Context

For years I've been trying to integrate a weekly review and planning process in my productivity system. But I never really managed to make it work as my task system was built rather around what I'm doing today, and how I plan tomorrow.

This was until I really had way too much to do a few months ago, and I had to find a much simpler system to manage the chaos in my head.

From where it comes

That's when I started to use the "Productivy Planner" from the company Intelligent Change.

It's a paper planner that comes with a few structured productivity routines:

• A morning review to plan the day

• An evening review to make sense of what happened

• A weekly review to see the successes and improve the next week

• A weekly planning to decide what's really important for next week.

What makes this system different are two things:

• It limits the number of things you can put on your plate (and also creates clarity about what's essential, what would be nice, and what is just a bonus)

• It integrates positive psychology elements like gratitude and reflection journaling

The system I use

I'm sharing here the images from the Intellingent Change website that show how the Weekly Review and Weekly Planning look like in the Productivity Planner.

Weekly review

The weekly review is all about:

• Recognizing the good stuff that happened

• Making sure that no important task that was missed last week gets forgotten

• Reflect and learn to make changes in how you work

• And decide how what you've learned could be applied next week

To make this part work well, I go back in my calendar to see what happened this week, I review my journal of "happy things" and "achievements" in Notion.

Weekly planning

The weekly planning review is all about:

• Making sure that you're clear on where you're trying to go

• Seperating clearly what's important, secondary and bonus

• Making sure that you don't overhwelm yourself with too many tasks

To make this part work well, I often look at all the reminders I have for the coming week in the Things app and all the meetings I have in my calendar.

How I'm trying to improve this system

• Making it hybrid: Previously I tried to do all of this in paper, but now I try to bring back tools like Things that make it easy to quickly jot down a reminder for a specific day.

• Making it smaller: I'm switching from the planner (that I found too big) to the cards.

• Making it smarter: I'm trying to find a way to keep better track of my learnings (maybe I'll do it in the same way I do it with databases in Notion than what I do for my "happy things" and "achievements" lists.

We'll see how that goes.