I’ve Gotta Do A Weekly Review! (GTD Tuesday)
Those were the words I silently shouted on a Friday morning about two weeks ago. After I made that decision, I immediately felt a deep sense of relief. I scheduled the review for the following morning. I spent over two hours doing my review but when I was done it felt great! You see, this review was only for my life outside of "work". Like many GTDers my "work" life tends to be more organized than my "home" life.
My day job is being a trainer in a local law firm. I've been in that same role for over 5 years now. My weekly reviews take maybe 10 minutes and don't even have to happen weekly for me to trust my system. On the other hand, my life outside of my day job has changed dramatically in the past 6 months. During that time I've started this blog, written a book, and started doing a lot more public speaking. If I had the time, I could easily devote 40 hours per week to any one of those new roles. In addition, I love to learn new things and I'm learning new things that I would like to implement in each new role. Wow!
Your need for a weekly review is directly proportional to the amount of change in your world and how recent it is. If you've been in the same role for a long period of time and keep your system in pristine shape all the time, you can probably use your weekly review time almost exclusively for looking at the big picture. On the other hand, if your world feels out of control you may need to focus almost exclusively on your next action and project lists. During times of great change, it may be counter-productive to think about anything other than those urgent lists.
The purpose of the weekly review is to take a look at all your lists so that when you are done, you can trust your system. Without it, you begin to lose trust in your system and stress begins to increase. Right now, I probably need to do a review for my day job about once every two weeks. On the other hand, it's possible my "outside of work" part of my life I may need to do 2 reviews per week for a while.
If you are content and haven't had much change in a while, don't feel guilty about skipping a week of your weekly review.
If you are not resting in your system, make sure you do a thorough weekly review every week.
Me? I'm feeling so much better already and the time it's taking me to do my weekly review is rapidly decreasing.
How about you? Do you do a weekly review? How often do you make it to those 10,000 feet and above levels?
See also
I do a weekly review every seven to 10 days.
Sometimes it seemed unnecessary, because there was not much going on. But as I progressed, and used part of the Review appointment to do some creative thinking and brainstorming, I came up with more tasks and projects.
It works great for personal development, tracking progress toward goals, and keeping your new year's resolutions.
I am the Weekly Review's number one fan!
Posted by: @Stephen | Productivity in Context | January 23, 2008 at 09:11
Stephen:
Good to hear from you.
I like your ideas.
Nice blog. I subscribed.
Craig
P.S. How did your signature (in the comment footer) to look and work the way it does?
Posted by: Craig Huggart | January 26, 2008 at 11:34