Weekly Review Challenge (January 2015)

[Barb]

Happy New Year, everyone!

I love the feeling of turning the page to a new year, all the possibilities before me, and the past behind me. I'll be spending time reviewing my Areas of Focus and writing some new goals over the next few days.

I noticed lots of you stating the intention of doing more Weekly Reviews in 2015 and that brings us to the questions for January. Just pick one and answer each time you post a review:

• What have you done recently to fine tune your Areas of Focus?
• Do you set actual goals? What is your process for setting them and/or tracking your progress?
• Are there any new checklists you can create to help make repeatable processes easier for you?
• What steps will you take to keep your system energized throughout the year? (It doesn't just happen long term for most of us).
• What one word describes your intentions during the coming year with GTD? (I alluded previously to my intention of eliminating "residue" so that's my word).

The prize for January 2015 - any item from the Gear category https://gettingthingsdone.com/store/home.php?cat=294

I look forward to all I learn from your posts! Thanks for making this community so great!

 

[enyonam]

Hi Barb! Happy New Year again

2015 is feeling like a sparkly new year for me!
I just left my last role as the Africa managing director of a technology company and it has unleashed all kinds of great stuff for me.
So my areas of focus made a left-hand turn which was awesome. There was a lot on my horizons of focus mindmap that I hadn't been able to get to so I thought I would take a couple of months off, turn off the last role and then turn on some of the someday/maybes. Instead, before I could even finalise I had a flood of new offers and opportunities so my areas of focus went into hyperdrive!

As a result the major change to my horizons of focus was to fine-tune between "ideas" .... or "maybes" and somedays. I have two different icons in my horizon of focus mindmap now for what I was previously lumping under someday/maybe. The differentiation prevented me from feeling like I had to turn things on and hence DO them, when what I really needed to do was consider all my options in more detail before I picked what I was actually going to commit to.

Worked for me - I've been able to better focus when looking at my buffet of where to focus next.

Happy New Year everyone!

Regards, Enyo
www.enyonam.com

 

[Barb]

WR #1 for January

Hi, Enyo! ^^^^

I've been working on my year end review for DAYS! I have tightened up my Areas of Focus and all the usual stuff and did a draft of my 2015 goals. I really need to sit with my ideas for a few days as I often make changes if I just let ideas come to me rather than forcing it. I also think I have too MANY actual goals. If I could get it to 3-5 I feel I'd have a much better chance hitting the mark. For those of you who set goals, does it matter to you if you have a lot of them?

Have a great week!

 

[Hrlakat]

WR #1 for January

Howdy all! Finished my first weekly review for my personal system yesterday. Holding at just under 800 NA's and up to 106 projects. I still have some residue from my weekend sabbatical last month where I started my 2015 goals, but I've had the opportunity to sit with them for a few weeks and flesh out a really big one and brainstorm on a few others.

• Do you set actual goals? What is your process for setting them and/or tracking your progress?

I do set actual goals but I don't set hard deadlines on them. I come up with the big actions that need to happen, and then used to put them on my lists.

I've set an intention for 2015 to minimize what comes off of project support and onto the lists. For the big goal I've fleshed out, I've printed out my overall plan, and have been carrying that packet around with me, doodling, adding to it, etc. That has been an interesting process for me, as I don't usually think of my personal projects in that manner outside of the weekly review. I don't see myself doing that with all my goals and/or projects, but there are one or two more that I might do this with.

Have a great week!
Heather

 

[Jenn]

WR #1 for January (#1 of 2015)

Although there wasn't much to process (which was fabulous), I did my first weekly review of the year to prepare for the work week.
I found my action lists more manageable now that I've moved many actions to my Someday lists.

In terms of this month's questions, I have chosen a new "one word" for this year, "practice".

 

[hikerpa]

Weekly Review #1 January

Happy New Year!

Finished up my year end review and a look ahead to my projects in the coming year. I can't believe how much the weekly review has really helped with propelling my projects further along.

Do you set goals? What is your process for setting them and/or tracking your progress.

This is the first year that I have actually done this. I'm using Michael Hyatt's "5 Days to Your Best Year Ever" program. I have set 10 goals to complete throughout the year. Some have hard deadlines and others don't. I'm tracking my progress using a template in Evernote that Michael supplied. This is a paid for program using video's that walk you through the process of goal setting. There are check ins throughout the year and a really active FB group.

I think this program will work really well for me and keep me on track to completing my goals.

Ellen

 

[Oogiem]

#1 for January Done!

