Simon Willison’s Weblog

Calling a wrap on my weeknotes

20th March 2025

After 192 posts that ranged from weekly to roughly once-a-month, I’ve decided to call a wrap on my weeknotes habit. The original goal was to stay transparent during my 2019-2020 JSK fellowship, and I kept them up after that as an accountability mechanism and to get into a habit of writing regularly.

Over the past two years I’ve adopted new posting habits which are solving those problems in other ways:

• I post something here almost every day. I actually maintained a daily posting streak throughout 2024, which I ended in January, but I’m still posting most days and plan to keep that up.
• Every time I ship a new release of one of my projects I link to it from here. This replaces the “recent releases” section of my weeknotes.
• I try to have a longer form piece of writing that’s suitable for inclusion in my newsletter at least once every two weeks. That’s another accountability mechanism that’s working well for me.

One downside of weeknotes is that I’d sometimes save something to include in them, which could lead to several items getting bundled together in a way that reduced their potential impact as standalone posts.

I got to the point with weeknotes where I was feeling guilty about not keeping them up. Given the volume of content I’m publishing already that felt like a sign that they were no longer providing the value they once did!

I still think weeknotes are an excellent habit for anyone who wants to write more frequently and be more transparent about their work. It feels healthy to be able to end a habit that’s finished serving its purpose.