Review


Reviewing is essential to maintaing your system and building your confidence that you everything has its place and you can find it when you need it.  If you don't do this step - all your work in the first three steps will be lost.  David Allen suggests you do this at a regular time on a weekly basis - either just as you are finishing your week or just as you begin it.  Leo Babauta suggests you also do a quick daily review.  Both are outlined here:

 

Weekly Review Process:

  1. Reconnect to your vision as well as your long and short term goals.  Assess how you are doing at forwarding these.
  2. Develop 2 to 3 goals for the next week. Ask yourself - what is most important to move forward now that will provide the most leverage to move my longer term goals forward.  Make sure you put these goals in a place you will see them and make sure these items are the first you focus on and tackle in the next week.
  3. Update and Tighten Your System
    • Clear out all of your Inboxes (E-mail, Physical, Voicemail, etc.) and clear your work area (collecting)
    • Review the previous week's calendar as well as next week's calendar to see if there are things you have left off your project or next action list and add those new project and next actions.
    • Look at any new notes in your collection system (your notebook or PDA) and make sure all items have been moved into your overall system
    • Review your projects and make sure you know your next actions for each project.  Schedule any next actions for the next week that you must accomplish due to deadlines (these are the only tasks you should schedule - all others remain in your system)
    • Consider the next actions you most want to tackle the next week.

 

Daily Review Process (This should not take more than 15 minutes). 

 

At the end of each day: