The CAST guide to writing weeknotes
What they are. How to write them. Where to get images. Platforms to use. (updated 15/06/22)
This guide is written for anyone. I’ve written it after being asked to by the Centre for the Acceleration of Social Technology. It covers:
- About weeknotes
- Why weeknotes benefit you
- Tips from Giles Turnbull
- Writing platforms to use
- Reusable templates
- Where to get free images
- How to share your weeknotes
Weeknotes take many forms
Weeknotes are writings based, either tightly or loosely, around what you’ve been doing this week.
You can write about one thing or lots of things.
You can write about things you’ve done, or things you’re thinking about.
You can write stories or just musings.
You can write in bullets or not.
You can compare your week to cloud types, write about a question you have, or anything else.
Weeknotes are personal. You write as you, in your own voice. You don’t write as your team or organisation.
No rules: write in whatever style you like. Write a little or a lot — 150 words is OK!
You don’t need to write every week. But it can be fun to write just a small amount regularly.
Benefits of weeknotes
Weeknotes are good for you because they:
- Help you reflect on your work, learn from it and make more confident decisions
- Helps others understand your work, so they can do their work with your work in mind
- Build new connections — people who read them understand what you are doing and can help you
- Show that you are willing to working openly and share — this attracts others to you, and makes them more likely to share with you
- Help you find your writing voice — most of us lack confidence to write, but weeknotes make it easy, as you’re writing for yourself more than others
Tips from Giles Turnbull
Giles Turnbull wrote these great tips. I’ve summarised them here. They are mainly his words.
- Write on a Friday — by next Monday you’ll have forgotten what happened this week.
- Don’t worry too much about structure — use the same, or vary it. No rules here.
- Sometimes there’s not much to say, and that’s fine — some weeks are full of news, others are slower.
- Use photos if you want to show something differently.
- You can include jokes and gifs — when people smile they enjoy your writing
- If you’re a leader, write your own weeknotes. Write your reflections on the past week, the way you see it. The more you can write like this, the more likely it is that people will read your weeknote.
- Let team members take turns to write weeknotes too — anyone can write weeknotes. People will have different styles.
- If you treat weeknotes like a burden, they’ll feel like a burden — they aren’t a reporting tool. They are personal.
- Be personal — a genuine personal reflection of the week. Allow thoughts and feelings to creep in, alongside news. Be open, be candid, be the sort of refreshing honesty that most colleagues are yearning for. This will result in excellent weeknotes!
Writing platforms
Using a new online platform can put people off writing weeknotes. But it’s super easy, even if you’ve never written on the web before. And it’s free. Here are three good options:
- Medium — probably the easiest place to get started. Simple to use. Beautiful design and easy writing experience. You can publish on the Deloitte Digital Connect Medium blog and reach more people, just follow this guide.
- Wordpress.com — another option. Choice of themes. Straightforward to learn. Doesn’t need to be used as a website.
- LinkedIn — easy place to get started. Very good for reaching networks. Not as pretty as Medium and Wordpress.com. If you write on Medium you could copy and paste your post here too.
Because weeknotes are personal reflections they usually fit better on a place or platform that belongs to you rather than your organisation’s website.
Reusable templates for weeknotes
Sam Villis at Weeknot.es wrote some great ideas for formats and styles, with examples. I’ve summarised them below. Use these links to help you.
- Sam’s ideas, with examples
- CAST weeknote templates that you can copy and reuse, based on Sam’s styles
1. The ‘jump straight in’- no structure: just thoughts and words. Simple and quick. Hard to do if you prefer to follow a structure.
2. The daily breakdown — simple. Use days of the week as your headings. Write as much detail as you like. Can feel mechanical if you prefer to be creative.
3. Lean-notes — communicate about specific projects or programmes.
4. The ‘[X] things that happened’ — flexible, repeatable and concise. Helps you pick out the most important things. For example ‘5 things that happened this week’.
5. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly — group by theme, without thinking of themes. Choose your own themes e.g. good things, learned things, difficulties, achievements, or overarching feeling, highlights, lessons
6. Stretching questions — like themes, but framed as questions, to help you think, e.g. What did you experiment with? What was hard? What did you enjoy? What was fun? What did you learn?
7. The anti-structure — feelings over thinking. Stream of consciousness.
- Sam’s ideas, with examples
- Weeknote templates that you can copy and reuse, based on Sam’s styles
Free images to use with your weeknotes
The best images to use are those from your own work e.g. screenshots of what you’re working on.
Free to reuse, high quality images do exist. Try:
- Openverse — the best place to find original images. All images come with a creative commons licence explaining what you can do with it.
- Flickr, using its creative commons search function — can be good for very specific searches. Reuse of images from here usually requires you to credit the owner.
- Unsplash — the most popular places to find free images. Can be generic.
- Pexels, Pixabay and FreeImages — all similar to Unsplash
Sharing your weeknotes
Share each new weeknote, using its url, in all the usual ways:
- Tweet the link
- Email the link to people you think might be interested — both colleagues and people outside your organisation
- Give the link to your newsletter team
Become a writer
Get started by becoming a writer on the CAST Writers publication. It’s really easy :)