I actually finished this on Monday but we had a lot of hay to deliver and errands to run on Monday and yesterday was our run to the city for monthly shopping, 10 stores, 7.5 hours and 200 miles traveled. Today is the first day I've really been at my machine to update.

I mentioned that I have added a year start checklist. I had a year end one but the beginning of the year actions were not clearly defined. I may combine them into a big year end/begin list that is set sequential but at least I'm documenting the things I have to do.

My Main AOFs are pretty clean, they are not really changing much from year to year. What is changing is how much emphasis I am giving to each area. Last year I totally ignored the fitness and health AOF other than required yearly exams so this year I need to bring it to the fore. I also didn't' do any of my mental refresh activities (sewing, knitting, weaving, scrapbooks) and I really felt that I missed it. So again, I am reworking what I do to ensure I have some time for those areas. They provided a much needed mental break from my normal work.

I have not yet picked my one word for the year. Last year was complete and I feel that i didn't finish with it but I also don't want to do it again. So far all I have is a scapple mindmap with 4 categories and several possible words in each category. The categories are Words about Me and the words are things that are roles or functions like mastermind, agent or adventurer. The second category are attributes that I want more of so words like power, strength, fit, agile. Then I have words about actions, reboot, dream, reset, resolve, forge. Lastly are words about my Environment, declutter, shed, organize, clean. I am drawn to each of those areas and am having a hard time choosing a single word to focus on. For the past 2 years I have followed along with Ali Edwards One Little Word Scrapbook program but I didn't do many of the scrapbook exercises she had for each month. I found her style is not my scrapbook style so after the first month I pretty much quit. One plan for this year is to create my own monthly mini-challenges and ways to document my word once I figure it out. The first year Idid this exercise of one word I set 12 monthly intentions and focused on them during my weekly reviews for that month and created and completed projects that moved those intentions forward during that month. That was really good for me and I want to replicate that activity this year. I didn't do that last year and I think that is why I didn't follow through with my word like I had planned.

I am not good on goals at all. I do fine with the big picture (why am I here) and pretty good on the minutia send this e-mail) but the middle levels are still a struggle for me. I think the problem is the standards of 1 year and the whole SMART concept (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timeline) It seems that to me my "goals" are always projects and I have a hard time distinguishing between them.

As to keeping my system energized, the biggest thing I've found that helps are my quarterly equinox and solstice in depth reviews. Yearly isn't often enough and monthly is too frequent. My focus this year will be ensuring that every project has a more clear definition of what done means. That should help the completions.

I also need to focus on avoiding paralysis. There are days when I have so many things that are all possible to do because I am in the right context that are all very important or have looming deadlines that I sometimes freeze like a deer in the headlights and can't break out and do any of them. I'll go read e-mail, or almost anything other than get started. As my projects get more critical and important and I have more of them I find that happening more often. I really need ways to break up that mental logjam and get moving.

A realted issue is that often those next actions are big. They are the smallest unit I can do but they take some time to get into the job and a lot of time to finish and then some time to close it out. I have a hard time scheduling the 4-6 hour blocks of time that many of those actions take so they pile up until I am in a panic to get them all done. I need better tools for marking my place within these big single next actions and I don't have any good ones at the moment.

Guess that's where I am for now.

 

[SiobhanBR]

WR #1

Today I felt like I did a decent weekly review, although it was by no means as complete as I usually like it to be. But I got through my projects and NAs and really tried to be ruthless about some of the hangers-on. I deleted quite a few of them. I am going to be out of the office and out of town for three nights next week, so I have prepared a temporary context of things to work on while I am on my own stuck in a hotel room. I think I put too much on there (39 NAs!) but it will certainly give me a chance to knock off a few items at least. Of course, the new input will still keep coming...

On the topic of checklists: I have been adding to my Travel-Checklist as I think about what I want to take on this trip. Last weekend on a family trip, we ended up in a hotel room with two bottles of wine and no corkscrew, so we had to buy yet another one. I think we own at least 20 of these things. Some other items to think about whether to pack or not include tea, bubble bath, headphones. This list also has all the usual suspects including my four necessary electronics and their chargers (iPad, phone, camera, Nintendo DS).

