Weekly Review Challenge (October 2014)

Barb

Registered
My friends, we are heading into the home stretch for the year. Can you believe it? I know I can't! Please read on because there is a very special prize announcement at the end!

This month's challenge is about Getting.Things.Done! Taking a cue from Kelly's recent webinar on Unsticking Projects and the challenges Julie Ireland has issued about doing things that are "old and dusty", let's plow through and see what we can finish. Our lists should be pristine now, our projects well defined, and our actions meaningful. If you still have work to do in this area, it's ok, but let's knock some actions and projects off the list and report back.

Do you have anything on your lists that fits any of these?
  • Something I'm overthinking
  • A project I finished long ago, except one item to truly mark it "complete"
  • Are you being too much of a perfectionist with some actions? Is it stopping you from moving forward?
The prize for October is: The NoteTaker Wallet of your choice https://gettingthingsdone.com/store/home.php?cat=273

And--for the first time EVER--Announcing a Quarterly Weekly Review Contest!!!

In addition to the monthly prizes, each time you do a Weekly Review during October, November and December and post about it, you'll also be entered into a drawing for a grand prize, to be given away at the end of December:

One FREE Virtual Coaching Session!!!!!*​
*Must be an active GTD Connect member on 12/31/2014 to qualify​

I have personally had Virtual Coaching and I'm so excited to be able to announce this opportunity!! So review often and remember to post!! Good luck, everyone!
 

John Forrister

GTD Connect
Staff member
I'm looking forward to the next review in October, because I do tend to get stuck by overthinking. Perhaps @Overthink should be a new context for me . . .
 

Barb

Registered
#1 for October

I've been working on this review for a couple of days, here and there, but finished up this morning. I'm going away to a conference for several days so I likely won't do another review for a while--unless I have time in the evening.

I have several projects with one action just hanging on and a bunch of "old and dusty" things. For instance, I redesigned my office a year or so ago and got the major things taken care of but just reorganizing one shelf under my computer has been sitting on my list for about a year. Really? It's nothing but procrastination at this point!

Have a great week everyone.
 

Oogiem

Registered
WOW! I have SO wanted to do virtual coaching but the cost is just a bit much. What a great incentive to be in the running for some coaching! You can bet that will motivate me to do regular reviews and post more. :)
 

CJSullivan

Registered
Very cool! I will definitely participate in this! I've been lusting after coaching for a while, and now that I have a new Mac-based set-up, I have been really religious about doing a weekly review, as there is still a bit of system tweaking going on (but not too much, I hope!)...
 

SiobhanBR

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WR #1

Oh no, am I ever in deep! This review was good but my lists, although up to date, are very long. I am drowning in a bad combination of too many meetings and not enough staff. Three of my nine staff resigned this summer! They all loved working here and were excellent - it just made sense for them family and career wise to move on. Replacing them? I hope so but it is a process that (a) I have little control over and (b) adds more projects to my overloaded desk.

In addition, there are about 10 huge new higher lever projects that are taking up a lot of time and I'm swamped with two-hour, four-hour and all day meetings. Plus of course actually doing the work for some of the staff I no longer have (and trying not to over-over-work my remaining staff). I'm now up to about 150 emails a day just at work, which I often can't get to for a few days because I'm in all-day meetings.

Every day I take deep breaths and prioritize. I question every meeting I'm invited to. I have no idea how I would have been coping if it weren't for GTD. Instead of dropping balls, I've placed them all neatly in the ball rack and I'll tee them up when the fairway is free.
 

John Forrister

GTD Connect
Staff member
SiobhanBR said:
WR #1
Instead of dropping balls, I've placed them all neatly in the ball rack and I'll tee them up when the fairway is free.

Maybe we should have a round of golf as your WR prize.

And good luck resolving that staffing situation.
 

