One of the most difficult and essential parts of maintaining your GTD black belt status is the weekly review. It can be a habit that will actually help you get more things done or it can become a source of frustration and guilt. The key is your attitude and being consistent…anything you do 30 days in a row will become a habit. My personal method of doing the mighty weekly review consist of me sitting down with a my Moleskine (which I use for an ubiquitous capture device) and Google calendar, I review last weeks plans for world domination and then I plot out next weeks plan for world domination…I also review my emails/next actions/projects/stuff. For me simplicity works best because I quickly found out that I’m not a tickler kind of guy…
Below are some other “ways” to do the weekly review.
- I like to have done all my processing already done before the weekly review. I used to spend so much time emptying my inbox and processing stuff that had accumulated that I found I had less time than I would have liked on the actual planning stage of the weekly review. I therefore try to process my inputs each day during the week and do a final processing several hours before sitting down to do my weekly review which I use for “Planning Not Processing”. (via 7 breaths)
- One thing about the WR I find very difficult is to not do anything about a project but think about the projects. So instead of emailing George about those figures, I think about the project, decide the Next Actions and see what actions can be marked off the list. (via what’s the next action)
- Currently I have 19 major steps on my weekly review checklist. Some steps are very specific to my GTD system, so your mileage may vary. Actually, steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 14 and 15 are typically part of my daily mini-review as well, so usually these do not require a lot of work during my weekly review. This saves a lot of time and ensures an up-to-date GTD system every single day! (via getting things done)
- In GTD, you capture everything, and process it, and use context lists for your next-actions … but things still slip through the cracks. The weekly review catches all those things that slip through, and empties your head of the “stuff” that keeps your brain working overtime. (zen habits)
- In my last post, I wrote about The Importance of the Weekly Review. Now I want to show you how to automate this process by entering a series of tasks into Outlook using a simple VBA program. This will enable you to enter the list with a single mouseclick. (If you read my blog regularly, this is an adaptation of my post on Automating Your !Daily Disciplines Task List in Outlook.) (via working smart)
