John Benson dot com

I’ve been working with the Getting Things Done method for organization for a while, but the system never really kicked into high gear until I fully embraced the Weekly Review.When reading David Allen’s book and listening to his lectures the Weekly Review is touted as the most important component and the hardest to adopt. It seemed strange to me that this would be the hardest part to stick to when getting started, but within a couple weeks it just didn’t occur to me to revisit everything that was going on in my life when it was placed into such a bulletproof system.When I started my job at the Firm, I learned that I’d be sending in a weekly report to the Director every Friday. While some people probably would view this as a painful task considering how busy things tend to get, a feeling of joy washed over me. Now I would be personally accountable on some level for completing the most important GTD component.My weekly review includes shutting my door (it’s an open door Firm so this is rare during the week), putting on my good headphones and listening to Miles while spreading my Hipster PDA all over my desk. I’m able to write down all my open projects on a legal pad first. This pad will then be transcribed to a text file which I send in. After getting everything current down, I ponder any other projects which I’d like to fully commit to and begin.The next step entails taking everything from the legal pad and old Hipster PDA cards and creating fresh ones. While seeing so many tasks crossed off is nice for gaining a sense of accomplishment, having to flip the context cards (@office, @mac, @calls, @email, etc) over tends to be a pain and makes the system less bulletproof.Even if you aren’t accountable on a weekly basis to someone, I’m guessing that it would be a great habit to develop. Not only are you accountable but it can be great for reminding the other people you work with that you are waiting on something when you know they may have forgotten.