[wilsonng]

Haven't really tried Things in a while. The weekly review function is someting that I really love about OF.

[Finlay Boo]

Hi. Can you expand upon that? How are you using reviews to practically marshall/ prioritise your actions. I already enjoy using OF and would like to look at how far I can take advantage of its' features.

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by Finlay Boo

Hi. Can you expand upon that? How are you using reviews to practically marshall/ prioritise your actions. I already enjoy using OF and would like to look at how far I can take advantage of its' features.

Reviews let you ensure things don't get lost. Every week, you go through the review and it will show you all remaining tasks in all active projects, and you can see if there's anything you should flag or set a due date on. There's a toolbar icon for review mode (it has a coffee cup).

Make a weekly repeating task to do a weekly review :-)

[wilsonng]

The collection process is the part of GTD that gets all the hype and the glory. Many GTD folks found this part easy...

I've found that GTD finally clicked for me when I finally mastered the weekly review. This is the part that a lot of beginners don't quite follow through on and it's an essential part of GTD.

After you've collected all your stuff and went through the processing part (filing it, delegating it, deleting it, etc.), you will have a generated a list of next actions that needs to be done to advance all your various projects. It usually ends up being a huge list (especially after the first brain dump). The master list contains a list of all the things that have captured your interest, important or not.

The part that overwhelms people is that sometimes you are faced with a huge list all these cool projects and tasks that you want to do. It gets overhwhelming when you see that huge list. Much like anything, you sometimes have to do some pruning and re-arranging to keep the progress and momentum going forward. if you do some gardening, you know that you have to prune the shrubs and the branches, mow the lawn to keep it nice and tidy.

If you don't do some pruning and re-arranging of your task list, you'll be overwhelmed. Sometimes your priorities change. What was important last week doesn't seem so important this week.

At least once a week (or more frequent if your workload gets hectic), set aside time for the weekly review.

Look for currently active projects and determine whether it is still a priority to you. You can decide to either put it on the backburner by moving it into inactive status. Do this by putting your project in the Someday/Maybe folder.

Or maybe someone else has the resources needed to advance the project? Resources are things such as time available to do the project and better skill set. For example, I'm not really great at number crunching, so I would delegate tax preparation to my accountant. Or I can hand-off photo scanning to my intern so that I can make better use of my time.

Maybe that family scrapbook project was important to you a few months ago but more pressing priorites and tasks have overtaken it? Move that family scrapbook project in to Someday/Maybe, delegate it to someone else, or just delete it altogether. There are no serious consequences that will occur if I never complete that project. It would be nice to have but not needed.

If an active project is stalled, try to determine the next action that you would need to do about it. Maybe you need to re-clarify the next actions associated with it to help advance it further.

Every day and every week, you will always be adding more projects and tasks to your OF list. Whether it's from your boss, co-workers, friends, family, you'll be assuming responsibility for something. So that adds on to an ever-growing list of responsibilities and projects. This will eventually overwhelm you if you don't do some pruning.

Deleting a project can keep your list to a more manageable size. During the weekly review, look for projects and tasks that you just can't prioritize as important to you. This is also known as "learning to say 'No' ". You are the coach for the company's softball team but you've found that leaves little room for family team. During the weekly review, determine whether staying on as coach is more important than family time. If no, then you would put something in your OF task to type up resignation letter and submit to the league officials.

I use the Zen-To-Done (ZTD) philosophy. It's a variant of GTD that can be found here:

http://zenhabits.net/2007/04/zen-to-...tivity-system/

During the weekly review, look at your projects and choose three big rocks for the week. These are the three projects that you would like to make your main focus for the week. Schedule these big rocks during the week. Then you can place smaller rocks around them (smaller tasks that can be done between the big tasks/projects).

All the other projects stay in the back burner (the Someday/Maybe folder).

You can also put back one of the big rocks back into Someday/Maybe when you've lost interest, changed priorities, or whatever.

Interestingly, ZTD also encourages you to adopt the GTD system with one habit at a time. Become good at one part of the GTD system by practicing a habit. Then when you've finally adopted the habit, look for another habit to adopt. Eventually you'll have master the whole ZTD/GTD workflow. Well, I finally got around to the weekly review habit and got my GTD workflow clicking. The weekly review is so essential to GTD. Everyone is bedazzled by the collecting part but often neglect the weekly review.

In Things, you would probably have to go through each project or area of responsibilities to do the weekly review.

In OF, there is a perpective in the toolbar for review mode. It sorts everything by review date. The default OF review date is set for weekly. You can change the interval to daily, semi-weekly, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or whatever.

Then you would be looking at tasks that were supposed to be reviewed in the last month, the last week, yesterday, today, tomorrow, next week, next month, etc. Then determine for yourself what you should be doing for each project/task in the next week.

During the weekly review, you would be looking at the tasks and projects that should be reviewed in the last month, last week, today, or even next week. Then determine whether each project/task should be activated, de-activated (placed in someday/maybe), deleted, or delegated. Mark them as reviewed via the right-click pop-up menu or the "Mark as reviewed" button in the toolbar. It will set the next review date to whatever interval you have it at.

Pruning and managing your task list is very important and that's what the weekly review does. If you don't prune and re-order your OF task list, it will eventually grow so large that you'll never want to get anything done. You will be able to put trust into your OF task list because you are kept aware of all the balls are juggling in the air as well as the balls that are still in the bag. I usually do it on Friday afternoons before leaving the office. I perform the weekly review for the next week and the next month. I trust it so that I'm confident that I'm on top of my game. Having trust in your system is very important. Without the weekly review, you'll start questioning yourself if there is something that got lost in the ever-growing list of things to do.

Reading "Making it all work" has helped set my goals at the higher elevations above the project level. That might help you here.


HTH

[Finlay Boo]

Thanks for the tips and the ZTD links. I like the idea of picking 3 'big rocks' to deal with.

I do have a current review system which is basically my daily review of 'Next' items to do in the office that forms my 'Today' list (flagged and due perspective). I have tended not to use the review dates option in projects but will give it a whirl.