Bookmark do Medium: Why You Should Send a Weekly Summary Email

O texto é focado no trabalho corporativo, mas eu achei válido usar o "método" pra organização pessoal também. Ao invés do e-mail, eu anoto no caderno um resumo semanal de prioridades e conquistas. Esses resumos vão compor uma lista mensal, que vai resultar num resumo do meu ano. E tá pronta a retrospectiva, sem que eu precise fazer um resgate de 365 dias no último mês do ano, baseada na minha memória falha e cheia de traumas 🤡.

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At its core, the weekly email has two headings with 3–5 short bullet points each: achievements this week and priorities next week. Under the former, you list the 3–5 most important things you got done this week, under the latter, the 3–5 most important things you want to get done the following week.

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It’s important to list achievements or outputs under both headings, not just activities. It doesn’t matter that you spent two days on a product spec, but it does matter that you finalized a spec. 

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Writing this email every week should be simple and not take more than 5–10 minutes. However, it has many benefits [...]:

1. Start the week off right: By focusing on the 3–5 priorities for the week, though, it becomes much easier to decide where to start.
2. Ensure progress on the things that matter: It can be easy to lose sight of the less urgent but important tasks, like more forward looking strategy and discovery work. Making the forward looking work an explicit priority for the week helps not lose track of it.
3. Enable introspection: At the end of each week, you can compare the things you wanted to get done with those you actually got done
4. Align priorities: If something that the manager considers important is missing from the list, they can simply mention it as a possible addition, and the product manager can consider it.
5. Make invisible work visible
6. Keep a record of achievements: Humans have imperfect memories and are afflicted by recent bias. It can be easy to fall into the trap of only considering the most recent past when writing reviews.

Pitfalls 

1. Listing too many priorities makes the email much less valuable. If everything is a priority, then nothing is.
2. Another pitfall is making your descriptions too extensive.
3. The last benefit is listing activities instead of outputs. Focusing on outputs makes sure that you actually produce something for your priorities.