Life review journal prompts
A life review is an inventory taken across the parts of a life rather than a rating of how the week went. The point is to see the whole shape at once, including the parts that have quietly had no attention for months.
How to use these
Once a week, same hour if you can. Answer three or four, not all of them, and let the ones you keep skipping tell you something.
The week, plainly
Description before assessment. Write what the week was before deciding whether it was any good.
- How were you this week, in your own words, before you assess anything?
- What did you give your best hours to, and was that the right place for them?
- What did you make, build, or finish?
- What did you learn, and from what?
- What took up room in your head this week without ever getting done?
- What did you say yes to that you wanted to say no to?
- Where did the week surprise you?
- What was the best hour of the week, and what was happening in it?
The parts of a life
The inventory proper. The useful answer is usually the one about the part you had not thought about since the last time you did this.
- Who did you actually spend time with, and who did you mean to?
- What is the state of your health this week, honestly?
- What happened with money this week that you would want to remember?
- What part of your life has had no attention this month?
- How is the place you live treating you at the moment?
- What have you done purely for pleasure lately?
- Who have you not spoken to in too long, and what is in the way?
- What are you learning outside of work, if anything?
Where it is going
Save these for the end of a month or a year. They read badly weekly and very well in December.
- What is the biggest open loop right now?
- What would next week look like if it went well?
- What is one thing you would like to stop doing?
- Looking back a year from now, what will this week have been part of?
- What has been true of every week this year that you have not named yet?
- What would you like the next three months to have been about?
- What are you tolerating that you could simply end?
- If someone read this year back to you, what would the story be?
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