By now, most of you know that I like using the Notion App to manage every aspect of my life literally. If you haven’t read any of my previous posts on Notion, check them out here and let me know how you manage your life using the Notion App.
Today we’ll dive deep into the Notion Template that I use to reflect on my week.
But let’s start at the beginning.
Why do I reflect on my week, and why do I use notion for this?
I’m obsessed with self-improvement. I believe that you can’t know something for sure if you don’t have the quantifiable data to back it up.
If you want to be better at your job, your skill or whatever, you need to be able to look back at the past and measure how well your performance was. When you know what you’ve done and how you’ve felt, and what the effect was of your actions, you’ll be able to learn, and you’ll be able to grow into a better person.
Secondly, I do it to learn from my mistakes. I wouldn’t say I like the word mistake because I do not believe in mistakes. I believe in experiences. You need to get a lot of experience to know what works and know what doesn’t work. So collecting all those experiences on a central hub like Notion is great.
And finally, I reflect on my week to collect all the life and business lessons I learned over the week. Every week, I do this every year I have a large list of weeks that I’ve reflected on. For me, these weeks of collected thoughts are a treasure chest that you can use.
Again just like the experiences, I like to round up all the information at the end of the week to make it stick even better. Repetition of seeing certain information is key here.
I use my weekly reviews to do my yearly review. When the year is over, and everything went as planned, I should have 52 weekly reviews that I can go through to see how my year was. It’s like a journal for your weeks.
Only by learning from the past will it make you a better human in the future.
It is the act of glancing over the information that I’ve gathered during the weeks that makes it so valuable. Lessons and insights hang with you for longer, which is the reason for doing all this.
So why Notion you ask? Well, that answer is simple. The Notion App is so robust and so flexible in its setup. It lets you make your own Notion Flows that make certain repeatable tasks and things to do super easy. And it’s the place where I do everything, so it’s obvious that I’m using notion for this.
What type of reflection method do I use?
I see different things on the interwebs. People use visualisation. People are talking into their phone recordings. Some people use video to record themselves. All these methods are fine. It’s not about the method; it’s about the intention and results you want to get out of it.
I like to write down my reflection on the previous week.
I use a set of questions that are always the same, and I take an hour to go through them every week (mostly at the weekend on a Sunday or Saturday). I say out loud the questions in my head, then I close my eyes and see in front of me what comes up after I say the question to myself.
When you first start, it will take some time before things pop into your head. It’s because we are so numb to our feelings and our thoughts. We’ve forgotten how it is to sit in peace and think. We only know how to get stimulated. So, in the beginning, it will take some practice to really think about these questions.
But hang in there, don’t give up. Don’t be afraid. You will find your flow, and after that it’s easy, and you’ll enjoy your entries one year later.
The Reflection Notion Template:
Below is an image of the Notion template that I use to reflect on my week.
The weekly reflection template for the Notion App consists of 8 steps in total. After the reflection, I go straight into my planning for the coming week, but that is a blog post for the future. Let’s focus on the reflection questions.
The below questions have been gathered over the years. They are the perfect combination for me. They might not be as good for you; it doesn’t matter. What does matter though is that you never slack and skip a question once you commit to a set of questions! Slacking once is the killer of discipline. The slacking will take larger forms always. One slack moment will cascade into another moment, and before you know it, you’re quitting a habit. So never skip a question once you start with your reflection.
So let’s jump into my reflection list.
Questions 1: Did last week feel productive?
This is a feeling question. I’m not asking if my week was any good, no I’m asking if it felt productive. This first question is the “focus question” in my life at this moment in time. I’m focussing on productivity at this moment in time, so a week that feels productive is good for me.
For others, the question might be, did you feel loved this week. Did you feel healthy or deep you feel energized? What are you focussing on at this moment in time? Make the first question your focus area.
Questions 2: Describe strong emotions you felt last week
This is also a feeling question. But it’s triggered by events that have happened. Usually, certain events in one’s life give strong emotions—a loss of something or someone or an experience that was very pleasant or horrific.
