Weekly Review Questions: 12 to Ask Every Friday
A weekly review only works if the questions are good. Twelve to choose from, a 30-minute running order, and how to keep the habit going past week three.
Ask fewer, better questions. A weekly review that takes two hours dies in a month. One built from five or six sharp questions, done in 30 minutes on the same day each week, tends to stick. Below are twelve questions to pick from, grouped by what they do, and a running order that fits half an hour.
What a weekly review is for
David Allen made the weekly review a core part of Getting Things Done: a regular moment to get your lists current, so you can trust them the rest of the week. Many people add reflection to that: what went well, what didn't.
Both jobs matter. The cleanup job means your list is not lying to you. The reflection job means next week is a little better than this one. A good review does a bit of each.
Twelve questions, grouped
To clear the decks
- What is still open from this week that I have not written down?
- Which tasks on my list are no longer true or no longer mine?
- What did I promise someone, out loud or in a message?
- What is waiting on another person, and do I need to nudge?
To look back
- What actually moved forward this week?
- Where did my time go that I did not plan?
- What did I avoid, and why?
- What drained me, and what gave me energy?
To look ahead
- What are the two or three outcomes that would make next week a good one?
- What is in the calendar that needs preparing?
- Which big task needs a time slot, not just a place on the list?
- What can I say no to before it starts?
You do not need all twelve. Pick two from each group to start. That is six questions, and it will take about half an hour.
A 30-minute running order
| Minutes | Step | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 5 | Empty inboxes and notes into one list | 1, 3 |
| 5 to 12 | Prune the list | 2, 4 |
| 12 to 20 | Look back | 5, 7 |
| 20 to 27 | Look ahead and pick outcomes | 9, 11 |
| 27 to 30 | Put next week's big tasks on the calendar | 11 |
Short on time? Do minutes 0 to 5 and 20 to 30. Capturing and planning ahead matter more than looking back if you can only do part.
An example review, written out
Here is what a real one might look like for someone in a marketing role.
- Still open: the landing page brief, a reply to legal about the image licence.
- No longer true: "research competitor webinar tool" was cancelled by the team. Deleted.
- Waiting on: design for banner drafts. Nudge Monday.
- Moved forward: launch email went out. Blog plan approved.
- Avoided: the budget sheet, because the numbers from finance are messy. Next step: ask finance one specific question.
- Next week's outcomes: landing page brief to design by Wednesday, budget sheet done by Friday.
- Calendar: Tuesday 9:00 to 11:00 blocked for the brief.
That is it. Nothing fancy, and the person ends the week knowing what Monday looks like.
Making it stick past week three
Most weekly reviews fail for one of three reasons.
No fixed time. "Sometime on the weekend" means never. Pick a slot, Friday at 15:30 or Sunday at 18:00, and protect it like a meeting.
Too long. If your review regularly runs past 45 minutes, your list is too big to review. Spend one session on organizing a huge to-do list and then come back to the short version.
No payoff. The review should make Monday easier. If it doesn't, change the look-ahead questions until it does. Ending with the first task for Monday written down is a small payoff that adds up.
Friday or Sunday?
Friday afternoon works well for work, because everything is fresh and you can close the week cleanly. Sunday evening suits people who mix work and home planning, and it pairs well with a home reset. Neither is right. The best day is the one you will actually keep.
Weekly review and daily planning
The weekly review sets direction. The daily plan turns it into a doable day. Each morning, pull from the outcomes you picked, and size the day honestly. The method in how to plan a realistic day is a good partner for this. If you use Todonado, the review is a good moment to move next week's two or three key tasks onto specific days, so the daily plan already has an anchor.
What to do with the answers
Questions only help if the answers change something. A simple rule: every answer in the look-back group should produce either a note for next week or nothing at all. If you write "I avoided the budget sheet because finance's numbers are messy", the next step is obvious: one message to finance on Monday. If you write "meetings ate Wednesday", the next step might be blocking Wednesday morning for next week.
Keep the answers short. One line per question is plenty. Long journal entries feel productive and are hard to act on.
Keeping a record
Store your reviews in one place, a notebook or a single document with the newest week at the top. After a couple of months, read back through them. Patterns jump out quickly: the same task avoided four weeks in a row, the same day always overloaded, the same person always waiting on you. Those patterns are the most useful thing a weekly review produces, and you only see them if you keep the old ones.
The limitations of a weekly review
A weekly review cannot fix a week that was overbooked from the start. If you plan 40 hours of tasks into 20 free hours, the review will just record the gap every Friday. Use it to notice the pattern, then plan less.
It also does not replace daily planning. A weekly review template sets direction, but each day still needs its own short plan. And a GTD weekly review in its full form is longer than the 30-minute version here; if you follow GTD closely, treat this as a starter and add steps as you need them.
The one question to keep if you keep nothing else
If you only ask one thing each week, ask question 9: what would make next week a good one? It forces a choice. Choosing a few things on purpose, every week, is most of what a planning system is meant to do.
