On September 23rd, 2018 I sent an email to six friends. In it, I recapped the week including Scooter Map's user growth, the features I'd released, and my goals for the next week.
My first weekly update
Now 81 weeks later, I've sent a Weekly Update email every Sunday to a list that now contains over 40 people.
Those weekly updates have tracked the launch of Scooter Map's paid feature, traveling around the world in a month, getting press for working out of a parking spot, starting and raising money Spring, receiving legal threats from Lime, and launching ZmURL.
I can't manage to keep a habit, but somehow I've managed to send this weekly email without fail for 81 weeks.
I'll give an overview of the email structure and then explain how sending a weekly update has helped me.
Intro / Short Story
I start off the email with a short narrative overview of the week. What's going on? Where am I? What am I excited / worried about?
Recap
I cover any products released, writing published, decisions made, or sales closed in the past week. Sometimes I add commentary on surprises or how progress compared to my expectations.
Goals
I jot down 1-3 goals for the next week. I'm not strict with these and these can change during the week. But I find it important to have a direction going into the week.
For Spring, every week I had the goal "close another customer" because I knew I needed to focus more on sales.