Hi Reader,
Happy Saturday! Here's what I'm up to...
📫 Hosting a free workshop with ConvertKit on effective email marketing this Wednesday, Nov. 8th. Would love to see you there. Sign up here.
🎭 Starting an improv class tomorrow at the Second City in Toronto. Excited but also very nervous.
🖼️ Finally got new headshots taken (as you can see above). Next step: updating my website.
Today, I want to share a practice with you that has become a cornerstone of my life. (You'll also get a free Notion template.)
The Power of Reviews for Personal & Career Growth
When did you last pause to reflect on your work and life?
For me, it was last Sunday when I sat down to conduct my weekly review – a practice I started over two years ago and can’t imagine not doing anymore.
Regular reviews are a much-needed pause in our dizzying pace of life, offering a snapshot of the ground covered and the peaks conquered.
This practice isn't a luxury—it's a lifeline to intentional living and working. By weaving reviews into the fabric of your life, you create a documented trail of your contributions and growth.
This blog post isn't just a nudge to encourage you to review your life regularly. It's a guiding light on how to do so efficiently, without the need to sift through the foggy recollections of our unreliable memories.
Why do regular reviews?
Ever felt like life passes you by too quickly? Sometimes days are just a blur, blending into each other. We’re so busy and yet it can seem like we’re never doing enough. But when I regularly pause and look back at all that I’ve achieved, I realize how much I’ve actually accomplished (which feels pretty good).
Regular reviews also give me the chance to reflect on my life and work. Is everything still going in the right direction or not? We may neglect our health or certain relationships in the short term, prioritizing other areas. Becoming aware of this quickly means I can still course-correct instead of waking up years later wondering where it went all wrong.
Why don’t more people do reviews?
I think there are two main reasons at play here:
First, it’s the misconception that reviews take a lot of time. In our hectic lives, who has time to slow down and reflect on the past? It’s too easy to let it slip one week after another. And what’s the point, doing a quarterly review if you’re already halfway into the next quarter?
Here’s the thing: The “I don’t have time for this” objection mainly emerges because it’s not clear how to do a review efficiently. Most people haven’t recorded what they’ve done in the last week or quarter, so they’d have to sit down, think hard, and try to remember what happened. That’s a lot of effort…and no fun.
Let me show you another way that’s much easier and doesn’t rely on our faulty memories.
How I review & calibrate my life in only 30 minutes every week and one hour every quarter
Here’s my secret to conducting quick but effective weekly, quarterly, and annual reviews: It all starts with a journaling habit. The daily journal entries serve as input for my weekly review, which in turn serves as input for my quarterly review, which are the input for my annual review once a year.
Let me explain…
Daily Interstitial Journaling
About two years ago, I started practicing interstitial journaling, which means journaling “in-between” throughout the entire day.
In a nutshell, I’m journaling in between tasks, every time I’m making a switch from doing one thing to doing another thing. I record the time, what I’ve done, what I’m going to do next, and any thoughts I had around that.
Here’s an example journal entry:
10:33
-
finalized the sales page and sent to our web developer for implementation
- so glad that’s done, feeling relieved
- will now work on the next newsletter
The result is a comprehensive timeline of each day (even the weekends, although I’m adding these entries often retroactively as I’m trying not to use my digital devices so much). I know exactly what I got done by the end of every day.
The tool I use for this is Notion. Every day has its own page in my daily journaling database where I also record my sleep and workouts.
What sounds like more work at first is actually saving me time and provides many other benefits, for example:
- Beat procrastination: I notice that I often distract myself when a task becomes hard. My brain wants to switch to something easier with a more immediate reward. Interstitial journaling keeps me grounded. When I feel the urge to wander off, I return to my daily note and write about what’s so difficult right now.
- Increase focus: We weren’t built for multitasking, so switching between tasks always takes a toll. Interstitial journaling empties my brain so I can fully focus on the next task at hand.
- Act strategically: It’s easy to jump from one notification to another, reacting to whatever my digital environment serves up. Interstitial journaling forces me to think about what I’m going to do next (because I’m writing it down). I can be proactive rather than reactive.
- Better decision-making: Making decisions is best done on (digital) paper, not in your head. I can find myself looping around the same few thoughts again and again, still unsure how to move forward. Now, I write down my inner monologue in my daily note, and it has never failed to bring new clarity.
But the main benefit of interstitial journaling for later review purposes is that it keeps track of accomplishments. The day goes by lightning-fast, and in the end, I was always left wondering what I had done all this time. I can now look back and see clearly what I've achieved. This helps me complete my weekly review at lightning speed.
Weekly Review
Every Sunday afternoon, I settle down in my bright yellow IKEA lounge chair to complete my weekly review. It’s a ritual I don’t want to miss anymore.
I start by revisiting every Notion page from the past week (so seven pages in total) and summarize what I’ve accomplished into a new page in my weekly review database.
This database has a template so I just have to fill in the blanks in three sections:
- What I’ve accomplished (work/personal): I summarize tasks completed, often simply copy+pasting from my daily pages.
- Reflections: I spend a few minutes journaling about anything that comes to mind as I think back on the past week. Was there anything that I wanted to do but didn’t? Did anything bother me that I need to get off my chest?
- Wins: I note down any wins that I want to remember.
This only takes about 20 minutes or so. I spend the remaining time preparing for the coming week. You can read more about my full process here.
Quarterly Review
The quarterly review looks very similar, with the source material being my weekly reviews. I go through every weekly review from the last quarter and summarize the key points into a new page in my quarterly review database
The quarterly review template has a few more sections:
- Work: What projects have I completed, what was involved and what results have I achieved? What are the areas that I’m maintaining?
- Personal/my business: What did I achieve personally and in my business?
- Relationships: With whom have I spend time this past quarter? How have my relationships evolved?
- Health & Fitness: What did my workouts looked like in the past quarter? Any injuries that bothered me? What did I enjoy/not enjoy doing?
- Movies/TV Series: Which movies and TV series have I watched?
- Travel: Where did I travel this past quarter and what did I experience?
- Wins: What wins do I want to remember?
- Reflections: What were some highlights/lowlights from this quarter? How do I feel about my work and life in general?
Going through this process, I especially enjoy revisiting the reflection pieces from each weekly review. That’s were I often rediscover what troubled me during one week only to see that it’s now resolved or irrelevant. A great reminder that nothing lasts forever.
I share the work-related part of my quarterly review with my boss and our COO, adding the status of KPIs relevant for my role (e.g., audience numbers for our different channels).
Annual Review
You can see where this is going. Between Christmas and New Years, I open my four quarterly reviews to get a comprehensive overview of how my year went. And I don’t need to rely on my faulty memory since past-Julia recorded everything that was going on and her thoughts in those moments.
For the last few years, I’ve used Steve Schlafman’s fantastic template (I believe this page will be updated later in the year) to conduct my annual review. But you can find many more templates and options online.
Grab my template and make it yours
The process of interstitial journaling combined with weekly/quarterly/annual reviews has helped me create a life that I’m genuinely excited about living every single day.
If you want to try it out for yourself, get my Notion template here.
What’s important is that you make this habit yours. I can only share what works for me and give you a starting point.
If a weekly review seems like too much, why not try a monthly review? My friend Jen Vermet swears by this format. Here’s one of hers that’s so fun to read.
Like Jen, you could also make every review public. It’s a great accountability mechanism and gives others the chance to get to know you better.
Happy reviewing!
Quote of the Week
"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thanks for reading!
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