While I completely agree that a weekly report of tasks performed is pointless I do think that a retrospection of what happened and why each week is a valueble process for managers. Spending an hour or two listing all of the detailed tasks and states into a report that nobody will ever read is the wasteful portion.

I like the idea of summarized contextual reporting because it still forces the retrospection without meandering into tediousness for the author and recipients of the "status report"