Ep. 380: A Guided Weekly Review  🔗 **Source:** [Ep. 380: A Guided Weekly Review](https://share.snipd.com/episode/0c0189ba-a9ba-4a66-a517-bb5c63a6aa04) ## Highlights - **The Weekly Review Creates A Higher Perspective** - The Weekly Review keeps commitments current while creating a higher, integrated view of life and work. - Even a partial review restores perspective and reduces the feeling of being controlled by incoming demands. Transcript: John Forrester The weekly review sits squarely in step four, reflect. For those of you who have been at this a while, you understand that there are five steps to the GTD workflow. This is the step that is specifically about reflecting on what you already have in your system. Now, the purpose of the weekly review, a couple of things. We want to get your system up to date. Your life is busy. Things move quickly. Feel free to roll your eyes at that one. But if you're like most of the people I talk to, your life moves very quickly. Things move along and happen. And so we might as well just accept that things happen, life moves quickly, and we're going to need to do some work to keep our systems up to date. New inputs come in, things change. So that's one of the main functions here of the weekly review is to keep your system up to date. It also gives you a higher perspective. In the forest management metaphor, it gets you out of the tree hugging and up into the tower where you can look at the whole forest. It also gives you an integrated view, top to bottom, left, right. It gives you an integrated view of your whole system so that you can understand how the pieces fit together. That way you won't feel like you're just working on one small thing, but without it being coordinated with the rest of your system. So it has a three-part purpose here, and we're going to look at all of that. Here's an encouraging quote from David. I'm going to read it for those of you who may be listening while you're driving to this recording at some point. Any reviewing is better than none at all. Don't let yourself keep from getting back in the game because you don't feel like you're doing it 100%. One more time, any reviewing is better than none at all. So that means if you're in the middle of a busy day and you just want to get some perspective, if you pause to do any part of a review, you don't have to do a full weekly review. If you pause to do any part of it, that's better than nothing at all. ([Time 0:02:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f14c195c-9e6f-4faf-a065-30aaaee35086)) - **Use Three Phases To Structure Your Review** - Review a complete, current, accurate set of reminders so you can choose effectively from moment to moment. - The process moves through three phases: get clear, get current, and get creative. Transcript: John Forrester Okay, best practices for the weekly review is to review a complete, current, and accurate set of reminders about your commitments as needed to stay clear and appropriately focused. Pretty simple. That's it. It's in a nutshell. That's one of David's nutshell sentences about what happens with a weekly review. The reason it's a best practice is that without reviewing your system regularly, you may not have a clear view of what you're doing and how to choose what to do day to day. Doing a weekly review makes all the difference in being able to choose what to do day to day, moment to moment. So here's a slide showing the 11 steps of the weekly review. Those fall into three sections. Get clear, get current, and get creative. Now, most of the time, people say they get kind of stuck in that first section about getting clear. After that, they say they'll tend to get tripped up in the beginning of the second section where we're reviewing the next actions, lists, and projects. Either way, those are the places where people say they don't quite get all the way through a review. We're going to talk about what to do to make sure that doesn't happen for you, ways that you can work during the week to make sure your weekly review goes smoothly and relatively quickly. The third section is get creative. This is where the fun comes in. You get to look at what you'd like to do that you haven't put in your system yet, things that you might have considered possibilities. It's a time for a little more fun. I think of it as the reward for having done the first two parts. And that's get clear, get current, get creative. ([Time 0:06:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2e603a92-71f4-4299-ab02-32c99985d553)) - **Gather Every Loose Physical Reminder** - Collect loose papers and misplaced physical items before processing them. - Check wallets, bags, cars, and entryway surfaces, using a note for oversized items such as a car transmission. Transcript: John Forrester Your turn. You're going to complete a weekly review step by step. First step, get clear, collect loose papers and materials. Here's where that inbox comes in, the in-tray that you already have on your desk or your work surface. It can be that improvised in-tray that we talked about a little while ago, just a space where you can put stuff anywhere at all there where you can just put some stuff while we're doing This part of it. This part's collect loose papers and materials. So get your wallet out, get your purse out, get your coat or jacket that you just wore out, out in the world, and maybe you stuck stuff in the pockets. Or if you're looking around your office or your home and you say, hmm, that doesn't belong there. If you see something that doesn't really belong there, bring it over there, set it in that improvised or real inbox. If it's too big to fit in