Back to Basics: Your Weekly Review

No matter how organized you are, how together your arrangement is, how careful you lot are about processing your inbox, making a task listing, and working your calendar, if yous don't stop every now and again to look at the "large film", you're going to get overwhelmed. You terminate up only responding to what's thrown at you, instead of proactively creating the weather of your life.

Almost every productivity expert recommends some kind of review, whether information technology'due south a formal process yous crank through (like David Allen recommends) or but a few minutes of "me time" to recollect near where you're at. Although there's nothing magical about the week equally a unit of measurement of time, doing such a review weekly seems to piece of work all-time – it's a block of time that's very securely ingrained in us as a scheduling unit of measurement.

Although at that place are lots of variations on the "review" theme. the basic idea is the same no matter what arrangement you're looking at. A weekly review boils downwardly to three questions:

1. What exercise I have to do in the upcoming week?
2. What am I doing wrong that needs to exist fixed?
3. What new things should I practice to have my life in the direction I desire information technology to go?

Preparing for your review

While some people manage to do ok by doing their review whenever they notice time, for near people, having a dedicated fourth dimension for a review each week volition be far more than fruitful. It should exist a habit, a regular appointment you go on with yourself.

• Schedule your weekly review in your agenda. Permit yourself at to the lowest degree an hour, preferably two.
• Finish all your work before the review starts.
• Get comfortable. You might want to go somewhere you don't associate with work.
• Accept five-10 minutes of quiet time. Meditate, doodle, or just stare at the head – whatever information technology takes to put a "buffer" between yous and your everyday stuff.
• Have something to write in/on.
• Make sure yous won't be disturbed. This is your time!

The GTD Weekly Review

I've already written a pretty thorough overview of the weekly review as defined by David Allen, then I'll first by repeating what I said in that location. Co-ordinate to Allen, a weekly review should consist of the following steps:

1. Collect all your loose papers and put them into your inbox for processing.
2. Process your notes to glean whatsoever activeness items, appointments, new projects, etc.
3. Review your previous calendar information to remind you of any ideas, tasks, etc. that you lot might non have captured at the time.
4. Review your upcoming agenda to run across if there are any new actions you need to add to your lists.
5. Empty your caput. Write downwardly anything that's currently on your listen or capturing your attention.
6. Review your project lists to determine each projection's status and if at that place are any actions you need to accept to move each of them frontward.
7. Review your next action lists. Bring them upward to date past marking off any actions you've already completed. Use completed actions as triggers to remind yous of whatever further steps you need to take not that an action is done.
8. Review waiting for lists. Add advisable follow-ups to your activeness lists. Check off anything that you lot've already received.
9. Review any relevant checklists.
10. Review your someday/maybe listing and decide if at that place is anything y'all're prepare to movement onto your agile projects list.
11. Review your project back up files to brand sure you haven't missed any new actions you need to have.
12. Be artistic and courageous. This is the hardest and nigh poorly described office of the process in Allen's books, which is too bad, since this is where the magic happens. Having cleared your listen of everything you need to practise at the moment, take fourth dimension to dream up new ideas — risky ones, artistic ones, etc. Essentially a free-grade brainstorming session around the topic of "what could I be doing?"

These steps follow a three-phase format:

1. Get clear: Tie up any loose ends from the week before so you can plow an middle to the future.
2. Get current: Program out the steps you need to take over the next week to advance whatever projects you're currently working on.
3. Get artistic: Think about and start planning things yous could be doing to motility your life in a new direction, or to advance you past your current level.

Another have on the weekly review

I prefer to think of my weekly review every bit a set up of questions to respond, rather than a ready of steps to churn through. While I nevertheless try to do a review weekly (every 2 weeks seems to exist more practical for me, though), I also practice a few "mini-reviews" as fourth dimension permits in betwixt full reviews.

A mini-review consists of merely a few questions:

1. What exercise I have to work on the next few days?
2. What deadlines do I accept coming up?
3. Are there any new projects I take fourth dimension to kickoff working on?

I practise this with my Moleskine in front of me, listing tasks every bit I recollect through each of those questions. (Later, I'll transfer them into my task direction organization – a mini-review is, to me, a kind of "capture" rather than "processing".)

The point of the mini-review is just to make sure I stay on track and don't allow anything important autumn through the cracks. When I sit down to do a total review, I'm more concerned with the fashion my life is going overall. The total review consists of these questions:

1. What do I have to work on the next few days?
2. What deadlines do I accept coming up?
3. Are in that location any new projects I take time to start working on?
4. What went wrong over the past calendar week? What lessons tin can I learn from that?
5. What went right over the by calendar week? How can I make sure more of that happens?
6. How well am I keeping up with all my duties and obligations?
7. What is coming up that I need to be prepared for?
8. What kind of help practise I need?
9. Is everything I'yard doing contributing to my advancement towards my goals? What tin can I do about the stuff that isn't?
10. Am I happy with where I'm at? What would I like to modify?
11. What are my goals for the next week? Calendar month? 90 days?

I like the question/reply format better than Allen'southward pace-by-stride because a) I exercise almost of the practical stuff on a daily basis anyway, and b) I like that the focus of (virtually of) these questions is me, rather than my stuff.

That'due south the betoken of the review, after all – not to keep up with the stuff you should be doing simply to check in with your self. And that'southward important – we tend to resist looking too closely at our selves, whether because it feels selfish or narcissistic, or considering we're afraid of what we'll find if we wait also closely.

If that sounds too "mushy" for you, then you probably demand it more than most. Considering every bit I keep proverb, the point of all this productivity stuff isn't to get more than done. It's to lead a improve life.

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/back-to-basics-your-weekly-review.html

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