Minimalist Weekly Planning & Reviews in a Bullet Journal

Everyone, my name is Matt, and welcome to a new Bullet Journal productivity video. In this episode, I'm going to be telling you one of the key force multipliers of my productivity, which is my weekly review and preview. Or is it the preview that leads into the review? One of the things that you're gonna see in this video is how these two functions, tactics, tips really work together to create a really strong, focused, actionable productivity system that you can follow every single day, every single week, to make sure you're doing the most important work. One last thing before we get started is if you go to 3, that's the number 3 keys, like carkeys.fyi, you're going to get my, like, 3 keys worksheet. And one of the things that we're going to talk about, that you're going to learn about, is this Weekly Preview and Review System. So, if you want a worksheet, kind of a workbook about this, if you want an extra video that I haven't shared anywhere else about how to implement these 3 keys of productivity in your life, go to 3keys.fyi. There's going to be a link in the description and in the show notes for this. Check it out there and you will get hooked up. I made the bold proclamation at the beginning of this that a proper Weekly Preview and Review is a true force multiplier in your work. The reason is because when you're doing a proper, for you, a proper preview and review of the week, you're gaining a level of awareness and clarity and confidence about the work that you're doing that helps make everything else a lot smoother and easier to do. It really is when you think about the outsized impact that this 30 minutes of planning can have on your week, It really is wild to think about. So, if you ever get yourself stuck thinking, even right at the beginning of this video, if you're like, "Matt, I don't have time to do like this whole big, you know, 2-hour weekly review or preview." Number 1, I'm not asking you to commit that amount of time, if you felt like that's the amount of time that it takes. Or maybe you've seen other productivity people tell you that like, "Well, I do this, I do this weekly preview and review and it takes all this time." I'm going to show you a really simple way to get like kind of that 80/20 effect. You do, like, this, you do this preview and review, and you will get a lot of the benefits whilst not putting in a bunch of work. What I want you to do is take out your Bullet Journal, take out your notebook, your planner, your app of choice, or whatever you want to do, and you are going to write down GAP, G-A-P, and that stands for Goals, Actions, and Plan. Now, the way that I preview my week is following this really simple acronym.. And what I'm asking myself at the beginning of the week, what are my goals? What are the things that I know I want to get done this week to move my business forward, to make sure that I'm making the connections and the content that I want? So I'm going to usually set aside, try and plan for 2 or 3 primary goals, could be more, could be less, that I know that I want to get done this week. All right, so now that I have my goals, Notice that this is really simple. Now that I have my goals, I'm going to write down what are the related action steps or tasks that I need to complete to make sure that I complete my goal, that I achieve my goal, that I finish the thing that I say is really important to me. My big goal for the week is to publish a new YouTube video, then that's going to go in and I'm going to start listing the action tasks, the action steps, for completing and publishing a new YouTube video. So, now that I've got my goal and I have set out the action steps for it, now I need to look at the week ahead, the calendar, you know, Google Calendar or Woven. I use Woven, love Woven. And I'm looking at it and saying like, "Okay, for the amount of time that I usually know that a YouTube video takes for me to make, where can I plan and protect that time?" in my week to make sure that it gets done. So I'm setting my goal, I'm defining the action steps, and then I'm planning and protecting that time in my week. That is how I preview my week with the GAP method: Goals, Actions, Plan. One little extra addition that I want to make to GAPs is like the little S of systems. Now, we've talked in different shows and episodes about the, like, the, the difference between system goals and outcome goals. And every single week, I know that I have different system goals in place, like record the podcast, record a new YouTube video, which I also mentioned as an outcome goal. But I need to make sure that things that I've already committed myself to, I need to make sure that my outcome-based goals that I'm setting are not taking over too much time that I've already committed to, like ongoing systems and things that I'm just already going to be committed to. So I like, sometimes I'll include that, sometimes I won't. But if I notice, the reason that I put that in there is because if you notice over the course of 3 or 4 weeks