Weekend Planning Routine || How To Do a Weekly Review in a Bullet Journal

Hey friends, my name is Matt, and welcome to another Bullet Journal productivity video. I'm still in my office, it's just at a slightly different angle. This is a different kind of video, only slightly. It's still about the Bullet Journal, but one of the ideas that I had was to do my weekly review like in real time and talk my way through it with you so that this could exist for you to kind of come back and do a weekly review together whenever you want, like in, you know, the internet YouTube virtual recurring sense. So let me know what you think about this video. If it's helpful for you, please just let me know in the comments because it's still a bullet journal video, but it's a little bit of experiment and we're gonna go ahead and get into it. I think it'll take about 15 minutes because that's how long my weekly reviews last. If you want to know more about like the specific questions of the weekly review, that WRAP, W-R-A-P, make sure you check out the, you know, card up here and link in the description below. And if you like this, I'll also do one for my GAAP weekly preview. So that way you can have like a GAAP preview and a weekly WRAP review that, you know, we can kind of do together in, again, the YouTube internet recurring sense. So, I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think in the comments, and let's go ahead and start the clock on my weekly review right now. Good clap. I want to give a shout out in this video to the sponsor, AppSumo. Now, I've been an AppSumo customer for almost 10 years now, and so I've seen the best and most important productivity, content marketing, even YouTube apps and services that I have used have come from AppSumo. Like, if you're a YouTuber, you've probably heard of TubeBuddy, and I got a lifetime deal to TubeBuddy. There have been deals from some of the biggest companies on the internet, like Mailchimp, if, you know, maybe you've done email marketing and you've heard of them. But it's not also like always apps either. Like, you can get great ebooks, you can get like these different template designs, you can get all kinds of things to help you be a better creator, to be a better marketer, to get started with maybe something that you don't feel as strong in. It's a great community and library of apps and tools to help you live the life that you want and build the business that you want. What's cool about AppSumo is how often it's updated. There are always new deals in tons of different categories, literally hundreds of products, apps, and tools. That you can check out to improve your workflows, to get better at sales, at video, podcasting, whatever it might be. There is something on AppSumo that will help you level up. The other thing that is wonderful about AppSumo is that it's totally free to sign up and only takes about 20 seconds. And for a limited time, my viewers, if you're watching this, you're a trusted and beloved viewer and subscriber, can get 10% off their first purchase at AppSumo by using the link in the description below or MattRagland10 at checkout. So I'd love to hear what you are thinking about or have already purchased in AppSumo. While you're watching, go ahead and drop into the comment. Let me know what kind of creative, you know, marketing content YouTube tool you picked up to help you build the business that you want and live the life that that you want. So thanks once again to AppSumo for sponsoring this video and several others over my channel the past couple of weeks. It's been a real pleasure to work with them, and we'll go ahead and get back to the video now.

All I need for this version of my wrap review is just my Bullet Journal. Sometimes I'll also use my like field notes that I keep during the week for jotting down quick notes, like making sure that I make a master Notion task list for Jamar. So shout out to Jamar making, making the video. I'll often, you know, kind of look through this to see if there's anything that I wrote down during the week that needs to become either part of my wins or my reflections or, you know, review the results of everything. What I'll do now is about 15 minutes of going through my just weekly wrap review. Takes about 15 minutes. What you can see I'm doing here is on my Time Timer, I I, you know, normally don't have it set down like this, but just so you can track along with me. Just right here, 15 minutes.

We're going to do this together.

Again, my hope for this video is that you will enjoy it and it'd be like we're kind of working, we're kind of working together, especially in like these times. It's just nice to have somebody to work with. Let's just reset this a little teensy bit back to 15 minutes. Ready to go. Here we go. One of the things that you're going to see that might be a little different for you in this video based on some of the others that I've done that you might be more familiar with is I'm doing this time graph. So check out the video that I'm going to do coming up about the time graph for a daily log for a bullet journal. But the first thing that I'm asking myself when it comes into this weekly review is what were my wins?

What are my wins?

So I'm just asking myself that question, making a couple of notes about it. For me, big win for this week was a great first week of Productivity Power-Up, the like project, project goal setting, task management, power-up, you know, productivity skills course that I run a few times a year. So the Pillar Project seems to be well received and popular. The other big win that I had, and I've been talking a lot about this just with, you know, important people and mentors in my life, is that I protected time for myself and didn't stress very much, which is something that I kind of battle back and forth with. I don't take a whole lot of personal time to just like decompress. My personal time is spent working out, which is fun, but that's not decompressing. Like it can reduce stress because it just kind of gets them out. But to protect time for something that didn't feel productive and didn't even feel like it was physically productive, like a workout, that was a big win for me because that's, that's something that I'm trying to get better and better at. So another win that I had, great talk with my uncle and one of my big mentors. About a partnership might be brewing. So, great talk with Dan. We're going to be planning an event together in September. One other thing, like, I'm talking through this, but if you are watching this and you're like, hey, if we're going to review our weeks together, I don't need to hear you like do it all, talk through your process. So if you want me to do an additional version of this where it's just like some, you know, some chill folk music— that's normally what I like to review to— and it can just be 15 minutes of, you know, you kind of watching me write and listening to some chill music those, those lo-fi beats, then I can do, I can do a version of that as well. Or I could do that for the, for the preview session. I can do that. But those were the wins.

