Concept
The weekly review
The weekly review is the hour a week in which David Allen's system is kept trustworthy: empty the inbox, check that every project has a next action, cross off what is done, add what appeared, and look at the calendar ahead. He calls it the critical success factor of the whole method.
A list the mind does not trust is a list the mind ignores, and then the open loops move back into the head and the anxiety that drives procrastination returns. Trust is maintained by review. Once a week, at a fixed time, the inbox is processed to zero, each project is checked for a defined next action, completed items are cleared, new commitments are captured, and the coming weeks are looked at so that nothing surprises. For a procrastinator the review does one more thing: it is where a plan worked back from the deadline is checked against reality, and where a record of real work sessions (Neil Fiore's Unschedule) is read for how many thirty-minute starts really happened. Cal Newport's shutdown ritual is the daily version of the same maintenance. Allen is blunt that a system without the review stops being trusted, and an untrusted system is soon abandoned.
A real-life example
A translator in Izmir books the review for Sunday morning. In week three it catches a deadline nobody had written down and a project that had quietly stalled for want of a next action. A student uses hers to count the thirty-minute starts she has recorded: five the first week, seven the second.
How to use it
- 1Book one hour, same time every week, and treat it as an appointment.
- 2Inbox to zero, every project a next action, done items cleared, calendar ahead checked.
- 3Read your record of work sessions and count the starts; that number is the week's real score.