Your Weekly Review 🎯

Time to break down our weekly review page

Included within our planner is our weekly review page. In summary, this page is about reflecting on the week just passed and planning towards the forthcoming week.

There are so many benefits to performance review, with reflection being at the core of improving performance. What worked? What didn’t? Where are you strong? Where needs improvement?

Without regularly reviewing performance it makes it difficult to understand if you are heading in the right direction. For example, are your tasks aligned with your goals? i.e., are you working on the relevant tasks that are taking you on the path to your ultimate dreams?

Reviewing your week can also be vital for wellbeing. It allows you to notice the good, to focus in on your strengths and you can develop such areas further.

You are conducting your very own performance appraisal on a weekly basis.

It is also vital that we set the tone for the week ahead. This is all about setting intentions. It is about having clear focused thinking. Going into a week knowing exactly what is needed to bring you closer to your goals is much more likely to help you to achieve them.

Step 1 – Weekly Wins, list all your achievements from the last week

The first part is all about listing your wins. This is key for dopamine production. It is also about purposely training your brain to recognise the good in your week. We are hardwired to focus on the negative, so it is important that we train our brains to recognise the good to. When we get into the habit of doing this it allows us to gain a sense of gratitude for the good in our lives.

It is also worth noting that to often we get so fixated on the long-term goal that we fail to see the daily and weekly achievements that we have made on the way. Listing our daily and weekly wins allows us to reflect on our journey.

It also provides critical insight to what is working. Your wins could be a result of an action or habit that is working, if this is the case, then continue to act on this!

There are many benefits to listing your wins and you can also find a full blog labelled ‘Celebrate your victories’ which can be found here (Celebrate… – Semester Student Planner) and goes into further details of its benefits.

Step 2 – Stop, start, improve

The next part of our review sees us visit this area. This is a critical part of the review process. In summary this area focuses on a three-step process to improving performance.

Stop: What must you stop doing, what is not working or having a negative impact on your results?

Start: What could you start to do which could boost your performance or results?

Improve: What areas are working but could perhaps be improved, what changes could be made which could maximise results?

This is vital for performance. Reviews are all about building the habit of working purposefully and productively and this is why we encourage everybody to do it.  

Following this three-step process is an easy way to break down your performance and provide an overall critical insight. If you need more information on this area then you can visit our full blog at (Stop, Start, Improve… – Semester Student Planner). Here we break this area down in further detail.

Step 3 – From 1-10, how do you feel this week went?

This area is exactly what it says on the tin… it is about giving your previous week an overall rating out of ten. This can be approached how you wish.  Firstly, you could simply give yourself an easy to view numerical representation summary of your week just passed and leave it at that. This is great as an easy summarizing tool. Secondly, you could expand on the open-ended question. Expand on the visual scoring. Why do you feel it is worthy of that number? If you scored low, how could this number increase? If you scored high, how could you maintain this. This is not about writing a dissertation thesis, but again about having another tool to summarise your performance.

Step 4 – Set the tone, set the actions.

We are now starting to think about laying the foundations for the forthcoming week. This area is divided into two sections. Academic and Personal. This is about getting out on paper several your key actions which you are looking to complete for the following week. It is about ‘setting the tone’ and starting to really recognise what needs doing.

This could be utilised like a ‘to do’ list and you could simply long list some of the tasks and actions which need completing next week. It is also designed as an ‘overview’ section, so you could list some of the main events you have this week, and some actions which need completing in preparation.

This space is simply about starting to ‘prep’ for the forthcoming week and get you shifting your mindset to look ahead at the week coming as opposed to reflecting on the week passed. How you set intentions and the actions you decide to take are all critical in establishing your long term success.

Step 5 – My Habit, My Reward

This is another process which involves looking forward to the week ahead and setting some fundamental habits for growth using your habit tracker. In our personal growth handbook, we dedicate a full section to discussing the value in habit tracking but in summarising some of those points:  

To reach our goals, we often must improve our habits. For example, if you want to achieve higher grades, you must get into the good habit of studying regularly and working on your assignments in good time. Good habits are critical to our success and as James Clear states, Habit tracking is powerful for three key reasons.

1. It creates a visual cue that can remind you to act.

2. It is motivating to see the progress you are making. You don’t want to break your streak.

3. It feels satisfying to record your success in the moment

Also Included within our habit tracker is ‘my reward’ section. Work hard, play hard, right? This area is simply about rewarding yourself for hitting your habits and we believe it serves as great motivation.

As stated already, we have a full blog on the importance of ‘celebrating your little wins’ and celebrating hitting a key habit is an example of one of those. It is massive for wellbeing as well as helping you stay motivated. It is also worth noting that if you are consistently celebrating the ‘small habits’ week on week, eventually you will be celebrating the larger successes compounded by these little wins…

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.” – Robert Collier

It is why Habit Tracking is a critical part of our week. Included within the day page is a reminder to fill out your habit tracker daily so that you never forget.

In Summary…

The above blog gives an insight into your weekly review page. There are various aspects to this page, and we hope the above explains them in detail for your understanding. Included within the planner are also explanations of various areas, but at any point you feel you do need support you can reach out and ask us for assistance via our contact page.

We believe that your weekly review page has all the tools required to help you on your path of personal growth. We have designed this based on our own personal experience when we were too on a study journey from stressed and overwhelmed students to success and fulfilment.

That said, we are always wanting our own performance reviewed and we welcome any feedback. If you are currently using the planner and feel there is something which could be improved, then let us know. Every day is a school day!!

#LetsGrowTogether