If you practice Getting Things Done®, the productivity method authored by David Allen, then you should have at least heard about the “Weekly Review”. Hopefully, you are also practicing it as well.
According to GTD, your weekly review should consist of an evaluation of your outstanding involvements. It’s a time to empty your mind, process your inbox, and review not only your Calendar but also your various “GTD buckets”: actions, projects, ticklers, someday items, and reference material. Most of us set aside one to two hours for the weekly review, in which the main benefit is to cultivate your trust not only in the GTD method but also in the tools you’re using to implement the method.
I speak to a lot of GTD’ers, and discovered that many of them fell off the GTD wagon many times. When we drilled deeper we found that a very large majority of them (close to 90%) did not do a weekly review. Digging deeper still, we discovered that nearly all of them scheduled and planned to do their reviews on the weekend: there, my friends, lies the problem.
No matter how ambitious we are, as soon as Friday afternoon raises its head, most of us are thinking about play—not work. GTD may be the best productivity method in the world, but the weekly review is not play, no matter how you spin it.
After speaking to many users, we turned inwards and realized that many of us in the office who were not consistent had, in fact, scheduled their reviews on the weekends. So we decided to change: with the exception of one person who does his review on Friday, the rest of us scheduled our reviews on Wednesdays. Wow, what a difference a few days makes. During the week, I’m in “work” mode: I’m highly focused on my targets, working on my projects, and gaining momentum gradually as the week progresses. I usually peak on Wednesday. It turns out that’s the ideal time for the weekly review.
The best part, of course, is that this way my weekends remain mostly about play.
Your creativity is fueled with the fires of experience, but you can only be productive if you rest. It’s a simple equation and it means that you need to spend your weekends doing the things you love, not reviewing various tasks and practicing your GTD.
I found that I ruined my weekends when I spend them dragging myself back to what I was doing during the week: it felt like a ten-ton hammer was looming over my head during the weekends. So, scheduling the reviews on Wednesdays turned out to be perfect; being rested and in control is a great combination.
Having accountability buddies who will remind you to do a review is great. Hopefully, you are not the only one at the office that’s practicing GTD; if you are, your next action is to get a GTD buddy at work.
If your colleagues at work are practicing GTD, it’ll be easier to keep on top of the weekly review. Sharing your GTD ups and downs will help create a dialog in the office, and it’s much harder to miss a weekly review when others are talking about their successful ones. Think of it as your GTD support group.
So, yes, telling your buddies at work that you need a little push to do that review can help you—nobody can push you while you’re at home (except your spouse and you don’t want that).
Most of us ride the same productivity curve during the week: we ramp up on Mondays and are running on full cylinders on Tuesday and Wednesday, but by Thursday morning we start to lose our steam. The mid-week review is great way to refocus and re-energize—by reviewing what we have accomplished and what is still on our plate, we get both a tap on the back and a kick in the behind.
If you’re doing your weekly review on the weekend, and it’s working, then as the old saying goes “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” However, if are missing your weekly reviews, if you’ve fallen off the GTD Wagon, or perhaps you feel lackluster on Thursdays and Friday, why don’t you give it a try? Let us know what you think!
Featured photo credit: Elderly and young men, working in very different fields of activity via Shutterstock
Haim Pekel is IQTELL's Marketing Director. IQTELL is a cloud-based GTD®, productivity and a personal information management (PIM) app for individuals and small businesses. Haim also writes on IQTELL's Productivity Blog. IQTELL is currently in private beta, if you Sign-up and mention Lifehack.Org, you’ll be expedited into the Beta. You can contact him on IQTELL's Facebook Page, Twitter and Google+ accounts. 
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