of doing a weekly preview, that you get into the weekly review, which we'll talk about next, and like, ah, I only did one of my goals this week, I only got 2 of the 4 done, then it's it's most likely the case that you're spending a lot of time in like things that you're already committed to. And when you're doing things that you're already committed to, it doesn't leave as much time for extra, for these extra goals, like these additional things that you want to add on to your schedule. So just keep that in mind. And as you're going through the review process, if you're like, ah, I didn't do as much of that thing as I intended to, then it's probably because you have a lot of preexisting commitments that take up a lot of your time. And when I'm doing my weekly review, I follow a simple acronym and a style prompt for it as well. And that is WARP, W-A-R-P, and that stands for Wins, Aspirations, Results, and Pivots. So let's go ahead and break down each of those. The win is very simple. It's just asking myself, going back, reviewing the week and asking myself, what were the wins? What were the things that went well? And I try and be very mindful of anything that has gone well because it's easy to look at your business, it's easy to look at your content on your channel and be like, "I wish it was doing better. I wish that I was able to go viral or blow up." And you sometimes miss, I often miss like, "Hey, I put a new video out this week. That's really cool. I made a new podcast this week. I wrote an email every single day." Those are all wins. I got this really nice email response from Sarah and one from Patrick and one from Michael and one from Michelle. So thank you. And also from Tammy. Thank you so much for— like, that feels really cool to get those wins of just people responding and saying like, hey, I'm really liking what you're doing. Those are all wins, and I'm trying to do a better job of recognizing those. The A part is for aspirations, and those aspirations are kind of, again, reviewing back and being like, what did Monday Matt aspire to do? Like, looking at those goals specifically. Okay, so I'm looking at those and be like, Matt intended, he aspired to do these 3 or 4 goals and they had these tasks and he was going to do it on these days. So it's really just looking back almost like a reporter instead of a judge and be like, excuse me, what did, I'm here, this is Friday Matt and this is Review Ragland and I'm asking Monday Matt, you know, what did you intend to do on Monday? Matt's like, oh, I was totally gonna do this, this, and this. And Review Ragland was like, mm-hmm, sure, okay, cool. You did all those things, didn't quite do this thing. So I'm just, I'm approaching it more as a reporter. What I'm doing on the back end of that, so I'm getting my kind of aspirational goals written down, and then I'm looking at what were the results. Was I able to complete, complete or finish the goals that I had set for myself? Did I get like 75% of the way there? And, you know, maybe I can still knock it out by the end of the week, or maybe it's just the first thing that I focus on Monday morning coming up. Okay. The important part for each of these, because aspirations, results, and pivots all work together really closely, and I want to keep hammering in this idea that when you're doing a review specifically, you want to approach it more like a reporter than a judge. You are not giving yourself a hard time in the review. Okay? At least I'm not. That's not what it's for. It's for me to kind of report, review, reflect as an objective observer, a third party, and be like, okay, this is what Monday Matt aspired to do. These were the results. And based on those aspirations and results, here's how we're gonna pivot in the week ahead. This thing that was a big goal, you said was a big goal on Monday, As the week has gone on, it's become clear that it's not as big of a goal anymore. You don't have to keep going on that. 75-80% complete is going to be okay. Or I can also look at it and say, like, alright, we're going to pivot next week a little bit. We weren't really intending for this thing to drag on from one week to another, but there's like this extra 10-20%, a couple of extra tasks that need to get done in order for for it to be like just complete or as good as I want it to be. Now that I have that Warp Review, you can start to see how these two things start to play together. Because once I have, you know, the results and the pivots from my Weekly Review, I can go into the next week's preview and start to ask myself like, okay, so now that I have this information, I have this information now from Review Raglan, the reporter-reviewer Ragland, that's too many Rs. But now that I have this from him, I can look at it and say like, okay, maybe I was a little, maybe I was a little too aggressive last week. That's okay, let's pull back a little bit. Maybe I'm just gonna focus on one, maybe two aspirational goals that I wanna get done this week. So I can pull back a little bit, I can kind of restructure my week ahead