I have been toying with the idea of creating a Sunday evening checklist. Something that I can check after my son is asleep but before it's too late for me to do a few things. Some examples of what would be on it:
- review calendar with husband (do we need to book a babysitter?)
- clean out son's backpack (change spare clothes, remove small toys/papers)
- menu plan/update the shopping list
- process personal inbox (email and paper)
- do some filing/shredding
- backup Evernote/sync iPad/download new music and videos to iPad
- relax/read a book or play a game
- soak in the hot tub

 

[Barb]

I subscribe to GTD Connect's Weekly Review Reminder, which sends a reminder and some encouragement via email on the day of my choosing each week. Today's reminder was particularly good and I wanted to share it:

"Best to not be too tied up in how often you "should" be doing a Weekly Review. Then, like avoiding writing your relatives because there's just too much to catch up on, if you're not getting to the Review regularly, you'll just think it's too much to catch up with, and you quit. Any time, any frequency, is better than not at all".

Particularly when I was a GTD Newbie, Weekly Reviews seemed to take forever, primarily because I tried to be "perfect". But this quote is really the heart of a GTD practice that thrives from year to year.

You can subscribe to the email series by clicking "My Membership" on the top right of the screen. I hope you find it valuable.

 

[Jenn]

WR #2 for January (#2 of 2015)

I completed my review yesterday but left the office right afterwards and thought I'd update now. It was a good review. With my @computer list a lot shorter now that I've moved a lot of actions to my Someday.Office list it is much more manageable and I feel like I'm making better progress on priorities.

I struggled with picking one of the questions to answer this week. The first four are all areas I need to work on and I don't really have answers to them yet. But here goes:

• What steps will you take to keep your system energized throughout the year? (It doesn't just happen long term for most of us)

I found it really helpful last year to share my GTD system with my colleagues. I did this quite a bit in the first half of the year and through their learning process I picked up tweaks to my own system. I am going to restart this again this year and see if I can do a little in this area each month.

 

[Hrlakat]

WR #2 January (#2 for 2015)

Just got back into the country earlier today after a long flight, so my WR was a "WR lite" this week, just looking through my project review pane in Omni only (I love Omni on the iPad!). Holding around 800 tasks and 104 projects. Taking the next week off, so plan to make a little progress on reducing the number of tasks and keep more of them in my project support where practical (I travel a lot, so there are some projects that are going to stay in Omni until I figure out a better way to keep project support on my iPad and get all that sync stuff sorted out - lol sounds like a new project!).

-> What steps will you take to keep your system energized throughout the year? (It doesn't just happen long term for most of us).
Wow, that's a tough question for me. I really like posting to the WR forum each week, and feel like my system has gotten better since I've made it one of my weekly tasks to post here. I've started a quarterly purge of clothes and my pantry - maybe a quarterly purge of my GTD system (borrowing from some of Oogie's posts) would be another things to look at adding, in line with the leave no residue theme.

Wrt my work system - I am not sure. I got outlook more or less sorted out, but left work at about 300 unprocessed emails due to a few last crazy days. One thing I did find out is that my daily email load is more than I thought - looks like the average is around 300 vs. the 100-200 I was thinking. There is some fine tuning I can do within my lists there, but the biggest thing that I want to get going is a good weekly review vs. the WR lites that I got to squeeze in offshore. That's probably the single best thing I can do for myself at work, though right now I am not seeing an easy way to implement the block of time that this requires during the week in the office, and even less clear offshore.

 

[Oogiem]

WR # 2

Got this done today.

My word for the year is reboot. Like a computer, my system and life have been accumulating detritus and old revisions and it needs a restart. Much of this review was cleaning up my GTD system before my virtual coaching session, sort of like cleaning house before company I think. ;-) I made sure that all the old finished actions were actually checked off and also that the active projects really are the important ones and the on-hold projects are not urgent or important.

My husband and I have spent some time just writing down all the things/projects that bug each of us in all the various areas of the house and farm. We haven't yet really sat down to go over them and prioritize or decide what to work on but a lot has been happening anyway. Case in point: Yesterday our UPS system died. In the process it took down all the computers that were up at the time. I had all of my machines up and was in the middle of a bunch of stuff with things working on all my computers. Since we had to pull all the cables to replace the UPS we took that opportunity to pull all the stuff out from under there and clean it. We also realized that there was a lot of junk that we never use that we can get rid of so we've been collecting stuff to donate and took out a bunch of trash as well. Fortunately nothing really got lost but about 10 minutes of work I did on one of my machines. It did take 15 hours for the server to finish the file verification process once we got it all back on-line. That meant we really couldn't do much more than check e-mail and read forums and news. So we cleaned out 2 more boxes of books to give away and realized that one of the issues is that we have no place to store office supplies. By getting rid of the books I could move some of my scrapbooks up into the upstairs bookcases and now we have 3 whole shelves to store our office supplies in. That should help a lot. We managed to clean and sort 6 bookcases full of books and have a plan for dealing with all the stuff we pulled out from under our desks.

