Your productivity is just like your finances: it doesn’t work if it changes too often. You are investing your time and effort in very much the same way that you invest your money. But for your time and effort to compound, you have to leave your goals well enough alone.
This is like Google Maps recalculating a new route to a new destination every 5 seconds – ensuring you arrive nowhere.
Your Weekly Review should be a quick check-in to give you clarity for the coming week, in the same way that a quick update of your budgets helps you navigate your weekly finances.
Specifically, your Weekly Review should accomplish three things:Clear your digital workspaces: tidy up the virtual environment where you get things doneUpdate your available tasks: update your to do’s based on new information that’s come inDecide on your priorities for the week: select a subset of to do’s that you are actively committing to for this week
I’ve tried long, comprehensive checklists that took me half a day, down to tiny check-ins that took minutes. I’ve tried automating it, streamlining it, and integrating it into my daily routines. I’ve even tried outsourcing it!The results of all these experiments can be boiled down to this extremely simple, 5-point checklist:EmailCalendarDesktop/DownloadsNotesTasks
This checklist is deceptively simple. But its purpose is profound: to take me from total chaos to total clarity about my priorities for the week in 30 minutes flat.It doesn’t matter if I’m checking in after a couple calm days of work, or coming back from a 3-week vacation: I follow the exact same steps, in the exact same order, every time. This produces an almost meditative experience, with each step deeply embedded in my muscle memory.To understand why each of these items is essential, it helps to understand each of them as an “inbox” where a certain kind of crucial information from the outside world is collected:Email: emails from other peopleCalendar: calls and meetings at specific timesDesktop/Downloads: files and downloadsNotes: digital notes I’ve savedTasks: my to do’s