The weekly reflection questions I've used with clients since 2017

The best weekly reflection asks you to look back at what happened, name the one thing in your way, and commit to specific days and actions for the coming week. Ten questions is enough. I've used versions of the questions below with coaching clients in my programs from 2017 to 2025, and they take about ten minutes to answer.

Key takeaways

Key takeaway

1. A useful weekly reflection is ten short questions: wins, last week's commitments, training and tracking, nutrition and self-care ratings, the biggest challenge and the support needed, and named days and actions for next week. Write it down and send it to someone.

Every week before their coaching call, clients in MERGE60, Life By Design, MF10C and the Whole Life Manifesto Coaching Program sent me a short reflection form, and I read every one before the call. The wording changed between programs over the years. The bones didn't. Wins, the training that did or didn't happen, how they ate and looked after themselves, the biggest challenge, and a commitment for the next seven days.

When I went back through 1,378 of those check-ins this year, one pattern stood out. In the weeks people tracked what they did, they completed their workouts far more often. I wrote that up, with its limits, in what 1,378 weekly check-ins taught me about why people stall. This piece is the practical side: the questions themselves, cleaned up so you can use them on your own.

Why does a weekly reflection work?

Two bodies of research back the habit.

The first is about monitoring. A 2016 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin looked at 138 experiments with 19,951 participants, where people were randomly assigned to monitor their progress or not. Monitoring improved goal attainment, and the effects were larger when the information was physically recorded and when the outcomes were reported or made public. A weekly form you write down and send to someone does both.

The second is about reflection itself. In a 2016 working paper on how people learn on the job, Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano and Bradley Staats found that the benefit of accumulating more experience was smaller than the benefit of deliberately articulating what had been learned. They traced it to two things: a better understanding of the task, and more confidence in your ability to do it.

In plain terms, doing more weeks doesn't teach you much on its own. Stopping to write down what happened does.

The 10 weekly reflection questions I recommend

Answer these once a week, at the same time. In my programs the reminder went out early Sunday morning, before the week started. Write the answers down. Keep them short.

1. What have you achieved in the past seven days?

Start with wins. Most driven people skip straight to what went wrong, which is exactly why this comes first. Small ones count.

2. What did you commit to last week, and what actually happened?

My business coaching forms opened with "Specific, measurable actions I committed to on my last call." Holding last week's promise next to this week's reality is where honest reflection starts. No judgment, just the gap.

3. Did you complete and log all your scheduled workouts this week?

Yes or no. The point is the yes or no. It's a simple, honest test of whether your plan met your week.

4. Have you been tracking your daily activities and habits?

In Life By Design the question was "Have you been completing your weekly checklist?" In my client data, workouts went hand in hand with tracking more than with anything else I measured. Even if tracking only travels with good weeks, it is the first thing to slip when a week goes sideways, so it gives you early warning.

5. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your nutrition this week?

A number is quicker than a food diary and still shows the trend over a month. Be honest rather than generous. If you write 8 every single week, the scale has stopped telling you anything.

6. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your self-care since our last call? Did you invest time in your personal self-care each day?

Two parts on purpose. The rating tells you how the week felt. The daily yes or no tells you whether you actually did anything about it. In my business clients' check-ins, people who said they invested in self-care every day rated it 8.6 on average, versus 6.5 for those who didn't.

7. What is your biggest challenge at the moment? What support do you need to overcome it?

This is the most important question on the form. The second half matters as much as the first: naming the support you need turns a complaint into a request. If your answer is "time" week after week, look under it. In my data, people who named time trained about as often as people who didn't. The obstacles that lined up with missed workouts were motivation, unclear plans, self-talk and pain.

8. For the coming week (Monday to Sunday), what days will you be committed to getting your scheduled 'gym' workouts done?

Name the days. "Three times" is a wish. "Monday, Wednesday, Saturday" is a plan you can put in the calendar.

9. What actions or behaviors do you commit to focusing on over the next 7 days to develop, grow and to continue to move forward in life?

Pick one to three actions, specific enough that next week's question 2 has a clear answer.

10. What changes have you noticed since you started?

Big or small. Over weeks this becomes the record you'll want on the day you feel like nothing is working. Read back through it when you're tempted to quit.

The business owner variant: working on the biz

For founders and owners, my MF10C and Life By Design form swapped the gym questions for business ones. The key phrase was WOB, "working on the biz": protected time spent building the business rather than running its day-to-day.

Use these in place of questions 1, 2, 3 and 8 above, and keep the rest:

• Specific, measurable actions I committed to on my last call. What were they, and what got done?
• New opportunities and positive result of actions taken. Owners under pressure miss these. Write them down.
• For the coming week (Monday to Sunday), what days will you be committed to set time aside to WOB 'working on the biz'? Name the days, the same way you would name training days.

Then finish with the self-care rating, the biggest challenge and the support you need, and your commitments "to move forward in life and business."

In those business check-ins, growing the business and planning or focus were the challenges named most often, ahead of time. If you're an owner and your answer to question 7 keeps coming back to clients and sales, that is normal. It's also worth noticing how much of the week you actually protected for it.

How to make the reflection stick

Same time, every week. Tie it to something you already do, like Sunday dinner or the end of your Friday.

Write it, don't think it. The research effect was bigger when progress was physically recorded.

Send it to someone. A coach, a partner, a friend who will actually read it. Reported progress had larger effects than private progress. That is why my clients' forms came to me, and I read every one before their call.

Keep it to ten minutes. If it takes longer, it'll stop happening. Short answers are fine.

Watch week five. In my client data, workout completion peaked in weeks 3 to 4 and slipped after that. Expect it, and use question 7 to catch it early.

This pairs with my 2% Solution: 30 minutes a day, with 10 of those minutes for reading, learning or reflecting. The weekly reflection is the review that keeps those daily minutes honest. For the bigger picture of how change actually lasts, see my lasting change page.

This is coaching, not medical advice. If you're managing a health condition, check with your doctor before you change how you train or eat.

Next step

A form only works if someone reads it and pushes back. That's what weekly coaching is for. If you're carrying a company and want someone in your corner every week, start with a free 20-minute call.