Templates, planners and worksheets

Workplace toolkit

Seven working documents, each shown in full on this page. Nothing is hidden behind a download form: read the guidance, then print the template or copy its structure into whatever tool your workplace already uses.

Every template here is deliberately short. A one-page instrument gets filled in; a six-page one gets postponed. Where a template asks a question that seems too simple, that is usually the question people skip.

Printable formats and paper sizes

Contents

What is in the toolkit

Meeting agenda

One page that forces a decision to the surface before anyone sits down.

Weekly planner

A fifteen-minute planning ritual built on available hours, not intentions.

Career development worksheet

Skills, interests, constraints and next steps mapped on one sheet.

Goal tracker

Three goals for a quarter, with the evidence that will show progress.

Professional development planner

Turns a yearly development conversation into an actual plan.

Reflection template

A ten-minute structured review you will still find useful in a year.

Project one-pager

Scope, owner, dates and what is explicitly out of scope.

Handover note

What a colleague needs if you are away unexpectedly.

Template 01

Meeting agenda

The purpose of an agenda is not to list topics. It is to tell everyone what will be decided, who owns the decision, and what they should have read before arriving. Topics without decisions produce discussion; decisions with owners produce meetings that end early.

How to use it

Fill in the outcome line first. If you cannot write a decision there, consider whether a written update would do the job better. Send the agenda at least a day ahead — the preparation line is worthless if it arrives ninety seconds before the meeting.

Meeting agenda — one page, sent at least twenty-four hours ahead.
Meeting	Title, date, time, duration, location or link
Outcome	The decision or output this meeting must produce, in one sentence
Owner	The person accountable for the decision being made
Attending	The smallest group who can make the decision; note who is informed afterwards instead
Prepare	What each person should read or bring, with a link
Item 1 · 10 min	Topic — who leads — decide / discuss / inform
Item 2 · 20 min	Topic — who leads — decide / discuss / inform
Item 3 · 15 min	Topic — who leads — decide / discuss / inform
Parked	Items raised but out of scope, with where they will go instead
Actions	What — who — by when. Read aloud before closing.

Label each item decide, discuss or inform. People prepare differently for each, and an agenda where every item is “discuss” usually signals a meeting that will not conclude.

Template 02

Weekly planner

A weekly planner is an arithmetic instrument. Its job is to compare the hours you actually have against the work you have already promised, before Wednesday makes the comparison for you.

How to use it

Book fifteen minutes at the same time each week — Friday afternoon or Monday morning both work; consistency matters more than which. Fill in the capacity line before looking at your task list, otherwise the list will quietly set the number.

Weekly planner — fifteen minutes, same time each week.
Week of	Dates
Scheduled hours	Meetings and standing commitments already in the calendar
Available hours	Total hours minus scheduled, minus a realistic allowance for interruption
The three that matter	Three outcomes that would make this a good week, in priority order
Focus blocks	Two protected periods of ninety minutes, with the task named for each
Waiting on	What you need from other people, and when you will chase it
Deadlines this week	Fixed dates you cannot move
Not this week	What you are deliberately postponing, so it stops generating guilt
End-of-week check	Did the three happen? If not, what displaced them?

The line people skip is “Not this week”. Naming what you are not doing is what makes the rest of the plan honest, and it prevents the low-grade background guilt that follows an unbounded list.

Template 03

Career development worksheet

A one-page audit of where you are, intended to be completed in about forty minutes and revisited twice a year. The blank sections are the most useful part: they usually mark skills nobody has explained to you directly, or preferences you have never articulated.

How to use it

Complete it in one sitting, without research. First answers are more honest than considered ones. Date it, keep it, and compare with the previous version when you fill it in again — the changes between versions are the actual output.

Career development worksheet — complete twice a year and keep the old copies.
Date completed
Current role in one sentence	What you are actually responsible for, not the job title
Strongest three skills	With one piece of evidence each, from the last six months
Skills I am asked for most	What colleagues come to you for — often different from the list above
Work I would happily do more of	Specific activities, not fields
Work I want less of	Be specific; “meetings” is rarely the real answer
Two gaps that block my next step	Only the blocking ones; ignore the merely desirable
Constraints I am working within	Location, hours, income floor, caring responsibilities, health, study
Someone whose work I envy	And which specific part of it
One step in the next ninety days	Small enough to actually start this month

Template 04

Goal tracker

Built for three goals per quarter. The limit is the feature. Twelve goals is a list of interests; three is a commitment with consequences for what you decline.

