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Weekly Review

03/23/15

The Weekly Review is the time to

Very simply, the Weekly Review is whatever you need to do to get your head empty again. It's going through the five phases of workflow management—collecting, processing, organizing, and reviewing all your outstanding involvements—until you can honestly say, "I absolutely know right now everything I'm not doing but could be doing if I decided to."

From a nitty-gritty, practical standpoint, here is the drill that can get you there:

Process Your Notes Review capture notebook and blog posts and personal diary items. Also review any journal entries, meeting notes, or miscellaneous notes scribbled on notebook paper. List action items, projects, waiting-fors, calendar events, and someday/maybes, as appropriate. File any reference notes and materials. Stage your "Read/Review" material. Be ruthless with yourself, processing all notes and thoughts relative to interactions, projects, new initatives, and input that have come your way since your last download, and purging those not needed.

Loose Papers Pull out all miscellaneous scraps of paper, business cards, receipts, and so on that have crept into the crevices of your desk, clothing, and accessories. Put it all into your in-basket for processing.

Previous Calendar Data Review past calendar dates in detail for remaining action items, reference information, and so on, and transfer that data into the active system. Be able to archive your last week's calendar with nothing left uncaptured.

Upcoming Calendar Events and Deadlines Review current deadlines. Update and add new deadlines. Look at future calendar events (long- and short-term). Capture actions about arrangements and preparations for any upcoming events.

Empty Your Head Put in writing (in appropriate categories) any new projects, action items, waiting-fors, someday/maybes, and so forth that you haven't yet captured.

Review "Projects" (and Larger Outcome) Lists Evaluate the status of projects, goals, and outcomes one by one, ensuring that at least one current kick-start action for each is in your system.

Review "Next Actions" Lists Mark off completed actions. Review for reminders of further action steps to capture.

Review "Waiting For" List Record appropriate actions for any needed follow-up. Check off received items.

Review Any Relevant Checklists Is there anything you haven't done that you need to do?

Review "Someday/Maybe" List Check fo any projects that may have become active and transfer them to "Projects." Delete items no longer of interest.

Review "Pending" and Support Files Browse through all work-in-progress support material to trigger new actions, completions, and waiting-fors.

Be Creative and Courageous Are there any new, wonderful, hare-brained, creative, thought-provoking, risk-taking ideas you ccan add to your system.

"Incompletion Triggers" List

Professional

Personal

Review Commentary

Catpure Notebook

Lots of good stuff in my capture notebook that are now in my reading bookmarks area on chrome. Mostly node and/or javascript related.

Blog Reading

I have established that my brain is female.

I like my post about designing a good review. If it ever actually leads to a good written review or two I should share it a bit, maybe.

Deadlines aren't going to do me any good if I don't devote more pomodoros per day/week to extra-curricular work.

Lots of game-related posts this past week. I think I may be back to my game-focused cycle of productivity.

Getting into vim at work has led to some decent vim posts, as well.

And then some blog posts on storytelling ideas.

I almost feel like there's a good flow and even a kinda theme to this week's blog posts. Games, Vim, and editing anime story-telling with my personal preferences. Yeah, it really feels like there's something deeper there that connects it all.

Hmmm.... Do I want to explore this further? I have no idea. Maybe it will naturally come back into form.

Diary Reading

Lots of sporadic thoughts. I might need to do my home system without any distractions, and when I'm actually more awake (aka, now is an example of me diary posting while both distracted and tired).

I should read plan documents and logs more often.

Loose Papers

Clearing out my receipts.

Budget stuff is something I need to work on, for sure.

Empty Your Head

I'm keeping stuff outta there pretty consistently, I feel. Blogging everyday is probably helping with that.

Review Projects

Haven't gotten much anywhere on my projects. I should work on that.

Next Actions

I should work on having a proper "next actions" list. Currently, projects and next actions are kinda mixed together.

Waiting For

No real waiting lists. I should work on it.

Skipping the Rest

I'm glad I did this, but I'm not going to finish this proper this week. The next weekly review will go better.