I’ve been writing my weeknotes a little while now, and since starting I’ve wanted to codify exactly what weeknoting means to me, what I do it for, in an attempt to draw a little box around it. Writing this up has never fit into a weeknote itself, as I’ve always had other things I’d prefer to write about. So here’s an attempt to do that, in a special little blog post all of its own.
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I write weeknotes for myself.
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Weeknotes are about work and work adjacent things.
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A single weeknote should take no more than 5 minutes to read. Any longer then it’s a blog post of its own and I will add it to my blog post backlog.
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I don’t worry about missed weeks. Some weeks will get missed and that’s part of the process, not the end of it.
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I write on a Sunday in nearly all cases, unless I’m unable to, in which case I write on a Saturday, or Monday. Any later than Monday evening and it’s a missed week. See rule 4.
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Weeknotes cover the last week, if I’ve missed a week I don’t try to wrap up a fortnight in the next weeknote. See rule 4.
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I write about what’s stuck with me when I sit down to write my weeknote. I don’t want to assume what’s important, or interesting enough to weeknote while it’s happening, so I don’t take notes during the week to feature in my weeknote. If I’ve forgotten it by the time of writing then it wasn’t worthy of inclusion in a weeknote.
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There is no such thing as a weeknote streak, I don’t care or reward how many notes I’ve written in a row. See rule 4.
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The extra sections, ‘listening’, ‘reading’, ‘watching’, ‘playing’, ‘doing’ are entirely optional. Listening is for music. Audiobooks belong in reading.
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Breaking any of the above rules is fun and I’ll do it as often as I like. See rule 1.