Weekly List

I’m always experimenting with how I work. And I try to avoid the productivity trap where you spend all your time organizing the work instead of actually doing the work.

This is why I love experiments (Issue #15). Just try it. Design a simple experiment, run it, and mindfully observe what happens so you can learn and improve. If you catch yourself saying, “I wonder if…,” stop wondering and try it. Be curious, but let your curiosity lead you towards something tangible.

That’s where the Weekly List experiment originated from.

I’ve tried every to-do app under the sun. I’ve tried going analog and writing down my tasks. I’ve built an elaborate setup inside my Notion system. But I always ask myself how I can simplify, making it easier to do the work and align my priorities.

I particularly love the week as a time unit because it’s the perfect time horizon for tracking and measuring progress (Issue #11, Issue #17).

And I also love a good document. I use the term document to apply to any artifact that allows you to add words and media to construct a larger narrative.

A document makes it easy to add information in one place, change how and what information is displayed, and transfer the information to other locations.

A document is centralized, flexible, and portable.

This was the core premise of the Weekly List experiment. Here’s the hypothesis:

If I create and maintain a Weekly List document, then I will have a single, evolving source of truth for my week that improves focus, makes it easier to adapt to changes, and surfaces valuable insights for future planning.

The Weekly List is structured to:

• Detail the three outcomes for the week.
• Track any unscheduled work for the week.
• Surface key insights that emerge from the work.
• Plan each day and account for tasks and meetings.
• Understand how and why (the context) work changes.

There are three key sections for how the Weekly List is organized:

1. Weekly section for outcomes, unscheduled tasks, and key insights.
2. Daily sections for planned work, unplanned work, and observations.
3. Review section to summarize all the work and set up next week.

Week

The top of the document is the overview of the week. It provides an anchoring focus to plan each day, knowing your individual tasks ladder up to your larger outcomes.

1. Outcomes: Pick three outcomes that, if true, would make the week successful. Three is a magic number, and the constraint forces prioritization.
2. Unscheduled: If you need to track tasks to do this week but aren’t sure which day, then you can leave them in this list and schedule them as they pop up.
3. Insights: As you uncover insights throughout the week, surface them in a dedicated section you can use in the weekly review.

Days

For each of the five days of the week (Monday to Friday), track:

1. Planned Tasks: Using your outcomes and your schedule, detail the tasks you have planned for the day in a single list. I consider meetings part of the things I need to do, so I will include them in this list with the time they will occur.
2. Unplanned Tasks: As new work emerges, you can add unplanned tasks in the same list as the planned tasks. I will use the 🔥 emoji in front of these to indicate they were unplanned.
3. Notes: Write down any observations. Provide context about why some unplanned work came up, write down a small win, or log an insight.

Review

At the end of the week:

1. Review your outcomes and update their status.
2. Review any unscheduled work and move it to another list.
3. Review the insights and log them for further reflection.
4. Review each day and the relevant notes.
5. Write specific observations about how the week went.

Template

If you want to try this for yourself, you can use my Notion Weekly List Template.