Family. Are you participating in your kids education as much as you would like to? Do you care about maintaining your relationship with your partner alive? How long has it been since you shared some time with your parents or siblings? Friends. Do you keep in touch with those friends who are now living somewhere else or is it that their rhythm of life doesn’t help spending some time together? How long has it been since the last time you called them? Personal development. Are you happy with your abilities in general, with the way you interact with people, with your role in life? What would you need to do to improve? What would you like to do to grow as a human being? Leisure. Is there time in your life for amusement and entertainment? Do you get enough rest? Do you travel? Do you save time for your hobbies, and things that make you enjoy? Health. Are you a dynamic person, are you in shape? Do you take care of yourself? Are you eating healthy? Do you exercise? How do you feel? Finance. Are you aware of your economic situation? Do you save enough money so that you don’t have to worry about unexpected things? Do you invest in your future? Is there something you need to change? Society. How do you like helping the community? What can you do with your actual resources? Donations? Volunteer? Spiritual life. Do you save some time for yourself and to meditate? If you practice any religion, are you happy with your level of involvement?

Ground: Calendar/actions

Horizon 1: Projects

Horizon 2: Areas of focus and accountability

What’s your job? Driving the creation of a lot of your projects are the four to seven major areas of responsibility that you at least implicitly are going to be held accountable to have done well, at the end of some time period, by yourself if not by someone else

Horizon 3: One- to two-year goals and objectives

These projects include anything from “look into having a birthday party for Susan” to “buy Acme Brick Co.”

Horizon 4: Three- to five-year vision

Horizon 5: Purpose and principles

What is the work you are here to do on the planet, with your life? This is the ultimate bigger picture discussion. Is this the job you want? Is this the lifestyle you want? Are you operating within the context of your real values, etc.?

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. Open tasks tend to occupy our short term memory until they are done. (this is called the Zeigarnik effect)

Those of us who complete a lot of tasks need a good system for keeping track of our commitments. Our commitment system needs to be completely trustworthy so we aren’t tempted to store tasks in our brains.

The weekly review is supposed to help you do three things: get clear, get current, and get creative.

Get Clear. Take some time to clean up your workspace and empty your inbox. Then, review your projects. Which are most important? Which ones have milestones coming up in the following week? Organize them by priority and urgency so when you start next week, you'll know what to start without having to think about it.

Get Current. Look at your calendar. Perhaps next week you have a big meeting with your boss about a big software upgrade, but you forgot to call the vendor to get the details. Put that call on the calendar for next week, and give yourself enough time to research before your meeting with your boss. Finally, check your mail for anyone you may be waiting on input from. Make notes or appointments to check in with them next week.

Get Creative. Look at those projects you've always wanted to get to, like redesigning your personal web site, and think about what small parts of those projects you might be able to slip into your schedule. Think about how you can be more efficient—maybe you're a sysadmin and there's a new tool that will cut down on the time you spend each week pushing patches to your servers. Take some time to get out in front of your life, instead of sitting in the passenger seat

First Things First: Put It On The Calendar

Get ClearCollect loose papers and materialsGet Inbox to zeroEmpty your headGet CurrentReview Action ListsReview past calendar dataReview upcoming calendarReview Waiting For listReview Project (and larger outcome) listsReview any relevant checklistsGet CreativeReview Someday/MaybeBe creative and courageous

0-15 minutes: Clean up email/paper notes. Interview notes, new contacts, and emails I want to follow up on all get filed. If there's a message I can fire a response to in a minute or two, I'll respond, but nothing that requires research.15-45 minutes: Review ideas, projects, calendar appointments. This is where I spend the bulk of my time. I look through my idea bank (stored in Wunderlist, which I mentioned last week), trash anything stale, add new ideas, and assign dates where I can. I head over to my to-do app (ReQall, another tool I love), clear out old and completed tasks, and add new or follow-up items based on my calendar, assignments, and trigger list.45-60 minutes: Brainstorming. This is where I head back to my idea bank and start brainstorming topics I want to write or learn more about, items in the news that are worth investigating, and personal projects that need my attention.

Try a Trigger ListIf you're having a hard time building a checklist, you may consider using a "trigger list" to jog your memory each week. The trigger list is just a long list of items you should scan during your weekly review to make sure you didn't forget anything. It's designed to trigger your memory and help you remember something you may have forgotten. We mentioned how you can use a trigger list for school and personal projects, and productivity guru Merlin Mann published this one at 43Folders a long time ago for professional projects.

Make Sure You're Reviewing and Not DoingOne common trap that people fall into when trying a weekly review is that they spend too much time actually doing things instead of reviewing them. If you hear someone say the weekly review only works for a small number of tasks, or that their weekly review takes hours upon hours, the problem may be that instead of scheduling a time to call that software vendor back, you're actually taking time out of your review to call them. Don't fall into that trap—it's tempting to do it now and get it off your plate, but a rule of thumb is that if the to-do takes more than 2 minutes to accomplish, stop and schedule it or put it in your to-do manager.