This is the place for that. By now I know that when this question pops up, I’ll have to go back to that impactful event in the week. If I can’t develop an impactful feeling within 60 seconds after reading and thinking out the question, I did not experience any strong emotions. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it, I guess…
Questions 3: Describe last week in three words
This will show my focus for the week. What was I focussing on the last week? What did I spend my time on the most? That is what comes out of the answer to the third question. It could also be focused on a single event that made a large impact. It’s nice to glance over all of these three-word sentences after a year of writing to get a quick snapshot of all the weeks.
That is what these three words should be: A snapshot of your week.
Try it, it’s fun to be very creative with only three words.
Questions 4: What were last week’s highs / good/happy/proud moments?
HIGH: GOOD: HAPPY: PROUD:
Here you try to recall the positive things and experiences that happened during the week. I think it’s important to glance back at what you’ve experienced in the near past. We forget so quickly, and we’re all chasing the brand new thing that we forget about yesterday’s experiences because tomorrow has to be even better. Be happy with what you had.
Questions 5: What were last week’s lows/frustrations/challenges?
LOW: FRUSTRATIONS: CHALLENGES:
These questions trigger you to think about the lesser moments of the week. I think it’s important to think about the lows to learn from those lows. There is always a lot to learn from bad experiences. Maybe even more than from good experiences. How can you turn those bad experiences into lessons? This is the place to collect those lesser experiences, reflect on them and look for signs so you can avoid them the next time around.
For instance, I found out that a certain person triggers a certain type of anxiety in my business career. I saw this by collecting my bad experiences for some weeks and seeing that a certain name kept popping up during those anxious periods. So I did what had to be done, and I made work of getting over my fear around this person. Once you know where the pain is, that is the moment you can act on it.
Questions 6: What I learned last week:
After you’ve collected many thoughts in the previous questions, you’ll have a good list of thoughts that you can distil into lessons.
Think about the following things. Which experiences gave you a proud or good feeling? The lesson should be that you need to focus on those experiences more. Do more of what gives you a great feeling and do less of those things that make you feel like shit.
I don’t always agree with the above statement since I know from personal experience that many things of value will take a while to collect or achieve. And everything amazing will cost a lot. Nothing great comes without some pain.
Questions 7: Who / What I’m grateful for
Many gurus can tell you about the value of being grateful and feeling gratitude. It’s important to think about those small things that make your life worthwhile. The devil is in the small things, and so is your life. Not that your life is devilish, but you get my point. It’s an exercise in seeing the small things. This is essential if you want to be content with your current state.
Questions 8: What I’d like to improve on / what I hope for
Again, when looking at all the collected thoughts above, you’ll be able to see how tomorrow can be a better day. This is a powerful question that makes you think about that single thing that you can do to make tomorrow a better day because that is how you become the best version of yourself.
To sum it all up
Every week has its hidden gems and nuggets that can only be uncovered once you try to reflect on that week.
Make it into a habit to look back every week. I do this every weekend, and it only takes me an hour to do. The Notion template I created makes it even easier to do, but you don’t even need Notion to do this reflection. Just a pen and paper would be enough. Again, the process does not matter; the intention and the outcome matter here.
Your life itself is a treasure chest. You need to accept that this is the case. Good luck with finding those life lessons in your own life. Everyone has them, and so do you. Happy hunting and I will see you in the next one!
Stay safe and stay inside.
More Stuff You’ll Love:
My Current Workday Morning Routine
Weekly reflecting: A Notion Template to reflect on your week
My Notion Cockpit: A new Notion Template – A Life Wiki on steroids
Switch your career every Five Years and become a Master in any New Subject
My latest article:
This is my current Evening Routine
Full archive of articles:
Check out the entire archive of 50+ articles from 2016 to now
Hey This is a great process – any chance of sharing the actual template on notion? Thanks!