What’s in your weekly review?

Setting a regular review of your productivity system is essential for maintaining it

Part of having a working system for productivity is doing a regular review of your system and ensuring that everything is in place and ready for you when you need it. I recommend everyone schedule in a weekly review as part of your productivity habits. Even if you’re just getting started and don’t have much to review, it’s a habit to create and respect.

What do you include in this weekly review? I tend to do my reviews on Friday towards the end of the work day. It gets you ready for the coming week, you can close out the current week knowing you’ve settled everything, and Friday afternoons tend to be more open for whatever time you need to spend on this task.

The first thing I do is look over my calendar for the coming week. Do have the contact information for any appointments? Am I adequately prepared for any deadlines? Are all the things I need scheduled in the proper place? Any gaps I need to address? I import my Outlook work calendar to my personal Google Calendar so I only look at one screen, and I make sure everything is synced up.

Next, I review my Todoist (or whatever task management app you use). My life is very much centered around my Todoist being accurate and up to date, so I make sure my Todoist inbox is empty and everything is in a project and has a due date. If there’s no due date, it will get forgotten! Sometimes my weekly review will reveal that I need to shift my priorities, or combine projects, or get rid of a project, or even that I need to delete a task because I keep postponing it and if I’m doing that do I really need to do it? I see if I’ve overloaded myself with tasks on one day and if I should switch things to a lighter day. Sometimes I’ve already completed some tasks, so I check those off and clear them out.

Then I got to my email inbox. Anything left in my email inbox is something I’m waiting on, like a tracking number for something I’ve purchased, or something that I need to address or read. Are there emails of things that have been completed? Archive them. Am I saving a coupon for a sale that just passed? Delete it. I get my inbox to something manageable to look at and don’t need to scroll. If there’s…