Create Your Best Life With Regular Review And Planning In Obsidian
I'm going to teach you how I do daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly reviews in Obsidian to create my best life.
This regular reflection and planning is the single highest leverage ritual I have ever instilled in my life.
It has allowed me to create content on YT, my blog, newsletter, and podcast part-time in college, regularly traveling, keeping a tight social group, participating in clubs, and all while eating healthily, exercising, and sleeping well. The best part is it's not concrete. My regular reviews allow me to adapt my best life to change with me as I do.
Unfortunately, most people don't do it because they:
• Don't think they have the time
• Don't have clarity over how to do the reviews
• Don't know when to do the reviews
• Don't know how to do them in Obsidian
I'm going to solve all these issues by:
Providing a system for doing these reviews in Obsidian and my templates for doing them at the end of this article.
Let's go!
How To Install The Periodic Notes Plug-In
The Periodic Notes plugin expands on the idea of daily notes and introduces weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly notes into your system.
It's what I use to do my regular reflection and planning.
To install it search up periodic notes in the community plug-ins tab.
Once you have installed and enabled it, go to it in your community plug-ins tab so we can set it up.
Create a folder called Calendar and subfolders inside it called Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly.
Go to the periodic notes tab and enable each of the periodic notes. Then type in the respective date format and folder for each periodic note.
Now every single day when you log into Obsidian you can open up your automatically created daily note.
Now I'll show you the templates I use for each of the periodic notes.
You will be able to download these for free at the end of the article.
🌞#1 Daily Reviews
I have a timer set for 9:00 p.m. every night reminding me to journal about the day inside my daily note template in Obsidian.
My daily review template:
Don't be scared about the code shown in the template. It simply fills in the last day, the current day, and the next day so that I can easily navigate the days with my mouse.
The same thing is done in all of my reviews.
📅#2 Weekly Reviews
Every Friday, I go through all my communication mediums, my task management list, and my calendar, and plan out the next week's goals in the realms of health, work, and relationships based on my monthly goals.
I review the last seven days of daily journal entries and fill out the journaling questions in my weekly review.
My weekly review template:
🗺️#3 Monthly Reviews
On the last day of every month, I go through the last four weeks of weekly reviews, journals, and roughly plan out the next month's goals in the realms of health, work, and relationships based on my quarterly goals.
My monthly review template:
🔎#4 Quarterly Reviews
On the last day of every quarter (3 months), I block out the whole day to go somewhere new. A coffee shop, a hotel, anywhere that isn't the usual.
I want to rid myself of the usual cues of my life to get into a reflective mindset.
What do I do?
I go through my last three monthly reviews and the last 12 weekly reviews. I answer my quarterly journaling questions. The three most insightful are:
- What should I start doing?
- What should I stop doing?
- What should I keep doing?
For stop doing, I have to choose at least one thing.
Than I roughly plan out my next quarter's key goals in the realms of health, work, and relationships taking reference from my yearly goals.
My quarterly review template:
🌍#5 Yearly Reviews
On the last day of every year, like in my quarterly review, I block out a day to go somewhere new.
Then I go through my last four quarterly reviews, my 12 monthly reviews, and my 56 weekly reviews.
What do I ask myself?
A couple of the most high-leverage questions I ask are:
• What 20% of things accounted for 80% of my enjoyment?
• What 20% of things accounted for 80% of my unhappiness?
When coming up with my goals for the next year, I make sure to add more of the things that accounted for most of my enjoyment and less of the things that accounted for most of my unhappiness.
I create a not to-do list, a list of things from the 20% of things that accounted for 80% of my unhappiness that I keep by my side for the first month of the year. This ensures that I don't schedule something from that list on my calendar without serious contemplation.
My yearly review template:
All in all, these five reviews allow me to create the best possible life for me:
🌞#1 Daily Reviews
📅#2 Weekly Reviews
🗺️#3 Monthly Reviews
🔎#4 Quarterly Reviews
🌍#5 Yearly Reviews
The reviews become more concrete and less aspirational the closer and closer you hone into the daily review.
This is because it's impossible to know what your future self will be like. You can only guess what you should plan to do in the future and change as you change.
The whole system works off of each other in a beautiful interchange.
Yearly review goals inform quarterly review goals, which inform monthly review goals, which inform weekly review goals, which inform daily review goals. Over time you continually create and adapt to make the best life for you.
But that will only happen if you do the reviews.
Get the review templates yourself for free here: https://course.aidanhelfant.com/dailyweeklymonthyquarterlyyearlyreviews