Keeping your Practice on target and on track with the Friday Review

You have been setting goals for yonks, deciding them and setting them and engaging with the feeling they create.  This is good but no good if you don’t keep on top of them.

Jam-packed days turn into hectic weeks. Busy months become whirlwind years. Moving from task to task each day leaves little room to be strategic about the big picture of our lives. Moving from task to task each day leaves little room to be strategic about the big picture of our lives.

We need to create the rhythms and habits to ensure we create the right behaviours in our business which enable us to achieve our goals.

It is the habits that you get you to the goal!

For example writing down weight loss goals won’t help if you keep eating donuts and don’t do any exercise you won’t achieve the goal.  Goal is achieved a result of changing diet and exercise habits.  It is changing the habits that shifts the results.

Say you want an extra £1000 month profit in you clinic you need to be identifying the habits you need to implement in your business to achieve this.    What do you need to create, change or implement!

Now you have that concept let’s look how implementing a simple friday review habit can help you achieve results! 

Without implementing this if you’re lucky, you happen to make incremental progress towards your goals. If you’re not, 365 days pass leaving you standing in the same spot you were the year before, despite the feeling you were moving forward. Making meaningful progress in work and life requires more intention than just checking off tasks on our daily to-do lists.

That’s where the weekly review comes in.

A weekly review is an opportunity to direct your life with intention. It’s dedicated time to think about the past week, reflect on what went well and what didn’t, and plan for the week ahead. It’s a chance to get aligned with your goals and ensure that the work you’re doing on a daily basis is helping you reach them. It avoids you ever having to ask, “What was I doing all this time?”.

David Allen, of Getting Things Done describes 3 clear sections to a weekly review:

• Get Clear: Process all your loose-ends.
• Get Current: Make sure all your items are up to date.
• Get Creative: Come up with new ideas to improve how you live and work.

“The Weekly Review will sharpen your intuitive focus on your important projects as you deal with the flood of new input and potential distractions coming at you the rest of the week.”

Try a weekly review will make a big impact if you…

• Usually start the week without a plan and just “wing it”
• Feel busy but haven’t made any real progress toward your goals
• Want to set aside regular time for reflection and self-improvement
• Are a human being who wants to get more done (seriously, weekly reviews are so great, we think everyone should do them!)

Let’s now walk you through practically how to complete a weekly review. There’s no one-size-fits all method, so customize your weekly review so that it works for you.

Choose your weekly review day, time, and place

Consistency will keep you on track when motivation won’t. Do your weekly review at the same time on the same day every week. You may even want to try doing it in the same place too – your favorite reading nook in your house or even your neighbourhood coffee shop. This way, you’ll build up a consistent habit each week and will feel “off” if you skip it.

Create your weekly review checklist

1.  Declutter and Mind Dump 0-10mins

• Tidy workspace, file away papers.
• Get all task out of head and into a task management system.

2. Reflection on last week 10-20mins

• Review completed tasks, calendar, notes and goals.  Compare plan to what actually happened. What went well? What didn’t?

3. Get current on goals and projects 20-35mins

• What progress have you made on your top priorities? what needs to be updated? What needs to happen next?

4. Plan the week ahead 35-50mins

• What are your most important tasks and events this week? Write them down and schedule them?

5. Think bigger 50-60mins

• Review your someday list?  Do any of these need to be happening sooner?

Gain an objective view of your week

With everything you’re already doing, committing to a weekly review sounds like an added chore.

A weekly review provides clarity and direction. It’s well worth the hour-long investment each week.

A weekly review makes you take a step back from the daily grind and view your week as a whole. Instead of bouncing from week to week without a true idea of what you’re accomplishing, a weekly review forces you to pause and reflect and get in control of where you are heading.

• What did I get done this week versus what I planned to get done?
• What unexpectedly arose this week that blocked my productivity?
• Why was I so efficient this week as compared to the last one?

A weekly review asks you to examine what went wrong and what went right. In taking time to reflect each week, you’ll inevitably see patterns emerge that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

A weekly review clarifies your thinking and drives better decision making. As a result, you’ll end up getting a lot more done in the long-run.

Be proactive in planning

A weekly review lets you run through the upcoming Monday to Friday and get prepared in advance. You’ll start each day armed with the game plan that you created during your weekly review.

This helps you get out of reactive mode and get ahead of your to-dos in a way that aligns with your long-term goals.

“The Weekly Review is the critical success factor for marrying your larger commitments to your day-to-day activities.”

– David Allen, Getting Things Done

Instead of wondering why we haven’t accomplished our goals only when January 1 rolls around, a weekly review gives you 52 opportunities to start fresh. 52 chances to improve on the previous week. 52 moments in time to learn more about ourselves and how we work.