportunity to course correct by fixing any mistakes made the previous week, setting ourselves up for success. Here's to finishing your week strong and starting the next with even more clarity, focus, and determination.
P.S. I’m currently looking for 3 more businesses to participate in our Slipstream beta program. We will help you identify, document, and systemize your core processes in Slipstream and give you an extended free trial (6 months!). Drop me a message on LinkedIn if you are interested!