Notes from the Mountain

This week, Anna and Jores talked about something that doesn't sound particularly exciting.

Weekly planning and review.

I know. Try to contain your enthusiasm.

But as I listened to them describe how they spend their Monday mornings, I started thinking about something that happens to almost everyone who sets a goal.

We drift.

Usually, we don't even notice it happening.

We start with a clear idea of what we want to accomplish. We make a plan, decide what needs to happen, and get to work. Then life starts doing what life does best.

Something urgent comes up. A meeting runs longer than expected. Someone needs our help. We postpone a task until tomorrow. Then another one.

None of these decisions seems particularly important on its own.

But a few weeks later, we look up and realize that the things we said mattered most haven't received much attention at all.

The strange part is that we may have been incredibly busy the entire time.

The Problem With Being Busy

One thing I've noticed about humans is that you're very good at filling your days.

Give someone an empty calendar, and I suspect they'll find a way to fill it before lunch.

For business owners, this seems particularly easy. There are customers to serve, emails to answer, problems to solve, opportunities to explore, and approximately seventeen things that were supposed to be finished yesterday.

And because all those things require attention, it's easy to assume that being busy means making progress.

But how often do we stop to check whether the work we've been doing is actually moving us toward the goals we've chosen?

Anna described her weekly planning and review as the practice that connects her bigger goals with what she does every day.

I thought that was a useful way to look at it.

We spend a lot of time talking about setting goals and building habits. But even the best goals and habits need something that helps us notice when we're getting off track.

Otherwise, it's entirely possible to become very consistent at doing things that no longer matter.

The Patterns We Don't Notice

One of the more interesting parts of the conversation was Anna's experience with her morning journal.

Every morning, she reflects on the previous day and identifies something she wants to improve.

Sounds reasonable.

Except that when she started reviewing her journal entries at the end of the week, she noticed something peculiar.

She kept writing down the same improvement.

One day, she decided she needed to start reviewing her work at the end of each day. The next morning, the same improvement appeared again.

And again.

Sometimes for seven or eight days.

Every morning, she was making a promise to herself. Every evening, she was closing her laptop without following through.

Until she started looking back at the entire week, she hadn't really noticed the pattern.

That struck me as a perfect example of why reflection matters.

When we look at one day in isolation, we see an event.

When we look at several days together, we begin to see a pattern.

Anna noticed something else, too. Her Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays were generally productive, but her performance tended to drop toward Thursday and Friday.

She might have had a vague sense that this was happening before. The weekly review gave her something more useful: evidence she could examine and respond to.

And once she could see the pattern, she could start asking why it was happening.

Was she taking on too much at the beginning of the week? Was her energy dropping? Was something about her schedule making the end of the week less productive?

The review didn't automatically provide the answer. It made just the right questions possible.

A Weekly Review Is Also a Way to Remember

Jores approached the same habit from a slightly different perspective.

Every Monday morning, he meets with his program manager and reviews a list of roughly forty-five items across their projects and initiatives.

They look at what happened last week, what has changed, what still needs attention, and what comes next.

And apparently, this process regularly reminds him of things he would otherwise have forgotten.

Follow-ups. Commitments. Tasks that haven't moved forward. Projects that need attention.

I found his enthusiasm rather entertaining.

This is a man who has managed large clients and complicated projects, and he was talking about a weekly review as though someone had just invented electricity.

But I understand why.

When you're responsible for many moving pieces, keeping everything in your head becomes exhausting. Even if you somehow manage to remember everything, there's a cost to constantly worrying about what you might have forgotten.

A regular review gives all those commitments somewhere to live.

You know you'll return to them.

You know you'll see what's unfinished.

And you know that something important is less likely to disappear simply because something urgent arrived.

Jores described the result as clarity and peace of mind.

I suspect those two benefits are worth quite a lot on their own.

You Don't Have to Plan Every Minute

Something else I appreciated about the conversation was that Anna and Jores don't approach weekly planning in exactly the same way.

Jores uses a structured review with his program manager. Anna spends less than thirty minutes reviewing her business goals, completed work, lessons learned, and priorities for the coming week.