So this is where, like, getting into the results.

These are the results of my aspirations. And when I say aspirations, I mean like, what were the things that I aspired to do, those goals for the gap preview at the beginning of the week? So these, these things right here, gap preview goals, uh, what were those aspirations? And then what were the results of them? So Some of— sometimes, and I had this question from a member, shout out to Ed, in the Power-Up. He's like, it feels a little like repetitive. Like, my aspirations were my goals for the week, so why would I write those down again? Fair question. Sometimes I like to write them back in just to like really solidify in my mind, like, was this something that I wanted to do? Was this something that I was able to do? And but sometimes I'll just write— I won't do that today unless time really gets of the essence, but sometimes I might just write, you know, met all aspirations, you know, results were positive. But I won't do that today. But you can see how quickly you can get through this, but it's still really, really useful to be mindful. It's not necessarily about the time, even though you can get through quickly. It's more about the, like, being intentional and aware of the This is what I said I wanted to do. This is how far I got on it. We kind of skip ahead a little bit. Wrap just sounds nice. But the aspirations for the week, amazing first week of Productivity Power-Up. So you can see, yeah, write down 1. Amazing. I don't have to write down the whole thing, but PPU week 1. And I can kind of come up here, 1, and I might just say like, Yes. Results positive. So it is nice that when your preview and your review work together so fluidly, sometimes you don't have to write down things multiple times. You just be like, you know, you can keep referencing back to this one. So one, one, amazing. I can just kind of sync those back together. Amazing first week. So results positive, I can also say like C wins, and I might just elaborate or like make a slightly separate note. So people are really taking to the pillar project concept. So pillar project is something to build on. Okay, so the second aspiration, this is where it gets, you know, maybe a little tricky. Bite-sized BuJo video and real-time wrap. So, uh, it's always nice with, as a YouTuber, when you can, you know, tie together something that you're actually doing with content that you can make. Those are, those Those are nice little serendipitous moments, and that's what this is. So, but I wanted to do 2 videos. So, 2 videos, bite-size snackable BuJo, bite-size BuJo video plus wrap. And the results of that are going to be Wrap is complete. That's a wrap. And then the other thing is, let's say, uh, Bite Size. I've recorded the bumpers, like the intro outro for it, but I haven't recorded. I've— and I've just, by nature of doing it, you can see like we're going to be talking about the time graph. So I have already all of these written down. So the layout is done, the bumpers are done. I'm just going to have to record, which is the smallest bit of the project besides editing. I just have to record the, the actual like overview of the layout and explain it a little bit. So I would say it's I haven't done editing, so— but the other thing, and I'll talk about this in the pivot, but if you don't get something all the way done, then just kind of write down how far you got on it. And you may look at it and think like— and we'll talk about this in the pivots— but you may find out that something that you aspire to do, intended to do, you get to the end of the week, you're like, oh, this doesn't matter the way that I thought, and that's why I didn't get very far on it. So that's the second one. Let's go back. You can see I'm just kind of going back and forth. Gap, wrap, gap, wrap. And then, uh, take 2 hours to relax without the phone outside. So that was, you know, relax without phone. I didn't do the phone thing as well as I wanted to, but it was not around me very much, and the results were super positive. So I, I have a golf trip coming up, and so twice this week I just went out to the range and hit balls. Actually, I'm doing it right after this, so that will be my second time at it, but it's blocked, it's scheduled, you know, that's, that was the main thing. And also, like I mentioned, just giving myself time to decompress and do something that, you know, of course still fun, still interesting, but it's not like I've got to get— I've got to edit this video now that I've made it. I got to edit it. It's irresponsible. Like, oh, that— I just get, get so stuck in that. That's one thing that I'll definitely— that I did. So results, yes, it did help. I met a friend doing it, was able to commit and stick. So that was really great. Okay, so the results, the aspirations, they line up. The only thing I didn't really get to as much as I wanted to was doing that second YouTube video, and I thought I was going to be able to do it, but, um, the time, uh, it's, it's tough to do a second video, and I knew that was kind of going to be my stretch goal, that second video. I also know that I'm not going to release that video until probably middle of next week. So a few days after this one. So I have a little bit more time. As long as I shoot it, and I might be able to shoot it tomorrow, then I can edit it pretty quickly because it's bite-sized. It's supposed to be pretty quick. So we've got about 5 minutes left, as you can see, in our time together today. The last piece of this are the pivots. So based on my goals, my gap, and based on how my wrap, my my wins, results, aspirations— mainly the results and aspirations have lined up so far. What, um, what do I need to pivot to next week? That's going to be really important to think about. So with the pivots, uh, and for these, you know, normally just do a bullet or a little arrow. I don't have to necessarily line it up to a 1, 2, 3, but one thing that I know is I need to prioritize that bite-sized BuJo time graph video. Prioritize BuJo video. And what I'm doing here, this is helping me inform the gap preview for the next week. And so one of my top goals for next week will be to complete the bite-sized BuJo video and maybe even shoot one more. Can I make sure I'm on that, that weekly cadence? Prioritize the BuJo video. I am bidding on a freelance project. Next week. So, uh, freelance project. It's not really a pivot, but just like, hey, heads up, because it might mean that I need to pivot away even from doing a video next week depending— like, if the freelance project comes to fruition, it's going to be a huge project. So, you know, might just— might need to reprioritize some things. Not reprioritize you, of course not. Uh, freelance Project bid. And I just have a lot of information here, like, and we've talked a lot about this— be a reporter, be an observant reporter and not a judge. Like, don't be judge and jury because that really gets yourself stuck in a negative spiral of being like, ah, wanted to do these things, I didn't have time to do it, I'm not any good, I couldn't do it. Ah, that's not what we're talking about. Okay, so just be easy on yourself. Part of why you do the preview and the review together, they sync so well, is because you want to establish a clear benchmark for what you can actually do each week. Because if your ambitions, your aspirations match the results kind of week after week, then you know you've hit a good benchmark. And it may be that now it's time to level up. But so often, and I get it, like as a productive person, you want to be like aspirational and productive and like, going to be ambitious. I'm very much like that. But if you like fall short every single week of even your super ambitious goals, it can really start to wear on you. I know it does for me. So pivots, was able to commit and stick, uh, prioritize the Bullet Journal video, freelance project bid, um, and that's, that's probably pretty much it in terms of the pivots. Now there are additional goals that I will focus on, and the other thing that I'll do, and We talk about this in the Productivity Power-Up cohort course. Is one of the things we do is we set these pillar projects for ourselves, and so it's something we want to focus on for 6 weeks. And so every week of the program, you look at what is my deliverable for this week, and so that, that becomes part of your gap preview as well. But in terms of pivots from this week to next week, things that I might need to change, it's really just those two, those two little things of, uh, making sure that I like have the opportunity to like bid on this freelance project and refocus on that. I get another bullet journal video out. Um, and then one thing I guess I didn't actually write down, but I do need to— I had it written down as a task was, you know, reach out to a couple of other partnerships. I reached out to two partners this week, and I need to make sure that I reach out to that third person. So I just wrote that down as it wasn't necessarily in my gap, but it was in my master task list. So I just need to make sure that I follow up on that. So just those three things.

Again, it's not specific always to like, I'm not planning out my whole week right here.

When I write down pivots, those are things that that have been coming up that I had in the plan for this week that maybe I didn't get to or went a little bit differently. So I'm just thinking about what I wanted to do this week. Do I need to pivot any of that next week? And a pivot could also be something like, you know, you— I, I hit— I'm— I hit a pretty, you know, aligned week this week, which felt good. But if, like I said, I fell really short, then I might need to look at and say my pivot is just to do a little bit less. Or if, you know, the inverse is true and I only gave myself a couple of goals, which is fine, or just one, one big goal, and or one medium-small size goal, and then I hit it, then that's great. Maybe I can do two, or I can do a little bit bigger goal. You know, you see the difference. So that's it. That's my weekly review. Now go into— I usually do my weekly preview on Sunday evening. My wife and I have a Sunday night planning session, and that's when I do my gap preview., and I'll kind of reference back to my wrap review in that as well. I said they work really well together. So here we are on time. We've hit just about 15 minutes easily, and that's even with me like talking to you for a lot of it. So easy to do in 15 minutes. I hope you enjoyed this. Let me know in the comments if you would want to have a silent version of this with me that probably goes 10 or 15 minutes. Play some chill music, and you can just let me know what you think about it. I will do this for the GAP preview coming up soon as well. So thank you so much for watching. This was a lot of fun. And make sure you do your weekly review. It'll help you feel better. It'll help you like chart a better course for the next week as well. Have a great weekend and I'll see you in the next video.