July 13 2007: GTD and the Weekly Review

Having finally settled into a rhythm and pattern of organized productivity, I am finally ready to include the famous GTD "weekly review" on today's "to-do" list. By good luck Gina Trapani at Life Hacker has just written a piece about the weekly review http://lifehacker.com/software/getting-things-done/getting-into-the-weekly-review-habit-278118.php
"One of the most important aspects of David Allen's Getting Things Done productivity system is the Weekly Review - a regular ritual of checking in and updating your task and project lists. When people discuss GTD, they usually focus on the "capture" part of the system, which is the first step: getting everything out of your head and into some holding pen that you trust (whether that's Microsoft Outlook, a paper notebook or a text file.) But having all your stuff out of your head isn't enough: you've got to review it regularly to make sure you're focusing on the right things in your work."

I confess I was relieved to read that Gina only recently implemented this piece of the GTD method, as I just began my own scheduling of the weekly review. The first scheduled review happens today, and I began a half hour ago, by going through my email and dealing with any that have gathered for a while, finally getting my inbox to. I have been hovering at 1 or 15 daily, and that's out of the 150 or so I receive daily. Of course it helped that I moved many of my listservs over to Gmail, where there are something like over 5500 unattended emails sitting there, waiting should I have any interest it attending to them. One Friday perhaps I'll over over and archive all of them, beginning again. Or perhaps they'll all be deleted. Meanwhile, before I return to my focus on the weekly review (and I will certainly report on this) I want to report that I am now into preparing the third research report for publication. Please understand that these are papers that have been waiting to happen for four years now, my productivity had gone so underground and come to a halt as I was weighed down by the mountain of "stuff" that had accumulated in my office/home. Freed of the burden of stuff, having thrown out what seemed like half of my house, I really was liberated to return to work. My grades for the trimester were all turned in early, other academic tasks were completed, and I am now onto a summer of research/writing/consultation/teaching --with the teaching being relatively light, as I work with a few dissertation students. My teaching load for the next year is also light, giving me plenty of time to write everything I've been saying I was going to write, for years to be honest.

On to the weekly review. It includes emptying my inbox, emptying a back up inbox that contains things that were put aside to file or toss, going through my notes from the past week, kept in a circa junior notebook and a moleskin carried with me, processing what ever I find, and finally, reviewing everything on my Vitalist "Next Actions" list including the "Someday/Maybe" list, and the list of projects (www.vitalist.com) I'm most afraid of what I'll find on the Someday/Maybe and Project lists. Maybe it won't be as overwhelming as I'm fearing. So far GTD method, since I made it through the collection phase which anyone following this knows took two whole months, has been a breeze and has made my life much much easier.