My weeknotes

I write my own week­notes, publishing them every Sunday morning. I’ve been doing this since late 2021.

What are week­notes?

The definition varies depending on who you talk to, and the format and content of my week­notes has certain evolved over time. For me, week­notes have two aspects:

• Reflections on the past week. What have I been up to? There is some overlap with the Now page, with the difference being that the week­notes are more of a log, rather than continuously updated.

• Semi-random thoughts. More recently, in my week­notes I elaborate on topics that have been top of mind. In essence, my week­notes act as a thinking tool, helping me to formulate thoughts that I would otherwise perhaps discard. Occasionally, I move/copy thoughts into their own dedicated note or set of notes, to make it easier to find later.

Who are week­notes for?

I write the week­notes primarily for myself. It is a thinking tool, and a reflection tool.

I don’t really have stats on who reads them; I know that a handful of people are subscribed to the mailing list, and some to the web feed, but I can only make guesses about how many people it reaches. Reach is not the point of my week­notes anyway!

It’s really about thinking and working in the open.

Plural or singular?

I always refer to week­notes in plural. A single entry, e.g. Week­notes 2024 W19: AI slop, is still a set of week­notes, rather than a single “week­note.”

A week­notes entry contains multiple thoughts. Those individual thoughts could be considered a week­note each, but that feels odd to me.

And so, I always refer to week­notes in plural.

How I write my week­notes

Every day, I set aside some time to update my week­notes. I aim for ten minutes each day, though there are days where I don’t get any writing done at all, and on some days I write for 30 minutes or more.

I have a rough template that I use for new week­notes. It comprises the following:

• Quick thoughts (single paragraph)
• In-depth thoughts (multiple paragraphs each)
• Entertainment (movies, games, books)
• External links

The stuff I write during the week can be very rough, because I brain dump a lot. In Bear, the app I use for writing (week)notes, I highlight anything that needs to be written, rewritten, expanded upon, reworded, revisited, deleted, or otherwise needs my attention.

On Saturday, I take the time to get everything into a mostly publishable state, resolving anything that is highlighted and thus still needs attention.

On Sunday, I do a final editing and proofreading pass, and hit the proverbial publish button.

See also

• Are week­notes ever edited?