Weekly vs. partial reviews

[sparkle]

How do you do your reviews?

In GTD a weekly review is proposed, to check all of your projects once a week. In the software I use, I can set individual review schedules for each project. This is quite handy, because it reduces the time needed for a weekly review drastically if you only need to check some projects lets say every 3 months. For me, this ends up having just a handful of projects being ready for review every day.

However, I'm asking myself if I'm missing something, because I'll never see the complete list of my projects including all the tasks at once. I could imagine that there's a positive aspect of looking at the "big picture" in regular intervals.

What are your experiences?

 

[sparkle]

Oops, maybe this thread should be moved to the "general discussions"?

 

[Folke]

I am doing it quite similarly. I do not have a timer feature for my reviews (and probably would not use it even if I had one) but I do review projects during the week and then allow myself to be more relaxed about those during the weekly review. The ones I review more frequently are the ones that are more turbulent or interesting or fast-moving.

 

[Hrlakat]

I also look at each of my projects in my Weekly Review - I keep my active projects below 150, and the rest are on someday/maybe (right now I have around 400). For those on my someday/maybe list, I go through them quickly - unless I get a hunch to stop and look at one of those projects a little closer.

I guess I'm of the opinion that if I just put a little bit of my awareness on a S/M project each week, then maybe I'll have an insight about it or maybe even the project will move without me doing anything about it (which has happened, surprisingly).

 

[sparkle]

Wow, Hrlakat!

That means you're reviewing 550 projects each week. May I ask you how long does this take?

 

[Hrlakat]

Sparkle -

One to two hours on average - can take me longer if I decide I have time to work small NA's as part of my WR.

The 400 projects on S/M aren't necessarily well defined, so they take about 15 - 30 minutes total to review - might take a little longer if I decide to make some of them active (which involves a little project planning to get at least one NA identified). For each I ask myself "is this still relevant to me?" and "do I want to do something about this?" in each WR.

The 120 or so active projects take about 30-60 mins to go through as I spend a little more time on each determining if there are any NA's that need to be added etc. My lists of available NA's take about 15-30 mins to to thru, depending on how much time I've spent looking thru lists during the week.

For me, I find it useful to look at both NA's by context as well as by project - helps me ID repeated items (actions & projects), as well as helps facilitate that "flash of creative insight" that we all get from time to time.

 

[sparkle]

Thanks, Hrlakat!

And do you think you'll get some kind of insight by your complete review you wouldn't get by doing a partial review? I'm still a bit scared about reviewing my complete project list every week (although it consists of way less projects than your list).

 

[Hrlakat]

Thanks, Hrlakat!

And do you think you'll get some kind of insight by your complete review you wouldn't get by doing a partial review? I'm still a bit scared about reviewing my complete project list every week (although it consists of way less projects than your list).

I actually do, as crazy as it may sound. My belief is that my subconscious, my reticular activating system, will slowly bring me information on each of the S/M items on my list, so that I can ultimately decide to do or not do something. What I've seen over the past two years doing this is that I have insights into some of these projects - and I file those insights away until I'm ready to actually make the project active. Sometimes I've even seen that some of the items on the list get completed automagically.

 

[DenaDahilig]

Hi, Sparkle,

The thing to keep in mind is that you only need to review projects as often as you need to review them. (Yeah, that sounded smarter my head.) I mean that if, truly, you only need to "Do a Thorough Check of the Yard Irrigation for Leaks" once or twice a year and "Track Vendor Reports" once a month, WHY look at them once a week? You don't need to. You really sound OK.

Now, if something fell through a crack and you're now freaked out that something else might capsize, too, yeah, maybe throw everything into a weekly review (not every week, just the next one so you can reevaluate timings). But overall it sounds like you have things well under control.

Happy reviewing!

Dena

Dena Dahilig
www.denadahilig.com

 

[GTD-Sweden]

Hi, is it not a danger not scan all your active projects during the WR in that 1 you don´t know for sure that you have an NA on the project and 2 that you might avoid to look at the scary/difficult projects?

 

[sparkle]

Thanks for your input so far. For now, I'll just continue with my partial reviews and check after a while if it's still ok for me.