I'm looking forward to the coaching to really energize my system.

 

[Barb]

WR #2 for January

I finished this review on Sunday and forgot to post. Much of yesterday's review centered around my one word, residue. Since I chose this word, I've have been conscious of just how often I create it for myself and have been able to stop it before it happens many times (not enough yet).

I've started following along on a Facebook page dedicated to a 365 Day Declutter Challenge. I'm using banker's boxes as I declutter various areas of my house. I have labled them this way: Donate, Another Room, This Room/Elsewhere. The idea is to spend a predetermined amount of time decluttering and the last part of that time cleaning up (processing the boxes). This is really working well because the boxes are strong, have lids, and I can pop the donate box right into my car when it's full.

So many of my personal projects seem to have decluttering as a step, I decided it's a project in itself. Wish me luck!

 

[Oogiem]

I've started following along on a Facebook page dedicated to a 365 Day Declutter Challenge. I'm using banker's boxes as I declutter various areas of my house. ...
So many of my personal projects seem to have decluttering as a step, I decided it's a project in itself. Wish me luck!

We are also doing major decluttering.

I'm interested in how you are approaching getting rid of things with great history/meaning but not useful or needed now? In fact I think I'll go post a whole thread to discuss de-cluttering strategies.

 

[Mark Jantzen]

Weekly Review completed and off to a good start on the year. It's amazing how my system gets better by clearing the decks. In my case I moved a bunch of things from actionable to Someday Maybe.

In terms of goals I do set them but use them more in the GTD context with a longer time horizon than traditional goal-setting focused on the next year.

Mechanically I keep a list in OmniFocus (separate folder called "Goals") and review these goals to ask myself whether I can add any projects to my projects list. Occasionally I'll add next actions if I need to brainstorm or better clarify my goals. I don't bother reviewing them during my Weekly Review unless intuition pushes me that way.

But I do dump ideas and thoughts onto that list - i.e. notes section of OmniFocus.

Another thing I've added was a yearly "theme" as opposed to New Year's resolutions. 2014 was "transition" as I moved across country from Boston to Denver. 2015 is "engage" as I connect to a new area and want to focus on doing things.

 

[Jodie E. Francis]

Two weeks into 2015 I've done TWO weekly reviews and am thrilled at the head space it creates!

Jan 5 - was easy, since in late December I'd set up my goals for the year, and re-negotiated my agreements (projects and actions) to align with them. A review is a piece of cake when the system is fresh

Jan 12 - took longer, since I had been back at work for a week and therefore had less time through the week to maintain the system, but I persevered and am now back to a clear head.

For 2015 my theme words are FOCUS and DISCERNMENT (I have some major decisions to make).

About three weeks ago, I implemented checklists that have been making a huge difference in my ability to stay on top of my tasks and focused, while ensuring nothing falls through the cracks - I call them 'Maintenance' lists (AoF is Maintenance) and they recur as you'd expect. Though I don't complete all the items each iteration, it is an excellent memory jog: Morning, Evening, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Annually.

 

[Jenn]

WR #3 for January (#3 of 2015)

Just completed my weekly review while waiting for a process to complete here at work. It was a pretty solid review and my reward was to end the review of my forward calendar by picking out a potential vacation week

Following the challenge of answering one of the questions each week:

· What have you done recently to fine tune your Areas of Focus?

I took some time in this review to pull out my “Horizons of Focus” document that I created last year, realizing that I really haven’t looked at it all year. It was interesting to see how many of the focus areas / goals etc I had actually worked on throughout the year. I was bang on with my priorities. It needs a little tweaking this year but most of it is still aligned with the direction I’m heading in. I am going to add this to my Weekly Review – just a glance at it to remind me of where I want to be at each level.

 

[Oogiem]

WR # 3

Just completed this. A lot is going on in the reboot my life area.

I completed my coaching with Julie Ireland and have a bunch of new projects related to things she suggested or brought up. One is to somehow separate my checklist types of projects from my other types of projects. So for this week I put a few of the recurring Omnifocus projects into a Checklists folder/AOF and am seeing how that works for me. Generally I've created checklists as recurring projects within Omnifocus and put them into the folders that are my areas of focus. I am not sure I like the separation of checklists out into a distinct area but I'll run with it for a week or 2 and see. One thing is that I typically have close to 200-250 projects but when I really look at them nearly 75 are checklist types.

