Look, I’m gonna be straight with you guys.
You see those cute little spreads people post every Sunday? The seven-card layout, one for each day? Most of them are totally wasting their time. I know this because I was that person for years. A complete disaster. I’d spend more time arguing with the cards than actually living the week they were supposed to be describing.
I seriously started tracking my weekly pulls about six years ago when I first got into this stuff. It all sounded easy enough: one quick spread, maybe three or five cards, a roadmap for the next seven days. Simple, right? Nope. I was making all the rookie mistakes, the ones that make your readings mush and turn the whole thing into a massive anxiety generator.
I quickly escalated to the seven-card “Day-by-Day” layout. That’s where the real trouble begins. My first major mistake, the one I see everyone doing, was treating a Tuesday’s card like it was a life-altering event.
- If I drew the Tower for a Wednesday, I was convinced I needed to quit my job, dump my partner, or that my toilet was going to explode.
- If I got the Three of Pentacles for Friday, I ran around all day waiting for a big raise to drop into my lap.
I spent so much mental energy trying to make the small daily events match the huge symbolic weight of the Major Arcana. It left me exhausted and feeling totally disconnected from the actual week. The cards were supposed to be a helpful little flashlight, but I was treating them like a crystal ball for the apocalypse.
The second thing I was doing wrong, and this is a massive issue with weekly spreads, is that I was asking them the big, life-changing questions. Stuff like, “Should I move across the country?” or “Is this relationship going to last?” Guys, a weekly spread cannot handle that kind of weight. It crunches the data and spits out random garbage because it’s designed for context like, “What’s the vibe going to be like at work on Monday?” or “What should I focus on this weekend?” I kept forcing the weekly reading to solve my deep-seated life problems, and it just got angry and confusing, giving me cards that made no sense in that timeframe.
My entire practice was a mess until things went sideways in my actual life. I was working this high-stress, low-pay job that I absolutely hated. Every Sunday, I pulled my weekly spread, desperately hoping to see the Sun, or the World, something that told me it was okay to quit or that a better opportunity was coming. But for weeks, all I drew were Swords—like the 8 and the 10—and the miserable 5 of Pentacles. I couldn’t stand it. I threw the deck in a drawer and told myself this whole thing was stupid.
The tipping point arrived about a month after that. My boss, who was a total jerk, handed me a massive project with an impossible deadline right before the holidays. I freaked out. I pulled the deck back out, not to do a weekly spread, but just to get some quick advice on how to survive the next three days. Guess what popped up? The same miserable combo I’d been seeing: the 8 of Swords (feeling trapped) and the 5 of Pentacles (feeling isolated and left out).
This time, I didn’t argue with it. I didn’t try to make it mean an unexpected bonus or a sudden lottery win. I saw the cards and it clicked. The reading wasn’t telling me to quit my job; it was describing the reality of my week: I was going to feel trapped, and I was going to feel lonely doing all this extra work while everyone else was taking off.
I accepted it. I leaned into the struggle instead of running from it. I stayed late, I powered through the work, and the week totally sucked, just like the cards said. But because I had accepted the suck, I didn’t waste energy fighting the feeling. I just worked and got it done. The cards weren’t a solution; they were a description of the weather I was sailing into.
That personal failure of trying to force a happy reading is why I can now tell you what not to do. It taught me the secret to a useful weekly spread. You need to keep it small and keep it real.
Now, I never use more than three cards for a weekly reading—Past Focus, Present Theme, Future Advice—and I stick to extremely simple, actionable questions. I made peace with the fact that sometimes, the cards just say your week is going to be dominated by the annoying Four of Swords (rest and recovery, you exhausted mess) and not the glorious Star (miracles and hope). And that’s fine. It’s practical.
So, if you find yourself re-shuffling because you don’t like the daily card, or if you get a Tower and think you need to sell your house, you’re making the same mistake I spent six years trying to fix. Stop it. Keep your spreads simple, ask small questions, and don’t make Mount Everest out of a Monday.
