Weekly Review: Check the Notes, Keep the Judgement

Use this on paper or in an appropriately protected file. AI is optional. This is an organizational exercise, not a diagnostic or risk-assessment tool.

Practice with fictional or non-sensitive notes. Do not upload a journal, mailbox or meeting archive wholesale. Keep confidential work or client information, credentials, health details, relationship conflicts and information about children out of this exercise.

For work data, approval must cover the exact tool, account, configuration, data and purpose. If permission or relevant data-handling controls are unclear, stop before sending.
An employer’s tool approval does not authorize sharing someone else’s private life. A temporary-chat label does not establish approval or zero retention.
Removing names alone does not establish anonymity. Dates, roles and combinations of details may still identify someone. Use a manual review when the private context is necessary.
Check retention, training, sharing and connected-app access separately. Disable unnecessary connections and actions in the workflow; a prompt telling the model not to act is not a security control.
Keep originals under applicable access and retention rules. Do not silently change evidence to fit a preferred explanation.

The NCSC’s LLM-risk guidance explains sensitive-input risks. NIST’s Generative AI Profile, sections 2.2 and 2.4 describes false supporting content and privacy risks. Neither validates this worksheet as an assessment instrument.

Step 1: Select Safe Notes

Week or period:
Safe selection and note IDs:
Manual review, or permitted AI workflow:
What context is missing from this selection?

Record only what you need. Do not copy sensitive details into this sheet as proof that you checked them.

Step 2: Check Candidate Themes

Three mentions is an optional sorting heuristic, not a validated statistical threshold. Fewer mentions are not necessarily unimportant; repeated notes may describe one event. Compare every quotation, date and proposed theme with the complete selected input. Reject invented or misquoted evidence, unsupported causes and omitted completion notes.

Complete one record per candidate:

Candidate theme:
Exact quotations with supplied dates or note IDs:
Separate events, or repeated notes about one event?
Conflicting evidence or alternative explanations:
Accept for further consideration / Reject / Unresolved:
Reason:

Separate items with fewer mentions:

Item and source note:
Does it need attention regardless of repetition?

Step 3: Check Possible Open Loops

No follow-up recorded in the supplied notes does not mean a task is unfinished. Check its current status before assigning work or blame.

Possible open loop and source note:
Current status: completed / unresolved / unknown:
How I checked, without duplicating sensitive details:
Next step, or explicit decision to drop it:

Step 4: Choose a Proportionate Next Step

For routine, low-risk habits, one small adjustment can keep an experiment manageable. It is not a limit on necessary action. Doing nothing, checking an open loop or asking a person can be the right choice.

Next step I choose:
Which checked evidence supports it?
What would count against this interpretation?
How and when I will check the result:

If nothing supports a conclusion, write “No conclusion from these notes.” Do not convert missing evidence into “Nothing important happened.”

Stop Rules

If you cannot verify the AI output, discard it and review the notes manually.
A single serious health, safety or interpersonal concern can deserve action immediately. Do not wait for more quotations or another weekly review. Seek appropriate human help; if there is immediate danger, contact local emergency services. Do not assume confronting the person involved is safe.
If you compare weeks later, apply the same privacy decision to the summaries. Repeated copies of one event are not independent evidence, and a missing update is not proof that an adjustment failed. There is no required waiting period before addressing a concern.

If Information Was Sent Accidentally

Stop sending more. For work data, follow your organization’s incident-reporting, preservation and containment instructions. For personal data, check the provider’s privacy or support route and available removal controls. Do not assume deleting a chat removes every retained copy or undoes disclosure. Keep the incident record minimal and protected; do not paste the sensitive material into another tool to ask what to do.

Keep only the review record you need, under the applicable retention rules. Save the generic prompt separately from private notes. The full guide includes fictional input and a teaching response you can check line by line.