How long should a weekly check-in take?

Ten minutes is enough and thirty is usually too many. Long sessions turn into rumination, which tends to lower mood rather than clarify it.

What if I miss a week?

Skip it and resume. Gaps do not invalidate a trend, and treating a missed week as a failure is the most reliable way to abandon the practice entirely.

Is this the same as journalling?

No. Journalling is open-ended and follows whatever is loudest. A check-in asks the same questions every week, which is what makes two entries comparable.

Where does a structured assessment fit?

It covers the same ground with more coverage and less self-editing, scoring ten emotional dimensions and returning a written read of the week rather than notes you have to interpret yourself.

A weekly mood check-in template that works

Daily logging captures weather. A weekly review captures climate, which is the level at which you can actually change something.

Ten minutes, seven prompts in a deliberate order, and exactly one action at the end.

Cofelpa runs the same idea across ten emotional dimensions and returns a personalised written read of your week.

Run a Cofelpa check-in

Why weekly beats daily

Daily mood logging captures weather. A single bad Tuesday tells you almost nothing, and after two weeks the logging itself becomes the chore that lowers your mood. Weekly review captures climate, which is the level at which anything is actually decidable.

A week is also long enough to contain contrast. You get a hard day and an easy one, a social evening and a quiet one, so the pattern in your reaction becomes visible rather than the reaction to one event.

The template, in order

Order matters. Starting with facts before feelings prevents the review from becoming a mood-dependent verdict on your whole life, which is the failure mode of most journalling.

Facts first: how much sleep, how much movement, how many meals eaten properly, how many hours worked.
Energy: where was it highest and lowest this week, and what was happening in each case?
Load: what took the most out of you, and was it the task or the anticipation of it?
Connection: who did you actually talk to, and did any of it feel restorative?
Control: name one thing this week you could influence and one you could not.
Signal: what emotion showed up most often, and what was it responding to?
One action: a single specific change for next week, small enough to be certain.

Score the dimensions, do not grade the week

A common mistake is ending with a verdict: good week or bad week. Verdicts are unusable. Ratings by dimension are usable, because they tell you which part moved. Energy can be low while connection is high, and that combination points somewhere very different from both being low.

Use a consistent one-to-five scale per dimension so this week is comparable to last week. Consistency is what turns notes into a trend.

The one-action rule

End every check-in with exactly one action, and make it small enough that failure would be surprising: a set bedtime three nights, one message to a specific person, one task removed from the week. Three ambitious actions produce zero. One certain action produces a data point about whether the diagnosis was right.

When to do it

Pick a fixed slot and keep it: Sunday evening for people who plan, Friday afternoon for people who need to close the week to rest. The specific slot matters less than the fact that it never has to be decided again, because deciding is where the habit usually dies.

Reading a month of check-ins

After four entries, look only for repetition. A dimension that is low every week is a structural issue in your life, not a mood. A dimension that swings with a specific person, task or day is a situational issue with an obvious lever. This distinction is the entire value of doing it weekly rather than occasionally.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a weekly check-in take?: Ten minutes is enough and thirty is usually too many. Long sessions turn into rumination, which tends to lower mood rather than clarify it.
What if I miss a week?: Skip it and resume. Gaps do not invalidate a trend, and treating a missed week as a failure is the most reliable way to abandon the practice entirely.
Is this the same as journalling?: No. Journalling is open-ended and follows whatever is loudest. A check-in asks the same questions every week, which is what makes two entries comparable.
Where does a structured assessment fit?: It covers the same ground with more coverage and less self-editing, scoring ten emotional dimensions and returning a written read of the week rather than notes you have to interpret yourself.