The GTD weekly review, step by step

What the weekly review is

The weekly review is a fixed time slot, once a week, where you check every list you keep and make it trustworthy again. You do very little real work in this hour. The goal is to make sure every task you have is written down, sits in the right place, and has a clear next step.

In Getting Things Done, Allen groups the review into three parts that he calls get clear, get current and get creative. In our own words:

• Get clear: collect every loose note, message and idea, and empty each inbox until nothing is left waiting for a decision.
• Get current: walk through your calendar, projects and lists, and update each one so it shows where things really stand today.
• Get creative: look further ahead, at the ideas you parked for later, and choose what matters most next week.

The planner that comes with this guide has one page for each part, so you can work from top to bottom without thinking about the order.

Why it works

Allen uses the term open loops for anything you have agreed to do, even only in your head, that is not finished yet. A reply you owe a friend, a bill to check, a plan to fix the bike some day. Each one takes a little attention, and together they create the feeling of being busy without knowing why.

A good list takes that load off your mind, but only while you trust it. Lists lose that trust fast. After about a week, enough new things have come in and enough old things have changed that you start to doubt the list. Once you doubt it, you go back to keeping things in your head, and the list slowly dies.

A weekly review resets the clock before that happens. Seven days is short enough that the gap between the list and real life stays small, which also keeps the review itself short.

Before you start

• Time: block 60 to 90 minutes in your calendar. Your first review may take two hours. After a few weeks, most people need about an hour.
• Day: Friday afternoon works well for many people. The week is still fresh in your memory, and you start Monday with a plan. Sunday evening is a good second choice.
• Place: somewhere quiet where nobody will interrupt you. Close chat apps for the hour.
• Things to have at hand: your email, your phone, any paper inbox, the notebook or notes app you carry, your calendar, and your current lists of projects and tasks.
• The planner: print the three pages, or open the PDF on a tablet and write on it.

The weekly review in 9 steps

Here is our short version of the review. Allen's own checklist in the book is more detailed; this one is built to fit on three printed pages.

1. Empty your inboxes

   Go through email, chat, paper mail, voicemail and your downloads folder. For each item, decide what it is: delete it, file it, or write it down as a task. The goal is zero items waiting for a decision. You do not need zero tasks.

2. Process your loose notes

   Collect every sticky note, receipt, notebook page and voice memo from the week. Copy each one into the Loose items table and write the very next physical action, such as "email Sam the draft" instead of just "Sam".

3. Look back at the last two weeks

   Read every past event in your calendar. Did a meeting create a follow up? Did you promise someone something? Write each new action down.

4. Look ahead at the next two weeks

   Read every coming event. What do you need to prepare, book, buy or send before it? Write those actions down now, while there is still time.

5. Review your project list

   A project is any result that needs more than one step. Mark each one as on track, stuck or done, and make sure each open project has at least one next action. A project without a next action will not move.

6. Review your next actions

   Read your task lists. Tick off what is done, delete what no longer matters, and rewrite anything vague so it starts with a verb.

7. Check your waiting for list

   These are things other people owe you: replies, payments, deliveries. Note how long each one has been waiting and decide if it is time to send a reminder.

8. Read your someday or maybe list

   This is where ideas go that you do not want to commit to yet. Move anything that now feels important into your projects, and delete what no longer interests you.

9. Pick three priorities for next week

   With everything up to date, choose three results that would make next week a good week. Write one first step for each.

Steps 1 and 2 are the get clear part. Steps 3 to 7 are get current. Steps 8 and 9 are get creative.

Worked example: Mia's Friday review

Mia is a freelance designer with four regular clients. She blocks Friday from 3:00 to 4:30 pm for her review and works through the planner from page 1 to page 3.

Get clear, 25 minutes. Her email inbox has 41 messages. Most are newsletters and receipts, and she archives them in a few minutes. Her notebook, her phone notes and the sticky notes on her desk give her 23 loose items. She writes each one on page 1 with a next action and a letter for where it goes. Five of them:

Get current, 40 minutes. Looking back two weeks, she finds a call with Northwind Travel where she promised to share mood boards, so that becomes a new next action. Looking ahead, a client workshop on Thursday means she must print handouts by Wednesday. Her project list has nine projects. Two are stuck: the Northwind website, which is waiting on page texts from the client, and her own portfolio update, which has had no next action for a month.

Her waiting for list has one item that needs action: Rivera Bakery has not paid an invoice for 18 days. She writes a short, friendly reminder and sends it on the spot.

Get creative, 15 minutes. Her someday list now holds the icon pack idea and an old plan to learn motion design. She keeps both there for now. Then she chooses three priorities for next week: deliver the Rivera logo, get the Northwind website moving again, and send the brochure price. Each one has a first step for Monday morning.

Total time: 80 minutes. Mia starts her weekend knowing that nothing important is hiding in her inbox, and she starts Monday knowing exactly where to begin.

How to use the planner

1. Page 1, Clear

   Tick each inbox as you empty it. Blank rows are there for inboxes that only you have. Write everything you collect in the Loose items table. The last column takes one letter: P for project, N for next action, W for waiting for, C for calendar, S for someday, X for trash.

2. Page 2, Current

   Write anything new you find in the look back and look ahead boxes. List your open projects with their status and next action, and tick the last column once that action is on your task list. Then fill in who owes you what, and since when.

3. Page 3, Creative

   Note ideas for someday, write your top three for next week with a first step each, rate your energy from 1 to 5, list a few wins, and write down how long the review took. Over a few weeks, that time tells you if your review is getting easier.

Print a fresh copy each week and keep the old ones in a folder. Reading last month's pages is a quick way to see which projects keep getting stuck.

The planner comes in A4, used in most of the world, and US Letter, used in the US and Canada. Both have the same layout; the A4 version has a few extra rows.

Common mistakes

• Skipping weeks. One missed review is fine. Three in a row and you stop trusting your lists. If an hour feels too long, do a 20 minute version with steps 1, 5 and 9 only.
• Reading without deciding. Reading a list is not the same as updating it. Every item you touch should end with a decision: do it, plan it, pass it on, park it or delete it.
• Too many projects. If your list has 40 open projects, most of them are not really open. Move the ones you will not touch this month to someday or maybe. A shorter list is a list you actually read.
• Vague next actions. "Website" is not an action. "Email Ana to ask for the logo file" is. If you cannot picture yourself doing it, rewrite it.
• Doing the work during the review. Allen suggests doing anything that takes less than two minutes right away, and that is fine here too. Anything longer goes on the list, or the review never ends.

Reading Getting Things Done in two languages

Many people read Getting Things Done in English while they are still learning the language. That is a hard way to learn a method, because the key ideas sit in short, exact terms like next action or someday or maybe, and a small misunderstanding changes how you use them.

A bilingual edition helps. You read the original sentence first, and a translation in your own language sits right under it, so you can check the meaning without leaving the page. Easy Book Translation turns an EPUB that you own into exactly that kind of book, with a translation under every paragraph and the original layout kept intact.