You will be able to run a weekly review that keeps your system current and your priorities in view.
Three weeks after setting up her task system, Priya noticed it was slipping. The next actions list had items that were already done. A few tasks had crept back into her email flags. Her waiting-for list said the agency owed her visuals, though they had arrived the week before. Nothing was badly wrong, but she had started to doubt the list, and when she doubted it she went back to keeping things in her head.
Every system drifts like this. New commitments arrive faster than they get captured, finished items stay on the list, and priorities shift without the lists catching up. The fix is a regular session to bring everything back in line. This lesson shows you how to run it.
David Allen calls the weekly review the critical success factor in Getting Things Done. In the five steps from lesson 2.2, Capture, clarify and organise, it is the core of the fourth step, reflect. Capture and clarify happen every day, but they deal with what arrives. The weekly review deals with everything, once a week, so that you can trust the whole system again.
Allen's own version has three parts: get clear, get current and get creative. This course adds one thing to the last part, which is the weekly planning from module 3, because the review is the natural moment to plan the week ahead. Each part has a short list of steps, and once you've done it a few times, the whole review takes under an hour.
The first part is about collecting everything that has piled up and processing it.
Gather loose papers, receipts, business cards and notes from your bag and desk into your inbox. Empty your inboxes, including email, your task app's inbox and any notes you scribbled during the week, using the clarify step from lesson 2.2. Then do a short mind sweep, like the one in lesson 2.4, Set up your system in one sitting: write down anything on your mind that isn't in the system yet. This is often where the most useful items come from: the thing a colleague mentioned on Wednesday that you never wrote down, the idea you had on the train.
At the end of this part, everything you know about is either in your system or deliberately thrown away.
The second part brings your lists up to date.
Look at your calendar for the past week. Are there follow-ups from meetings you haven't captured? A promise you made in a call? Then look ahead at the next two weeks or so. Is there anything you need to prepare, book or buy?
Then go through your lists. Next actions: tick off what's done, delete what no longer matters, and check that each remaining item is still a clear next action. Projects: check that each one has at least one next action. A project with no next action is stuck, as you saw in lesson 2.3. Waiting-for: has anything arrived? Does anything need chasing? Add a chase to your next actions for items that are overdue.
For Priya, this was where the stale waiting-for item came off the list, and where she found a project, "Q4 report template updated", that had had no next action for two weeks.
The third part looks forward. In Allen's version, you go through your someday list to see whether anything should now become active, and give yourself room to add new ideas and projects. Two minutes on your someday list is often enough. You might move one item into projects, delete a few that no longer interest you, and add something new.
This course then adds the weekly planning from module 3. Check your three priorities from lesson 1.3. Are they still the right three, or has something changed? Then choose next week's two to four outcomes, as in lesson 3.1, Plan the week before it fills itself, and put them into time blocks before anything else, as in lesson 3.4. If you've done the energy map from lesson 7.4, put the deep work into your best windows.
This is also when you look back at the comparison of last week's plan with what actually happened, and decide whether anything in your system should change.
The review only helps if it happens every week, so give it a fixed time on your calendar. Friday afternoon works well for many people, because the week is fresh and you leave work knowing that next week is planned. Others prefer Sunday evening or Monday morning. Pick a time that is realistic and protect it.
Allen's three parts give you the structure, but your review should be written in your own words, with your own lists and tools named. A checklist helps for the first months, until the steps become automatic. Keep it short. A review checklist with thirty steps will be skipped on a busy Friday. One with ten or twelve will get done.
Marcus wrote his on an index card and keeps it in his notebook: clear the inbox tray, empty email to zero, sweep chat threads for promises, mind sweep, review calendar past and future, review next actions, review projects, review waiting-for, review someday, check priorities, choose outcomes, block the week. Twelve lines, which takes him about 45 minutes on a Friday at 4pm.
Your activity is to write your own version, in your words, using the three parts as the structure.
Write a weekly review checklist in your own words with no more than twelve steps, based on the get clear, get current, get creative structure.
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