If you’re not doing a Weekly Review, then you’re always trying to do a Weekly Review, but never really doing it. The real reason to do it is so that 6.9 days of the week you don’t have to.  -David Allen

Looking for motivation and coaching on the GTD Weekly Review?  Get the CD set. Includes Coach Meg Edwards walking you through a Guided Weekly Review.

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You can never get enough of what you don’t really need. And you can never work hard enough, long enough, or fast enough, to eliminate the stress or discomfort that drives those behaviors. Your Weekly Review brings a much-needed break in the pace.  -David Allen

Grab the free article on the GTD Weekly Review

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Do YOU know the best practices of GTD?

Although they’ve been recorded for our GTD Connect online learning center, we have been posting the GTD Best Practices series to our free public podcast as well, for all to benefit from.  These informal podcasts are a great way to learn the essentials of GTD.  Here is the series:

Best Practices of Collect

Best Practices of Processing

Best Practices of Organize

Best Practices of Review

Best Practices of Doing

If you like these podcasts, GTD Connect has over 110 recordings like these, with more added every week, that you can play on the Connect site or  sync to iTunes.  It’s a great way to learn coaching tips from David and the staff, listen to interesting interviews with GTD’ers (Evan Taubenfeld being one of the recent ones), watch the “Slice of GTD Life” videos and more.  Good stuff.  Check out the free trial of GTD Connect.

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The master key to clarity is maintaining a complete and current inventory of all your commitments and agreements with yourself. You need to capture, clarify, and organize them, so you can constantly review and reflect on the totality of your engagements with the world, so you can trust your choices about what you’re doing, moment to moment. -David Allen

Grab the free article on the 5 phases of Mastering Workflow.

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A Community Contribution from Ryan Oakley

Whether you’re a proficient OneNote user or just started using it after reading my GTD and OneNote article posted on GTD Times it doesn’t take long to populate the software with a tonne of pages and a tonne of information (yes, I am Canadian).

First, some definitions:

MS Office OneNote 2007 is a digital notebook that provides people one place to gather their notes and information, powerful search to find what they are looking for quickly, and easy-to-use shared notebooks so that they can manage information overload and work together more effectively.

ActiveWords is a Windows application that relates words and actions, giving you instant access to what you want, making you more productive, and improving the quality of your work.  (Editors note: ActiveWords was also featured in a podcast by David Allen.) [Read more →]

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A computer programmer implementing GTD asked David Allen about projects:

I’m confused about (and I’m sure you are extremely bored with this question, but from the books I couldn’t work out the answer) – how do you size projects?  I’m continually having problems working out what is or isn’t a project – and getting lost in the confusion.

I’m a computer programmer.   I have to design systems and then build them.   A typical “task” of mine will last 6 months – and involve maybe 800 real hours of my own work.   There will be all sorts of things inside that that can be done simultaneously, things that I have to wait for and so on.  Is the whole thing a project?  Or do I break it into individual projects of do the first screen, do the second screen, do the back end?   [Read more →]

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If you are still struggling trying to get the GTD Weekly Review to become a habit, you’re not alone!  It’s why GTD Connect, David Allen’s online learning center, sends out a Weekly Review reminder email to our members.  It’s a dose of inspiration, sent once a week, looking at a common speed bumps for people with their GTD practice. Here’s a recent one:

Still procrastinating about a bunch of things on your action lists? There are usually one of two reasons for this: (1) they have slowly slipped in importance and interest to you or (2) they aren’t really next actions (so you don’t really know what to do, where, about it).   If (1) give yourself permission to move them to Someday/Maybe.   If (2) then gird your loins and get back to the granularity of real next actions on your lists – not small sub-projects about your stuff.

- David Allen

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David Allen answers the timeless question, “What are the first steps in getting organized?”

If by “getting organized” you mean getting relaxed and in control, it actually involves five steps, only one of which is actually the specific “organizing” component.  1) Collect the work. Corral everything that has potential meaning for you. 2) Process the collected work and associated notes. What specifically do they mean in terms of your commitments about them? What can you toss? What are the actions required on what you keep? 3) Organize the results of what you’ve collected and processed into retrievable lists and groupings. For instance, when you’re at a phone you should be able to see all the calls you need to make. 4) Keep things current—which involves a weekly review. What are your outstanding commitments and agreements? What new ones have emerged? 5) Decide what you want to do. Make a choice about how to allocate your resources, and feel comfortable about that decision.

Grab the free article or buy the laminated card set that summarizes these phases as well.

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What’s it like to do GTD when you are an bioinformaticist?  Here’s a community contribution from Fred, sharing about his recent week:

After a monstrous review today, I felt compelled to sit down and write this:

I started a new job a week ago squeaky clean.  A review the Friday before got everything squared away.  No loose ends.

It’s 14h20.  I just finished processing my in baskets.  I started three hours ago.  The end isn’t in sight.  Only the two minute rule has kept my head above water.  My projects list has multiplied and multiplied again. [Read more →]

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“When do most people feel best about their work? Just before a yearly vacation.  They think it’s because of their upcoming vacation.  I disagree. It’s because in order to take that vacation they’ve cleaned up, clarified, organized, reviewed, and renegotiated all of their agreements with themselves and others.  They’re highly motivated to be able to walk on the beach, ski the slopes, cast their fly, play eighteen, and ride the rides with their kids without being distracted by un-managed stuff.  What if you could have that freedom of mind weekly instead of yearly?  You can. The Weekly Review.“  – David Allen

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