Weekly: compare your documented system to your actual system — fix discrepancies immediately

Why This Is a Rule

Documentation drifts from reality. You write a handbook describing your operational system — daily routines, weekly reviews, capture protocols, processing workflows. Within weeks, your actual practice evolves: you drop a step, add a workaround, change a tool. The documentation doesn't update itself. The gap between documented system and actual system widens until the documentation becomes fiction — accurate when written, misleading now.

A single weekly comparison check converts a static document into a living one. At the end of each weekly review, you spend 2-3 minutes scanning your operational documentation against what you actually did this week. Wherever they diverge, you update the documentation immediately — not "later," not "next week," but right now while the discrepancy is fresh.

This check is the minimum viable documentation maintenance. Without it, documentation decays to uselessness within months. With it, documentation stays accurate indefinitely because it's reconciled against reality every seven days.

When This Fires

• At the end of every weekly review
• When you reference your operational documentation and find it outdated
• After changing a workflow, tool, or routine
• When setting up an operational handbook or personal system documentation

Common Failure Mode

Skipping the comparison because the review is already running long. The check takes 2-3 minutes — if your documentation is short (which it should be). If the documentation is so long that comparison takes more than 5 minutes, it's too detailed and should be simplified. The check becomes unsustainable only when the documentation is over-engineered.

The Protocol

Last step of every weekly review: (1) Open your operational documentation (handbook, system description, routine checklist). (2) Scan each section: "Is this what I actually did this week?" (3) For any discrepancy: is the documentation wrong (update it) or is your practice wrong (fix it)? (4) Update immediately — not a note for later, an actual edit right now. (5) Total time: 2-3 minutes. The weekly investment prevents the multi-hour documentation rewrite that becomes necessary after months of drift.