What you can use
Review commitments, delivery bottlenecks, customer evidence and next-week capacity with a practical worksheet and a filled hypothetical example.
SOLOHATCH FIELD GUIDE · SOLO WORKFLOWS
A useful weekly business review ends with a small set of decisions: what must happen next, what needs clarification, and what you will stop carrying into another week.
The worksheet below combines delivery commitments, customer learning, and available capacity. It is designed for a one-person operation where the same person often handles enquiries, client work, and administration. Adapt the sections to the work you actually do rather than filling every box for its own sake.
Copy this weekly review worksheet
WEEK ENDING: AVAILABLE WORKING TIME NEXT WEEK: Fixed commitments and unavailable periods: 1. COMMITMENTS What did I promise to deliver? What is complete? What is still open? Does anyone need a status update? 2. DELIVERY What moved forward? Where did work wait for an input or decision? Which correction or repeated step took attention? What can be clarified or standardized? 3. CUSTOMER LEARNING What did a suitable person actually say or do? What question, objection, request, or commitment appeared? What is my interpretation? What other explanation could fit? What evidence would change the next decision? 4. ENQUIRIES AND FOLLOW-UP Which conversations need a response? What decision is needed in each? Who owns the next action, and when? Which conversations should be paused or closed? 5. CAPACITY What work is already committed? What essential administration needs time? What uncertainty needs room in the plan? What should I defer before accepting more? 6. NEXT WEEK'S DECISIONS Most important delivery commitment: One process improvement: One learning question or small test: One thing to stop, defer, or decline: First action and review point:
Use the records you already have: your calendar, delivery list, enquiry log, and notes from real conversations. If you do not track a measure, mark it unknown rather than inventing a number to complete the review.
Begin with promises, not a score for the week
Start by checking what other people expect from you. A client waiting for a file or a decision may need a clear update before you spend time planning a new experiment.
For each open commitment, identify its next action and owner. “Finish project” is too broad if the actual next step is “ask the client to approve the final description.” The second version shows both the dependency and the conversation you need to have.
When something is late, record its present state and communicate the revised next step. The review is useful because it helps you respond accurately, not because it produces a positive weekly summary.
Keep activity and evidence in separate columns
Publishing a page, sending a proposal, and preparing a template are activities. A person using the template, explaining an objection, or agreeing to a defined next step gives you different information. Both belong in your records, but they answer different questions.
For a service enquiry, separate sending a proposal, receiving a response, confirming the work, taking the agreed payment and delivering the result. Record which event happened and which decision remains open.
For a service offer, a compliment may tell you that the explanation is understandable. It does not establish a purchase decision. Ask what the observation supports before using it to choose more work.
OBSERVATION: A suitable prospect asked whether editable files are included. POSSIBLE INTERPRETATION: The handoff format matters to this person. OTHER EXPLANATION: They may be comparing several suppliers or exploring options. NEXT ACTION: Clarify the handoff in this proposal, then check whether the same question appears in other relevant conversations.
Filled example: a solo tutor’s review
Illustrative example: an independent language tutor reviews upcoming lessons and two enquiries. These fictional notes show how a review can lead to a small set of decisions.
- Open commitment
- Prepare an upcoming workplace-English lesson after the learner confirms which type of client call they need to practise.
- Delivery bottleneck
- The preparation request asked for background information but did not ask which call was most urgent.
- Customer observation
- A prospective learner asked whether sessions could fit a rotating work schedule.
- Follow-up
- One enquiry has an agreed time to discuss availability; the other still needs a clear next step.
- Capacity decision
- Reserve lesson and preparation time for existing learners before offering another weekly slot.
- Process improvement
- Add one question about the next real situation the learner wants to handle.
The tutor’s first action is to ask the current learner which call to prioritise. The intake improvement is one targeted question. A scheduling tool can help arrange times after the actual availability and lesson needs are clear.
Choose commitments that fit the available week
Write down fixed commitments and unavailable periods first. Then consider the work already promised, essential administration, and uncertainty around inputs or reviews. Use your own recent experience to estimate effort; avoid assuming every available hour can become uninterrupted delivery time.
If the plan does not fit, change it before adding more work. You may need to renegotiate a sequence, defer an optional improvement, narrow a new request, or leave a conversation uncommitted until its inputs are clearer.
Choose a small number of outcomes you can check. For example: “Send the agreed draft after the missing description is approved,” “clarify the handoff format in the proposal,” and “remove an unused intake question.” These are easier to review than “be more productive.”
Give each experiment a review point
A process change needs a way to learn whether it helped. If you add an input-owner field, review it after the next suitable project: did it make the next action clearer, or did the field remain unused?
For a change to lesson or service delivery, choose a review point after the next relevant use. Note what happened and whether the change helped, then decide whether to keep or adjust it.
Keep the review short enough to repeat. If a section never changes a decision, reduce it. If a recurring surprise is missing from the worksheet, add one targeted question rather than redesigning the entire system.
Make next Monday easier to start
Finish by writing the first concrete action for the next working period. Include the relevant document, person, or input so you do not need to reconstruct the decision later.
Use the client intake template for missing-input problems, the proposal follow-up guide for open conversations, and the workflow framework for a repeated delivery bottleneck.
This guide was developed with AI assistance. Examples are illustrative, and templates should be adapted to your situation. SoloHatch is operated by My Target Limited. About SoloHatch · Browse all guides