"It took me five hours last week"

The sentence came up in one of our live sessions, where every week I take a volunteer through their weekly review. Not as a complaint, more as a confession, in the tone of someone who genuinely wanted to do it properly.

My answer at the time: that can even be fine, if you reserve Friday for project work anyway. You just must not tell anyone. Anyone who hears that a weekly review takes five hours will never do one again.

The reason for the five hours was found quickly, and it is the same one as for almost everyone whose review runs out of control.

Reviewing and planning are two different activities

While going through his projects, the participant was planning at the same time. A client meeting had left signed documents and notes, out of which came a good fifteen next steps, and those had to be structured and put in order. That is real work, it is necessary, and it has no business being in the review.

Reviewing means checking whether the system still reflects reality. That takes seconds per project. Planning means thinking a undertaking through, and that takes half an hour. Do both in the same appointment and you will not get through.

I would also prefer to pull the whole thing through immediately whenever I set up a project. You have to be careful there. What I do instead, and quite often: during the review I write down a single next step, “plan project XY” or “run the natural planning model for XY”. I know exactly what that means for me — set up notes and think the thing through properly once. And I take separate time for that.

The walkthrough, step by step

First of all: there is a common template for the weekly review, and I always recommend copying it into your own notebook and making your own version out of it. Mine is not the perfect version. It is the one that works for me.

Arriving

Distractions away, headphones on, music on. Sounds like a side issue and is a fixed part of it for me.

One participant told us about his creative playlist, purely instrumental, which he uses exclusively for the review so that it does not wear out. It gets him into flow considerably faster. I went through a phase of always listening to the favourite playlist of whoever I was coaching at the time. Two months of Metallica straight through the weekly review. It was hard, but it worked.

Getting clear, physically

Empty all physical inboxes. For me that is a small basket on the desk, for others the briefcase with the plastic sleeves from client meetings.

If there is little material, I process it right away, meaning I decide the next step immediately and enter it. If it would take an hour, it makes more sense to separate collecting from processing and postpone the latter.

Getting clear, digitally

This is where it gets interesting, because this is where most inboxes get overlooked. The question is not “have I got through my mail”, but: where can something land that I would have to answer or do?

From practice, mine and participants’:

• Email, obviously.
• WhatsApp, including for business. For many people it is the channel where things actually happen, and at the same time the most frequently neglected one. One participant takes a screenshot of the message and sends it into his capture tool, so the matter lands in the normal inbox.
• The spam folder. Something relevant regularly lands in mine. That is why it is fixed on my checklist.
• Chat programs. I work with several companies and have three Teams instances and one Slack. Some of them I do not look into at all during the week, because there is no need. Once a week I fly over them.
• The notes app and transcripts. If you dictate a memory protocol after meetings, there is material sitting there that wants processing.
• The downloads folder. More important than the desktop for me, because I use it the way other people use their desktop.

On that last point I always said the same sentence in trainings, and I meant it: no matter how new, expensive or sexy your computer is, nobody can guarantee it will still exist tomorrow. The desktop and the downloads folder are the worst possible place for something that matters to you. Go over it once a week, fish out what is important and put it where it belongs.

Mind sweep

Paper and pen, or digital, and write down everything currently in your head. Do not evaluate, do not sort, do not distinguish between big and small.

I work with a trigger list and read the categories out loud: errands, hardware store, pharmacy, bank, presents. Mobility, car, bike, repairs. Health, doctor, check-ups. Neighbourhood, friends, relatives, colleagues, partner, upcoming birthdays. Communication, open calls, mail, reports, minutes. Staff, hiring, appraisals, personnel development. For the self-employed: freelancers, outsourcing, everything you ought to think about before you urgently need it.

Anyone with a good capture habit during the week finds only two or three things here. That is exactly the point. The mind sweep is not a capture method, it is a check.

One participant asked what to do when ideas always come in places where he has no device on him. The answer is unspectacular: if you have a place where things regularly occur to you, make sure there is something to write with there. For years I had a waterproof board with a suction cup in the shower. The note did not go into the inbox afterwards but onto my keyboard, because I knew I would be sitting there in ten minutes anyway. The later attempt to digitise this with a voice assistant in the bathroom failed. Arguing with a device from inside the shower made me more aggressive than I normally am, and the humidity did the speaker no long-term good.

Context lists

Go through, tick off, delete, defer. Which lists these should even be is in GTD lists: the ones you actually need. More on this below, because one of the three critical points sits here.

Calendar backwards, then forwards

Unfamiliar for many: I start with the past week. Just skim it, click nothing. What kind of meetings were those, who was in them. Almost every time, something comes up for me that got left behind.

Then the coming two to four weeks. And this is the moment the blockers get set. If you do not defend your time, nobody will do it for you. In companies, colleagues simply book themselves in when they see a gap, and privately it works exactly the same. What else ends up in the calendar despite not belonging there is in your calendar lies about your time.

In the session came the objection that always comes: the dentist only has this one slot. Then that is a decision, and you are making it. But it is yours, not his. He is not going to tell you that you need two hours for reading next week. And if a service provider is never available, there are other service providers.

Projects

The main question when going through them is: does this project have a concrete next step? If yes, on to the next one. That goes fast.

It gets interesting with the others. If no next step is defined, it gets defined now. And if a project has been standing for a long time and still nothing is moving, it is worth asking whether the step is cut too large.