an inbox, for example, you don't need to bring the transmission for your car in and put it in the inbox because you know that that's on something that's going to Need your attention. You can take a piece of paper, write a note on it, transmission, and put that in your in-tray. That'll take care of it for you. So let's take about two minutes for this. If you have a little more time, you don't have anything in your purse or wallet that doesn't belong there, and you want to run out to your car, run out to your car, check the side pockets Of the doors, the center console, the glove box, the back seat, the trunk, for heaven's sake. You may have something there that you find and go, well, this either needs to be fixed or I need to write it down or whatever needs to happen. Gather the physical things, loose papers and materials, physical stuff, put them in your in-tray. That's all we're doing is gathering. And two minutes and go. If you've already cleared out your wallet, briefcase, purse, whatever, anything like that. Here's one other place to consider. What's the first flat surface at the entrance to your office or your home? Think about that. Do you have anything that where you just set stuff down on that first flat surface? That becomes an inbox, but it's not truly an inbox. So go grab stuff there and bring it over and put it in your real inbox. ([Time 0:08:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2db9efae-3a54-472b-a291-4b343c16b913)) - **Keep Every Inbox Near Zero** - Bring email, voicemail, texts, paper, Slack, Teams, and other inputs toward zero. - Process inputs regularly; clearing them within 24 hours makes the Weekly Review much faster. Transcript: John Forrester Now, in for you is probably multiple ins. For sure, I'm going to guess that you've got at least one email inbox, maybe multiple email inboxes, voicemail, SMS text as an input that you may need to clear, paper for sure, and that Could be your paper mail. Maybe you don't get very much, but some of it. The in-tray that you have there on your desk now. For some of you, social media may be part of your work or something you consider an inbox. So think of all those as your potential digital inboxes. Some of you, Slack or Teams or other messaging channels that you work with regularly. Those are inputs. So get those to zero. What we're going to do here is clarify all the outstanding paper materials, meeting notes, voicemails, dictation, emails, any of that digital and paper stuff. Here's one of those steps where you may say, I don't have time. This is where I get bogged down on the review is just getting clear, getting into zero takes me longer than I have. The trick here is to do it often enough that it's not a big deal when you get to it here. By the time you get to this, your last clearing to zero should have been less than 24 hours ago. If that's the case, then you can probably get into zero in a few minutes here. This is just a taste of that. So if you're not getting everything to zero, that's okay. We're going to just start by clarifying your outstanding materials. Start getting those things out of in and into your system. ([Time 0:11:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/56db358d-a762-4ae2-9d34-97421349533a)) - **Process Inputs With A Ruthless Decision Tree** - Decide whether each item is actionable, then trash, file, incubate, do, delegate, or defer it. - Use two minutes for quick actions, someday-maybe or tickler systems for incubation, and next-action lists for deferred work. Transcript: John Forrester For each item that you pick up or look at, if it's digital, what is it? It actionable? No or yes. Two and only two answers. Can't be both. If it's a maybe, we'll get to that in a moment. Is it actionable? No or yes. If it's no, it goes down the left-hand string there. It's either trash, reference, or incubation, but it's not currently actionable. Trash, that's pretty easy. That spam email that's sitting in your inbox, just click delete and you're done. Tap delete, swipe to get it off your screen, whatever you do, that's trashed and gone. You've handled it. Reference is something you might want to look at later. If it could be a reference for a project or something else that you might want to look at later, file it in your reference system. Incubate is the interesting one. That's where maybe comes in. There's only yes or no here, but if you say maybe, then it goes down to incubation. Two kinds of incubation. One is a someday maybe list. That's for things that might be actionable in the future, but you're currently not ready to make any commitment to take action. No commitment. The only commitment when you put it on someday maybe is that you'll look at that someday maybe list in the future at your next weekly review. You'll see what you put on your someday maybe list and reevaluate whether you want to make a commitment on it. For now, it's a no and it goes into incubation. The other form of incubation that you may find handy is what's called a tickler or a carry forward file. The days of paper systems, that could have been a set of folders, monthly folders, and then daily folders as well, one for each day of the month, where you could say, I have this item, but I don't want to do anything about it until this date in the future. And you could drop that into a paper tickler folder so that when that date arrives, you open up that folder and look at it. These days, most people would have something like a digital tickler system where they would take a digital reminder of that item and put it on their calendar out in the future to tell Them they want to reconsider this item in the future. So