Weekly Review Challenge (May 2014)

[Barb]

#1 for May

I missed my regular Sunday review but scheduled time to do it today. I felt so out of whack! I deleted a lot of things I just let pile up that don't seem to matter much anymore. If I find my attention going back there someday, I'll address it then. They weren't even worthy of keeping on someday maybe.

My own GTD journey began with a reading of "the book." But I bought it at the airport here and left it on a plane right out of the gate. It was at least a year later before I tried again. It didn't completely click for me until I bought the CD version of the live seminar. Best investment EVER.

 

[Barb]

I hope everyone will take a few minutes and read the terrific article recently posted by Coach Wayne Pepper. Here’s a link if you haven’t seen it: https://gettingthingsdone.com/connect/coaches_connection.php?id=147

I started me thinking about my own very gradual journey implementing GTD and curious to hear the stories of other members as well. So each week, tell us a bit about your journey when you check in here. Did it take you a long time to fully implement the methodology or did you just go for it right away? How long were your first Weekly Reviews and how long are they now? Tell us anything you’d like about your journey—you’re sure to provide inspiration!

The prize for our lucky May winner will be a free month of GTD Connect so be sure to check in here each time you do a review. Have a great month!

 

[SiobhanBR]

WR #1 for May

This morning's weekly review was really great. I had some time yesterday to knock off quite a few quick actions that had been there a while - these are mostly things I need to read that are not of an urgent nature but could be important. Every weekly review I cull some of them (as in, admitting I'm never going to read it) and recommit to others. Eventually they either get done or deleted. I also have quite a few projects that are in the waiting-for stage (as in, my part is done and it is moved on to others). I am feeling positive that I may be able to call some of them done sometime this year.

My journey implementing GTD I would call gradual. I found GTD while looking for some way to handle my email at a previous job. I got a labeler to help with paper files and created the Action, Waiting, Read, and Someday email folders in order to get inbox zero. My problem with that was the Action and Read folders just got longer and longer... When I started a new job back in 2009 I implemented what I will call a full GTD system but it took a while to become habit. I've reread the book at least 10 times and have moved from paper to an electronic system which is working very well for me now (Outlook at work/Evernote for personal). What did the trick for me was springing for a tele-coaching session (best splurge ever!) - I knew I needed some help coming back to work with a little one at home.

My weekly reviews used to take hours (at least 3) and I was very inconsistent until I joined this challenge thread (back in 2010 I think!). My weekly reviews are now done weekly and almost always completed in one to 1.5 hours and I find this so useful to me at work that I've blocked it on my calendar.

 

[MikeP]

WR #1

I returned to my Friday email / calendar review and weekend list review with this Weekly Review. Not how I want to do it, just how it works out. I also find myself adding more things than I am knocking off. This means I need to take a hard look at what I'm doing and move more to On Hold / SMB or Delegated. The weather has finally turned nice in my part of the world so I will make an effort to do an off-site WR to help get the creative juices flowing so I can prune them back some.

I have always been a list maker so when I heard about Getting Things Done it had an immediate appeal to me. I believe my first step was to ditch the To Do list and organize by Projects and Next Actions. I also liked the idea of One List to Rule Them All (meaning I liked keeping personal, professional, etc all in one list) but I took a number of years to find use for contexts.

Mike

 

[rmurphy]

WR #1

After ages of not posting, I’m just going to jump back in. This morning I finished a 1.5 hour WR. It was long overdue and very helpful. By going over the long project list, I caught some important items that need to be dealt with this month. Although they are on the calendar, I hadn’t yet checked that far ahead. Very glad to have caught those.

The inspiration from regular weekly reviewers on this forum is very much appreciated. I’m looking forward to posting more than every few months!

Rosalie

 

[hikerpa]

Weekly Review #1 May

Still going strong with my weekly reviews. My GTD journey started sometime in the year 2007. I still feel like newby. I've learned so much from this group and know that I have lots more to learn. I'm not even sure why I picked up the book, but after I started to read I felt like it was something I could sure use in my life.

 

[John Forrister]

My GTD journey started sometime in the year 2007. I still feel like newby. I've learned so much from this group and know that I have lots more to learn.

Coincidentally, I was just saying the same thing to David Allen yesterday. We were recording his next Up Close (you'll see it posted very soon), and I mentioned that each time I reread the book or attend a seminar/webinar, I feel like a newby. It's a learning journey for me.

