Longtime GTD implementer Jacki shared this on our GTD Facebook Fan Page about her experience with the GTD Weekly Review:
For the longest time I avoided the Weekly Review and just moved from day to day reacting to what came up – in other words, I had not implemented the most effective part of GTD. Then I set aside an hour on Sunday, turned off the phone and TV, and put on a pot of tea and some relaxing music. During that time I asked myself why was I avoiding the Weekly Review? I found the answer to be that once I knew how many things needed to be done in my personal and business life, I felt overwhelmed. But then I realized that once I had it all out in front of me, I could pick and choose what I could do when, delegate in some instances, and negotiate deadlines on some items, and put off some indefinitely. I started with just telling myself to do it for 15 minutes, and that stretched to an hour. Now that golden hour every week helps me face whatever comes my way. I can make adjustments and still get through the week with confidence and with most of my life and business tasks accomplished.
What has your experience been doing (or not doing) the Weekly Review?
Hello. Since I’ve moved country and job I noticed I am avoiding the weekly review and did not do a regularly. I thought that I could spend this hour more productively doing other things such as email. After doing it I always felt good to know what needs to be done.
I had a great experience about 3 weeks back which has helped me immensly to get back to a weekly review: I had cleared my Inbox to Zero and I was able to keep it that way. And with this there is no need to go emails and emails again and again thinking what needs to be done and when. They are all processed now and filed or action scheduled in the diary. Now I check my emails twice a day and take action immediately. With this, I feel I have time left every day to work on my projects ( I was even asked how I am able to keep track of so many things …) and I feel under no pressure anymore to do my weekly review.
Thanks for GTD.
In the beginning, the weekly review was the hardest thing for me to make a habit. So much so that when I worked for David Allen I used to joke that I was good at doing “Weakly” reviews.
Eventually, I decided that I needed the consistent support that a coach might offer so I created The Weekly Review Coach (http://www.eproductivity.com/weeklyreviewcoach)
If you’re a user of Lotus Notes, have a look. If not let me encourage you in your efforts – the weekly review process is priceless.
Eric
Disclaimer: I am the creator of eProductivity for IBM Lotus Notes. However, eProductivity is a “GTD-Enabled” application and is the only Lotus Notes application that has earned this certification from David Allen.
Took me a while to get into the swing of it, but now it’s one of the most exciting parts of my week! After doing it I really feel like my life is moving forward.
I can relate to this.
Having been applying the GTD framework for a number of years, the weekly review has been the hardest to achieve.
I am still strugling, and much like the author I believe the resistance is due to the realisation of what is waiting to be done.
I now trying to handle this differently; for example rather than reviewing all my action lists I will review the largest action list and try to look at a different one each week. With time, I hope to get on top of it all.
I have maintained a projects list and an action list for a while now, but never actually sat down to do a weekly review.
When I look at all the items there, it feels like it would take me a full week to do a full weekly review. If I just take an hour, I never get through even a fraction of what I ought to get through in the weekly review.
Has anyone else here managed to overcome this?
@Jesse
I think you may have too many projects committed too right now. The first thing you should do is to go through them and decide which ones are the most important to you. The someday/maybe pile is a good place for ideas that you want to do, but don’t have time for.
Another option is to place some of the projects into a tickler-file of some sort (a simple sticky-note on a calendar you look at regularly would do).
You don’t have to go over all your projects if you can trust that they are handled in some other part of the system.