How I Reduced my Weekly Review Process to Just 15 Minutes

How long is your Weekly Review? Does it take so long that you skip it most weeks? Do you have a Weekly Review process at all?

Through aggressive refinement and simplification, I was able to reduce my Weekly Review from a 2-hour process down to just 15 minutes, and it can be completed from any device.

The Weekly Review is a practice of getting organized. It is a pillar of the Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy, created by David Allen. The process involves reviewing your inventory of tasks each week and ensuring your database is clean and representative of the state of your current to-do list.

It’s a key opportunity to make sure you capture any open items sitting in your head, and getting them into your task manager.

Here, I’ll talk through my 15-minute process—the tools I use, the way I organize my tasks to keep it simple, and the steps I take each week as part of my review.

Tools

At the center of my Weekly Review process is tooling. The apps I choose to manage my workload need to be simple and are carefully selected. They must be well featured and mobile-friendly. This is what enables me to perform a Weekly Review as quickly as possible.

• Things — my Task Manager of choice. There are many options available, ranging from Apple Reminders, OmniFocus, Notion, and Todoist, to name a few. I find Things to be the most balanced in terms of power features and simplicity. I’ve used many task managers and have found Things to be an absolute joy to use.
• Evernote — while I’ve written before about my issues with Evernote, I still use it as my archive of records—receipts, statements, PDFs, and general notes that I need to retain for reference.
• Fantastical/GCal — Fantastical is a wonderful calendar client with an easy-to-use interface. I also use Google Calendar, which has an overall great feature set with their mobile apps getting better every day.
• iCloud Drive — Any files that aren’t stored directly in Evernote are stored via iCloud. I’m 100% in the Apple ecosystem, so this has worked out well for me. Any file I store can be accessed, edited, moved, or renamed via any of my devices from the Files app on my phone or tablet, or Finder on my Mac and synced across. I used to use Dropbox, but consider iCloud’s filesystem UI to have improved considerably over time, and moved all my personal files over to that.
• Drafts — Drafts functions primarily as my first point of capture for anything textual. Notes, tasks, random things to jot down. During the day, it’s easiest to capture the note down as quickly as possible and not stress about figuring out where it’s supposed to go until later.
• Craft — I’m starting to experiment with a Zettelkasten system, and have picked Craft as my repository for all of my ideas. While this is outside the scope of my Weekly Review, I mention it here as many of my notes in Drafts end up being ideas that are best stored in Craft.
• Notion — I tend to use Notion for my complex project management items that require storage of various types of media (ex: I am redecorating my home office and need to track things to buy, links, pictures of furniture, etc.). Something more complex like this shouldn’t be stored in a Task Manager, otherwise, the Task Manager will get overly complicated. Like Craft, I don’t maintain a practice of checking Notion during my Weekly Review and haven’t found that I’ve needed to (yet). I mention it here as it is a destination for some of my notes from Drafts.
  

Organizing Tasks

I try to keep my task organization as simple as possible. The more complicated it gets, the more overhead it creates in managing and reviewing weekly.

Areas vs Projects

Contrary to much popular advice, I try to avoid breaking tasks down too granularly. Doing so would lead to a proliferation of projects, which means even more things to review.

The tasks I take on are normally more ambiguous and subject to revision frequently. So breaking down a large task into a project with specific steps creates more projects for me to review and would need to be constantly changed. For me, I find I’m still able to carry forward ambiguous tasks through to completion without too much breakdown, so this works for me.

If I need to break something down, I’ll try to use sub-tasks (Things calls them checklists). Only when something truly becomes large enough with a definite end is when I break it out into its own project.

Use of Start Dates

I like using start dates to queue items up into my system for any given day. It gives me an agenda for things to work on for the day, instead of hunting through my list for the next thing to work on. Others use different ways of flagging a task to work on it for a given day, if that works for you, go for it.

Note that this is different from Due Dates, which should be used sparingly and only when something is actually due.

Use of Tags

I avoided tags for a while using Things. I am currently experimenting with tags to signify prioritization, estimated duration, and if something needs to be discussed with another person.

I’m not convinced I need tags, as I think it may unnecessarily add complexity. Furthermore, I don’t use them too much, so I may abandon them over time.

Overall, maintain your system in a way that works for you. Keep it only as complex as it needs to be and no more.

Process

My process itself involves 12 tasks, and I follow them in sequential order. Each step feeds into the next as a kind of a funnel for getting the right things into my system. Items may end up filed away into Things, Evernote, iCloud, Craft, or Notion.

1. Clear Inbox — this is where I review my Inbox in Things and give everything an Area/Project, tags, and (usually) a start date.
2. Process Physical Papers — I like to keep everything digital and have as few loose papers lying around as possible (inspired by David Sparks’ Paperless Field Guide). So, everything gets scanned via Scanner Pro (iOS app) or a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner. The scanned PDF gets automatically put into my Inbox folder in my file system (see next step), so I can safely shred the physical paper.
3. Review Inbox Folder in Files — I keep a folder in iCloud called “Inbox” where I put any digital file that has to be somehow processed. Here, I will review this directory and file anything accordingly. I’ll either move it into Evernote, into an appropriate PARA folder in iCloud and/or add a task if applicable to Things if I have to do something with that digital record (like pay a bill).
4. Review files on Desktop — similar to the above step, just if anything is sitting on my Desktop.
5. Review handwritten notes — any handwritten notes that I jotted down during the week that have accumulated on my desk will be either scanned directly into Evernote or added into my Things inbox if the note was an action item.
6. Review notes in Drafts app — as my first point of capture for anything textual, I review my Drafts Inbox a few times per week and clear it out as best I can. My weekly review is the time I ensure all Drafts are processed—either stored as an archive in Evernote, as a task in Things, or as an idea in Craft.
7. Organize Evernote Inbox — mostly reference notes, paper scans or book notes (synced from my Kindle highlights via Readwise) end up here. I’ll review a folder in my Evernote called Inbox where this all ends up as the first point of entry and file these notes into the correct Evernote notebook accordingly for future reference.
8. Review calendar for the upcoming week — I review my calendar for the upcoming week and ensure there aren’t any tasks I need to schedule ahead of time preparing for those meetings.
9. Review all tasks in all Areas and Projects in Things — I’ll look through my entire inventory of tasks within Things in each Area and Project folder to determine if they are still relevant. If anything has changed, I’ll either change the task to fit new developments, delete the task, or restructure the Project. I’ll also add start dates for tasks that need them but don’t have them or remove start dates that are no longer required.
10. Review all Projects and Areas folders — Review to ensure I don’t have any projects missing that need to be created, and that the current list of projects is still relevant and active.
11. Review Upcoming Tasks — review the start dates of all upcoming tasks for the next week in the Upcoming section of Things. If any one day is too crowded with tasks, I’ll look to spread the tasks out more so that the week has a more even workload.
12. Review Inbox — any tasks that got recorded from all the preceding steps end up in the Things Inbox. In this step, I do one final review of the Things Inbox and clear it out before considering my weekly review complete.
    

I usually perform these steps from my phone. I rarely miss doing this on any given week because it is so easy to follow. These steps are a recurring project that gets generated in Things each Sunday. I’ll open up the project, and check off each step one by one.

Following this process regularly has kept my system very reliable yet still lightweight and low maintenance.