In one of the first posts, I wrote for this blog about five and a half years ago was about the GTD method for, well, getting things done. It comes from the brain and books written by David Allen. I’m not going to go into the method overall in this post, because you can go read the one I wrote back in 2017.
One part of that method is the “weekly review“. Without a weekly review, it’s easy to miss things that need to get done.
I’m one of those people who have very few email messages in my inbox at one time, and any that remain when I do my weekly review are handled at that time (that may be a very quick answer, filing it away, deleting it, or making a note to myself about what action I need to take related to it. My paper inbox doesn’t always get emptied as efficiently, but I’m working on it.
For me, the most important part of doing a weekly review is reviewing my calendar. Did anything happen this week that I need to follow up on? If yes, I make a note to myself. Then I look at the coming few weeks to see what’s coming up. Is there a birthday coming up that I need to get a card for? I know that I need to get something done for an upcoming meeting, but have I blocked time to work on it before then? Is there anything that I can get off my calendar? These are all important questions to keep me from being stressed over forgetting something or not allowing myself the time to do it.
I use a digital calendar so that I can have a shared calendar with my family, and because I need to be able to share my work calendar with my team. In addition to this, however, I use a paper calendar. After my weekly review, I fill out my paper calendar with the information for the coming week. I also make sure that I’ve blocked adequate time for any work I need to get done. I also schedule my weekly review for the following week, as well as when I will write blog posts and when I’ll take some time to “study”, which usually involves reading something related to work.
I usually do my weekly review on my last workday of the week (I take every other Friday off). It’s a good way to help wrap up work for the week and feel like I’m prepared for the next week. It helps to make my weekends more restful.
How do you close loose ends at the end of your week and prepare for the next?
