Weekly Review…

GTD For Beginners:  Weekly Review.

For ultra newbies: GTD = Getting Things Done, and referrs to the Book by David Allen.

Part of GTD–an integral part you need to fully trust the system–is the weekly review. It’s unlikely that you will do much with GTD without a weekly review process that works.

The book suggests that you look at your:

• in boxes
• tasks
• Someday/maybe file.
• lists
• waiting ons.
• Projects.

and centralize everything that you’ve done. There is some overhead inherent in GTD, and this is one of the things that is required to maintain the system. A lot of people resist the overhead necessary to maintain many different systems with rationale such as:

• “Who has time to do that…”
• “I’m gonna remember anyway.”
• “I’ll do the important stuff.”
• Etc.

There is some truth to some arguements, but our minds are so not equipped to handle the day to day stuff that’s coming at us. Why not free our minds from having to manage “stuff” and leave that to computers. This way we can use our minds to do what computers haven’t been able to do, namely, express the best functions of our mind, including:

• intuition
• insight
• love
• planning
• goal setting
• List making

So, for me, my weekly review will be done in two parts; on Fridays, and on Sundays. The friday review will be at the office/office, and the Sunday review at my home office. I’ll make a list of things I will do each time, and will check off (I think that it might be appropriate to write a weekly scorecard for this sort of thing, if I can keep it uncluttered). We should try to get this done this week.

This “weekly review” should take about 2 hours, if done right, and should be invigorating, fast paced

• Check my weekly numbers.
• Review pipeline and current bills; plan if there are problems.
• Set goals for next week.
• Write down what went right
• Write down what I’ve learned.
• Write down what i can improve on.
• Write down anything I’d like to learn this week, or start on.
• Check what I’ve read this week.
• Check in on my projects/tasks done.
• check someday/maybe file.
• Neaten up my office.
• Go through my briefcase to check on supplies.
• Clean out briefcase, process receipts.
• Re-read my blog for the week.
• Read stared stuff in reader/print/act on it if necessary.
• Look through my calendar
• Write a letter to someone.
• Update booklist/go through Google notebook.
• Look for imporovements to process.
• Re-read quarterly business plan.
• Read monthly/quarterly checklists.
• Define what one of these items means each week.
• Gather all notebook items
• Gather all voice recorder items

Home Stuff:

• Review meal plans/make shopping list.
• Review budget.

Other stuff that’s not “Weekly Review” I want to schedule

• Record personal commercial
• Do stuff that is on my sales list.
• Listen to first and latest iteration of personal commercial.

Anyway, this should be a good time, and this should get me going to where I need to get to.