I’ve been thinking of an appropriate format for my personal weekly retrospective. That’s a meeting I have with myself on Sunday or Early Monday mornings to review the previous week.

My new plan, which I’ll enact this coming Sunday is to use a FLAP chart. Here’s a brief and good overview of the concept.

At work, I tend to like this technique for groups when time is short. Usually a full retrospective has more time, details, and ritual. The FLAP system is good for getting to the point quickly, if time is short. Since it’s just me on this “project” I’ll try the FLAP system to see how it goes.

I’ve purposely limited myself to three goals this week, as anything more than that is untenable for me. Three is the magic number. After the retro, I’ll know if the three goal planning and my overall process is sound.

My initial thought was to write this down in my notebook under my weekly tracker but there’s not enough room. Next I thought of a dedicated “spread” in the notebook, but iteration is key for this activity. So I’m either going to use a whiteboard and stickies / dry erase or a sheet of paper and a sharpie. First messy and quick iterations, then reflection to turn the results into learnings and goals for next week.

The more tech I use the more I realize a pen and paper or dry erase and a whiteboard are fantastic tools to problem solve. Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin says he’s teaching people to “Solve any Problem with a Simple Picture”. That’s really resonating with me recently.