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The Ultimate Guide to an Effective - Highlights

These are my personal highlights extracted from the original source PDF/converted markdown file for the guide on weekly reiew’s by Justin DiRose:

==The weekly review is the cornerstone habit to keep for anyone looking to stay productive and focused. It will help you get a clear head, see every commitment currently on your plate, and help you make decisions that ultimately lead you to be more intentional and focused over the upcoming week.==

==First, it keeps your system up to date.==

==The thing is that, just like a garden, a productivity system needs regular tending to ensure its effectiveness. Think about it. If you let a garden go for weeks without tending to it, what’s the result? Weeds. Animals eating the growth. Dead plants. Regular tending to the garden aims to create a healthy ecosystem for plants to grow through regular weeding, watering, and ensuring the garden is properly fenced and protected.==

==Productivity systems easily get out of date without regular reviewing. And when the system is not accurate, you wrong trust it. And if you can’t trust it, you won’t use it.==

==When the system is current, you get a clear picture of the tasks, projects, commitments, and responsibilities on your plate at that exact moment in time. That clarity enables you to make better decisions on how to spend your time over the next week.==

==I regularly use my productivity system to help me decide where to focus my resources in the upcoming seven days. Let’s face it – we have limited time, attention, and energy. It would be unfortunate for me to use those finite resources that I’m wholly in control of in a haphazard and unintentional manner, essentially wasting them.==

==The weekly review is just that: weekly. It’s suited for particular types of tasks and focuses that help you review the week. There are some things to avoid doing in the weekly review because of that.==

==Don’t evaluate your long term plan effectiveness. You might have goals or a theme you’re pursuing for the next year or 12 weeks or whatever timespan it is. The weekly review is not the time to decide if that’s a good goal for you or not.==

==The weekly review is also not the best place to do work. This is your time to plan, refocus yourself, and ensure the accuracy of your system – don’t pollute that time with doing work!==

==Obviously this is a best effort suggestion as there are times you will need to do something in the middle of your review. But the truth is that your brain likely doesn’t handle planning and acting in the same mode of thinking very well. I know mine doesn’t.==

==When I start my weekly review, I need to make sure I’m out of any inboxes that could distract me unless I’m ready to process them. Why? Inboxes are the place where work shows up. If I’m drawn into a new shiny piece of information to deal with when I’ve decided to be reviewing, I’ve just broken my focus on the task at hand and it’s going to take me a while to get back on track.==

==Something else to consider for your review timing is habit chaining. There are many habits you can perform on a weekly basis, like cleaning your desk, reconciling your checkbook, or weeding the garden. If you’re already performing a review weekly, why not chain another habit to it?==

  1. ==Clear the Decks - neutralizing inboxes, capturing, and mindsweeping==
  2. ==Process and Review Open Loops - ensuring all projects & resources are up to date==
  3. ==Reflect on the Past Week - try to learn from what happened previously==
  4. ==Prepare for the Next Week - review and prepare for your upcoming commitments, intentions, and habits==

==The very first thing to do when starting your weekly review is clear out your mind, inboxes, and physical space. When you clear it all out, organize it in one place, and mentally prepare to process and review, the whole process gets easier.==

==This is the whole idea that your brain takes time to warm up and engage with the task on which you’re working. So, when you’re first starting, overcome the resistance to the task by simply doing it for two minutes. Once you get going, momentum kicks in and it’ll be easier to continue going.==

==Clearing the decks starts with getting ready like this, but it’s also important to keep the momentum. Protect the momentum, if you will. The last thing you want to be doing in a review of this sort is to get distracted. The review process is one of deep work, where you’re focusing intently on one thing for a longer period of time. This allows your brain to understand all the contexts and connections between projects, tasks, commitments, intentions, and the like while you’re working through the review. Staying focused will help you make better decisions about how to handle items in your system and what you’re committing to for the next week.==

==When clearing the decks, get ready to dive in deep. Close out chat, set your phone to do not disturb, and go somewhere where you’re not going to get interrupted. If you work at home, maybe go to a coffee shop. If you can’t get out to a coffee shop, put on some noise canceling headphones. The key is minimize as many distractions as you can.==

See Also: The GTD Mindsweep**

==One of the quickest ways to get clear of the items causing you stress in your head is a mindsweep, also known as a brain dump. Getting these “open loops” out of your head and onto a piece of paper or text file puts them in a place where you can properly review and process them later.==