As for WR, this week I noted that I have been doing actions that don't tie to areas of focus. That triggers me to update my areas of focus, which usually means some conversations with coworkers.

 

[John Forrister]

Welcome back, Rosalie!

 

[vbampton]

This thread has temporarily been moved to the Educational Content sub forum as Barb, as the original poster, can't see the replies to her own thread when it's in the Core Skills & Challenges sub forum. There's a redirect in place from the correct forum to the new temporary location.

 

[SiobhanBR]

I completed my 2nd weekly review for May. It took about an hour and I moved quite a bit of stuff around both marking complete, deleting or rewording. It was a good review.

Some more thinking on how I got started with GTD this week... for me the hardest habit was and still is checking my lists on a daily basis. I have so much input every day at work that I usually start moving and just go through the day. When I first started I blocked random half hours of time to "Work from my NA lists" and that helped instill the habit of looking at my lists when I had a moment to help decide what to do (rather than looking at the inbox).

At home, I am not always on the computer so I don't check my lists as regularly as I would like. But by doing my review on Friday, I refresh what I want to do in time for the weekend and I usually do ok. Now that I've switched my personal lists to Evernote I can easily check on my iPad without booting up the computer ("easily" being somewhat inaccurate because the hard part is wresting the iPad away from my son!).

 

[Barb]

I completed my 2nd weekly review for May. It took about an hour and I moved quite a bit of stuff around both marking complete, deleting or rewording. It was a good review.

Some more thinking on how I got started with GTD this week... for me the hardest habit was and still is checking my lists on a daily basis. I have so much input every day at work that I usually start moving and just go through the day. When I first started I blocked random half hours of time to "Work from my NA lists" and that helped instill the habit of looking at my lists when I had a moment to help decide what to do (rather than looking at the inbox).

At home, I am not always on the computer so I don't check my lists as regularly as I would like. But by doing my review on Friday, I refresh what I want to do in time for the weekend and I usually do ok. Now that I've switched my personal lists to Evernote I can easily check on my iPad without booting up the computer ("easily" being somewhat inaccurate because the hard part is wresting the iPad away from my son!).

You know, Siobhan, having at least some part of your system completely portable really comes in handy. I use Omnifocus on my iPad as my entire system. I was in a seminar Friday that got a bit tedious and just pulled it out and tidy up my tasks and projects!

 

[MikeP]

WR #2

I managed to get 90% of this Weekly Review done before I left work on Friday but thanks to the variety of things I had planned for the weekend I didn't wrap it up until Monday morning. I have been breaking my On Hold / SMB list down by review frequency. On Hold will be looked at weekly and I have created monthly, quarterly, and annual SMB lists. I'm hoping this will reduce my resistance to using SMB (I have gotten better at using On Hold but it has been growing).

I listened to some GTD Connect webinars while I mowed the grass Saturday and was inspired to create monthly checklists. The struggles are (a) do I include everything on them or do I end up creating personal and professional versions? and (b) incorporating it into my Weekly Review. I'm leaning towards keeping personal stuff only in them as I have other tools to keep me on top of annually recurring projects at work.

Continuing my GTD Journey story: I finally found a list manager that I could use on my Palm and my laptop / desktop computers and that helped me with contexts. The challenge then was the Weekly Review: in the beginning I was overjoyed if I did them monthly! Finally, in 2011 my company decided to roll out GTD training and I got to attend a Mastering Workflow seminar and got a GTD Connect membership.

Mike

 

[Oogiem]

WR # 1 for May

Finally got a chance to finish my first real weekly review since lambing began. I started on the 10th, a day with no new lambs born, and just managed to finish last night. Lots of my projects were old and stale. I had been working from my lists but not actually finishing the clean-up portions or checking them off. SO I spent quite a bit of time trying to tidy up the reference files on completed projects.

I cleaned up all the remaining stuff from my 2 college classes. Last thing on them was waiting for final grades. I managed to squeak out an A in statistics and Nutritional Biochemistry! The Nutrition class I was not worried about but I was sure I was in mid B range in Statistics at best. I also knew that due to stress and time issues I missed a lot of questions on the last test. But it looks like the professor dropped our worst test scores (we were taking tests every week) and that must have made the difference. Rather relieved at that outcome. I had it in my GTD system as Pass Statistics with a B or better. This also marks the halfway point in my Masters program. I've got a month off and then summer session start. I'm taking 2 classes, one in each summer session. Animal Breeding and Implementing Change. Should be interesting.

