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Weekly Review

03/09/15

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:

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.

Process Your Notes 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.

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 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

Okay, so here goes my first personal weekly review using this system. Which, in all honesty, probably makes it my first real weekly review. I was never quite as good as I would have liked at the weekly review thing.

I can't really process much loose papers, because I'm doing this at the U of A (I meant to do this yesterday at home, but bad habits got in the way). I can, however, get all manner of loose papers and stuff out of my wallet and backpack.

I actually do have some loose papers I need to deal with in my backpack. I need to get in the habit of flipping through my big journal more often.

I got various receipts in my wallet, which means I should probably do a review of my budget using my Mint account. Good, good, good.

Processing my notes actually takes a while, as it means processing these diary entries, which can be quite time-consuming. I mean, it's more time-consuming at work because I make more of them at work, but when I get good at doing these at home, it'll be a good move to push this part back as far as possible.

Wait, actually, maybe that's backwards. This part's pretty important, but long, so I should probably do it first so that it actually gets done. Yeah, do it first. Even before the loose papers thing. I'll fix the template for future iterations of this review.

All right, let's read through my diary posts for the past week, starting on Monday the 2nd. Oh, I didn't have anything written that day, Tuesday the 3rd, then.

I regularly mention planning my next day during my end of day review. I'm beginning to think I should have some guidelines to read over before starting my end-of-day review so I remember what I want to write about and can choose to skip certain themes if I so desire. Considering I've developed the habit of doing my end-of-day routine first, I can put that stuff in there.

Oh, yeah, spaced repetition. I need to add that into my daily planning proper. Or else it'll just fall away into something I don't do anymore.

Diary posts read. I suppose I should also read my blog posts for the week. Forgot to actually link to something with my "intent is not magic" link. Maybe at some point I'll go back and fix all those non-existant links. I actually like a lot of my posts this week. Maybe I should start tweeting more of my posts or something. It's something that should probably be a part of my site development thinking at least.

I should probably work on using my calendar more consistently and for more set-in-stone event stuff.

Head feels pretty empty.

Projects will be something I put off until next weekly review.

Next actions will be something I focus on next week.

Not waiting for anything, as far as I can remember. Well, nothing I feel the need to track.

No checklists that need checking, I think.

Someday/Maybe needs to wait until next week.

I don't really have pending or support files right now.

I'm already creative and courageous!

Triggers list can wait until next week. I mean, I wrote it all down, and anything triggered was captured during, or it can wait until next week.

Weekly review done. I think I'll just void this extra pomodoro, and take a good break before the Game Dev Club meeting.