30 Days to a More Organized Life, Day 19: Hold a Weekly Review
At this point, you’ve been using your notebook for almost three weeks. And it’s been a week since you’ve done a brain dump and wrote all those lists. It’s been going well, but things might just be starting to fray at the edges. Perhaps those lists aren’t quite as up-to-date as the first day you made them.
Don’t worry: getting organized is supposed to work like that.
Being an organized person doesn’t mean that you must be perfect all the time. Perfect is bad, you need to let a little productive mess into your life. But, to be an organized person, you need to learn how to keep that natural, creeping disorder under control.
This is what the weekly review is for.
The idea of a weekly review comes from David Allen’s excellent book Getting Things Done. Every week, you need to review your lists and re-empty your mind. It’s not possible, or even desirable to stay perfectly up-to-date and organized at all times: once a week it’s necessary to hold the world at bay for a while and straighten everything out.
The first and most important thing about the weekly review is that it is an unbreakable date with yourself – it takes priority over all things. If you don’t dedicate time for the weekly review, you will procrastinate or deal with seemingly more urgent work. Write weekly review on your calendar and get your butt in the chair when the time comes and follow these steps:
1) Process Everything in Your Inboxes
Go through and empty the places that collect messages, notes, and information for you. These can include your personal notebook, cell phone text messages, computer desktop, physical inbox or email. Review each the items in these inboxes one at a time and for each one turn them into projects and to-do’s as necessary.
2) Review Your To-do Lists
Look over your to-do lists. If there are any items on them that you’ve already completed, cross them off now. Add any necessary items to the list if they come into your mind.
3) Review Your Projects List
Take a look at your projects list. This is the best place to get an overview of how many things you are committed to in your life. Look at each project in turn, and ask yourself what can I do to move this project forward? Phrase your thoughts as to-do items, and add them to the appropriate to-do lists.
4) Empty Your Brain
Take a moment to just sit and wait for anything that isn’t on your lists to pop into your mind. You’ll be surprised how often something was lingering just below your consciousness, waiting for a clear moment to make an appearance. Turn that thought into a project or potential project to keep your mind clear and friction free.
5) Review Your Calendar
Check your calendar to review upcoming meetings and deadlines.
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Header photograph by emdot
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I love the feeling after I’ve spent an hour or two doing a comprehensive weekly review. If there is only one habit I could develop from GTD, it’d be this one.
Nice post.
The weekly review is the most important moment of the week to stay under control.
Not a GTD fan, per se, or maybe I am and I just don’t know it…but there are a few basic steps that I believe are essential to productivity. The weekly review is absolutely one of them. The one point I would add is, and maybe it’s self evident, when you’re processing your list, it isn’t necessary to complete every single item. You may make conscious decisions that certain things on your list aren’t worth the time or effort involved compared to the relative benefits.
Love the series. Just found your site today thru thesimplerlife.net
- Charley