Here are the five prompts. Each covers a distinct moment in the weekly review process. Use them this Friday.
Before You Start: 5-Minute Data Block
All five prompts work from the same input. Spend five minutes building this before you open your AI tool:
Week of [date]
Time by category:
- Deep work (focused, cognitively demanding work): [X] hours
- Meetings/calls: [X] hours
- Admin (email, Slack, scheduling): [X] hours
- Personal/buffer: [X] hours
Top priorities I intended to work on:
1. [Priority 1]
2. [Priority 2]
3. [Priority 3]
What I actually completed:
- [Item] — [done / partial / not started]
- [Item] — [done / partial / not started]
- [Item] — [done / partial / not started]
Energy note: [Which days felt focused? Which felt scattered?]Prompt 1: The Core Weekly Analysis
Use this every week. This is the complete 30-Minute Weekly Review in a single prompt.
I'm doing my weekly time review. Below is my time data from the past week. Give me exactly three outputs:
1. ONE WIN — the single most meaningful pattern or behavior in how I spent my time this week. Not just a completed task. A habit, decision, or structural choice worth reinforcing.
2. ONE LEAK — the single biggest gap between how I spent my time and what I said my priorities were. Name the category, estimate the hours, and explain the cost specifically.
3. ONE SHIFT — one concrete, structural change I should make to next week's calendar. Something I could implement in the next 10 minutes. Not a principle — a specific calendar change.
Be direct. If the data shows a problem, name it.
[Paste your data block here]Prompt 2: The Leak Diagnostic
Use when: Prompt 1 identified a leak but you want to understand it more deeply before deciding how to address it.
You identified [name the leak] as my main time leak this week. I want to understand it better before deciding what to change.
Please diagnose the leak at three levels:
1. Immediate cause — what specific events or patterns in the calendar data produced this leak this week?
2. Structural cause — is there something about how my week is organized (meeting patterns, role demands, default commitments) that makes this leak predictable rather than accidental?
3. Behavioral cause — is there a decision-making pattern on my end that's contributing? For example, am I saying yes to things I could decline? Handling things synchronously that could be async? Starting low-priority work before high-priority work?
Based on your diagnosis, what type of shift would address the root cause rather than the symptom?Prompt 3: The Priority Alignment Check
Use when: You completed a lot of work but aren’t sure if it was the right work.
Looking at my completed work this week, I want to check how well my time served my actual priorities.
Here's the breakdown:
Stated priorities (in order of importance to me):
1. [Priority 1] — completion: [done/partial/not started]
2. [Priority 2] — completion: [done/partial/not started]
3. [Priority 3] — completion: [done/partial/not started]
Other completed work this week: [list what else you finished]
Questions I want you to answer:
- What percentage of my deep work time went to my top priority versus everything else?
- If someone looked at this week's work without knowing my stated priorities, what would they conclude my actual priorities were?
- Is the gap between my stated and revealed priorities a one-week blip or does it look like a pattern?
Be honest. I can handle uncomfortable answers.Prompt 4: The Shift Generator
Use when: You know you need to change something but can’t identify the specific structural change.
I've identified that my main problem this week was [describe the problem — e.g., "too many meetings crowded out deep work" or "admin consumed my morning hours"].
I want you to generate three specific structural changes I could make to next week's calendar to address this. For each:
1. The exact change (what block moves, what gets added, what gets removed or shortened)
2. What it would protect or create
3. The likely resistance or cost (what I'd have to give up or negotiate)
4. How to implement it in the next 10 minutes
Rank them from most to least impactful. I'll pick one.Prompt 5: The Eight-Week Pattern Review
Use every two months. Submit eight weeks of data for pattern recognition across the full cycle.
I'm doing an eight-week review of my time data. Below are my weekly summaries from the past two months. I want you to identify patterns across the full dataset — things that don't show up in a single week but emerge clearly across eight weeks.
Specifically:
1. What categories of time are consistently over- or under-allocated relative to my stated priorities?
2. Which of my weekly shifts were implemented (appeared in the following week's data) and which were not?
3. What is the one structural change I haven't made yet that my eight-week data most clearly indicates I should make?
4. Is there a category of time that's been growing slowly week-over-week? Or one that's been shrinking?
[Paste 8 weeks of data blocks here]Your action this Friday: Build the five-minute data block from your past week’s calendar. Then use Prompt 1 with any AI tool. The full framework behind these prompts — including what to do with the output — is in the Complete Guide to Weekly Time Review with AI.
Frequently Asked Questions
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What time data do I need before using these prompts?
At minimum: your calendar for the past week, categorized into four buckets (meetings/calls, deep work, admin, personal/buffer) with rough hour estimates. Also note your intended top priorities and what actually got completed. That's it. Five minutes of preparation unlocks all five prompts.
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Can I use these with ChatGPT as well as Claude?
Yes. These prompts work with any capable language model. Claude tends to produce more nuanced qualitative analysis on the pattern and meaning questions. ChatGPT handles the structured output prompts well. Either works — the prompt quality matters more than the model.
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Should I use all five prompts every week?
No. Prompt 1 (baseline analysis) is the core weekly prompt. Prompts 2–4 are follow-ups for when you want to go deeper on a specific aspect. Prompt 5 (eight-week lookback) is for the end of every two-month cycle. A typical week uses Prompt 1 and possibly one follow-up.