Weekly Notes is an opt-in extension to the Forever ✱ Notes framework. It adds a lightweight system for week-by-week reflection, themes, and goal tracking — without changing anything in your existing ✱ Journal.
This extension assumes you already have the core Forever ✱ Notes framework installed — specifically the Open ✱ Home Note shortcut (from the ✱ Home setup) and the Open Today's Note shortcut (from the ✱ Journal setup). The Weekly Notes setup uses both.
Why Weekly Notes are an extension, not part of the ✱ Journal
Week numbers don't align with days and months from one year to the next. In some years January 2nd is in week 1, in others it's in week 2, and in the ISO week number system it might even be in week 52 or 53 of the previous year. Calendar Weeks (used in Australia, Mexico, and the United States) treat January 1st as always being in week 1. ISO Weeks (used across Europe and most of the world) treat the first week of the year as the one that contains a Thursday — so depending on the day of the week, the first few days of January may still belong to week 52 or 53 of the previous year.
That means if weekly links were built into the daily, monthly, or quarterly notes the way the rest of the ✱ Journal is linked, you'd need to redo all of those links every year. Weekly Notes are designed as an opt-in extension instead. You set them up once, they work forever, and they stay cleanly separate from the core ✱ Journal.
Setup
→ Get the Apple Shortcuts:
- Create Weekly Notes in Apple Notes — the setup shortcut
- Open Current Week Note
- Open Last Week Note
- Open Next Week Note
Install all four shortcuts on your device before running the setup shortcut. The setup shortcut pre-populates each weekly note with links that depend on the three navigation shortcuts above, plus the Open ✱ Home Note and Open Today's Note shortcuts you already installed as part of the core Forever ✱ Notes framework.
Create all Weekly notes
- Run the
Create Weekly Notes in Apple Notesshortcut. It creates 53 notes titledWeek 1,Week 2,Week 3, all the way throughWeek 53. - Each note comes pre-populated with a title and three navigation links: ✱ Home, Today, and Current Week. All three links work via shortcut URL schemas, so they always point to the right place.
Note on naming: Weekly notes don't use the heavy asterisk in their title (e.g., Week 20, not ✱ Week 20). The heavy asterisk is used elsewhere in the framework to make ambiguous note titles like "December" or "Q1" easy to find via search. "Week 20" doesn't collide with anything else in your notes, so the asterisk isn't needed.
Add Weekly navigation to the ✱ Home note
- In the
✱ Homenote, find the Journal heading. - Below it, add a new line:
Last Week | Current Week | Next Week - Highlight each phrase in turn and add a link using the
Add linkoption. Use the following shortcut URL schemas:- Last Week:
shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=Open%20Last%20Week%20Note - Current Week:
shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=Open%20Current%20Week%20Note - Next Week:
shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=Open%20Next%20Week%20Note
- Last Week:
These three links are time-relative — they always open the week before, during, or after today, no matter when you tap them.
Tags
- The setup shortcut automatically adds the tag
#ForeverNotesto each weekly note.
Optional: Add Back and Next navigation between Weekly notes
If you'd like to flip through your weeks one by one — for example, to look back through past entries — you can manually add Back and Next links inside each weekly note. This uses the same technique you already know from the ✱ Journal setup.
It's a one-time job that takes about 30 minutes:
- Open
Week 1, add the text← Back • Next →at the top. - Highlight Back and link it to
Week 53(this closes the loop). - Highlight Next and link it to
Week 2. - Repeat for each week — Back always links to the previous week's note, Next always links to the next week's note.
- In
Week 53, Next links back toWeek 1to complete the loop.
This isn't included in the setup shortcut by default. Most people use Apple Notes search to jump to a specific week, which is fast enough that the manual chain isn't necessary. But if you'd rather browse week by week, this is how to add it.
Just like the rest of the Forever ✱ Notes Journal, you reuse the same weekly notes year after year — next year's Week 20 is the same note as this year's Week 20. You just add the year as a new Heading above the previous one, and continue the process year after year.
How to use Weekly Notes
Weekly Notes work well for a handful of distinct purposes. Pick whichever ones fit how you already think about your week.
Reflection — A quick check-in on what worked this week and what didn't. Much lighter than a monthly review, but frequent enough to catch course corrections in real time.
Themes or Focus — Set an intention or a theme at the start of the week. It creates clarity about what matters most for the next seven days.
Goal tracking — Break monthly or quarterly goals into weekly milestones. Big goals become more manageable, and you keep momentum.
Highlights — Capture small wins, memorable moments, and insights that would otherwise be lost. Your weekly note becomes a record of progress that's surprisingly motivating to look back on.
Tasks and commitments — Review the past week and prep the next one. A lighter, faster version of your monthly or quarterly reviews.
