Start weekly planning with last week. Count what you closed for each priority, not in total: a week can close 79 percent of its tasks and give your first priority half its plan. Then plan the next: three results, a first focused block and a stop list.
Review last week in ten minutes
Last week is a record of where your time goes when nothing protects it. Open its task list and calendar, and answer three questions in writing, a line or two each.
1. What did I close, and which priority did each item serve?
Mark each closed item with the priority it served, or with none, and count each group against what you planned for it. Counting by hand means going through last week’s list item by item. FocusPilot’s weekly review does the count for the week from Monday to Sunday (see how); it splits by category, so the split by priority stays yours.
2. What moved on my most important goal?
Write down evidence only: a number that changed, something that shipped, a reply you were waiting for. “Worked on the proposal” is an activity. “Sent the proposal to the client” is evidence.
3. What did I avoid, and why?
Look for the task that moved from day to day, and write its reason in one line. The reason usually points to the fix: an unclear next step needs ten minutes of planning, and a task that waits on someone needs a message today.
Plan next week in twenty minutes
The plan is three decisions, each built on what the look back found. Write them down before you close the review.
Set three priorities you can check at the end of the week
Each priority should move one of your goals for the year, and each is a result, for example “QA pass on Android finished”. “Work on the app” is an activity, and at the end of the week you cannot tell whether it happened. Keep it to three: with more, almost every task serves one of them, and the next look back stops telling you anything. If more than three compete, the Eisenhower matrix helps you decide what deserves the week.
Give the first focused block to the priority that got the least
Open next week’s calendar and find the morning early in the week with the fewest meetings. Book it for the priority with the smallest share, while the numbers are in front of you. The start of a week is a good moment to begin something: in three field studies by Dai, Milkman and Riis, searches for “diet”, gym visits and commitments to goals all rose after temporal landmarks such as the start of a new week. Time blocking turns the other priorities into blocks for the rest of the week, each as long as its steps add up to.
The task you avoided goes first on one morning next week. If it is not worth a morning, drop it and tell whoever expects it.
Then leave room for the work that will arrive unplanned, as much as it took last week, and put the open time right after the first focused block, so an overrun has somewhere to go.
Write a stop list
Two or three things you will not do next week, written where you will see them. Start with what took more time last week than it was worth: a meeting that ran long every day, a document on its third round of edits. A no settled during the review is easier to keep on Wednesday than one decided when someone asks.
My current stop-list item is checking Slack and email before 10:00. It held on Monday and Tuesday and broke on Wednesday during a deadline crunch, so I am testing notification filters and scheduled check windows to make it stick.
A good hit rate can hide the priority that slipped
A review that stops at the total misses where the week went. Ada’s week in the example below closed 19 of 24 tasks, 79 percent. Counted by priority, the goal she named first got 4 of the 8 tasks planned for it, while everything outside her three priorities got done.
Work that arrives with a sender tends to get closed. The priority nobody chases is the one that slips, and only a count by priority shows it. That count is what picks next week’s first focused block.
My own last six reviews hit about 60-70% of what I planned, and my first priority got done in about 4 of those 6 weeks. I run the review with my notes and an AI assistant to spot patterns, like which block types keep slipping.
A worked example: Ada’s week
Ada, the account we use for demos, set three priorities: ship the new onboarding flow, plan the team offsite in Lisbon, and get three training runs in for her half marathon. At the end of the week she counted what she had closed against what she had planned.
Ada’s look back
Closed, by priority
- 1. Ship the new onboarding flow:4 of 8
- 2. Plan the team offsite:5 of 5
- 3. Three training runs:2 of 3
- Not on the list:8 of 8
- The week:19 of 24, 79 percent
Moved on the most important goal
Avoided, and why
Her plan for next week:
- The result that would count: the flow with beta testers by Thursday.
- First focused block: Monday, 9:00 to 12:00, the QA pass on Android, on a borrowed phone.
- Left open: Monday afternoon, about what last week’s 8 unplanned tasks took.
- Stop list: offsite agenda edits (three rounds so far, for a two-day event) and vendor demos.
Example data from a demo account. Names and numbers are illustrative.
Template
Last week (10 minutes)
- What did I close for each priority, against what I planned for it?
- What moved on my most important goal? (evidence only)
- What did I avoid, and why?
Next week’s three priorities (each one you can check at the end of the week)
Decisions
- The result that would count:
- First focused block, for the priority that got the least (day, time, task):
- Room left for unplanned work:
- Stop list:
The same slot every week
Block 30 minutes at the same time every week, at its end: Friday afternoon if you want to start Monday with the plan made, Sunday evening if your Fridays fill up with whatever comes in. Planning before you stop has a second payoff. In experiments by Masicampo and Baumeister, writing a specific plan for an unfinished goal stopped it intruding on unrelated tasks.
Keep the slot fixed, because a review that moves around the calendar is the first thing to go in a busy week. On a short week, answer question 1 and write the stop list. If the same priority comes last three weeks running, the problem is bigger than one week: cut a goal.
On Wednesday morning, take two minutes: is the first priority’s result still on track for Friday? If not, give it one block that day and leave the rest of the plan alone.
Where weekly planning falls short
This look back is about priorities. If your trouble is open loops, an overflowing inbox and lists in five places, the weekly review from Getting Things Done fits better: it brings every inbox, list and calendar up to date.
A team needs a shared update on top of each person’s plan. If thirty minutes a week will not happen, run the two-minute Wednesday check every morning instead, against the same three priorities. You do not need an app: a notebook does the whole method, and if you already plan in Sunsama, it lets you set and track weekly objectives.
Run the look back in FocusPilot
FocusPilot’s weekly review does the counting. The planning stays with you.
- Keep the week’s tasks under goals, each goal in an area (Professional, Personal or Health) and each task with a due date.
- Open the Goals tab, tap ⋯, then Weekly review. It covers the last full week, Monday to Sunday, and the row appears once that week holds something closed or missed.
- Read it from the top: the hit rate answers question 1 in total, By category shows where the closed work went, and Patterns lists the work under one goal that went unclosed two or more times, which answers question 3.
- Split the closed tasks by your three priorities yourself, since the review counts by category.
- Book next week’s first focused block as a task with a start time and a length, under the goal that got the least.
FocusPilot is free to download on iPhone and Android, and every plan starts with a free trial.
FocusPilotiPhone and Android
We make FocusPilot. The method above works without it.
The bottom line
Weekly planning pays off for anyone whose week fills with work that arrives with a sender; if your trouble is a messy inbox, start with a GTD review. Either way, count last week by priority before you plan the next.