One thing she did suggest that I tried and that failed miserably for me was to set projects parallel as a default and not set the context of an item until I need to. I tried that, I know it's the suggested way in the OF set-up guide, but I found it frustrating and irritating to use. I only lasted 3 days before I went back to my standard way which is to set the default for projects to be sequential and to always add a context to my actions unless they are reference material or notes. I found I could not see projects, when I finished taks I was expecting the next task to show up in their proper context especially when I knew I had already planned the project and they didn't. That meant I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why and then fixing it. Changing the context on my phone is not as simple as adding it on my main computer. Since I usually create and plan projects on my desktop and use my phone for doing and check off of completed actions I found the disruption in my workflow impossible to deal with.

One issue with my OF system that I need to deal with is how I save/store e-mailed project support material. I have typically clipped entire e-mail messages to the OF Inbox and often just added them as a separate action at the bottom of the project they relate to but leave the context empty. It's a convenient way to store project support material for projects. However, in Yosemite, Apple has removed the capability to clip an entire mail message so the Omnifocus Clip-o-tron won't work that way. I have to define a different way of storing those e-mailed project support messages. I have no ideas on that right now so I'm letting my brain stew on it for a while.

Our massive system/house clean-up and declutter is moving along. We ended up buying a couple of rolling carts with drawers. I'm using one for all my scrapbook tools so I can easily access them. I think it's going to be much nicer as I don't have to move everything to get access to tools so I am hoping that will mean I can get back into doing a few scrapbook pages a day. I've really missed my scrapping time and the stories I document so I'm looking forward to getting back into that this year. (Reboot my storytelling and scrapbooking side.) I already love the fact that all my scrapbook paper is now visible, organized by color (ROYGBIV order) on a shelf I can reach with the stepstool.

We've sorted out the office supplies and are collecting some to donate to a local cooperative business place that we don't need. We discovered that often we'd buy duplicates of stuff because we couldn't find or know we still had some supplies. It turns out that both of us prefer to see what we have either neatly labeled or visible. But with a farm dust is always an issue. The solution is to put office supplies in a bookcase that is near both of our offices but not visible from the main part of the house. We're still fixing it and deciding what to keep vs what we don't need or use anymore but once it's done I'll take some pictures.

Computer clean-up is also progressing. I have the file cabinets set and I'm slowly crunching all the files and either deleting or renaming them as appropriate and then moving them to the proper new location. It is very slow, I did all the easy ones and now I have to really look at the files to decide whether to continue to keep them or not. I can only do that for about 20 minutes before I need a break.

My declutter tactic is to do the computer files for about 20 minutes, then work on sorting and scanning physical files for about 20 minutes then work on physical house cleaning for about 20 minutes. Repeat for at least 2-3 hours each day.

Didn't get much done in the get creative part at all this week. I have so many things on my someday/maybe lists that I didn't even come up with any new ideas at all. I suspect once the file/house declutter and cleaning is done I'll get a burst of new ideas to work on.

 

[Hrlakat]

WR #3 for January (3 of 52)

Just finished my personal weekly review. Down to 770 tasks and up to 148 projects, though I did notice I have some projects with one last action to close out, so plan to add residue today to the list along with trip planning and clearing clutter.

Are there any new checklists you can create to help make repeatable processes easier for you?
I made a nightly routine checklist this year, to make sure I put eyes on what I want to get done each day this year (meditation, goal reviews, etc).

I travel a lot, so I have multiple travel checklists depending on what part of the world I'm going to and what I'll be doing there. My master travel checklist is broken down into subsections - Stuff to Do One Week Before I Leave, Stuff to Pack in Luggage, Stuff to Pack in Carry On, Extras for Africa, Extras for Photography, Things to Do Right Before I Leave. I just started scuba diving (one of those things on S/M for a long time - just got off this year!), so I'll be adding an Extras for Diving section soon, as my first diving trip will be within a month. Not sure what else I could add to it, but am always open to new ideas.

I could see where I could benefit from other checklists: steps to process photos in Lightroom, master pantry list (I have this mostly but not completely done - residue strikes again!), overall home maintenance checklist, hurricane evacuation checklist (I live in Houston). I've got the checklist webinar loaded onto my iPad, so will see what comes to mind next time I watch it.

Have a great week!
Heather

 

[Oogiem]

2014 was "transition" as I moved across country from Boston to Denver. 2015 is "engage" as I connect to a new area and want to focus on doing things.

I keep meaning to come back and post about this and forgetting...

If you are in Denver now, you are a nice weekend visit away from us. Perhaps this summer plan a trip to the western Colorado wine country and stop by. I can suggest nice B&Bs and I'd be glad to give you a full customized farm tour.