What questions should you ask in a weekly values review?

Four questions, asked the same way every week, produce more usable material than any longer checklist — and the right ones are about your principles, not your task list. The mistake most weekly reviews make is opening with "how did I do," which is a grading question. The better version asks "what happened," which is an observation question, and observation is what actually changes behavior over time.

Why "how did I do this week" is the wrong first question

"How did I do" invites a score, and a score invites either self-congratulation or self-punishment — neither tells you anything you did not already know from whatever mood you happened to open the review in. It also tends to average everything into a single number, which erases the one specific moment that actually mattered. A values review is not a report card. It is closer to reading your own case notes: here is what happened, here is what I want to remember, here is what I might watch for next time.

The four questions worth asking every week

1. Which principle did I fail to live, and what was going on when I failed?

Not "which task did I miss" — which principle. The second half of the question is the one that matters. A missed principle is not the finding; the circumstances around it are. "I said yes to a favor I resented" is not useful on its own. "I said yes because I was tired and agreeing was easier than explaining why not" tells you exactly what to watch for next time.

2. Which principle did I live without having to think about it?

A review that only hunts for failure trains you to expect failure. Ask this one on purpose. Sometimes the honest answer is "none, really" — that is itself useful information, and it usually means the principle needs a clearer behavior standard, not that you are a worse person than last week.

3. Was there a moment I overrode a principle on purpose — and looking back, was that the right call?

Not every departure from a principle is a failure. Some are legitimate exceptions: a genuine emergency, a case the principle was never written to cover. This question is how you tell the two apart after the fact, once you have some distance from whatever felt urgent in the moment.

4. What is one specific thing that happened that I want to remember?

One sentence, one event, dated if you can. Not a summary of the week — a single concrete thing. A review built entirely out of averages and trends is unreadable a year later. A specific sentence about what actually happened is the part you will still find useful.

A fifth question, but only when something is unresolved

If two principles pulled against each other this week and you are still not sure you handled it well, write the collision down as its own line: what pulled against what, and which one you let win. You do not have to resolve it inside the review. Writing it down honestly is most of the value — it turns a private discomfort into something you can look at later, possibly with more information than you have right now.

Questions to leave out

Skip anything that produces a percentage. "What was my completion rate" measures behavior standards, and behavior standards are meant to be disposable evidence, not the thing being graded. Skip anything phrased like an accusation — "why didn't I," "what is wrong with me" — because those questions do not produce information, they produce a mood, and the mood is what makes people quietly stop doing the review a few weeks in. If a question would make you dread opening the review, replace it. A review you stop doing because it feels like an exam is not working, whatever it manages to uncover while it lasts.

Keep the list short on purpose

Four questions, answered honestly in five minutes, produce more usable material than twelve questions answered on autopilot in twenty. If you are reviewing more than five or six principles, do not run all four questions against each one — pick the two or three that actually moved this week and go deeper there. The goal is not coverage. It is one true sentence about what happened, written honestly enough that it is still worth reading in six months.

CreedOS's review page is built around a version of this: your daily check-ins already have the specific events attached, and the review surfaces which creeds are scoring low, going idle, or worth a second look — so these questions have something concrete to work from instead of a blank page. It is free, with no in-app purchases.