I “live tooted” my weekly GTD review on Mastodon. I shared my thought processes, to emphasise for others the ease and value of dedicating 1/1.5 hours weekly.
8:52 am—Start with the template
I’m starting my getting-things-done-weekly-reviewnow, following My GTD weekly review steps.
First up is to create a page for today using
CTRL-SHIFT-Tin Obsidian to bring up my weekly-review template.
8:58 am—Inbox zero
First up is “Inbox Zero”.
I have just 4 emails needing my attention and two of those are from the same person as we tag back-and-forth to set up a meeting. One other is notification of a company change in our system and the fourth a template email for some work I’m doing with Copilot.
Archive one of the emails for the meeting, and the company information one. The two others I’ll leave. I will get back to the meeting email today so keeping it in my inbox makes sense for quick reference. The template email I am also going to reference in work later today.
I can afford to not be 100% true to “Inbox zero” because I have so few emails sitting there at any time. It’s not worth creating new tasks when a glance is enough. Any email that gets a few day stale, will be moved on.
9:01 am—@overdue
Check my “@overdue” list to find it empty. The list shows dated tasks which were not marked done (or not done) on the day.
It’s empty. I check @overdue at the start of each day and my habit is strong enough that I’d already handled it. One task was moved today, another next week, and a third had the date removed. It will happen when it happens.
9:03 am—@today
My @today list is also pretty clean. The standard Thursday items of setting an out of office message, checking project and ticket states and the task of yesterday that was moved to today.
I don’t have anything big today that I’ve not already considered so we can keep on with the weekly review.
9:16 am—@long term waiting
Now I am getting into the meat of things where I need to start putting thought into what I’m seeing.
My @long term waiting tracks the age of “waiting for” tasks. 25 overall and the oldest is -94d. I’m waiting for someone to comment on a plan I put together. Because it is their project and not mine, all I’m tracking is that I may need to revisit it. I might follow up with them sometime. When I do, I’ll add a new date and the clock will reset (I will also keep the original date in my notes). Old long term waiting for items are always for projects where I do not have responsibility for completion.
Started with 9 more than a month, 13 more than a week and 4 less than a week.
Finished with 4 more than a month, 4 more than a week, and 8 less than a week. From 25 down to 16. Tagged 6 of those to follow up today, and found a couple that were complete but not marked as such. Those may leave projects without tasks, but I’ll get to them when I review the projects.
I picked up I’m using “tasks” instead of “next actions”. They are the same. I lean to tasks as that is what Obsidian calls them.
9:20 am—@next actions
The review of my @next actions list is quick. Sadly, no pleasant surprises of tasks I’ve finished but not yet marked done.
I listen to my body during a weekly review. It will tell me with certainty every time with a sinking feeling for each task or project I see that I’m not committed to completing. Quite a bit of that in my next actions list so I’ll have to take extra care when I do the next step—project reviews.
9:38 am
48 active projects with 47 needing review. The difference will be a project where I’ve forward dated the review date. I do this when I know there will be no progress for a while and I don’t need to look at it.
I pin the page with the list of projects and open each in a new tab in turn. When done I use ALT-R mapped to a small script that updates the review date with today, and closes the tab. A second or two later Dataview catches up an the project disappears from the list of active projects due for review.
I adjusted the -94 day task to no longer show up as something I’m waiting for. I have kept the date I provided the information for reference.
No closed projects today. I future dated the reviews for a couple. There is no point catching up for an event in November until November.
Four of the projects are what others would consider someday/maybe. I don’t have enough to warrant track that back and forth. We all GTD in our own way.
18 minutes to review 47 projects shows the value of a weekly review done weekly. It’s all pretty much under control.
9:41 am—@no next action
8 projects without a next action,. There were 11 before the previous step. I’m ok with all of those. Nothing to do now, but there will be in the future.
9:43 am—Calendar review
Last 2 weeks and next 6 weeks of calendar reviewed. I usually do these one after the other without pause. Importantly, nothing from the last 2 weeks has been missed. Earlier I tasked myself to set up a client meeting, only to find in a couple of week’s time that it’s already scheduled. Yay, one less thing to do.
9:45 am—@QA
QA step flagged no errors. All my projects are properly tagged to clients and have an owner. All people are tagged to a company. All good.
9:46 am—Unfiled notes
There were no notes sitting unfiled in my Obsidian inbox.
[!mastodon] 9:48 am—Reflection
Learning of the week: Reminder that when I lean into knowing what I know, I am fully resourceful and able to handle whatever is thrown at me.
Highlights of the week: Getting to play with Power Automate to prep some work for a client.
9:52 am—Final comments
That’s it for my weekly review. It took an hour including the time to type as I went. I believe it is the most powerful component of the GTD approach. It grounds me and gives me comfort when life gets out of control in one area that all other areas are in control.