Module 11 · Reflection & learning from experience · Lesson 7 of 7

Weekly, monthly and life reviews

Short reviews often, longer ones rarely — each looks at a different distance.

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The idea

Reviews work best on a rhythm, with each kind looking at a different distance. A weekly review is short — ten or fifteen minutes. What happened this week? What moved, what went quiet? What matters next week?

A monthly review steps back further: are my goals still the right ones? Are my habits and plans serving them? What patterns am I noticing? A life review — once or twice a year, perhaps on a birthday or at the new year — looks at the biggest questions: am I heading where I want to go? What would I change about the direction of my life?

None of these needs to be long or formal. What makes them valuable is regularity. A short review done every week teaches far more than an ambitious one done once and never repeated.

Why it matters

Without regular reviews, days fill with the urgent and months pass without anyone checking the direction. A simple rhythm keeps both the week and the life on course.

See it happen

Every January, Anand spends a weekend writing a detailed life plan. By March he has forgotten it, and next January he writes a new one.

The first read

A thorough yearly plan seems like the best way to take his life seriously, so he keeps making them.

With this idea

He keeps a short life review each January but adds a fifteen-minute weekly review on Sunday evenings and a monthly check on the first of each month. The yearly plan stays alive because it is looked at every month.

What changed

He added regular short reviews that kept the big one connected to his weeks.

Easy to get wrong

• Making reviews so long that you skip them. Short and regular beats thorough and rare.
• Only ever reviewing the week. Without monthly and life reviews, you can be efficient in the wrong direction.

What this rests on

Practical wisdom. A widely used way of working. Useful to try — not a scientific law.

• Katy Milkman — How to Change (2021), and the fresh-start effect (Dai, Milkman & Riis, 2014) — Research on why change is easier at new beginnings — a new week, month or birthday — and on making good behaviour easier and more rewarding.

Try it: Set your rhythm

1. Choose a day and time for a short weekly review.
2. Choose a date each month for a monthly review.
3. Choose one date in the year for a life review.
4. Write three questions you will ask at each.

Reflect

• When did you last step back and look at the direction of your life, not just your week?
• What rhythm of review would you actually keep?

Use it in the coming days

Do a weekly review in My Reviews this week, and put the next monthly review on your schedule.

Where to do it: My Reviews

My Reviews is built for weekly and longer reviews, and keeps them together over time.