Common Weekly Review Mistakes that Limit Productivity

One of the most common things that I hear from people when it comes to doing a weekly review or a weekly preview, I don't have time for this. I know what I have to do, so I'm just going to spend time doing those things. I have definitely gotten stuck in that mindset before. I know I will get stuck in that mindset again, but when you do a preview and a review, the preview especially for this is you start to clarify what really matters to you. In the moment, our heads can be such a jumble of things, like, well, I got to do this, and this popped into my head, and this, you know, like, I got this email, or I saw this on Twitter, or, you know, whatever it is, I got this direct message. If you were to plan out your week, it makes a promise to yourself about what matters. Because I know that when I go into a week, I would never write down as a main goal for the week, I want to make sure that some random email that I get on Tuesday late afternoon becomes a primary part of my week. If we don't have like these clear goals set for our week, we'll get something from a person that's just like, hey, can you get my— can I get your advice on such and such? And that can be important, but that can be a reason, an excuse that we give ourselves to like take a step back from our primary goals to the things that we define matters. Be like, well, you know, going to help this person. Of course I'm going to help this person. I'm a nice guy. I'm a nice person. This is what Michael Hyatt he calls the difference between uphill work and downhill work. Is the goals that you set at the beginning of the week, those are your clearest manifestation and vision of the things that are going to move your work, your company, your side hustle, your life onward and upward. It's going uphill, you're reaching the summit. Like, those are the things that you put in as your goals, right? The downhill work are the things that feel productive in the moment, but ultimately aren't really getting you any closer to that summit. Well, you know, I got to update this on Instagram, I got these 20 emails that I have to respond to. Do the uphill work, the goal-centric work that matters first. That is what's going to move your career, your life, your side hustle, whatever it is. It's going to move you forward when you seek to go uphill with the habits, with the goals that you have.

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When you take just 30 minutes at the beginning and the end of the week, and literally it can take like 15 minutes to preview and 15 minutes to review. And what's so valuable about this is if you think about your work as having like kind of that standard 40 hours a week, that 1 hour to preview and review makes everything else clear. Things that I can get distracted by, things that I can look at in my week or kind of get pulled, pulled aside or start going downhill, I can look at my preview and be like, I didn't write anything down about this. And I know that I need to get this video done. I know I need to get these lessons written. I know that I need to put together this media kit. I have all of these things that I know are definitive goals for me. And when I write them down at the beginning of the week and then I review review them at the end of the week, it creates such clarity for me. So now when I do a proper review, it makes my preview of the coming week better. And when my preview of the coming week gets better, then my reviews are going to get stronger and clearer. You can see again how both of these things play together really effectively. But it's such a small, small, small percentage of the time that you have each week. And to say that I don't have enough time to do a proper even 30-minute preview and review of the week, then you're probably way too scattered. Create some clarity for yourself. Give yourself the gift of focus this coming week by starting out with a really strong goal, action, protection, you know, planning preview, and then follow it up at the end of this week by reviewing your wins. What were your aspirations? What were the results of those aspirations? And where do you need to pivot going into your next week's preview? The other thing that people often talk to me about when it comes to like, I don't feel like I'm being very successful with my goals each week. I can't, I can't seem to hit them.

I can't seem to reach them.

And so the review feels worthless and not very fun because I'm like, yes, I aspire to do this. And once again, the results were subpar. And so I've tried to pivot, but I really don't feel like doing this anymore because it makes me feel bad. Well, I would even have a quick little follow-up to that. If you find yourself getting in that mindset every single time you do a review, and so you don't feel like doing a preview, see, it works together in a negative way. You're not treating this as a reporter, as an objective reporter. You're treating it like a judge, and you're saying like, you're not being good enough, you're not being smart enough, you're not like being, you know, consistent enough, you're not motivated enough. Treat your review like a reporter, not like a judge that makes yourself feel like you're, you're not very good at anything. Okay, here's another week where I'm not quite doing all the things that I aspire to do at the beginning of the week. One week went by, two weeks went by, I wasn't able to get it done. Just literally go for one goal, one goal that I want to do. Here are the action steps, here's the time that I'm going to do it. But I would even make that goal much smaller than you initially felt like it could be or should be. Your— one of your action steps actually needs to become the new goal. Okay, so that's how we break it down even further. If you have a bigger goal and you listed your action steps, but you weren't able to knock out all the action steps, you weren't able to do anything with it, take the most important action step from that goal, and that now becomes your most important goal going into the next week. We're not after this feeling of like, I'm conquering the world every single week. If you're having trouble doing the little things, that's totally okay. Everyone starts with the little things. Now you can break it down, and even if you get that thing done, you're like, great, what do you know, I wrote that outline on Monday, crushing it. Now you already know, like, okay, I can add on another action step. And maybe just the ability to start small and tackle one, one thing for your goal is the momentum that you need to build so that you can actually get the thing done this week.

Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. I really enjoyed putting it together for you.

I'm—

now that I'm editing, I'm back in Nashville. I'm back in my home office amongst my books. But let me know in the comments if you have any questions about like, how do you get into your preview and your review? This has been a video and a concept that's really resonated with a lot of people. So love to hear what you think in the comments. And thank you so much to AppSumo for sponsoring this video and a few videos coming up. So big shout out to them. Remember, you can save 10% on your first purchase at AppSumo by clicking the link in the description below or using the code Matt Ragland 10 at checkout. Thanks so much, I'll see you next week. Bye!