Journaling is great for capturing what happens/inspires you throughout your day and for focusing your attention on what matters most right now. On the other hand, periodic reviews are essential to make sure that you are moving in the right direction (i.e., towards your goals) and to adjust course if and when needed.
Before we start, keep in mind that effective reviews require knowing about your short/mid and long-term goals. If you don’t have clear goals, then it will be hard for you to perform useful reviews. This means that you have to perform periodic planning too. That is, regularly update/refine your plans. Long-term goals should be your north star, and all your actions should move you towards those.
My personal productivity system heavily relies on regular reviews, inspired by agile approaches and innovation principles:
Periodic reviews are an excellent opportunity to look back, but also to look forward. Evaluate your past, adjust your plans for the future, and make leaps forward.
Periodic reviews can be performed at various time intervals:
Don’t worry though. You don’t have to perform all of those. You can start simple and expand from there if you feel like it. I recommend doing at least daily and weekly reviews, as those can be incredibly impactful.
A daily review should take 5-10 minutes at most. The first goal of a daily review is to identify what you feel grateful for. Even a tiny little detail that was positive about your day is worth mentioning. Try to identify at least 3 items. When you feel down, go back to those points, and you’ll be surprised how much it can help improve your mood. Let me give you an example: today, I’m grateful for the fact that my baby Raphaël kissed me on the cheek three times in a row. It was magic.
Second, take a few moments to consider the items you didn’t complete on your to-do list of the day. Don’t feel bad about those. No need to dwell on the past. Just try to understand what the problems were: