weekly-review-ritual

Weekly Review Ritual Skill

Without a weekly review, weeks are driven by whatever arrived loudest — the calendar fills by others' invitations, threads drop at the boundaries, and Monday starts in reactive mode by default. The review is 30 minutes, same slot weekly (Friday afternoon: close the week while it's warm, aim the next before it arrives), with a fixed agenda that never varies: close (the week's loops: done, stalled, dropped-on-purpose), sweep (every capture point emptied into the system), choose (next week's big three, calendar-checked), and the two compounding questions — what worked, what got dodged. The ritual's power is its boringness: same slot, same steps, every week including the bad ones.

What This Skill Produces

• The fixed agenda — the four phases with time boxes, tuned to the user's actual systems
• The sweep checklist — the user's real capture points (inbox, notes, chats, the desktop, the head) — enumerated so the sweep is mechanical
• The big-three method — next week's three outcomes chosen against the calendar's reality, blocked before Monday claims the space
• The survival rules — the 10-minute crisis version, and the never-skip-twice rule

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The existing systems — task list, calendar, notes; the review orchestrates what exists ([email-triage-system](../email-triage-system/SKILL.md), [task-triage-matrix](../task-triage-matrix/SKILL.md) are its natural companions) — a review without a task system to sweep into needs that installed first
• The capture points, honestly — everywhere commitments accumulate: inboxes, chat mentions, meeting notes, the head (the head is always on the list)
• The week's shape — when the review can actually happen (Friday 3pm default; the slot must be real, recurring, and defended)
• The dropped-thread history — what tends to fall between weeks; the sweep checklist gets built around the actual leaks

Framework: The Ritual Rules

1. Close before choosing: phase one walks the week's intended outcomes — done (acknowledge it: momentum is data), stalled (why? — the answer routes to [unblock-protocol](../unblock-protocol/SKILL.md) or renegotiation), and dropped-on-purpose (said explicitly, per the [decision-journal](../decision-journal/SKILL.md) honesty: a conscious drop is a decision; a silent one is a leak).
2. The sweep is mechanical, from a list: each capture point opened and emptied — every loose commitment becomes a task, a calendar block, or a conscious no ([email-to-tasks](../email-to-tasks/SKILL.md) grain). The head-sweep closes it: two minutes, "what am I carrying that isn't written anywhere?" — the question that empties the 3am anxiety cache.
3. The big three are outcomes, calendar-checked: three finishable outcomes for next week ("ship the draft to legal" not "work on the doc") — then held against the calendar's actual open hours ([meeting-cost-meter](../meeting-cost-meter/SKILL.md) reality: a 4-hour week can't carry three big outcomes; better to know Friday than Thursday) — and blocked into it ([deep-work-blocking](../deep-work-blocking/SKILL.md)) before Monday's invitations arrive.
4. The two questions compound: what worked this week? (do more of it — explicitly named) and what did I avoid? (the dodge list — usually the same item three weeks running, which is the review telling you something the task list can't). Thirty seconds each, written, because patterns emerge only in writing.
5. Survival rules keep the streak: the crisis version is 10 minutes (sweep + big three only — closing waits), the never-skip-twice rule is absolute (one missed review is a busy week; two is the system dying), and the review reviews itself monthly: is the checklist still matching the real capture points?

Output Format

Weekly Review: [name] — [slot], 30 min

The Agenda

[Close (8 min): the week's outcomes → done/stalled/dropped-consciously · Sweep (12): the checklist below · Choose (8): big three vs. the calendar · The two questions (2), written]

The Sweep Checklist

[The user's actual capture points, in order · ending with the head-sweep question]

The Big Three (this week's)

[Three outcomes · the calendar check · the blocks placed]

Survival Rules

[The 10-minute crisis version · never-skip-twice · the monthly self-check]

Quality Checks

• [ ] The slot is real, recurring, and defended on the calendar
• [ ] The sweep list names every actual capture point including the head
• [ ] The big three are outcomes, checked against real open hours, and blocked
• [ ] Both questions get written answers
• [ ] The crisis version and never-skip-twice rule are explicit

Anti-Patterns

• [ ] Do not review without sweeping — a review that skips the capture points is a diary entry
• [ ] Do not choose five big things — three, calendar-checked; ambition unchecked by hours is next Friday's guilt
• [ ] Do not let drops happen silently — dropped-on-purpose is healthy; dropped-by-leak is the thing this ritual exists to end
• [ ] Do not skip twice — the second skip is the system's funeral, quietly
• [ ] Do not expand the ritual — 30 minutes is the ceiling; a 90-minute review gets skipped by week three