Life comes at us quickly. As we deal with all the input and projects throughout the week, it is important to dedicate time to regaining a lay of the land. The best way to do so is the Weekly Review.

The Weekly Review is a GTD staple. In fact, David Allen has repeatedly stressed that the review is one of the most important things a knowledge worker can do to stay current and focused. To help practitioners, he had created a guided Weekly Review on his website. The video comes with the following note:

Experience what David Allen calls the “critical success factor” with GTD, by going through a complete GTD Weekly Review. You’ll get a taste of all 11 steps of the process, with helpful advice along the way. Please note that this recording has not been edited to remove the several minutes of silence for you to do each of the 11 parts of the review.

David has repeatedly stressed that the Weekly Review is a “critical success factor” to engrain a GTD practice. What does it involve? The first step is to Get Current:

GET CLEAR
COLLECT LOOSE PAPERS AND MATERIALS
Gather all accumulated business cards, receipts, and miscellaneous paper-based materials into your in-tray.
GET “IN” TO ZERO
Process completely all outstanding paper materials, journal and meeting notes, voicemails, dictation, and emails.
EMPTY YOUR HEAD
Put in writing and process any uncaptured new projects, action items, waiting fors, someday/maybes, etc.

Read the rest of the article to learn about the other two steps.

If you haven’t done a Weekly Review recently, I encourage you to do so at your earliest opportunity. The clarity that comes from a thorough examination of all your open loops and commitments is time well spent. The result will be more items accomplished with less stress. Now who wouldn’t want that?