The idea behind the mind-sweep is to identify and gather everything that is making claims on your attention or is likely to affect the larger areas of responsibility in your life -- everything that's quietly burning cycles, stealing focus, and whittling away at your attention -- so that you can then decide what (if anything) must be done about each of those things.

Are there items on this list I now realize might have been aggravating my recent GTD slack? Did anxiety or a feeling of being overwhelmed contribute to avoiding proper planning and execution of these items? Might there be holes in my system that have made it easy for some of these items to escape and resist subsequent capture? Has my work, home life, or general focus changed in subtle ways that might make me want to rethink best use of my planning time? Are there interesting clusters within these projects that suggest opportunities and imminent change? What sorts of tasks and projects are causing the biggest pain for me now? And how can I evolve a system that helps to compensate for that?

It is not a single, atomic activity - This is the biggest one for me, by far. Maybe 80% of the time, a small project is masquerading as a single TODO. Acknowledging the multiple steps and identifying the logical next action usually does the trick for me. Change: move to “Projects” and generate true next action

It is not a physical action - “Think about proposal for Bob” seems like a next action because it’s tied to a commitment I’ve made, but imagine how much easier this would go as “Draft five or six ideas for Bob’s proposal.” Now I’m writing instead of just staring at a wall thinking about the notion of proposals. Change: Reword it as a physical activity, preferably yielding a physical artifact or new next action.

It is not really the very next action I need to take - I can frequently find at least one action that needs to take place before the one I have on the list. Bear with me here, but even “Return library books” can linger for weeks and months if you first need to find the one missing book that mentally keeps you from proceeding. This is a thorny one, since a legitimate future action can seem like the next action, even when it really is not. Change: walk backwards through your steps until you can derive the true next physical action.

It is not something I’ve actually committed to - “Learn Regular Expressions” is something I’m really interested in, but, in addition to actually being a potential Project (not a next action), it’s not something about which I have a stake in the ground. Until I’m ready to make it part of my immediate actions, it’s just guilt-inducing cruft. Change: move to “Someday/Maybe/On-Hold” or “@Tech”

It is poorly defined or just badly worded - This is a catch-all for stragglers that may be addressed by many of the fixes above, but I draw it out separately here for a good reason: changing the way you define or word something also changes the way you think about it. Try always beginning your next actions with a physical verb. “Email,” “Call,” “Google,” “Recode,” “Visit,” and “Buy” all encompass physical actions, and often context. Change: try re-phrasing your next action as a specific contextual activity

It is nothing I can act on now - This is usually the result of lazy or infrequent reviews. If an item on your list is something that has a dependency with another person or just takes time until follow-up, get it out of there. Alternatively, rephrase it as your physical followup that you want to perform as soon as possible (“Call Jean to check progress on perl script”). Change: move to “Waiting On” or reshape it as a true next action for yourself

Next actions: Both physical _and_ visible

The thing is, I now see how items like these can’t really be “done” at all; each one of those things is actually a complex, multiple-item project with built-in dependencies and waiting time. To look at any of them as a single thing I need to do is to buy into the anxiety-inducing premise that my goals and behaviors should somehow mirror each other on a one-to-one basis. If you think about it, that’s plainly ridiculous.

A more reasonable approach using GTD would be to focus just on that next physical activity needed to undertake each project; even if it seems like a trivial activity. In order: Find old résumé in file cabinet Call gym to see when membership expires Start a running list of everyone I need to buy Christmas gifts for

write - Once you've gathered any amount of information -- and, seriously, don't go to committee forever on this stuff -- try writing a letter, email, one-page-report, or even a theoretical blog post about your topic. No one ever needs to see it, but if you were to explain everything you've learned about your new topic alongside how you feel about it, you might be surprised to discover you know, think, and feel more than you had realized before you started writing. My layman's theory here is that writing puts demands on the left side of your brain to turn mushy clouds of ideas into semi-coherent pyramids of information. (Sometimes those pyramids will end up looking more like they were created by a dog's behind than having arisen from the dream-visions of Pharaohs, but you'll never find out until you commit that "Shitty First Draft")

agenda - If you have a big pile of a little questions that can wait for now, just capture them all into your list for "agenda-boss," "agenda-team," "agenda-spouse" or what have you. You can then quickly blow through them all at one time.

all - Some of the information you need to make decisions is almost certainly available in the brain of someone close to you. When needed, make a short call to someone who you think can help guide your way. This could be anything from the person in the next cube to a customer service line to a library reference desk to that wisest of institutional historians, your Mom. Again, all the usual admonitions about respecting time still apply, but a phone call, used efficiently, can be the fastest path to an answer.

email - Once you've given yourself an independent education on a topic and feel that you've learned enough to ask good questions, consider writing a short email asking for advice and input from a colleague or people on your team. All the usual rules apply here, but a fast email along the lines of "Do you have a preference in foo over bar, and why?" can be a quick way to bring one honeycomb of the hive mind's experience quickly into play.

