Splitted weekly review

christophe.portier

christophe.portier

Registered
Hi there,
As many people (according to what I've readen/heard), the main point on which I'm facing issues to use the full potential of the GTD methodology is the weekly review. I don't manage to get even one free hour in my week. Even after having tried several moments.
I tried a new way and it works pretty well for a few months: splitting it.
Every day, a reminder tells me the part of the weekly review I'm supposed to do. For example, Monday: "Projects in progress", Tuesday "Actions on computer", Wednesday "Actions at home", Thursday "Actions in the city", etc.
This trick allows me to only take ~10 minutes per day 7 times a week, and even if I don't get the full profit of the "real" weekly review, I can reflect, get some time cleaning lists, adding items still in a part of my head but not in my system yet, get refreshed on what is pending, etc. during these 10 minutes.
I guess this way of doing could interest other GTDers facing similar issues. And, maybe, some experimented GTDers who tried the same and who would think this is not a good idea could also share their view or their warnings.
Cheers,
Christophe
 
I've totally thought about trying something like this and have to some extent. However, I have found there are still times where I feel like I need to catch up more than just one area so I'd say give yourself permission to do that. One thing I do is to pick a reasonable amount of time to spend on GTD system work every day. That way I give myself a limit to not spend all day on my system and to control my perfectionist tendencies. Doing a 2 hour weekly review once a week is very hard psychologically and to focus for that long on something like that.
 
Listening to David on one of the webinars, he said if you haven't done a weekly review, you are essentially trying to do it all of the time and not finishing, essentially failing at it.

I thought, well, if I'm (in a way) always trying to complete the review, I decided to start my day with 30 minutes of "weekly" review, every day. The funny thing about doing that was 1) I did a bunch of <2 minute tasks and 2) what I reviewed yesterday was quick to review today (not much changed) and 3) I kept making it farther and farther through the review.

I really got to know what was in my system and what had my attention. I got to know what helped me do things quickly and what didn't. My system got lean and highly usable. Someday and incubate grew. Project list shrunk.

When I turned to processing IN after these short daily reviews, I knew how the new stuff fit, more and more with what I had already committed to doing.

Happy reviewing,
Clayton

Have an open mind but not so open your brains fall out. - Auggie
 
christophe.portier said:
Hi there,
As many people (according to what I've readen/heard), the main point on which I'm facing issues to use the full potential of the GTD methodology is the weekly review. I don't manage to get even one free hour in my week. Even after having tried several moments.
I tried a new way and it works pretty well for a few months: splitting it.
Every day, a reminder tells me the part of the weekly review I'm supposed to do. For example, Monday: "Projects in progress", Tuesday "Actions on computer", Wednesday "Actions at home", Thursday "Actions in the city", etc.
This trick allows me to only take ~10 minutes per day 7 times a week, and even if I don't get the full profit of the "real" weekly review, I can reflect, get some time cleaning lists, adding items still in a part of my head but not in my system yet, get refreshed on what is pending, etc. during these 10 minutes.
I guess this way of doing could interest other GTDers facing similar issues. And, maybe, some experimented GTDers who tried the same and who would think this is not a good idea could also share their view or their warnings.
Cheers,
Christophe
Click to expand...
Humbly aiming to do the step-by-step "Weekly Review" in ten-minutes daily . . . for increased "empty" head and hyper-crisp / hyper-fresh GTD system
 
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