Jenn

Registered
[FONT=Arimo, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif]WR # 1 for October (# 34 of 2014)[/FONT]

[FONT=Arimo, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif]Today was a good review. Although I usually like to do my review on Friday afternoon, I had a few other priorities that day and deferred to Sunday. This let me spend longer on it uninterrupted.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arimo, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif]As we're now in Q4, I made sure to review through to year-end to capture any projects that need a kick start. It was nice to see that there wasn't much lurking, just a few meetings that need rescheduling now that travel plans have solidified.

I then spent some time with this month's challenge:[/FONT]
  • Something I'm overthinking
    • Yes! My project list. It's not complete so I tend to avoid it. Instead, I went through what was already on it. I was able to close 3 projects, identify a few projects without next actions and also identify next actions that are related to the projects but not associated.
  • A project I finished long ago, except one item to truly mark it "complete"
    • This one is a little embarrassing. I have an open action to share photos from a 75th birthday party...except the 76th birthday was last month. I'm going to do this one tonight. Ugh.
  • Are you being too much of a perfectionist with some actions? Is it stopping you from moving forward?
    • I don't think it's perfectionism keeping me from completing actions. I think if anything it's perfectionism making my lists too long in the first place. I'm seeing a lot of items on my lists that I simply think to myself - not now. I need to move more to Someday / Maybe and consider a few different Someday / Maybe categories (Home/Work/Short term/Long term).
Jenn
 

Jenn

Registered
SiobhanBR said:
WR #1
Instead of dropping balls, I've placed them all neatly in the ball rack and I'll tee them up when the fairway is free.

I love this analogy. I often think about all the balls in the air, as if I'm juggling and really just hoping I don't get hit in the head.

Just a thought from my experience....when I've been short staffed, I've tried to keep the actions and projects related to the open positions tagged so it's clear to me that this is really another role's work. In this way when I need to put together a justification for the position, I can do a quick search of all of the work that I'd either done or was still to do that belonged to that role.

Jenn
 

CJSullivan

Registered
First October review today. So far I'm finding Omnifocus is really helping me speed through my reviews. The only drawback to that is that I might not slow down quite enough to dig in where digging needs doing!... However, I also feel that if I let something slide that perhaps needs to be looked at more closely, I will review it again in a week's time. The important thing is that I have far less resistance than I have in a while towards the review. I'm looking forward to week away from my day job, so I'm planning on knocking off a few "dusty" next actions - and in fact knocked off a few in the course of my review. And I did a work-related review before I left on Friday, so I'm feeling ready to "get at it" in the days ahead!
 

MikeP

Registered
WR #1

The past week was even more hectic than the last so all of my Weekly Review got done at home on Sunday. I'll have to review my meeting notes when I get in Monday to pull out any remaining Next Actions but this gets me current on at least 95% of what I will need for the coming week.

I like this month's theme, I have many projects that have one last item to mark it as complete. Examples include writing up a checklist for the next time I have to do estimated income taxes or scan car receipts into Evernote. There are also some that need an action taken to get them started such as Identify directories on my laptop that need to be cleaned up. Unfortunately between absorbing new work and fiscal year end these all move to Someday Maybe for the time being.

Mike
 

SiobhanBR

Registered
Jenn said:
I love this analogy. I often think about all the balls in the air, as if I'm juggling and really just hoping I don't get hit in the head.
Jenn

I like this analogy! Yes - I've been hit in the head a few times with those ones.

Jenn said:
Just a thought from my experience....when I've been short staffed, I've tried to keep the actions and projects related to the open positions tagged so it's clear to me that this is really another role's work. In this way when I need to put together a justification for the position, I can do a quick search of all of the work that I'd either done or was still to do that belonged to that role.

Jenn

That's a great idea. For our obvious "projects" this is straightforward enough as we have a separate system that keeps track of the project contact. But for all those little "extras" this is a really good idea. Thanks!

