The Weekly Review is the single highest-leverage planning artefact in the Groundwork system. More than the Daily Focus Sheet, more than the Annual Blueprint, more than any individual product. Thirty minutes on a Sunday produces meaningful changes in every week that follows. Skip it for three Sundays and the entire cascade begins to break down.
This is the deep-dive on the artefact itself. What's on the page. Why each section exists. How the page is designed to be filled in at exactly the right speed for thirty minutes. And how the Weekly Review connects to the rest of the cascade — what feeds into it from above, and what flows out of it downward.
The five sections on the page
The Weekly Review sheet is one A4 page (or its A5, Filofax, US Letter equivalents). Five sections, designed to be filled in for six minutes each:
Section 1 · Brain Dump. A blank area at the top of the page, about one quarter of the total space. You write down everything that's been accumulating in your head over the week. Tasks, worries, half-thoughts, things you meant to do. The space is deliberately limited — if you fill it, you've probably done enough.
Section 2 · Processing grid. Four columns: Action, Project, Reference, Trash. Each item from the brain dump gets a tick in one column. Actions get a day assigned. Projects get a next-step. Reference gets filed. Trash is crossed off. The processing grid is the page's structural genius — it makes the GTD four-bucket sort visual and fast.
Section 3 · Debrief. Three questions, with one or two lines of space each. What hit this week? What missed? What's the pattern? Short answers. The debrief is the section most people want to expand and the one that benefits most from the constraint.
Section 4 · Cascade box. A bordered box labelled "This week's intentions, from the 90-day plan." Three lines. Each intention inherits from one of this quarter's objectives. The box is visually distinct because the cascade is the most important architectural feature — it's what stops the weekly intentions from being arbitrary.
Section 5 · Week ahead grid. A 7-column schedule sketch for the coming week. Deep work blocks, immovable meetings, key administrative tasks. Not a literal calendar — a strategic overview.
How the page handles the time constraint
The thirty-minute target is enforced by the page design. Each section's space is calibrated to roughly six minutes of careful writing. The brain dump is bounded — when the space is full, that section's done. The processing grid has a fixed number of rows — you can't sort 50 items into it. The debrief lines are short — you can't write a paragraph per question. The cascade box has three lines — you can't add a fourth intention.
This is the same design principle as the Daily Focus Sheet's three priority lines. The constraint is physical. You don't have to discipline yourself to keep the review short; the page does it for you.
What feeds into the review · what flows out
The Weekly Review sits at the connecting point between the long-horizon plans and the daily execution. Inputs come from above; outputs flow downward.
Inputs (from above):
- The 90-Day Goal Planner's three objectives — these are what the weekly intentions inherit from
- The Annual Blueprint's four domain outcomes — these provide the broader context for the quarter
- Last week's Weekly Review — for the debrief section
Outputs (downward):
- The three weekly intentions — which become the source for the next seven daily focus sheets
- The processed action items — which get distributed across the seven days
- The schedule sketch — which becomes the starting point for daily time-blocking
This is the connective tissue of the cascade. Without the Weekly Review, the daily layer floats — daily priorities get chosen from short-term urgency rather than from longer-horizon intent. With the Weekly Review, the daily layer inherits from a structure that traces all the way up to values.
The Weekly Review — the connecting tissue
The Weekly Review sheet is £3.99 standalone in print or digital. Inside the Groundwork OS, the Weekly Review auto-populates from the 90-Day Plan above it (the cascade box loads with this quarter's objectives) and feeds the Daily Focus Sheet below it (the week's intentions appear on each daily entry automatically). Last week's debrief is one click away. The thirty-minute review becomes the connecting tissue of a system that runs across all five layers of the cascade. £19.99 for the OS, £54.99 for the complete bundle.
See the Groundwork OS →The honest next step
If you've never run a serious weekly review, start this Sunday. Block thirty minutes at 7pm. Run the five sections in order. The first review will be rough — the brain dump section will overflow, the processing will be slow, the debrief will feel awkward without a previous review to compare against. Do it anyway. By the third Sunday the page is familiar; by the eighth Sunday the practice has become automatic.
The Weekly Review sheet is £3.99 standalone. The complete Groundwork bundle at £54.99 includes it alongside every other layer of the cascade. The Groundwork OS at £19.99 runs the Weekly Review inside a connected Notion workspace where the inputs and outputs link automatically.
The single highest-leverage thirty minutes available to a working adult. Once a week, every week.