Another important aspect of the GTD process is the ‘Review’ phase. This is where we do a periodical audit of our complete GTD system going through all the action items captured, making it current by adding what all is not captured yet, and planning for the week ahead.
What to review?
- Physical items: post its, memos, articles, receipts, letters, notes, manuals, supplies, decorations, utilities, appliances, areas/places to be cleaned/organized, CDs, DVDs, tapes, camera, closets, tools, luggage, computers, basically any physical item which might have an action assigned to it.
- From the psyche: projects – stalled/to be started/changed course, hobbies, travel, new things to do, R&D about stuff, bill payments, etc.
- About People: commitments/events related to spouse, children, family, boss, colleagues; appointments & social/cultural events.
How to review?
- Collect all the loose papers, notes, post-its, letters, memos, in one place (inbox) and process them
- Empty your head of all the open loops into the inbox and process them
- Check previous and upcoming calendar items to trigger action items 1
- Review all the lists – next actions, projects, scheduled, someday/maybe, checklists – already in the system
Tips
- Review regularly: David Allen calls weekly review the ‘critical success factor’, and that’s for a reason. What’s the use of having everything in a system if we don’t look into it regularly to keep ahead of things; and if we dont keep it updated? Weekly review is a must.
- Maintain a ‘review checklist’: create a checklist with your most common action trigger points – places you need to check without fail for possible pending work like: physical inboxes – office, home, transit (bags/luggage), mobile phones, digital tools – email, calendars, lists, etc.
- Reviewing is not doing: Unless the task takes less than 2 minutes to complete, no action is to be performed. Only decided when the task needs to be done.
- Plan ahead: While going through the task lists we may consider planning for the coming week. There’s inherently no wrong in doing so, but, my suggestion would be to limit the number of activities you schedule to 5 for any given day. The reason being, the more we see on the list, the more we feel “obligated” to complete them. Obligation leads to procrastination. Instead start small.
- Check those goals: Once your goals are set & broken down to action items keep reviewing them regularly to check if anything can be incorporated into the coming weeks’ schedule.
1: Leo Babauta
This post is a part of “GTD Tips” series. Click on the link to to view the other tips: GTD
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