If nothing has moved for weeks and nothing will move in the next four or five either, the project does not have to stay on the active list. It moves to someday/maybe, so that the project list stays a usable tool instead of growing overwhelming. Why the sheer number is not the problem is in too many projects?

Anyone who uses someday/maybe exclusively for private ideas and holiday dreams can set up an intermediate stage. Some call it a backlog: a list for projects that are currently dormant but are not dreams. It works the same way, and for some people it feels more right.

Waiting for

For me, everything I have handed off goes in here, and handing off means two things. Real delegation in the team, meaning someone takes a topic on and I want to know the status regularly. And everything where I am waiting for an answer: sent mail, applications, reimbursements, orders.

One example that shows nicely why this pays off: in February I ordered brake levers for the motorbike. Two weeks later I looked at the order confirmation more closely; it named a calendar week, and that week was in July. It moved to waiting-for, and on the very day of the session the delivery arrived and I could tick it off.

Reimbursements likewise. If I submit a medical invoice and the money arrives some time in the next few weeks, I need a reminder to check the account occasionally. Otherwise nobody notices.

One bonus question at the end

At the end I like to ask one more that has nothing to do with the system. For instance: which of your friends have you gone longest without calling? And then that exact name goes onto the calls list.

The three places where it gets stuck

The context lists do not get emptier

In the session, someone said it openly: he inwardly refuses to write new ideas down. Because everything he writes down then wants to be processed and pushed forward too, and it is already too much as it is.

That is economising at the wrong end. Capturing is the part that has to stay cheap, because everything else builds on it. Stop collecting and you no longer have a complete picture, and your head notices immediately and starts carrying things itself again.

The useful question is: where exactly is the jam? If the inboxes keep getting fuller, there is not enough time for processing. If the context lists keep getting fuller, there is not enough time for doing. Those are two completely different problems with different solutions. The second one is mostly about blocking time, saying no, delegating — and sometimes about admitting that it is too much for one person.

A line from the group that captures it well: full context lists always have a reason. Either we do not want to do the things, or they are simply not relevant. Both are information, and both lead to a decision.

And another one I have kept: the flip side of inbox zero is full context lists. The empty mailbox feels like being finished, when the work has merely moved somewhere else.

The idea graveyard

The term came up in the group, and it describes the danger precisely: a list where ideas land and are never looked at again. In that case you might as well print it out and throw it away.

The difference between a someday/maybe list and a graveyard is an appointment. I go through mine once a month, fly over it, and decide for each item: delete, leave standing, or activate.

What took me a long time to learn: if I fly over it and leave something untouched, I do not need a bad conscience about it. For a long time I had one, because these are unfinished things after all. That is the point at which many people give the list up.

My favourite example shows how well it works: a tandem paragliding jump sat on my list for a year and a half, left standing on eighteen consecutive passes — and then I did it. Without pressure, without a guilty conscience. That is the whole point of it. The full story, and how I keep the list, is in someday maybe: the list that must not become a graveyard.

The client as a project

For someone who runs one project per client, going through the project list automatically becomes long, and that slows the entire review down.

The solution we found during the session, which the participant implemented immediately: separate active and dormant clients. One board for clients where something is genuinely running right now, and a pool for all the others. After ten minutes the feedback came: instead of a long list, there are now five clients on the active project list.

This holds beyond the client case. If your review regularly gets sticky at one point, it is usually not the method’s fault but the structure at exactly that point.

How long the whole thing takes

With explanations, questions in between and discussion, the session took a good hour and twenty minutes. The participant’s own estimate afterwards: without the interruptions he would have been through in about three quarters of an hour.

That is a realistic order of magnitude for a well-kept system. The first few runs take longer because they are catching up on backlog. If it permanently takes several hours, planning or processing is happening in it instead of checking.

The trick that makes it actually happen

My recommendation has been the same for years: find somebody. A colleague at the company, someone you know who is also starting with GTD, and do the review together at the same time.

Not because you learn something from each other, but because a shared appointment gets kept and a solitary intention does not. That, incidentally, is exactly how our weekly session came about. During the pandemic, sitting together was not possible, so I did my own weekly review online and other people could dial in.

Common questions

How long should a weekly review take?

With a well-kept system, about an hour; with practice, less. The first few runs take considerably longer because they are catching up on backlog. Several hours almost always means that planning or processing is happening inside the review.

What is the difference between reviewing and planning?

Reviewing checks whether the system reflects reality, and takes seconds per project. Planning thinks an undertaking through and needs concentrated time. If the review reveals that planning is needed, “plan project X” goes onto the list as the next step and gets scheduled separately.

Which inboxes are most often forgotten in a weekly review?

WhatsApp, the spam folder, chat programs like Teams or Slack, the notes app, dictated memory protocols and the downloads folder. If you only empty the mailbox, you have caught the smaller part.

What do I do when my context lists keep getting fuller?

First distinguish where the jam is. Full inboxes mean too little time for processing, full context lists too little time for doing. For the second, only blocking time, delegating, saying no or deliberately deleting things helps. Stopping capture is not a solution.

How do I stop my someday/maybe list becoming an idea graveyard?

With a fixed appointment. Go through it once a month and decide for each item: delete, leave standing or activate. Leaving something untouched is entirely fine and needs no bad conscience.

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If your next review runs long again, note down at which point it happens. Usually it is two or three projects, and those do not need checking — they need an hour of thinking on a different day.

The fastest way to improve a review is having someone sit beside you and see where it snags. That is what sparring is, one fixed appointment a month. Write to me if yours regularly overruns or gets skipped.