Getting there and not...

[Wayland]

So, I've read a lot online over the years about the GTD system. But
never actually took the time to read the book. So, a couple weeks
ago, I found a copy of David Allen's "Getting Things Done Fast" CDs.
This gave me a lot more flexibility and I really started implementing
the system throughout my life.

It's worked great so far. My personal e-mail, as recently as a few
months ago had over 900 unread messages in it. These days it reaches
0 at least once a day. My problem, however, has been with the weekly
review.

I had decided to use Sunday evenings from 8 - 10 as the time I was
going to sit down and do my weekly reviews. I figured it would be a
good way to start the week. Well, in week one, my roommate/best
friend was having problems with his girlfriend. I would have felt
horrible if I had left him to let that eat at his brain. So we went
out for wings and a couple drinks. Needless to say, I didn't get my
review done that night. I kept trying to work it after work, but I
never got around to it. So Sunday rolls around again. I had been
working on my schoolwork all day. (The weekends are really my only
time for schoolwork, between my full time job and 15 credit hours of
online classes.) About 6pm I start wrapping up with schoolwork, fix
and eat dinner and then promptly realize I that I am falling asleep.
I remember in the seminar, "When your brain had the attention span of
an insect, what do you do? Insect-like things." I figured struggling
to stay awake, shouldn't be the time I do my thinking for the week.

So I guess I was just looking for suggestions from everyone, how/when
do you do your weekly review? Any ideas you could toss my way about
it?

Wayland

[Dennis During]

Wayland:

I doubt that anyone can make a specific recommendation, but it has to be a time when you are not likely to be interrupted and when you are pretty sharp.  It might be a way of breaking up your schoolwork time, particularly if you can go to a different physical location with what you need to do the review.

 

--
Dennis C. During
dcdu...@gmail.com

[Evan Edwards]

On Monday 09 April 2007, Wayland wrote:
> So I guess I was just looking for suggestions from everyone, how/when
> do you do your weekly review?  Any ideas you could toss my way about
> it?

I just tell people I have a meeting. In your case, as a student, you
could head to the library and snag a quiet corner. You *do* have a meeting,
even if it's with yourself.

Most people don't question when you say you have a meeting without further
explanation, and just accept that you have a fixed time appointment. Which
is exactly what you have.

--
Evan "JabberWokky" Edwards
http://www.cheshirehall.org/
615.517.6900

[Sam]

Thanks Evan - I'll definitely try that.

Wayland, I noticed you had a two-hour block in mind. I just found this
article on how to do a Weekly Review (properly) in under an hour. I
haven't tried implementing it yet, but it looks good:

http://zenhabits.net/2007/02/how-to-do-weekly-review-in-under-hour/

Sam