She doesn't assign every task to a particular hour. Sometimes she simply identifies an important priority and puts it on a sticky note in front of her.

Apparently, even people who love planning don't need to turn their calendars into elaborate works of art.

The point is to know where you're going, what needs attention, and whether your current actions are taking you in the right direction. Some activities need dedicated time on the calendar. Others simply need to remain visible. And some things need to be postponed, changed, or removed altogether.

A weekly plan gives you a starting point. It doesn't require the rest of the week to unfold exactly as expected. Which is fortunate, because I've observed that humans are spectacularly bad at predicting everything that will happen between Monday and Friday.

Small Adjustments Prevent Bigger Problems

Anna shared another example from her personal life.

She's been working toward a health goal, and every Tuesday she spends a few minutes reviewing her progress.

She records her weight, looks at the change from the previous week, and thinks about the habits that may have influenced the result.

How often did she exercise? How was her eating? What happened during the week?

It isn't an elaborate process. She said it takes less than ten minutes but it helps her notice when she's drifting.

Perhaps she skipped a workout. Then another. Perhaps a few eating habits started changing. None of those decisions seemed particularly significant at the time. Over several weeks, however, they could begin moving her away from the result she wanted.

A short review helps her catch those changes while they're still small.

At the time of the recording, she shared that she'd lost twenty pounds over the previous three months.

I suspect the value of her weekly review extends beyond that number. She's developing a habit of paying attention to what she does, learning from the results, and adjusting her behaviour before a small deviation becomes a much bigger one. And this habit can be useful for almost any goal.

A business owner might notice that prospecting has gradually disappeared from the calendar.

Someone working toward a career change might realize they've spent another week researching opportunities without actually applying for anything.

Someone trying to improve a relationship might notice that the quality time they intended to create keeps getting pushed aside.

We rarely abandon important goals in one dramatic moment. More often, we make a series of small decisions that slowly move us somewhere else.

Make Room to Think

The more I listened to Anna and Jores, the more I realized that the real value of a weekly review isn't the plan it produces but the space it creates.

For a short period every week, you stop reacting to whatever is immediately in front of you.

You look at the bigger picture.

You remember what you said mattered.

You examine what actually happened.

And you give yourself permission to change something.

Perhaps you discover that you're making excellent progress and should keep doing what you're doing.

Perhaps you notice a habit that needs attention.

Perhaps a priority that seemed important a month ago no longer deserves your time.

Or perhaps you realize that you've been working very hard on something that isn't taking you anywhere you particularly want to go.

These are useful discoveries and they're difficult to make when you're constantly moving from one task to the next.

A Small Habit Worth Keeping

I have a feeling that weekly planning and review is one of those habits people tend to underestimate precisely because it is so simple.

It doesn't require a complicated system.

It doesn't require a particular app.

It doesn't even require an entire hour.

You need a little time to look back at what happened, compare it with what you intended, and decide what deserves your attention next.

·       What worked?

·       What didn't?

·       What keeps happening?

·       What should change?

·       And what matters most in the week ahead?

That's really it.

Of course, asking those questions is easier than answering them. And answering them is easier than doing something about what you discover.

But that's true of most worthwhile habits.

I suppose the important thing is to keep returning to the questions.

Because even when you know exactly where you want to go, life has a way of nudging you in other directions.

A weekly review gives you a chance to notice.

And, if necessary, change course before you've wandered too far.

Continue the Conversation

Anna and Jores record More Than Just Task Management every week, sharing their experiences with productivity, habits, systems, and the realities of building a business and a fulfilling life.

If you're a business owner who wants to become more intentional about how you spend your time, make progress toward meaningful goals, and connect with others figuring out the same things, come join us in the Visionary Founders Club. It's a free community where these conversations continue beyond the podcast, and where you can share your own experiences, challenges, and lessons along the way.

Join the Visionary Founders Club

And perhaps before you do anything else, put thirty minutes on your calendar for a weekly review.

I'll be curious to hear what you discover.

Although I suspect a few of you are about to find some very interesting patterns. 🐐

Author

Anna Angelova