Taking an hour or so every week to unplug from doing turns out to be really hard. When I finally get the time to sit down to do a weekly review, I find myself jumping into quick tasks and catching up on work that has piled up throughout the week.
This is why I have to remind myself “the weekly review is not a time for doing work, it’s a time for reflecting on work.”
Most of the time, I actually need to schedule time to do work and get my ins to empty before I can truly reflect on all my commitments.
I’ve been practicing GTD and walking through the Weekly Review for several years and discovered that following my personalized, custom template has been the key to staying on track. (You can download it for free without any email exchange.)
We each need to take the time to develop our own checklists and templates for approaching work. The Weekly Review template is just a simple checklist to remind myself to go through the whole process. If I find myself still working on a step past the suggested duration, it’s a cue to schedule more time for that step during the week.
