A weekly review should make Monday lighter. If it becomes a second job every Sunday, shrink the ritual until it gives more time than it takes.
Use the template below to turn last week's loose ends into a few decisions. You need a calendar, your current task list, and 20 minutes. You do not need a new app, an empty inbox, or a perfect record of the week.
Copy the template · Follow the 20-minute routine · Use the five-minute version
Copy your weekly review template
Paste this into a note. Short answers are enough; stop when you have a workable next week.
WEEK OF: LOOK BACK One thing I finished or moved forward: One unfinished commitment that still matters: What got in the way: LOOK AHEAD Fixed commitments and real deadlines: Preparation or follow-up I must not miss: Something I can drop, defer, or renegotiate: CHOOSE Up to three outcomes for next week: The first action for each: Where those actions fit in my calendar: ADJUST One thing I will do differently: My next review cue or appointment:
The calendar is the reality check. If your chosen actions cannot fit around commitments, reduce the plan or renegotiate the work. A review that ends with an impossible schedule has not finished its job.
What a finished review looks like
Imagine next week contains a Thursday work deadline, a Wednesday family appointment, and a personal course you want to continue:
| Question | A useful answer |
|---|---|
| What moved? | Collected the figures for Thursday’s report |
| What stalled? | Planned report writing during the family appointment |
| What matters next week? | Deliver the report and attend the appointment without rushing |
| What is the first action? | Draft the report’s three conclusions Tuesday at 9:00 |
| What gets removed? | The optional course lesson moves to the weekend |
| What changes? | Block appointment preparation and travel before adding optional work |
Notice what is missing: a score for how good a person you were. The review is a decision session, not a character assessment. You leave knowing what to do, what to stop doing, and what to watch next week.
A 20-minute version that actually survives
Minutes 0–5: capture the loose ends
Scan the places where important commitments arrive: your main inbox, recent notes, and anything still on your mind. Write the actionable items in one place.
Do not try to process every email. If the inbox needs a proper cleanup, schedule it separately. During this review, prioritize promises, deadlines, and loose ends likely to matter next week.
Keep reference material out of the action list. If you need somewhere to put it, the PARA method gives notes a home without turning each saved article into a task.
Minutes 5–12: look backward and forward
Check the past week's calendar for follow-ups, then look at the next two weeks for preparation you might overlook. Review active projects and anything you are waiting for.
Give unfinished work a decision:
- Do: choose the next action and a realistic opening.
- Defer: set a review date if it remains worth considering.
- Delegate or renegotiate: contact the person involved when a commitment changes.
- Drop: remove something you no longer intend to do.
Do not delete a real obligation because it has been postponed several times. Repeated postponement is a reason to clarify, get help, or renegotiate it.
Minutes 12–17: choose the week
Choose up to three meaningful outcomes. Fewer is fine when your calendar is full. Break each into an opening action and check where it fits.
“Finish the report” hides several decisions. “Draft three conclusions from the figures” names an action you can begin. Our goal tracking guide explains how to separate the result you want from the action you can schedule.
Leave room for ordinary interruptions. You are making a plan you can use, not proving how much work could theoretically fit.
Minutes 17–20: change one thing
Write one sentence about what worked and one about what you will adjust. Then confirm the next review cue: after Friday's last meeting, before Sunday's meal prep, or another dependable opening.
A bigger career or life decision deserves its own time. Capture it and schedule a separate session instead of letting it consume this review.
When you only have five minutes
Use a five-minute fallback:
- Check upcoming appointments and the nearest real deadline.
- Choose the next action that protects that commitment.
- Decide what can wait and set the next review.
If you skipped two weeks, begin with the current situation. Scan for missed obligations, but do not require a complete reconstruction of every day before you can move forward.
Restart from reality. You do not owe your template a backlog of perfect answers.
Why this routine helps
David Allen's GTD Weekly Review organizes the process around getting clear, current, and creative. This 20-minute adaptation keeps those aims while limiting the work to what you can reasonably review now.
The useful mechanism is simple: your list stops being a collection of old intentions and becomes a record of current decisions. A task you no longer want can leave. A deadline can receive preparation time. A stalled project can get an opening action.
If returning is the hard part, connect the review to an event that already happens or arrange a shared review session. Our accountability setup can help make the appointment concrete.
Use TaskCoach to keep the evidence together
In TaskCoach, use completed tasks and activity records to answer “What moved?”, then check unfinished work against the coming calendar. A journal note about late meetings can explain a missed session better than a completion count alone. The useful output is a decision: keep the report, protect the family appointment, and defer the optional lesson.
Premium AI reports and Brain Chat can help summarize and reflect on recorded context. Check that summary against what happened: offline work and unlogged commitments may be missing. You decide what to drop, renegotiate, or schedule next; a report does not make that tradeoff for you.
The free core supports manual planning, tasks, habits, notes, journal, and focus tools. Premium adds broader coaching, memory, AI reports, and external calendar sync. We build TaskCoach; you can also run this entire review from the template in a plain note.
Put one next action on the calendar before closing the review. The payoff is a week you can enter with fewer decisions left hanging.