How to use it

For each goal, write the evidence that will show it happened before you write any actions. Evidence keeps goals honest: “improve my writing” has no evidence line, while “three project updates that led to a decision without a follow-up clarification” does.

Quarterly goal tracker — three goals, reviewed monthly.
Field	Goal 1	Goal 2	Goal 3
Goal, in one sentence
Why it matters now
Evidence it happened
First action this month
Who can help
Month 1 review
Month 2 review
End of quarter	Done / partial / dropped — and why

“Dropped” is a legitimate outcome and should be recorded without apology. A goal abandoned in week three because circumstances changed is better information than one carried unmoved for a year.

Template 05

Professional development planner

Most development conversations produce agreement and no plan. This template exists to be brought to that conversation, already half completed, so the discussion is about support rather than about what you might like.

How to use it

Fill in the first four rows yourself before the meeting. Leave the support and review rows blank; they are what you are asking your manager to help complete. Send it a day ahead.

Professional development plan — one page, revisited quarterly.
Period covered	Usually twelve months
Where I want to be able to contribute	Described as capability, not as a job title
Two capabilities to build	The ones that genuinely block that contribution
How I will build them	Roughly seventy percent through work, twenty through others, ten through study
Work I am asking for	The specific project, rotation or responsibility that would develop it
Support needed	Time, budget, an introduction, a mentor, a change in scope
What success looks like	Observable by someone else, not only by you
Review dates	Two in the year, booked now

The seventy-twenty-ten idea is a rule of thumb, not a law: most capability is built by doing real work with real consequences, some by working alongside people who are better at it, and a smaller portion by structured study. It is a useful corrective for plans that consist entirely of courses.

Template 06

Reflection template

Ten minutes, weekly or at the end of a piece of work. Reflection has a reputation for vagueness; this version is deliberately concrete, and produces entries you can reread usefully a year later.

How to use it

Keep entries short — a few lines per prompt. Consistency beats depth. If you miss a week, start again the next one rather than writing a catch-up entry, which is invariably where the habit dies.

Reflection entry — weekly, or at the close of a project.
Date
What I worked on	Two or three lines, factual
What went better than expected	And what specifically caused it
What was harder than expected	Describe the difficulty, not your feelings about it
What I learned	One thing you did not know on Monday
What I would do differently	Stated as an instruction to yourself
One thing to carry forward	Into next week, in a single sentence

Template 07

Project one-pager

For work that is too small for a formal plan and too large to hold in your head. The “explicitly out of scope” line prevents more difficulty than every other line combined.

Project one-pager — write before starting, revise when scope changes.
Project	Name and one-sentence purpose
Why now	What triggered this and what happens if it is not done
In scope	The specific deliverables
Explicitly out of scope	What people might reasonably assume is included and is not
Decision-maker	One name
People involved	Who does what, and who is informed
Key dates	Fixed dates first, then everything scheduled backwards from them
External dependencies	Where you wait on someone outside your control
Known risks	Two or three, with what you would do about each
Definition of done	How everyone will agree it is finished

Template 08

Handover note

One page per recurring responsibility, kept current. Written for a colleague who must pick it up at short notice and without you available to ask.

Handover note — one per responsibility, reviewed twice a year.
Responsibility	What it is, in one sentence
Rhythm	When it happens: daily, weekly, monthly, on request
Steps	The sequence, plainly, including anything only you currently know
Where things live	Files, systems, access needed and who grants it
People	Who to contact, for what, and their usual hours
What usually goes wrong	And what to do about it
What can wait	What can safely be paused for two weeks
Last reviewed	Date and by whom

Test it properly. Ask a colleague to read the note and tell you what they still could not do. Their questions are the missing content, and finding them now costs a coffee rather than a crisis.