Monthly Review Template: Copy-Paste Markdown
A copy-paste monthly review template in markdown: wins, shipped vs started, project health, archive sweep, and next-month focus, plus a filled example you can steal.
A monthly review template is a reusable checklist for closing out one month and opening the next. The version below has five sections: wins, shipped vs started, project health, archive sweep, and next-month focus. It is plain markdown, so it runs in any editor and never gets locked into an app.
The weekly review keeps your task system trusted. The monthly review keeps it honest. Thirty days is long enough for a project to quietly die while still looking active on a list, and short enough that you can still remember why you started things. Copy the template, then read the section notes and the filled example.
# Monthly review, 2026-09
## Wins
- [What finished, shipped, or got resolved this month]
## Shipped vs started
- Shipped:
- Started:
- Ratio check: [did starts outnumber ships? why?]
## Project health
- [Project]: alive / stalled / done / dropped, next action
- [Project]: alive / stalled / done / dropped, next action
## Archive sweep
- [ ] Completed projects moved out of the active list
- [ ] Someday/maybe items pruned
- [ ] Loose notes and downloads filed or deleted
## Next month focus
1. [Focus area one]
2. [Focus area two]
3. [Focus area three, optional]
That is the whole artifact. The rest of this page is what each section is for, a filled example to calibrate against, and how the monthly review connects to the weekly one. If your weekly layer is not in place yet, start with the markdown weekly review template and add this once a month on top.
What goes in a monthly review template?
Five sections, each answering one question the month left behind. The template is short on purpose: a monthly review checklist that takes two hours to fill in is a monthly review that happens twice and never again.
Wins
A plain list of what finished, shipped, or got resolved. This section exists because memory is loss-averse: without a written list, the month feels like it contained only the unfinished things. Three to seven bullets is normal. Include personal wins if this file covers your whole life and not just work.
Shipped vs started
Two short lists and one honest question. Shipped is what crossed the finish line. Started is what you opened. When starts consistently outnumber ships, you are feeding a workload problem that no capture system will fix, and the review is where that pattern becomes impossible to unsee. GTD's horizon levels exist for exactly this kind of zoom-out, and the Getting Things Done digital playbook covers where a monthly cadence fits the five-step method.
Project health
One line per active project: a status word and a next action. Alive means it moved this month. Stalled means it did not, and stalled is a decision request, not a moral failure: revive it with a concrete next action, demote it to someday, or drop it. A project that has been stalled for three consecutive monthly reviews is not stalled. It is over, and the review's job is to let you say so.
Archive sweep
The mechanical section. Completed projects leave the active list, someday/maybe gets pruned, loose notes get filed or deleted. This is the part that keeps next month's review fast, because a system that never archives makes every future review slower.
Next month focus
One to three focus areas, ranked. Not goals in the annual-planning sense, just a written answer to "what is next month for?" that you can check against your calendar and task list. If the focus list and the calendar disagree, one of them is lying, and finding that out on the first of the month is the entire point.
What does a filled-in monthly review look like?
A filled monthly review is short, specific, and slightly uncomfortable in the shipped-vs-started section. Here is a real-shaped example so the blank template has something to calibrate against.
# Monthly review, 2026-09
## Wins
- Shipped the pricing page rewrite, live since 09-22
- Closed the office lease negotiation, signed
- Ran the first customer onboarding call without a script
- Dentist. Finally.
## Shipped vs started
- Shipped: pricing page, lease, Q3 retrospective doc
- Started: partner integration spec, blog refresh, home office rewiring
- Ratio check: 3 ships, 3 starts. Acceptable, but the
integration spec ate two weeks and has no next action.
## Project health
- Pricing page: done, archive it
- Partner integration: stalled, next action is "send Maya
the v0.2 outline", revive or demote at Friday's review
- Blog refresh: alive, next action "draft first two posts"
- Home office rewiring: stalled 3 months, drop it
## Archive sweep
- [x] Completed projects moved out of the active list
- [x] Someday/maybe pruned from 41 to 26 items
- [x] Downloads folder emptied, 3 files kept
## Next month focus
1. Partner integration spec to v1.0
2. Blog refresh: four posts published
3. Keep onboarding calls weekly, no new starts
Two things to notice. The file is honest about the stalled project, which is the review doing its job. And the focus list has a deliberately boring third item, because a focus list of three ambitious starts is how next month's ratio goes red.
How is a monthly review different from a weekly review?
The weekly review is maintenance: empty the inbox, confirm every project has a next action, sweep the calendar. It keeps the system trusted. The monthly review is direction: is the work on the lists the work you meant to do? It keeps the system honest. The weekly asks "is everything captured and current", the monthly asks "should any of this exist".
They also fail differently. Skip a weekly review and the inbox rots within two weeks. Skip a monthly review and nothing breaks visibly, which is exactly why it matters: the drift it catches is the slow kind, projects that died quietly and ambitions that never got scheduled. The ritual for the weekly layer is in our GTD weekly review guide.
Can AI do any of the monthly review for me?
AI can draft the raw material of a monthly review: what shipped, what is stalled, which projects have not moved in thirty days. What it cannot do is the judgment pass, deciding that the stalled integration spec still matters and the rewiring project does not. That call is the review's actual content.
This is the split quik.md is built around. Because every capture lands as a filed card in a project, the AI organize layer can surface "no movement in 30 days" and "completed this month" without you reconstructing the month from memory, and everything exports as markdown if you want the review file itself in your own archive. The category view of which tools do this well is in our pillar on AI task managers. Whether the drafting is manual or assisted, keep the five sections. They are the review.
FAQ
What is a monthly review?
A monthly review is a recurring 30 to 60 minute session where you close out the past month and set up the next one. You record what shipped, check the health of every active project, archive what is done or dead, and choose a small number of focus areas for the coming month. It sits one level above the weekly review.
How long should a monthly review take?
Thirty to sixty minutes for most people. Under thirty minutes means you are skimming project health, which is the section that carries the review's value. Over an hour usually means the review is doing weekly-review work, which is a sign the weekly review needs attention instead.
What questions should a monthly review answer?
Five: What did I finish this month? What did I ship versus merely start? Is every active project still alive and does each have a next action? What can I archive or delete? What are the one to three focus areas for next month? A template that answers those five covers the whole review.
What is the difference between a weekly and a monthly review?
The weekly review keeps the system trusted: empty the inbox, confirm every project has a next action, check the calendar. The monthly review keeps the system honest: is the work you are doing actually the work you intended? Weekly is maintenance, monthly is direction.
Should I do my monthly review in markdown or an app?
Either works, and markdown has one real advantage: the file is the record. Twelve dated files give you a year of reviews you can grep, diff, and read in any editor forever. Apps add reminders and structure, but a markdown file with a duplicated template is the version that never gets locked in.
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