Using personal weeknotes as a tool for attention

Since leaving my day job two years ago, I’ve been writing personal weeknotes. In short: once a week, I publish on my blog a set of notes about what I did the past week. I believe weeknotes started inside organizations (here’s a good primer on professional weeknotes), but I appreciate using the weekly checkpoint as a personal tool to steer my attention and action.

This post is my entry for July’s IndieWeb Carnival on the theme of tools, hosted by James G. Crossposted to IndieNews.

I knew, as I was transitioning from an externally-structured schedule to a self-defined one, that I would be susceptible to feelings of not doing enough. It’s easy for me to trip over issues of self-worth related to work and worries about carrying my fair share in my partnership. (Fortunately, my partner has been my biggest cheerleader for both betting on myself and acknowledging that we don’t need to “pencil out” our contributions to be equal partners.) As I started my journey of self-employment, I needed to balance those fears of not doing enough with my state of burnout and exhaustion, taking time to rest while also making progress.

I noticed other bloggers writing weeknotes, both professional and personal. At first, I was simply interested in the contents of what people were doing — and then I recognized the usefulness of weeknotes as a tool.

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