About doing quick weekly reviews

[May]

A quote from DA:

"I can sometimes just in an emergency mode go and take 5 or 10 minutes and scan through everything, take a look backwards, take a look forwards, don't tell anybody but very often I do a very quick weekly review because I'm moving so fast that I really need to do enough review to let go so that nothing is going to pull up on me.
And there are times when this is a fabulous 2 hours of constructive rabbit trails."

I find that I do the same thing very often too.

I mean I would go and check the calendar, tickler, due dates, all projects and all actions. It takes 5-10 minutes for me because the system is electronic.

I might even do a little mindsweep and add some actions but I don't go into any detail while doing this quick review, I don't really make sure that all next actions are attractive and if all projects are attractive and such, I don't check project plans and I don't check Someday and etc. So it's just a quick scan to make sure than I'm not going to miss anything.

I personally don't really like to rely on just next actions, I like to scan through everything more often than once a week.
(In other words I do like to rely on just next actions but not for a long time like whole week)

Do you do this too?
Or do you really scan through everything only once a week during a long weekly review and then use only next action lists with reference/support materials for the rest of the week?

.

 

[PaulK]

Most days: scan projects list to ensure I have at least one clear next action or waiting for on each project.
Once daily: process inputs to create next actions/projects or more often if 'in' is full and I have time.

Most time is spent working from next actions lists appropriate to current context. A recent list syncing issue reminded me how many things I do in a 2 week period.

I do short weekly reviews if there isn't time for a longer one, better than nothing.

 

[bradenchase]

Daily Review

Besides my weekly review, I have about 30 min to 1 hour of scheduled daily review time. I'm constantly working off my lists so there's all sorts of review going on there. But my life right now (living in a foreign country, running a start-up in a foreign language/country, teaching my children and wife a foreign language, understanding and workning with inter- and intra-national politics, networking in foreign country and back home, etc.)

Anyway, I realized that two hours a week is no where near enough time for me. So I implemented these daily reviews (as well as monthly and quarterly), to keep my stress levels in check. I can't remember where I got this idea but it was actually a tip from David.

Works like a charm.

 

[bishblaize]

What I find is that some weeks (or sometimes for several weeks in a row) the main bits of work I have to do are so obvious, so much more important than anything else, that there's no thinking involved in 90% of the active projects on my list.
In these reviews all Im doing is checking that nothing is going to die, to make sure that im not missing really easy ways to move certain projects on, checking that iv not forgotten about anything important in my calendar and so on. Then its a matter of checking all the projects have at least one next action. This can be as simple as 30 minutes.

So for example we're coming up to our financial year end (dont ask why its in July) which means there's a tonne of finance stuff that needs to be completed and chased up before the end of the month. The projects for that alone will take up pretty much all the week, so there's no point worrying about what else to do on top of that.

At other times of the year tho I find that nothing really stands out as being more important than anything else - its a blank page. So each weekly review takes a lot longer as everything has to be weighed against everything else.

 

[Vickie]

Besides my weekly review, I have about 30 min to 1 hour of scheduled daily review time. I'm constantly working off my lists so there's all sorts of review going on there.

I do this too! I have the first 30 minutes of each day blocked for a min-review. I do not review email during this time either. Reviewing emails as soon as you get in can quickly derail you.

I have found that my weekly reviews have become far less daunting when I am keeping up with my daily reviews.

 

[Cpu_Modern]

I have found that my weekly reviews have become far less daunting when I am keeping up with my daily reviews.

Another way to reduce the heavyness of the weekly review, is to get your project support materials in order. This consolidates the amount of projects and NAs and clarifies further which projects should go onto SdMb or what @agendas and @waitingfors should get some 'push'.