Summary: Are you doing a GTD weekly review? If not, you are missing out on getting the clarity that you need on all the commitments you have made. Today, I wanted to talk about the evolution of my weekly review and share with you some ideas on how to get started doing your weekly review and some other ideas I have at mastering the process. As usual, you can probably guess that I suggest you get a checklist going. At first, I wouldn't make your own. Instead use the one that David Allen provides and later start getting your own spin on it by putting your own specific actions on your checklist. The first problem I encountered is that I didn't actually do a weekly review. I think that this is a natural progression. At first, I was busy working on getting everything collected and processed. I always suggest when you are first starting out to get all of the buckets set up. Then, make sure you are getting everything collected into the system. Once you feel comfortable getting all of that down, then move onto mastering processing your inboxes to zero. Eventually, you'll create the momentum you need to start making a project list to determine what all your next actions should be. And finally you'll move onto consistently doing them. I noticed, as I think several others have, that when you first start doing your weekly review, that it takes a long time. This is because you are busy collecting, processing, doing your two minute actions and organizing. By the time you get to the actual reviewing you are well over an hour easy and often you run out of time. If this is you, then I think that you'll find some good tips in what I recommend here. Step One: Commit to doing the review at the same time once a week The first step is to commit to doing the review. Get it on your calendar and make sure that you keep the appointment. I like to do my weekly review late on Sunday nights. This is because I am pretty relaxed from the weekend, it's quiet in my house and I have some private time to do it. Since I work for myself, I find this an easy time and place to do it. The other thing that I like about it, is that it provides me a running start to Monday as I have already thought out what I want to do for the week. This might not work for you. You might instead like to do it on a Friday afternoon. What's important is not so much when you fit it in your schedule, but that you do it consistently each week and I suggest at the same time to get your mind condition to getting in the habit of doing it. Step Two: Work on your review for at least one hour a week As I mentioned above, your reviews will probably go over an hour when you first start. You will probably feel overwhelmed. You might not even finish. Whatever you do, work on your system for at least an hour even if you only work on collection or processing. Just keep moving the system forward. What you are striving for is getting the system under control. This hour a week will help you do that. If you want to spend more time on it, do so, but at least spend an hour working on it. Step Three: Use your review time to get your system in shape before you worry about reviewing If you are new to GTD, you'll find that you have a lot of collecting to do. Focus first on getting everything collected until you feel like you have stuff fairly well collected. I know at first, I was buried in paper. I had paper everywhere. I didn't have a system set up. I didn't have an inbox. Spend your review time getting collection under control. Once you do, spend your review time getting your email to zero. Once you do that, spend time getting your paper inbox to zero. You'll find that slowly moving this improvement through your system will create a snowball effect and give you the mental strength to move onto and through the review. Don't be afraid to use the review time for this purpose. Step Four: Break the review over a three day time period When I first started doing my reviews,
