Weekly Review Challenge (December 2014)

December WR #3

Made it offshore and completed it today despite jet lag!

Another thing I learned about my GTD system is that I had a "stuff" project (the default project in OmniFocus where Omni puts tasks if it doesn't know what to do with them). I was using that project as a "stuff" container as well since I wasn't really doing the thinking about those items. I cleared it out this week and turned some of them into 4 or 5 projects with much tighter boundaries, moved other items to other projects, and deleted a few items as well.

I also put a lot of projects on hold now that I'm away, so number of action items down to 760 with only 97 active projects. Didn't get to do the visual of each project mapped to area of focus - have added that to the list for when I get back.

Have a great week and Happy Holidays!
Heather
 
Barb said:
As Julie Ireland once said: Don't leave residue! Residue could be leaving a couple of dishes in the sink, not putting something away, or leaving one last step in a project undone. This remains a big improvement opportunity to me, so "leave no residue" will be a 2015 mantra.
Click to expand...

I have a really bad habit of leaving residue, the last tiny bits that make a project really done are so easy to slide on when the fun/exciting/difficult part is finished. I too am trying to manage completion more by pushing through that final action or 2 that completely closes the project down. I like the term residue better than unfinished actions. Somehow it seem easier to tackle a "bit of residue" than "a final next action" not sure why but I'm stealing that term for 2015 as well.
 
WR # 3 FINALLY Finished

This is the day after the solstice, when the world turns and the light comes back. Ewes are pregnant with possibility, I look at their soft faces and amber eyes, I scratch the special friends, Clematis, Rhosyn, Jasmine's daughter, Gilda with the swept back ears. I feed the orphaned lamb, Sterling, our star sheep, who is still in his separate pen because he is too small to compete with the rest of the lambs born this year. He is a tough sheep, he has survived things that would kill a lesser animal. He's an intact ram, I can't make him a pet but he has a personality and power that shines out of his tiny black body. He dances as I toss in fresh hay, eyes bright, he makes a small baa of contentment as food arrives. I see the snow, horses stomping and snorting, our old stallion looks like a colt, he hasn't moved this well in years. His gelding friend is slower, he's a few years older than the stallion, but he tries to show his pleasure at good food and fresh snow. Our oldest ewe, Kierra, old, grey, heavily pregnant, or at least I hope so, waddles slowly over and dips her face into the water tank as I stand filling it before I go in for the night. She lifts her head, drops of water freezing on her whiskers. She is an old soul, wise in the ways of sheep and man and we acknowledge our link in the world. The rams are still bashing, testosterone poisoning as my vet would say, but they are still all macho even though the old boys know they are not on the list to get ewes this year. I have to decide who goes to slaughter soon and I hate that task. The ram lambs, young bucks, full of teenage bravado and raw power but still a bit awkward, ram and dance and try to bluff me. But the word is out, "Butt mom and you are dinner", so they keep their distance and show off at arms length. Farms are tied to the sun, we live and die by the weather. I know that for most folks yesterday marked the start of winter but as a farmer I know that this is really spring, days are longer now, the promise of the seasons will come soon enough.

I did one of my most complete reviews of where I am and where I want to be over this weekend. Heavy snow, nothing to do but take care of us and the animals gave me time to contemplate. I feel a swelling of possibility, this is the time I get so many ideas that I have to stop and just capture them, I want todo so much but I am time limited. I get restless after the solstice, I expect to be able to do far more than I can. Perhaps this year I will not start too many projects.

I am closing out my 2014 One Litte Word, for this past year I chose "Complete" and I didn't but that is ok. I will carry on and move forward. I haven't decided on my next work, I hope for inspiration before the new year.

Take care all and have awonderful holiday season.
 
Weekly Review #3

Finished my weekly review by setting my goals for next year and looking back on last year. I finished up all of my Christmas Projects and I'm looking forward to next year.

My GTD system had become much more organized this year. I seem to scan and review on a more regular basis. My system is getting better every day and it's thanks to the great people on this site!

Wishing all of you a Happy Holiday and a great New Year!!

Ellen
 
Weekly Review #3 (actually completed on Wednesday 17 December but have been away and not posted since then)

I made sure I did my third weekly review the day before I went away for a family holiday. I'm back home today and am closing out as many things as I can so that when I do my fourth (and final for the year) weekly review this week, it will be easier because lots of items will be completed. I'm also looking forward to a 'residual-free' start to 2015.