those are the forms of incubation for anything you say, is it actionable? Maybe. Maybe is a no. It goes down the no path, but only into incubation so that you'll be looking at it in the future. The other option is yes. Is it actionable? Yes. For that, if it's something you can do in less than two minutes, do it. It's not even worth the time to put it into your system if it's going to take you more time to put it in and then review it next time than it is to just do it. So if it's less than two minutes, just do it right then and there. The tricky thing is knowing what really will take two minutes, and we all have a tendency to be able to fool ourselves into thinking, this is only a two-minute action or less than two minutes, And five minutes later you're still working on it. So that takes some practice and self-awareness. It also helps to have a timer. Just use your phone as a two-minute timer. If you think something's going to take less than two minutes, time it. You do a few of those and you're going to get very good at realizing whether you are underestimating how much time stuff takes. If you can't do it in less than two minutes, can you delegate it? Can you hand it over to somebody else to do? Wonderful if you can. If you can't, then you're deferring it. And defer means defer it onto your lists, onto your list of next actions. You're deferring it until you can do it in the future. And everything on your next action list is stuff you would like to do as soon as possible, but you're not going to do it right now. So that's what deferring it onto your next actions list means. ([Time 0:13:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/af64d910-7ed5-4292-8193-6b468f693eac)) - **Regular Reviews Prevent Small Fires** - People commonly underestimate quick tasks, especially timely email replies, and get pulled into doing during the review. - Regular reviews reduce these emergencies because fewer neglected inputs have time to become smoldering problems. Transcript: John Forrester Okay, let's start to wrap that up then. And here's my question for you. Did you find that you were bogged down by any things that you thought were less than two minutes to do, which turned out to be more than two minutes? Anyone have that experience? Yes, especially time-sensitive replies to emails. Thanks for that, Alex. Leone, yes. Yep. That frequently happens with people as they get started on something and go, oh, this is really timely, especially if it's something where they might not have paid attention to it before. And it's so easy to get drawn into doing those things. That's why one of the many reasons the weekly review is so valuable is that you have less of those things kind of pulling on you saying, hey, you didn't pay attention to me enough during The week. And now it's become, if not a forest fire, at least something that's smoldering a little bit. So when you're doing this, that's one of the things that often trips people up with processing ins to zero during a weekly review is they get to doing things that they thought were less Than two minutes, which turn out to be more than two minutes. All I can say is as you do the review more frequently, you'll have that be less and less of an issue because you'll be more current with things. So practice will make this easier. It's like any kind of a sport that you're learning or a musical instrument, anything like that, where if you do it a little at first, it just feels really awkward. But the more you do it, the more used to it you'll get. It will start to get easier, and you'll get a sense of relief from doing it regularly. ([Time 0:18:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a9b0ad22-0fbd-4727-9b2b-927d5e5575e4)) - **Trust Repeated Thoughts During A Mind Sweep** - Perform a mind sweep even when an idea seems to be on your lists already. - Repeated thoughts often signal an unclear outcome, missing next action, insufficient detail, or an unrecognized project. Transcript: John Forrester So empty your head. This is a mind sweep. Put in writing, oops, there we go. Put in writing and clarify any uncaptured new projects, action items, waiting for, someday maybes, etc. I don't know how much of this you've got, so let's take three full minutes to get stuff out of your head, even if you think it's already in your system. We'll talk about why in just a moment. If you already think it's in your system, write it down anyway. Write it down on paper or in a digital place where you can collect it there. And then take a moment to consider how to clarify it. Is it actionable? Is it not actionable? And we're going to bring up the clarifying diagram for you to look at on that one again. So three minutes for a mind sweep. And go. All righty. Let's wind that up. And here's why I said go ahead and capture it in your mind sweep, even if you think it's already on your lists. There's a reason that came to your mind again, and it's probably something like this. It comes into your mind again because you have more thinking to do about it than you've done so far. Could be that it's a project and you've just noted it as an action and you weren't quite willing to, when you put that on your list, you weren't quite willing to admit that one action won't Do it. It won't be complete after one action. You won't have achieved the outcome. So your mind brings it up again for you to get more ruthlessly honest with yourself and say, yes, it truly is a project. More than one action. Or you may have it as a project or an action already, and that's okay, but it needs to be more specific. Your mind may still have a hold of it because you didn't write it down in a