Plus Minus Next: the only weekly review practice I've managed to stick to

Above everything else, optimize for simplicity

I am currently reading through

Anne-Laure Le Cunff

‘s excellent new book Tiny Experiments, and today, the spirit moved me to write an ode to my favorite learning from Anne: The Plus Minus Next system

AI generated image (Prompt: kid using a CRT monitor and looking at lifehacker.com articles)

My previous dalliances with Weekly Reviews

Let’s start with some personal background, I’m a recovering self-help addict who has been interested in productivity since my early teen years (I blame Lifehacker.com for starting me down this road). Name a productivity technique and it is very likely I’ve tried it. Name a self-help book and it is very likely I’ve read it (or have read it’s precursors¹). Name-drop a famous psychology finding like the Zeigarnik effect and I will often beat you to the punch with how I’ve tried to incorporate it to try to improve my productivity².

In the personal productivity “literature”, a weekly review practice is one of the most commonly touted pieces of advice. David Allen (of GTD fame) calls weekly reviews the “Master Key to GTD”. Ben Kuhn (whose blog is a personal favorite) says that the “weekly review is the most useful habit (or habit-generating meta-habit) I’ve built.”.

If you’re reading this article, you’re probably already sold on the benefits of a daily review, but if you aren’t, here’s one way to look at it: A lot of us (either implicitly or explicitly) review our year at around the end of the year. We think through what went well, what didn’t and make plans (or ill-fated New Year Resolutions) for the next year. However, just once a year is not the optimal cadence for reflection - first because you will only have 80-ish opportunities over a lifetime, but also because you will have forgotten most of your lessons by the time next year’s review rolls around. A week is a much more better cadence for reflection³. If you review your life once a week, you can be much more nimble and agile, and take small actions and choices that nudge your life in the direction you want to steer.

So, I have known this since forever, but just knowing the benefits of this practice hasn’t been enough to install this practice in my life⁴. In retrospect, the failure mode I always fall prey to is obvious, and laughably so. When starting a new system, I have a lot of energy and enthusiasm, and so I over-engineer my weekly review. Oh, David Allen recommends going through task lists for all your projects? Yeah, I want to do that. Ben likes to read an inspiring article to set the mood for doing the review, that sounds useful. Add that to the list! And in no time, my review now takes up multiple hours. I am able to sustain this for a few weeks, but at some point, I run out of steam (/ am not able to schedule out the multi-hour time-block in some weekend), and then stop using the system.

Enter “Plus Minus Next”

Plus Minus Next (I shamelessly stole this image from Anne-Laure’s blog post on this technique)

The process is very simple:

1. Take a piece of blank paper

2. Split it up into 3 columns: Plus (+), Minus (-), and Next (→)

3. Then fill up the first 2 columns reflecting on the previous week: write accomplishments or things that worked well in +, things that didn’t go well in -

4. Then, use the insights from the + and - columns to make a list of things you want to do (or tiny experiments you want to run 😉) in the next cycle/week

5. That’s it, folks, you’re done!

Why does this work?

Thinking on a meta level about why this technique works, the main guiding principle I notice is Simplicity. The system is remarkably simple, has no frills, and notably, can be done very quickly (I’ve timed my weekly reviews, and have found that I can get one reliably done in 10-15 minutes). This low-effort nature of the process is essential, because to be honest, that is the only reason I have been able to stick to it: I can (almost never) think of a reason not to do it 🤣.

If you’re interested in building systems in your life, this is a very important thing to notice, possibly the most important. Above anything else, optimize for simplicity.

Reminds me of Gall’s law⁵:

All complex systems that work evolved from simpler systems that worked. If you want to build a complex system that works, build a simpler system first, and then improve it over time.
- Gall’s Law (description sourced from PersonalMBA site)

So, when building a system, start with the simplest possible system. Aim to make it effortless. Before you get to the point where you reliably do it, do not even think of adding any extra elements. Even after you have it down pat, think very long and hard before adding elements. Also, always be willing to drop down to the simplest and most bare-bones version of the system if you need to.

Some tactical advice

Some weekly-review-related tips that have helped me:

1. Try to block out the same time period every week to do your weekly review

   1. Add a calendar event for it and try to be religious with it

2. I do my plus minus next journaling in Roam. Particularly, I have a template for this, which instantiates a Kanban board with these three columns. When filling up the columns, I like to fill them up quickly brain-dump style and then, optionally, reorder them in the order of importance later.

   • I have a pretty bad memory so doing this review from Roam also lets me quickly view the last week (just scrolling the last week’s daily notes) and catch stuff I’d have otherwise forgotten

   • I’ve noticed that doing this exercise in an outliner prevents me from writing too much unnecessary exposition (you could achieve this same benefit by increasing the cost of writing too much, by say, handwriting in a piece of paper)

   • Apart from this, I do not complicate the process further. I just make sure to tag the review with “[[Plus Minus Next]]” so that I can find it later

   • Recently, I’ve started going Zen Mode during my reviews to not get distracted

3. Some weeks, if you want to do extra reflections, you can. Just remember that those extra steps are optional, and if you’re strapped for time/tired, you can always drop down to the simplest 10-minute version of just filling up these three columns.

   1. Some additions I like to do if I have the energy:

      1. Review how my time was spent over the last week. (Toggl Track, the app I use for time tracking, provides an easy link to access this data)

         1. Go over my quick captures over the last week

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So, if you’ve ever tried and failed with other clunky weekly review systems, do give Plus Minus Next a spin, I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised. And this is only one of the many awesome techniques from Anne’s new book Tiny Experiments, I strongly recommend you give it a read. (I generally find self-help books to be either a rehashing of some idea I already know or a bunch of fluff around a single idea, this book is neither, and)

Here’s the book trailer:

⁶

1. For the longest time, I didn’t read the massively popular Atomic Habits because I’d already read what I deemed to be it’s predecessor: The Power of Habit (this is a funny example because I read almost everything else James Clear wrote, apart from his most famous work XD)

2. I chose a very easy example for this, The Zeigarnik effect is fascinating, and the obvious application is what is sometimes called the “Hemingway effect” - stopping writing mid-way while you’re in flow (and let your subconscious work on the open loop)

3. When I think of weeks, I can never not think about Tim Urban’s awesome post "Your life in weeks”. Highly recommended

4. At least, until very recently (My current streak starts at Dec 29, 2024 specifically)

5. which again, I’d read a long time ago, but nothing like experience to drill into you a lesson, right?

6. I know I have not been active on this blog much, hopefully will be back soon with another article (have a bunch of posts about topics I find very interesting coming up soon)