20 MINUTES · 5 STEPS · PRINTABLE
Weekly review template: guided questions and a printable sheet
A 20-minute guided weekly review: clear your head, look back at wins and misses, check your habits and calendar, pick next week's top 3. Print or save it.
Weekly review
Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2026
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Step 1 of 5 · about 5 min
Get clear
Empty your head and your inboxes first, so the review works with everything, not just what you remember.
Step 2 of 5 · about 5 min
Look back
Scroll last week's calendar and your done list. Start with what went well: it is the part people skip.
Step 3 of 5 · about 2 min
Habits check
Tick the days you did each habit. Count, do not judge: an empty day is information.
Step 4 of 5 · about 5 min
Look ahead
Look at the next two weeks so nothing arrives as a surprise.
Step 5 of 5 · about 3 min
Plan next week
Pick three things that would make next week a good week, then give each one a day and a time.
Preview the printable pages
The short answer
A weekly review is a 20 to 30 minute check-in at the end of each week. Clear your inboxes and your head, look back at what went well and what slipped, count how often you did your habits, scan the next two weeks of your calendar, then pick three things for next week and block time for each.
How to do a weekly review in 20 minutes
| Step | What you do | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Get clear | Empty your head and your inboxes first, so the review works with everything, not just what you remember. | 5 min |
| 2. Look back | Scroll last week's calendar and your done list. Start with what went well: it is the part people skip. | 5 min |
| 3. Habits check | Tick the days you did each habit. Count, do not judge: an empty day is information. | 2 min |
| 4. Look ahead | Look at the next two weeks so nothing arrives as a surprise. | 5 min |
| 5. Plan next week | Pick three things that would make next week a good week, then give each one a day and a time. | 3 min |
The order follows David Allen's GTD weekly review: get clear, get current, then plan. Clearing first matters: you cannot plan well around things you have not written down.
Weekly review questions
Use them here, print the blank sheet, or copy them into a notebook.
- What is still on your mind?
- What went well this week?
- What slipped, and what got in the way?
- What gave you energy, and what drained it?
- What will you do differently next week?
- Which habit needs a smaller version or a better moment?
- What is coming up, and what do you need to prepare?
- What will you say no to, delegate or move to someday?
- What are your top 3 for next week, and when will you do each one?
- Which habits did you do, and on which days?
Weekly review checklist
- Inboxes down to what needs action (email, messages, paper tray)
- Loose notes, receipts and screenshots gathered in one place
- Open tabs and downloads closed, saved or added to a list
- Last week's calendar checked for follow-ups and notes to file
- Next two weeks checked: deadlines, birthdays, travel, bills
- Anything you are waiting on followed up
- Every active project or goal has a next step
- Time blocked in the calendar for each of the top 3
Why a weekly review works
Unfinished tasks keep pulling at your attention. In experiments by Masicampo and Baumeister (2011), unfinished goals caused intrusive thoughts and hurt performance on other tasks, and simply making a specific plan for them removed the effect. That is what the clear-your-head step and the top 3 do. Giving each of the top 3 a day and a time is an if-then plan, which improved follow-through across 94 tests (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006), and counting your habit days is progress monitoring, which helped people reach goals across 138 studies, more so when it was written down (Harkin et al., 2016).
Writing down what you learned also pays off. In a working paper with field and lab experiments, people who spent time reflecting on a task in writing did better afterwards than those who spent the same time practicing (Di Stefano et al., 2016). That was about work tasks, so treat it as a reason to reflect, not a promise.
Keep going after the review
Carry the top 3 into the weekly planner, sort a long list with the Eisenhower matrix, and keep bigger goals in view with the goal planner. Once a year, the year in review does the same thing for the whole year. For the home side of Sunday, read how to start a weekly reset routine.
Frequently asked questions
What questions should I ask in a weekly review?
Five are enough: What is still on my mind? What went well? What slipped, and why? What is coming up in the next two weeks? What are my top three for next week? Add one about energy (what gave it, what drained it) and one about habits if you are building one.
How long should a weekly review take?
About 20 minutes once it is a routine: 5 to clear your head and inboxes, 5 to look back, 2 for habits, 5 for the calendar and 3 to plan. The first few can take 45 minutes or more while you catch up on loose ends.
When is the best day for a weekly review?
Friday afternoon or Sunday evening. Friday closes the work week while details are fresh; Sunday sets up the week ahead. Pick one, give it a fixed time and treat it like a meeting. This page opens on the week that just ended from Monday to Thursday and on the current week from Friday.
What is the GTD weekly review?
It is the weekly step of David Allen's Getting Things Done method, in three parts: get clear (collect loose papers, process inboxes, empty your head), get current (review action lists, the past and upcoming calendar, waiting-for items and projects) and get creative (look at someday ideas). The guided review above follows the same order in a shorter form.
What is the difference between a weekly review and a weekly plan?
The review looks back and clears the decks; the plan fills the next seven days. Do the review first, then carry the top three into your weekly planner so each one has a day and a time.
Can I print the weekly review template?
Yes. Print blank sheet gives every question with lines to write on one Letter or A4 page. Print my answers prints this week's answers, habit ticks and top three on one page. Save as image makes a phone-sized summary.
Are my answers saved?
Yes, per week, only in this browser on this device. Use the arrows to go back to an earlier week. Nothing is sent to our server and there is no sign-up.
Sources and evidence
- The David Allen Company: GTD Weekly Review checklist — The Getting Things Done weekly review in three parts: get clear (collect loose papers, get inboxes to zero, empty your head), get current (review action lists, past and upcoming calendar, waiting-for and project lists) and get creative (review someday/maybe ideas).
- Di Stefano, Gino, Pisano and Staats (2016): Making experience count, the role of reflection in individual learning — A working paper with a field experiment and two laboratory experiments: once people had some experience with a task, deliberately writing down what they had learned helped later performance more than extra practice did.
- Masicampo and Baumeister (2011): Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals — In a series of experiments, unfinished goals caused intrusive thoughts and hurt performance on other tasks; making a specific plan for the goal removed those effects.
- Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006): Implementation intentions and goal achievement — Specific if-then plans that say when and where you will act improved goal attainment across 94 tests.
- Harkin et al. (2016): Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? — Across 138 studies, monitoring progress improved goal attainment, more so when progress was physically recorded or reported.