based on the results that I reviewed in the past week. Okay? And then the cycle just starts over again. So, okay, it's week 2 of doing my gap preview. What are my goals? What are the action steps? When am I going to plan to get these things done? And then, you know, I get to the following Friday, and I'm reviewing, I'm reporting, like, okay, These are the wins. Hey, everything that Monday Matt aspired to do, it looks like the results all line up. These things all fit. You were able to get all these things done. Maybe the pivot is like, okay, I tried to do 3 or 4 things in week 4 and I didn't get them all done. But then in week 2, I try— I only did 1 or 1, maybe 2. And so there's a nice little middle, like do 2 big things, maybe a 3rd smaller thing.. But it's as I'm doing this, like making a plan, giving it a preview, giving the week a preview, setting those goals, those actions, those plans, and then coming back and being an objective and a reporter of the week. Being like, what were my wins? What were my aspirations? What were the results of those aspirations? And then where do I pivot going into the next week? You see how they really work together to be really effective. Now, for me personally, I do all of my planning and previewing in the Bullet Journal. At least that's the very first draft. That's where all the brainstorming happens. That's where the planning happens. In my weekly preview spread, I'm looking at it ahead of time and saying, like, here are— here is my goal. Here are the action steps for the goal. And then what I'm doing, since I pre-format my, like, daily— my daily logs, in the Bullet Journal, you know, a couple of weeks ahead of time, then I can look at it and say, like, okay, I'm going to block out some time on Tuesday to work on this YouTube video, or I'm going to block out some time on Wednesday morning to make sure that I'm writing those new lessons for the course. And from that, so all the planning, all the gap review goes into the Bullet Journal. If it's something that I do want to block specific time for, then I'll go into Woven, I'll block that time in my calendar, I will often write it into my Bullet Journal as well. The reason that I block it in my calendar, there are two reasons. One is I do like getting a little, like, ping reminder, like, hey, in 10 minutes you should be starting, to make sure that you are sticking with that goal. This is the time that you have planned to take that action on the goal. And the other reason is I do a lot of coaching, and so I'm getting called, my schedule is open for my clients to book calls with me. And so, I have to protect the time, that protection piece, to make sure that I'm not getting interrupted and be like, "Oh, I intended to work on my lessons during Wednesday morning, but then so-and-so booked a call with me." If I haven't blocked it and protected it, that's on me. And so, that's why I will use Woven to make sure that my calendar is up to date and protected. So, you've seen me do all of this in the Bullet Journal. And you can go to 3keys.fyi. There's a link in the description below. And get your free access to this worksheet. You'll learn about GAP and WARP. You'll see some videos about this. Again, you'll have a worksheet. There'll also be a couple other emails that you get just about these 3 keys of productivity. So, definitely go to 3keys.fyi and check that out. One other thing that you can do, and you'll actually be signed up for this after you get the 3 keys emails, but another thing that you can sign up for if that other thing didn't sound as interesting, you can go to mattrogland.com/daily. Because I have been sending daily, well, Sunday through Friday, short, helpful, productive emails about Bullet Journaling, about planning, about productivity, about habits, and goals, and time management, and creativity mindset. There's a different topic every single day, and I know if you're on this channel, you would really like those emails as well. I've already heard from so many of you, and just from email responses, about how much you're loving the email. So thank you so much for, like, watching. Thank you for the kind responses to my daily emails. Thank you for, like, yeah, just being a part of this community and this thing that we're building. I'm really excited to be a part of it and to share ideas with you. I would love to hear in the comments below what you think about GAP and WARP, and if you already do some kind of, like, weekly preview or weekly review, go ahead and share that in the comments. Share your expertise, your tips. There may be something that you share in the comments that resonates with someone else even more than this video that I made. That's totally okay. That's great. We're sharing the ideas and expertise that we have together. So thank you so much for watching. Thank you for signing up to the email list, either at mattreiland.com/daily for emails or 3keys.fyi to get the 3 Keys worksheet and productivity video. I can't wait to share the next video with you, and I will see you then. Take care, everyone. Bye.