I'm looking forward to more consistency with all of this next year and being more active again on these forums. I like connecting with GTD people :)

Happy holidays to everyone.
 
I'm sure everyone participating knows this, but just wanted to remind everyone we have just a few more days to qualify for the GRAND PRIZE: A free virtual coaching session!! I'm so pleased someone will have the opportunity to experience this! Good luck and keep posting those reviews!
 
December WR #4

A pretty clean weekly review - yay!

Holding at 763 action items with 92 active projects. The biggest things I accomplished personally this week are picking my 2015 word (fearless) and mapping out my biggest 2015 goal, whose actions I will leave in project support until they need to be pulled out! (Another of my 2015 goals is project support files up and running.)

But I consider my biggest success this week is getting my work inbox to zero! I got my system up earlier in the week, and struggled to keep a working backlog of ~ 100 emails until yesterday. It was a quiet day, so I managed to get through that working backlog, which was a great feeling!

From a sunny offshore spot in the Atlantic - Happy New Year!
Heather
 
WR#4 Finished

Got this one done fairly easily. My e-mail has been hovering at less than 10 messages but I haven't yet managed to keep it at zero consistently. I don't have a convenient place that I look for e-mails that don't fit into existing projects but have an actionable piece contained in them. Ones that are part of a project I shunt off to Omnifocus and add to their projects but the one off items never make that trip. I'm playing with going ahead and putting them into OF as well into a misc. list. I tend to not have those, nearly everything I have to do is really part of a project but maybe I do need one.

The big file reorganization project on my computer is going well, I am about half done. I am renaming all my files to be operating system independent, sorting and deleting files I no longer need. I am also bringing all files into either PDF, RTF or Libre Office formats so that they are able to be used on multiple computers. Once the digital files are cleaned up I will be ready to sort, scan and shred the physical paper files. In the process I am creating an encrypted disk and a cleartext disk and all personal and financial data is going into the encrypted one. For physical critical files we will put them in a fire proof rated for media protection safe. I am also slowly working on updating and modifying all my passwords on all computers for all sites and other things. Many are old and no longer very secure and now that I have a better tool for keeping them there is no reason not to make very long complex passwords that are different for everything. All of these are part of the big project "Harden the House" prompted by the burglary at our friends house. The burglars got all sorts of private data, bank account info, social security numbers, investment info as well and many thousands of dollars of stuff. It was a wake up call for many of us in the valley as the suspects are semi-local and the house appears to have been targeted. That event has prompted us to take a very close look at security in all forms. There is the physical security of our house and possessions, being worked on by my husband, while I am tackling the data security and household inventory projects. In the process we are trying to declutter and clean up stuff we no longer need or want. The goal for this project is to have the main house inside complete by the end of January then move to the garage and other buildings on the farm.

I am so far resisting making hundreds of new active projects but my someday maybe lists have grown.

ANyway it's cold, windy and we have lots of sheep to feed so off now to take care of the critters.
 
WR #2
This year has gone by in a blur, and I've discovered how fragile my weekly review habit has become! Only 11 documented reviews for 2014... I'm hoping for one more by New Year's to at least make it a dozen. :)

I did a review on Christmas, solid on calendar & next actions, and ended up cleaning up a lot of old residue from my system. I don't feel like it was as thorough as I wanted to be with it (just a quick/superficial review of projects) but some review is better than none, right?

I have a work project that has been all-consuming, and I think it will be wrapped up in the next week or two. I love Barb's plan for a "residue-free 2015". I want that, too!

I am really hoping to get another review in before the end of the year. That one that will be more looking ahead, rather than cleaning up old stuff. And one of the big things I want with regard to my weekly review practice for 2015 is to get back to being consistent with it.

This one work project has been so HUGE that I have in effect put almost everything else on Someday/Maybe. But that doesn't help. I still know that I need to be reviewing the whole scope of my life on a regular basis. Not just assuming that things will be "fine" until I'm able to get back to them...

One thing I did realize, however, was that I am a little afraid to do a thorough weekly review. I think that's because I'm afraid I will find something that will be WAY more interesting than what I'm working on currently. It's almost a self-protective mechanism of putting blinders on, believing if I cannot even see some of the other options, and then I won't be distracted. However, I know that is not the way GTD works!!