And yes, John, a round of golf would be a great prize! Maybe somewhere warm in a couple of months, when golfing here is just a fond memory?? :cool:
 

hikerpa

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Weekly Review #1 October

Weekly review done using some of Barb's guidelines for the month. I have a couple of projects that literally have one next action to complete. I'm not sure why I'm so resistant to completing these projects. So my goal will be to complete these projects by the end of the month. I'm using Omnifocus to complete my weekly reveiw and I'm really enjoying Omnifocus 2. It seems to keep me very focused.
 

ArcCaster

Registered
Did my weekly yesterday -- have a project with a few dozen action items -- spent more time here, and emerged with a sharper sense of where that project could be going
 

Hrlakat

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Weekly Review #1 October

Am offshore now in the thick of things, so this week's review was done over three days. Wrt to the monthly challenge, I have two big things that I want to focus on "unsticking this month": setting up GTD for work in outlook / iphone reminders, and spending a large chunk of time outside of working hours working down my "noodling" list - those things that I need a change in location and / or perspective to think about, contemplate, etc. This last category of tasks is really stuck for me, because I find it hard to get large uninterrupted chunks of time at home to really do this kind of brainstorming.
 

FrDavid

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WR #1 (Oct 2014)

First revew of the month.

I have two projects that are "finished" but need one final acttion step before I can consider it completed. The final step is making delivery on the work product so I think part of it is anxiety about how the finished product will be received.

I think I am still being too broad on naming my projects--I need to be more specific. This is something that I have been working on. I think it prevents me from being able to "cross things" off my project list which then gets stale and offensive as opposed to attractive! This is something that I will continue to work on. Of course, this might also be something I am overthinking! :)

I continue to notice a backlog on my reading. I was able to put a bit of a dent into it this afternoon--that felt really good. I am probably "under processing" in some ways--I need to discard more of it during the initial "2 minute" analysis as opposed to just sticking it on the reading stack without processing it. Make sense?
 

Oogiem

Registered
WR # 1 Done for October

Actually got done on Friday last week but stuff happened on Saturday and we got swamped so I couldn't take time to post.

I've really got several items that relate to this months challenge.

I had a whole bunch of projects that I am lacking a single action to complete. I spent a lot of time on them during the review and realized that what I thought were single actions were actually whole separate projects. No wonder I couldn't seem to get them done! So for most of the review I took those "actions" and planned the projects that they really are.

I was feeling good about that when I turned to some other stuck projects. bThey are stuck in the trap of wanting to be perfect rather than good enough. So I worked on re-negotiating my expectations with myself. I really need to give myself permission to accept a slightly less than perfect job for some things where it won't really matter in the long run.

I'm already starting this week's review, because due to dog emergencies that started on Saturday, I haven't had any time to process new inputs all week so I'm behind in my inbox processing and I really do a better weekly review when I start with the inboxes at empty.
 

Barb

Registered
I just wanted to pop in and make a comment: I am SO HAPPY to find I'm not the only person with a bunch of projects with just one.next.action left!! Validation!
 

S-Tolland

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My first WR for October was a rather poor one, but I reminded myself that any review is better than none at all. I got my inboxes to zero, took a cursory look at my lists and checked my calendar, but couldn't manage any more than that in the time I had available. I have a crazy couple of days coming up this week, but am hoping that by Thursday things will have settled enough for me to review properly and get back in control.
 

Barb

Registered
Weekly Review #2 for October

Did a good review today as I'm back in town and getting back in the groove of life.

It was wonderful to get away to a conference AND to stay in a great hotel--even if it was only 30 miles away from home. I was able to meet people, exchange ideas and even pass on the Getting Things Done idea to one overwhelmed person. I also love to do that.

I resisted adding a bunch of projects to my list based on my thinking while I was away, but I did park a lot of things on someday/maybe. I'll have my hands full through the end of the year and don't need to create any shiny object fun for myself that isn't a necessity. I need to keep telling myself this!!

Have a great week everyone!
 
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