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I'm having trouble figuring out how to practically fit this into my workflow.
Do you use review in OF? if so how? How does it help?
Cheers,
Shanana
 
Shanana,

I've been using the review dates for a few weeks now and really like them. I set review intervals on all my projects with the most important projects scheduled for very frequent reviews and the on-hold ones and someday-maybes* scheduled less frequently.

During my daily review I look over every active project due for review today.

During my weekly review I look over every on-hold project due for review in the next week.

During my monthly review I look over every someday-maybe project past due for review.

I used to try to do thorough project reviews only during my weekly review. This meant that my weekly review took a long time and I didn't give appropriate attention to each project. Using the review intervals, I only have a small number of projects to review in each daily review and my weekly reviews are more efficient.

One tip, if you set review frequencies using prime numbers you can reduce the likelihood of multiple project reviews piling up on the same day. My active projects have review frequencies of 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, or 17 days. My on-hold and someday-maybe ones have review frequencies of 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, ... weeks.

* I'm tracking someday-maybe projects using folders in OF named "Someday/Maybe" and marked inactive.
__________________
Cheers,

Curt
 
Interesting.

It is one of the features of OF that I have just not used at all as I was unlcear how it was to be used.

In GTD, a weekly review is supposed to cover all projects, on hold, etc, so putting projects in a 1 month review seems to fly in the face of.

That being siad, there are projects like "Buy a dog" that don't need to be reviewed weekly, because I am not going to buy a dog for a year or two.

I will start to play around and see if helps with the weekly review.

BZ
 
I'm waiting for Perspectives to be a bit more developed so getting started on a review can begin with a couple of keystrokes.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by BwanaZulia View Post
In GTD, a weekly review is supposed to cover all projects, on hold, etc, so putting projects in a 1 month review seems to fly in the face of.
I don't do full project reviews in the monthly review. I do look at my someday-maybe projects to see if any should be made active.

Most of my on-hold projects don't need to be reviewed every week. If they needed that, I wouldn't put them on hold. That said, if I need to "clear the decks" for a particularly focused week, I can always put some active projects on hold without changing their review intervals. By virtue of their shorter review intervals, they'll come up again soon.

As far as doing some full project reviews on a daily basis, I was finding that weekly reviews were sometimes not frequent enough for my most important projects. I suspect that the recommended weekly review is just a sweet spot that Allen recommends as about right for most projects. OF's review intervals allow me to customize the review interval for individual projects without having to think about the interval much. I can easily tweak the interval down or up if I feel I'm reviewing it too little or too much. Ultimately I may go back to full project reviews once a week, but so far like my new system.
__________________
Cheers,

Curt
 
Lots of food for thought coming out of this. Curt, thanks for the detail on what you are doing with them. I think this type of flow will fit very well into my system and I too was struggling with a bunch of projects for which weekly wasn't enough of a review to keep them in effective play. At the same time, reviewing everything everyday isn't working perfectly because it is labour intensive and not that necessary. What was happening for me was a lot more "on the fly" review that would happen when I know I would be much better keeping as a "doing only, review free zone" so I'll give these review intervals a try and see if that helps.
Cheers,
Shanana
 
Thanks for sharing your ideas, Curt, but I'm still unclear on how the review action you're describing is different from creating a repeating action for "Review project X." Is this two ways to accomplish the same thing, or are there subtle benefits I'm missing in the Review characteristics? I tried setting some review cycles, but I don't remember how it affects the start date or due date.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by chuckbo View Post
Thanks for sharing your ideas, Curt, but I'm still unclear on how the review action you're describing is different from creating a repeating action for "Review project X." Is this two ways to accomplish the same thing, or are there subtle benefits I'm missing in the Review characteristics? I tried setting some review cycles, but I don't remember how it affects the start date or due date.
Review dates have no effect on start and due dates. Using review dates is effectively the same as creating a repeating action for "Review project X", but doesn't require you to create a separate action for each project to be reviewed. Given that I have around 100 projects, that's a godsend.
__________________
Cheers,

Curt
 
I must say that there's more to this application then first meets the eye.

And, I must confess this is the first time I've figured out what the reviews are for.

Now for the question -- when you look at the action in the inspector, is the review date supposed to update to the next actual review date? Or, is it supposed to only show the next review date based on when you first create the action?

It looks to be the latter, but I'd love for it to be the former.

Thanks

Christopher
 
Christopher,

The review date updates when you use the Mark Reviewed command. It's available in the Edit menu, by short-cut, and in the tool-bar.
__________________
Cheers,

Curt
 
 


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