For Barb's other questions, I do have ubiquitous capture, I do have GTD well integrated for both my personal and professional life. I just haven't been doing my weekly review on anything approaching a consistent basis. But I can't begin to imagine what life would be like if I didn't have GTD. GTD, even done poorly, beats any other option I've tried.

I am not much on New Year's resolutions, but I am definitely resolving to do many more reviews next year (say at least FOUR TIMES as many!) than I did this year.
 
#4 for December

I kind of can't believe I actually did 4 reviews this month with all of the other things I've had going on. I continue to marvel at the amount of 1-2 action projects I have let linger on for no good reason whatsoever: RESIDUE!

I plan to do a very thorough year-end review on January 1. My priorities are starting to shift rather significantly and I need to make sure my system is tight going into the new year. I'm really looking forward to this deeper dive!
 
WR # 2 for December (43 of 2014)

I just completed my weekly review over the course of the day, interrupted with last minute work issues to resolve since there are so few of us in the office today.

I plan to take some time over the next few days to do a final review and clean up some lingering actions that I don't want to carry into 2015.

I also realized that I hadn't answered any of the December questions so here goes....
  • Did you learn anything this year with regard to your GTD practice that really changed things for you?
    • I learned that any review is better than no review and that once you get into the habit of the weekly review, you really notice when you have missed it. There is a real sense of both satisfaction and calm when you complete a review and I look forward to getting it done and then being ready for what's next.
  • Have you fully implemented GTD into both your personal and professional life?
    • Professionally I'm in pretty good shape although I still struggle with a full implementation of Projects. I also have way too many actions on my actionable lists and need to move them to Someday lists.
    • Personally I'm way behind. I do use GTD for actions lists around the house but I certainly don't claim to have a fully implemented system there. I think the big difference is paper versus digital. Home tends to be paper based while work is mainly digital. I am definitely better at digital and need to "upgrade" my personal system.
  • Looking forward, what change(s) would you like to see yourself make early next year with regard to your GTD practice?
    • Last January, I looked back at my Weekly Reviews in 2013 and found I was hitting about 75%. Well this year I've made some improvement but certainly not to the 100% target that I had crazily envisioned! 83% achievement....when I look back, about half of the missed reviews were during vacations when I had no intention of doing them! Time to be more realistic about the target I think :)
I also wanted to wish everyone here on the forum a Happy New Year! Thank you for your contributions and the motivation that they provide!
Jenn
 
WR #4 for December - completed today (31/12)

Yay. Jenn - after seeing your comment about how many reviews you'd completed this year (and being very impressed) I counted mine. I completed 17 in 2014. Hmmm, that's only 32%. This made me see that setting a goal of 100% or even 80 % for 2015 is probably unreasonable. I might go for double what I did this year - 34 reviews for 2015 (65%).

I'm looking forward to keeping track of that goal in 2015!

Happy new year everyone.
Cass
 
I'm doingn a mini-year end review today, just verifying that everything that has to have a 2014 postmark or date was actually completed. So far nothing I need torush out and do but I'm only about halfway done checking my projects and tasks.
 
WR # 3 for December (44 of 2014)

I took a bit of time today for a quick mini review for the end of the year. I took some advice from back in October on breaking down my someday lists and opted to try out Someday.Office and Someday.Home. I was able to move a lot out of my @computer that I'm just not ready to work on right now and I think my lists will be more manageable going into the New Year. I also took the opportunity to do a mini-cull while I was at it. It's funny how some things just aren't relevant any more!

Looking forward to next year already.......
Jenn
 
WR #3
I made it to 12 Reviews for 2014 by doing #3 for Dec on 12/31.

MUCH room for improvement next year, and also pleased I finished the year strong, with 3 reviews in December.

I made sure the things that needed a 2014 date got mailed or donated in time, and caught a number of things that had been completed & not checked off yet. It wasn't as much of a forward-looking review/planning time as I'd hoped, but i did update calendar and do a mindsweep and review next actions. A superficial glance at projects and I called it done.

I feel like I'm almost back on the wagon again, and it feels good!
 
Congratulations to CassRussell, winner of the December Weekly Review Challenge. The prize for December is the Happy Holiday free month of GTD Connect. With great pleasure I have extended your membership by a month.
 
Wow - thanks so much John & Barb :) I'm super excited about winning this even though I'm also winning just by doing my weekly reviews!

It's great to be active in these forums again - I get so much from reading the posts of others.

Cass
 
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