The Weekly Review: the simplest habit to keep leaders on course
A weekly review is one of the most useful tools in a leader’s kit.
Not because it’s clever. Because it’s a relief.
Senior roles come with a constant stream of shifting inputs: decisions, people issues, customer demands, deadlines, family logistics, health, finances, the lot. The volume is high, the variety is huge, and the pace is relentless.
Our brains didn’t evolve for this kind of “always-on” workload. They’re good at thinking, judging, and creating. They are not great at holding a thousand loose ends in working memory without it leaking stress into everything else.
A weekly review fixes that by giving you a regular map check.
Why it works
The weekly review is a short interval that matters. Daily is often too tactical. Monthly is too late.
Done properly, it gives you three things that most leaders quietly lack:
Perspective: you can see the whole board, not just the next problem.
Alignment: actions reconnect to goals, not noise.
Control: you stop carrying everything in your head.
It’s the difference between reacting to the latest and loudest, and choosing what actually moves the organisation forward.
It also creates a kind of calm. Not a mystical calm. A practical one. The calm you get when you’ve looked at reality, made a few decisions, and can stop mentally rehearsing everything you might be forgetting.
What I mean by a “map check”
A map check isn’t a deep strategy session. It’s a quick, honest look at where you are, where you’re going, and what needs to happen next.
At a minimum, your weekly review should cover:
Inbox sweep: anything unprocessed gets captured and clarified.
Commitments scan: what have you promised, and to whom?
Calendar look-back and look-ahead: what did you learn last week, what’s coming next?
Top outcomes: what matters most over the next 7–10 days?
Next actions: what are the real next steps, not vague intentions?
If you do nothing else, do that. Most leaders will feel the benefit within two or three weeks, mainly because the background anxiety drops.
When I do mine (and why)
I usually schedule my weekly review for Friday morning.
That timing works well for a few reasons:
Space to act: if something urgent emerges, I can still address it on Friday afternoon.
Clean handover to the weekend: my brain can switch gears, rather than dragging loose ends into Saturday.
Strong Monday start: I begin the week with clarity on priorities and next actions.
It’s also a quiet antidote to Sunday evening dread. When you’ve already looked at the week ahead and made a few decisions, Sunday stays as Sunday.
One practical note: protect the slot. If your weekly review gets bumped every time “something important” appears, you’ll fall off the wagon and the days and weeks that follow will be reactionary rather than strategic. The review is what stops everything important becoming urgent.
If you want a well-known framework
If you’d like a structured method for weekly reviews, there’s plenty of solid material from David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done.
His approach is clear, repeatable, and designed for exactly this problem: too many open loops and not enough bandwidth.
Book an Intro Call
If you want, I’m happy to walk you through a weekly review process that fits your role, your calendar, and your reality. No preaching. Just a practical method that gives you more clarity and control.