specific enough way, a granular enough way. It could be that you, for example, put it on your calls list, but your mind says, I don't have the number to call. So when you get down to your calls list and it says, call so-and you don't have the number and your mind knows it's not really a call until you have a number. So the next action is get the number instead of call. It could be something that picky that your mind is on to about why it brought it up for you again. Or it could be that it's a project and you haven't really defined what the outcome is. What does done look like? With actions, the words you use to describe an action is what the doing looks like. With projects, the word you use to describe the project is what done looks like, doing or done. So if your mind says you haven't really identified what done will look like for this project, it may bring up that project more than one time in a mind sweep. I would say trust your mind, go ahead and get it on your list, your mind sweep capture if it comes up, and look at it again on your list and say, why did this come up again? Is it clear enough? Is it granular enough? That kind of thing. Have a look at it. ([Time 0:21:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c28e4567-903d-4ba1-958a-0a7cd82c8244)) - **Review Next Actions Without Doing Them** - Review next-action lists by marking completed items and recording newly prompted actions or project notes. - Do not execute tasks during this step; reviewing is separate from doing. Transcript: John Forrester So next up, we're going to review your next actions lists. This is likely your lists of actions by contexts where you can get the item done. So you're going to mark off completed actions and review for reminders of further action steps that you may want to record. Let's take another seven minutes to review your next actions lists. Now again, watch that you don't get into doing, because by definition, everything that's on your next actions lists is going to take more than two minutes. I'm saying that because when you put it on the list, you already clarified it, and you said to yourself, can I do this in less than two minutes? No, then I'm going to put it on my next actions list. You already know it will take more than two minutes. So this is just reviewing, it's not doing. We're just reviewing the items on the list to make sure that if it's completed, you mark it off, or if it spurs your thinking in some way about other reminders to add for something else To record. And it could be that you look at that next action and get three more ideas about actions to take on a project that you can't take yet, but you want to add them to your project notes. Things like that can show up here. Just watch that you don't get into the doing. This is for reviewing. ([Time 0:25:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1e0f2e86-a5fa-45af-a599-d20df85770aa)) - **Use Accountability To Stay Out Of Rabbit Holes** - Use a timer, structured recording, or accountability partner to resist rabbit holes during reviews. - When an item prompts another action, capture it and immediately return to reviewing. Transcript: John Forrester And let's wind that up. Here's another chance for you to speak up or chat up, whatever you choose. Did you get tempted to do instead of review during that? Were there things where you looked at them and went, hmm, oh, I think I could, isn't that interesting? Well, wait a minute. I could get a lot of progress done on that in just a couple of minutes. Next thing you know, you're into the doing instead of reviewing. Did that happen for any of you? If it didn't, fine. If it did, that's something we hear from a lot when people haven't regularly done a weekly review. Once you get into doing it regularly enough, it doesn't seem to draw people in nearly as much. But when you're developing the habit or you haven't done a weekly review in a while, it can be very tempting to see something on your list and be pulled down that rabbit hole. And next thing you know, more than two minutes have gone by on something that you know was not a two-minute action, and you've gone from reviewing into doing. Comment here, I wasn't tempted to start doing, but only because I know John's watching the clock. There you go. And that is a great advertisement for having some kind of a structured way of doing a weekly review regularly in a couple of ways. One could be just have one of our review recordings going and stick to the timing of that so that you're not tempted to just think that, well, nobody's watching, so why don't I let myself Go down as many rabbit holes as I want? The other thing you could do is look for an accountability buddy, somebody to do the review with. Not that you're showing them your stuff while you're doing the review, but just doing it at the same time. And it can be somebody from another corner of the world. It doesn't have to be somebody in the same room with you. Have somebody who will do it with you. You both say, we're going to spend an hour and a half or an hour or whatever amount of time. And since you're both doing it, you have a way of kind of supporting each other in accountability for that. Let's see. Tempted to start doing, and then another comment, especially when an action I'm reviewing prompts, an additional action I hadn't thought of before. Yes, I understand how that works too. And that's where there's value in this because it gets you to think further about your stuff. And the temptation can be to start doing on a project or a set of next actions. ([Time 0:26:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0e152dc2-07de-4fc0-9054-b6abdca24802))