I also spent several hours on calendar stuff. Now with the first batch of lambs out and on the ground I have a lot of projects that will start up soon that have time dependent things related to those lambs. Stuff like when I need to run the ewes through and check for mastitis, when the lambs need their shots, scheduling the weighing for NSIP recording which is so many days after birth etc. I have these as recurring projects that have start dates when I expect to have the first batch of lambs out and the first task is to review the calendar and put in the start and due dates as required for various tasks. That takes a while.

Also with the debugging part of LambTracker lambing module winding down with most things working well I needed to plan what's next for the mobile app and start planning how to tackle the desktop version that has now got to be my focus. Normally during reviews if a project needs more planning I just put the action as plan or map or noodle on project X but due to lambing issues and because I knew most of the projects were ok I decided that as I hit one of these bigger projects that needs some thinking time, if I was not rushing out to deal with lambs, I'd stop the review process and do the planning right then and there. My thinking is that I can actually do simple reviews even when stressed or in a hurry between lambs but thinking time is precious now so when I had some and had a project that needed it I just did the planning part as I came to that project. It may not be GTD canon but it's what works in my life during this time of year.

I also realized that there were some of the recurring projects that are related to monthly financial stuff that had fallen way behind. Those projects do not have due dates, just start dates each month. During the review I discovered that I hadn't finished the April tasks on many of them and hadn't started the May set. Part of the reason those tasks kept getting put off is that the sequence of actions has changed. The Identity theft issue I'm dealing with means that it takes a lot longer to verify statements. I hadn't finished those tasks. I'd get a statement, verify the data were ok but not finish getting the payments into my Quicken system or the bills allocated by category and the statements get saved with odd file names that need re-doing and then moving into my electronic filing cabinet. Idid put next actions on these to go and revisit the proper sequence of events and documentation to handle them. One other gotcha is that I was trying to implement both paperless statements and using Hazel to do some automatic filing. I realized that doing both at once is just too much at one time so I backed off the Hazel stuff and am concentrating on getting the workflow for handling electronic statements down and into my system. I hadn't really realized how much my monthly checklist of how to deal with the paper financial statements was helping me until it was no longer the correct sequence of actions to do.

My history with GTD is pretty well documented here already. Came from the Covey mindset but lacked ability to deal with the runway issues. Started on Palm os and moved to Other tools once Palm was dead.

I'm glad I got a good review done when I did. This morning we've had between 6-10 inches of new snow and so far 3 new lambs being born in it. a set of twins and a single. Looks like several others will go soon. Had to spend time taking hay out to the pasture as all the grass is under the snow. I sent out tweets with lots of pictures. OogieM on Twitter if anyone wants to go take a look. I'm ready for winter to end now!

 

[hikerpa]

WR #2 for May

My weekly review was a day late but I spent a good portion of doing on the day I was due for review. I'm trying to tidy up some of my projects because I'll be heading on vacation soon.

Like many of you my GTD journey started on the Palm system. I think I started with the Palm III. I was so sad to see palm go. I started out with an app called Life Balance by
LLamagraphics. I really loved that program and the Palm. I now use Omnifocus and love it too.

 

[Barb]

Good heavens I needed this review! I missed my normal time on Sunday and, after that, it was so easy to just let it slide. Big discovery (not really news to me): I am SO MUCH LESS PRODUCTIVE if I don't do this for myself weekly. And nothing seems to go smoothly either.

Can anyone else relate to this?

 

[John Forrister]

I am SO MUCH LESS PRODUCTIVE if I don't do this for myself weekly. And nothing seems to go smoothly either. Can anyone else relate to this?

That would be a yes.

It's interesting that people often focus on the organizing aspect of GTD, and neglect perspective. I don't exclude myself from that. In day-to-day life it's so easy for me to rush from one task or meeting to another. Lately I've been thinking of Wordsworth's sonnet, "The world is too much with us; late and soon." If he were writing now, he might say, "Weekly Review is due; don't wait, do soon"

 

[CloudGuy]

WR #3 (ish) for May!

All, I've been remiss about posting here. May has been a crazy month so far. I've continued to squeeze in SOME sort of weekly review every week on Saturday, but they have been less than stellar in terms of completeness. My next actions lists are somewhat in disarray, though they are actually shorter than they were a month ago. I think I am becoming a little more judicious about adding more projects and maybe just slightly more realistic about adding to my lists. Maybe...