==Process All Inboxes==

==don’t be afraid to judiciously delete. ==

==What Does Process Mean?==

==Processing means taking a thing you’ve captured, clarifying what it means, restarting the words if it’s not clear enough, and placing it in the appropriate location in your system.==

==Review a Trigger List==

==The first thing I like to do before doing any reviewing is go through a typical GTD-style trigger list. A trigger list is a group of items, both personal and professional, that’s designed to surface anything that needs to be handled.==

You can see a great example here: GTD Trigger List

==Process Captured Items/Mindsweep==

==From there, it’s time to capture. It’s okay if you don’t think you have it all quite out yet; more open loops will likely surface as soon as you start moving through the review process, especially looking at your project lists.==

Be diligent now because it will save you future frustration!

==Review Projects List==

==Review Calendar==

TIP : If you don’t have a direct action plan for that project quite yet, be sure to create a next action to “Plan project regarding…”

==Reflect on the Past Week==

==Productivity is an iterative process. Every day you encounter new tasks, information, tools, and ideas. With such an ever-changing world around you, it would do you a great service to make sure everything is working as optimally as it could!==

Those components are:

==Commitments These are your hard landscape items where if you don’t do them, something breaks. They can be appointments or set commitments with yourself, such as publishing a blog post every Friday. Intentions Anything deemed important enough to focus on today/this week but isn’t going to break the world if it’s not done is an intention. Habits Habits are recurring actions at set intervals that help you move the needle forward in areas of your life or assist in maintaining something, such as your health.==

==Did you miss any commitments? Were there too many on your plate? Not enough? This may give you a good sense if there are responsibilities to eliminate or if you have room to add any.==

==Did I accomplish my intentions?==

==Where commitments require follow-through, intentions can allow for some flexibility. If you missed any intentions, was that due to your own issues (like procrastination), external circumstances, or were you overloaded on commitments? Is there anything you can do to mitigate that in the future?==

==Did I focus on the Most Important Things?==

==Everyone has Most Important Things in their lives. Your most important things are different than mine. And no, we’re not talking most important tasks. These are the highest level areas of investment. For me, that’s my spiritual life and relationship with my wife and kids. So, for me, this is asking if I loved my family well, if I spent time in prayer, or if I neglected any of those items.==

==We productivity enthusiasts are always looking for something new to try, right? A new cool app, perspective idea in OmniFocus, or a new notetaking style. Of course, you can’t upend your system all at once for something that’s not proven. However, you can give yourself a little wiggle room to experiment, especially if there’s something not working for you now.==

==Prepare for the Next Week==

==What you can do, however, is prepare yourself for what you’d ideally like your week to look like. And, lucky you, the review process you just went through makes this a whole lot easier.==

==Review Goals==

==If you carry any sort of goals, aims, or theme, now would be a great time to review them. Be sure to ask yourself if there are any particular action items you need to accomplish in the next week to keep on track.==

==Set Up a Week Plan==

==I make my week plans in Notion (and I’ve made a video you can find on YouTube about that). Mainly, I note the following items down for each week. Having manually put a plan together helps me to keep the items for that week top of mind. When stuff is top of mind, I stay all the more intentional in advancing them.==

In my week plan, I’m sure to include:

==Focus This is my overarching main goal for the week, usually a particular project I want to advance. Commitments Write out any known meetings, appointments, or due tasks. Intentions List of the intentions previously selected Habits Add a reminder for the habits you want to focus developing this week.==

==What If I Don’t Have Time for a Full Review?==

If you have any time at all to complete one, focus on the following areas:

==Performing a mindsweep Processing inboxes and tasks Reviewing any major/due projects and commitments==

==The rest of the system can likely wait until you have time to conduct a full review. If you focus on these areas first, you’ll have 80% of your bases covered for things that could bite you if you miss them.==

TLDR;

==The weekly review is the glue of your productivity system Be consistent in conducting one Clear the decks by: Getting ready, Mindsweeping, Processing all inboxes Process and review open loops by: Reviewing a trigger list Process captured items Review your projects list, calendar, notes, someday/maybe, and journal. Reflect on the past week through journaling Plan for the next week by setting your main focus, commitments, intentions, and habits==