Weekly review

Since reading Getting Things Done by David Allen in 2022, I've been doing a weekly review in some form or another. It has evolved over time to make space for what I needed at that point in time, but I feel like I've landed on a pretty good structure that I'm happy with sharing.

My weekly reviews happen in the weekends. I'll carve out an hour or two to go over every one of my "inboxes" (more on that below) that have filled up with cruft over the past week and clear them out to set me up for a successful next week. Other books that have influenced this practice are Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte and Grip by Rick Pastoor (Dutch).

The review is just a way to clear all the various inboxes in my life and reflect back on the past week to set the next week up for success.

1. Email is the most obvious "inbox". I'm pretty good at maintaining "inbox zero" throughout the week, but sometimes I'll leave a message sitting in the inbox because I'll need it later. This weekly review is the time to either action the email, archive it in the proper place in Obsidian, or (what happens most often) create a todo to take action at a later time.
2. My calendar is next. I'll go through the previous 2 weeks and look at every event. Is there anything I need to "capture" based on these events or meetings? Often this is something I promised someone, and seeing the event in my calendar reminds me. Again, the result of this is either a note in Obsidian or a todo in my Things inbox. I'll also look ahead into the next 4 weeks to see if there's anything I need to take care of beforehand like birthdays or meeting prep.
3. Next up is my workspace. This means my physical desk and the various folders where things accumulate on my laptop. I clear out my downloads folder and file away random files that have accumulated on my desktop. If I find anything that would take more than ~2 minutes to do, it ends up in my Things inbox.
4. My notes is the next focus. During the week I'll take loads of quick notes without any real structure. Now is when I'll go through them, file them away in the proper project or area, and clear out the inbox folder. Note that this includes the notes I took in the previous 3 steps!
5. Last but not least is my todos. I use this as a way to clean up after myself, since an average review leaves me with anywhere between 5 and 20 todos. These todos need to be organized by project/area and scheduled over the next week (or further into the future).

After all these inboxes are cleared I can be certain that everything that came across my desk during the week is taken care of or will be surfaced as a todo or calendar item when it needs to be actioned. I then take some time to reconcile my balances in my budget and action some of the smaller todos that I created.

I believe doing a weekly review can be one of the most impactful ways to use your time, and I recommend it to anyone. Take note that if you're inspired to start doing a weekly review, you're more than welcome to use my setup as a starting-off point, but I would recommend you make it your own! If you're already doing a weekly review, I'd love to hear about your process. Let me know!