GTD : The weekly review checklist

What should you do once a week

Photo by Anete Lūsiņa on Unsplash

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.