Project verbs Finalize Resolve Handle Look into Submit Maximize Organize Design Complete Ensure Roll out Update Install Implement Set-up

Next-action verbs Call Organize Review Buy Fill out Find Purge Look into (Web) Gather Print Take Waiting for Load Draft Email

This causes many of us to fashion more or less phoney-baloney "sub-contexts" that reflect some facet of the parent (e.g. "@computer" might contain "@email," "@web," "@code," "@print," and so on). While this makes terrific sense from a logical standpoint (and it can certainly have its uses), it doesn't reflect the true meaning of a context, at least in my own mind: "what tools, resources, opportunities, and limitations are unique to this situation?" or put slightly differently from the perspective of choosing tasks at a given time, "what are the things I can't work on now given where I am and the tools to which I have access?"

If you don’t already have a “waiting for” folder in your email, you need one. This is the folder I keep in my email where I drag sent messages that I’m waiting for a response on. I go through it basically daily, and it’s fascinating to see how often I haven’t heard back about something and need to follow up on it, and which I otherwise might have forgotten about until the lack of answer popped up as a problem. I do this not just for work emails, but personal ones too, like the person in my homeowners association who was supposed to get me an answer to a question about dues but didn’t, or any other question that I need the answer to but might otherwise forget that I’m waiting on until months later. Yes, this does make me the annoying person who will follow up with you when it’s been a week since I emailed you a question and I haven’t heard back. It also makes me the person who gets the answers I need and doesn’t discover weeks later that some crucial bit of info never arrived.

By failing

By failing to review consistently, they just let things pile up and it gets harder and harder to keep up with their system. They can get the system set up, but then they try to “set it and forget it.” They don’t maintain it. When it comes to your productivity, you need to be consistently reviewing and making adjustments in order to get things done. It’s important to clean up and update your lists, dump any new loose ends into your trusted system, and clear your mind so everything can run smoothly. At Asian Efficiency, we recommend that you do this weekly. Yes, it takes a little bit of time, but the benefit of feeling like you’re finally in control of your life by far outweighs the cost.

Capture Everything: Capture anything that crosses your mind. Nothing is too big or small! These items go directly into your inboxes. Clarify: Process what you’ve captured into clear and concrete action steps. Decide if an item is a project, next action, or reference. Organize: Put everything into the right place. Add dates to your calendar, delegate projects to other people, file away reference material, and sort your tasks. Review: Frequently look over, update, and revise your lists. Engage: Get to work on the important stuff.

- Things I need from someone to accomplish current, due tasks. These are serious barriers that are potentially stopping deadlines from being met. Gratefully I seldom have more than an item or two here. This would be something like a new logo I need for a site that launches this week; something I need to bang on daily to make sure progress continues without interruption. Follow-up - These items cover middle-term events and deliverables that I just need “soon.” These might include things I know will arrive soon or eventually like incoming essays for The Long Winters’ site (that’s a passive-aggressive ping, Mr. Roderick) or a form I need to fill out for a client’s records in order to get paid. Occasional check-in - These are things that I hope happen soon but have no way to anticipate or predict. Still, I’d like to know about when it does happen so I check in every week or two. For me this includes stuff like a new software release or support for a feature I’d like in an app I’m thinking of using. The thread that runs through all of these is that the onus is on me to a) make sure these items represent part of a commitment I’ve made, and b) make sure they actually get done (even if it’s not my direct responsibility); otherwise, they should get moved onto my “Maybe/Later” list, right? So the questions on my mind are: How do I make sure I’m checking in often enough? How do I ensure I’m prepared to execute when the items are available? Staying on top of things The simple answer for getting these items done is to convert them into next actions. If I have a “waiting on” item that says “Receive new logo from Jim” for more than a day or two, it might benefit me to generate “Call Jim to nail down delivery date and dependencies for new logo” as a next action. Now I’m in the driver’s seat, ensuring that bad communication or just old-school slack don’t prevent my client’s cool new site from launching on time.

identify all the stuff in your life that isn’t in the right place (close all open loops) get rid of the stuff that isn’t yours or you don’t need right now create a right place that you trust and that supports your working style and values put your stuff in the right place, consistently do your stuff in a way that honors your time, your energy, and the context of any given moment iterate and refactor mercilessly

geeks are often disorganized or have a twisted skein of attention-deficit issues geeks love assessing, classifying, and defining the objects in their world geeks crave actionable items and roll their eyes at “mission statements” and lofty management patois geeks like things that work with technology-agnostic and lofi tools geeks like frameworks but tend to ignore rules geeks are unusually open to change (if it can be demonstrated to work better than what they’re currently using) geeks like fixing things on their own terms geeks have too many projects and lots and lots of stuff

Next actions: Both physical and visible - “But, for me, turning anxieties into projects and projects into discrete physical behaviors has a lot of appeal. It takes all the pressure off your brain and puts it back where it belongs: on your eyes, on your hands, and on that fat ass you need to get into gear.”

Yes, anywhere. Any portion or component of the GTD approach, applied, will bring at least a bit more clarity, focus, and control for you—without exception. And very likely when any one thing is executed, it will create a reverberation effect and spread to other parts. It’s a holistic model—i.e. any piece can be worked, and it will add to the whole gestalt.