GTD : The weekly review checklist
What should you do once a week
2 min readOct 25, 2019
A few folks had asked me how my tools fall into the mix of my actual weekly review. I thought I should probably document my weekly review process and how my tools play a role in my weekly review. Without much ado, here is what I do on Sundays.
Collect stragglers
- Collect all loose papers / letters / other correspondence from the week and put an @inbox entry on my todo.txt file
- Look at all notes from my work related notebook for the week and see if anything is actionable and add them to the @inbox
- Empty the items in my head and add items to @inbox
Process Tickler File
- Run the tickler processing tool and add items to my todo.txt
Review last week calendar
- check if there are new action items from last week’s meetings
Review upcoming calendar
Create specific next actions for the following.
- 1 week ahead — any prep work needed for the upcoming week?
- 2 weeks ahead — Any major milestones (events / parties ) coming up and prepare a plan for it.
- 3 weeks ahead — Check and communicate travel plans if any to the people you want to meet at the destination and make any hotel reservations etc.,
Begin todo.txt review
- Review all the @inbox items created now and during the week and classify them into their appropriate projects and contexts with due dates
- Review projects without actions — my weekly review toolkit helps me identify these projects automatically.
- Review current list of next actions and see if any of them trigger further next actions / missing items
Deep think on the week ahead
- Review @waitfor list and figure out how to get them to respond — add additional actions if any
- Review the Someday / Maybe list of projects and see if they can be made active — add them to the todo list
- Review some projects to see if you want to defer them for the next week since your plate is really full
- Review some next actions to see if they are in the urgent and important zone with specific deadlines and add that information in.
This is how I do my weekly review. The tool has only one specific step in the entire process of course. Weekly reviews are meant to be a comprehensive review. Hope this helps.