5 Phases, Weekly Review checklist, and an epiphany

Z

zen_tiggr

Guest
A short while ago, I collected and personalized a saying about Zen - "Life in enlightenment is not standing on the bank, pefectly seeing the river in all its detail and beauty; it is jumping in and swimming along."

I keep getting my feet wet with GTD ideas, scooping my hands through the water like I know how... but like many others that gather here, I hit rough spots, and haven't taken the plunge yet.

Today's learning: I've been stumbling over using DA's weekly review checklist, because it seems like there's a chunk of 'get the collecting and processing up to date' at the beginning of it. That's daunting to me, because I am not yet at the point where my inbox stays consistently close to empty.

But who am I to use a black belt's process as is? He's had lots of time to get the basics straight, and surely has optimized his process quite a bit. For me, for now, I need to see 'collect and process' and 'review and update' as two distinctly separate things, so that's what I'll do.

In my morning before-work routine, I'll now dedicate a time slice to process things toward 'inbox empty'. Every other Sunday, my wife works; that leaves four, five hours to just review what's there. (To get me in the habit of actually reviewing things, I think I'll even go so far as to Collect whatever new ideas come up, continue and finish the review, then go back around and Process the new thoughts afterward.)

Maybe this will help clarify the whole process - get me further past the 'amorphous blob' anxiety.
 

Esquire

Registered
In the same boat

I used to have just a weekly recurring untimed appointment on my Clie every Friday for "weekly review" with an attached note of DA's checklist and I too found that I spent a great deal of time getting in to empty.
Now I have a second weekly recurring untimed appointment for every Thursday afternoon called "Get in to empty".
That way, when I get to my weekly review either late Friday a.m. or early Friday p.m. I'm only dealing with, at most, a couple of hours worth of inbox accumulation.
 
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