What are your favourite Weekly Review rituals?

I'm looking for ideas to make my Weekly Reviews more satisfying!

One thing I do is put on my "Weekly Review" music playlist in iTunes. I picked songs that really get me in the mood. Occasionally I'll also take my lists with me on a walk in the park and do it on a park bench out in nature.

What are your favorite practices? Do you have places or rituals that make it more enjoyable or rewarding?

 

I often have a cup of coffee. What music do people like for a weekly review?
Yesterday? Purple Rain? Born This Way? Rhapsody in Blue? Bolero?
Theoretically, I would find instrumental guitar music pleasant, but I never remember
to put music on, so I just do the review without anything special.

 

I take my iPhone down to the local Chinese massage shop and get a foot massage. I go through my weekly review using OmniFocus. Very relaxing and productive.

 

My weekly review is Sunday night, the end of my work week. It is usually 9:00 or so by the time I start on it and I am tired (which is not good), but its placement makes me look forward to it as the wrapup of the week’s work and gateway to a day off (Monday).

I light a candle, turn off the overhead lights (leaving just my desk light), brew some herbal tea, have food at hand (nothing like a Food Trigger to make me enjoy something!), play music. Often, it is some of my own (I am a church musician). Or relaxing things from YouTube. Or sometimes the BBC Choral Evensong.

I read the book and started GTD last summer, and the Weekly Review has become a thing that I anticipate strongly. Once I got the habit established, I have missed only one Sunday, when I couldn’t get around to it until 11:30 pm. I was too tired by then, so I got the In boxes to zero and called it a week. And I felt “incomplete” when I came back to work on Tuesday. That taught me a lesson.

I signed up for the forum today in part just to say “Thank You” to Mr. Allen and the others who have made GTD a reality.

 

First, I DON'T do mine in my office! Changing the venue definitely changes my thinking. Thankfully, our company has a wide array of places to do work...often with sizable monitors. I definitely have my favorites.
Another is that I always start by clicking "Work Offline" on my email client (Outlook), and don't click back online until I'm done. This has been the greatest "focus booster" I can remember....highly recommend.
A nice chai tea makes it easy to step into.
I also find it helpful to keep 3 screens going: one with my WR agenda (on my iPad), one with email and one with my list manager (Wunderlist is my tool of choice). Since my WR agenda is in Wunderlist, keeping it open on my iPad saves me from going in and out.
I do mine Friday at 9:15am. This allows me to get into work, get things rolling, attend my morning standup then duck away. I've tried all different times and days and this is definitely the one that works for me.

 

Hi mcogilvie,

My weekly review playlist consists of mostly slow tempo music that puts me in a relaxed and reflective mood. Lots of soundtrack pieces, including from video games and piano arrangements. I've got theme music from Superman, Batman, Star Trek: Voyager, Super Mario, and Final Fantasy to name a few.

 

I put on noise cancelling headphones and play Brian Eno's generative music app for the iPhone, Bloom. It creates a lovely sound backdrop that's lyrical without being melodic. I find catchy melodies just as distracting as words, and complete silence seems to increase my inertia, but Bloom's evolving sound patterns are easy to listen to or ignore at will—the perfect complement for the Weekly Review.

 

I do my weekly review in the middle of a forest somewhere, with a big thermos of strong tea. It works because I like to get out walking at least once a week and I don't get disturbed, unless the loggers turn up unexpectedly (which has happened more than once). If it rains then I rig up a big piece of plastic between the trees to shelter under. My background music is nature- wind in the trees, birds, flowing water or silence (or chainsaws....)