Today's weekly review is going to be split up. I had work to complete this morning before I started and I have family commitments this afternoon. I will need to continue early tomorrow AM. Today I am focused on updating my project lists.

In terms of my personal journey:

I had listened to the GTD audio book many years ago and had incorporated at least some of the principles into a system that I used. It worked fairly well for me at the time. Then, a few years later, I was promoted to a national middle management role for a large technology company. It pretty much blew up the organizational system I had used for prior roles. The amount of information that came at me every day was much higher (200-300 emails per day) and I was desperate to find a way to keep up and manage all of my new responsibilities. So I re-read the entire GTD book, followed by Making It All Work and Ready for Anything. I also started listening to GTD podcasts. I really got serious about GTD in late 2011 and took some vacation time to assemble my system that year. After that, it took me about a year and a half, but at some point it really started to work well for me.

Since then, It's been quite a journey. About 12 months ago, having held that same management role for nearly 5 years, I decided to take a VP role for a small technology startup, which is my current role. Once again, it has put my organizational system, which seemed to be working quite well at the time, to the test and I've had to adapt and change how I do things.

I'm in a very interesting season in life right now. My job requires me to change gears mentally very frequently -- probably more than any other job I have ever held. Also, due to the fact that I have a wife and young children at home, my personal life is actually busier than ever as well. I can't imagine getting through any of this without GTD. Even when my system is out of date and my lists are unruly, I never stop using it. Even when my weekly reviews are shortened and not as focused as they should be, I never stop doing them. For better or worse, I just keep plugging away. I try to roll with the punches. And once in a while, if I keep an open mind, I learn something new about how to find more control and perspective.

 

[mommoe436]

WR #2 for May

I've completed some type of review just about every week this year, but the last month or so have been less satisfying, feeling rushed and only doing superficial review - not really engaged, just going through the motions. I was able to take several hours this morning and feel I got through a real review. I'm frustrated about getting very good at adding things to my lists but not completing enough things so my lists just grow.

I'm finding that when I schedule a few hours out of the office for WR, I can also get some of the smaller tasks that move things forward done and feel better about the lists. I had been doing my review early Friday mornings, but found they stretched through the weekend, so I am going to schedule several hours Saturday morning to do the review and doing time on some small items.

My start with GTD was reading the book - I implemented email to zero and 2 min rule right away (not always successfully) - I also started my lists but wasn't very good at keeping them current or referring to them. I realized that I didn't know how I wanted to organize things - that took some experimenting. Definitely was not doing WR at all until maybe a year and a half ago. Up until recently I also resisted creating projects - just felt like it was duplication of NAs, and wasn't seeing the benefit. Now that I am focusing on the Projects I have rather than a list of things to do, I'm finding the benefits of have those edges. I've also learned the benefit of slowing down to speed up - which is not my natural mindset!

 

[MikeP]

This Weekly Review was more of a 50/50 split between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. We are doing a 14 day challenge at work and once I get my email under control my next goal is to get my WR down to a one-sitting event. I realize that won't be the case all the time as my bosses often have other plans for me but I want to reduce the number of split up WR I do.

I'm feeling good about the calendar / list review part of my WR and am ready to try and elevate it. I thought I would try journaling on a daily basis and use my WR to review what I wrote and pick out any nuggets. I currently have a calendar reminder every week day that I tried to use to start this habit that I habitually ignore so I'm going to make up a template with a few questions to make the writing easier (what did I do yesterday (highlights), what am I grateful for, what did I read, maybe add something related to habits I want to start).

Wrapping up my GTD Journey: After he seminar in 2011 I was inspired to make my Weekly Reviews a weekly habit. With the help of the GTD Connect forums and a customized WR checklist I am pretty consistent with that today. In the past year I have also migrated from a Palm-based system to a Windows/Cloud/Android system (Evernote and Pimlical are my to main tools). The learning curve slowed me down some but the change also inspired me to look for improvement opportunities.

Mike

 

[hikerpa]

WR #3 for May

My weekly reviews are becoming more streamlined. I'm not really sure why I was so resistant before! The weekly review has really helped me get hold of my projects, calendar and seems to give me a bigger picture of what's going on in my life. I have a vacation coming up soon and want to keep on top of things so I will feel free to relax and have a good time. Any suggestions from the gallery would be great. Thanks.

Ellen