GTD Weekly Review: How to Reclaim Control of Your Week

You know that slightly uneasy feeling whenFriday arrives and you're not entirely sure what happened to the week?

You were definitely busy - sitting through back-to-back meetings, responding to a constant stream of Teams messages, and firefighting whatever the week decided to throw at you - but if someone asked what truly moved forward this week, you'd pause.

Not because you did nothing but because busy-ness and progress are not the same thing, and here is where the right kind of analytics can help.

When most people hear"analytics," they picture dashboards, traffic-light reports, and spreadsheets but at its core, analytics is simply evidence. It's the difference between relying on memory and looking at what actually happened.

For anyone who practises GTD® (the GettingThings Done® methodology) there's already a low-tech analytics system built in.It's called the GTD Weekly Review.

Most people underuse it but, as a GTD coach who has seen its positive impact for our clients hundreds of times over, I'd like to not only make a case for it, but also invite you to experience one.

The GTD Weekly Review as Your Air Traffic Control

As a part-time pilot when I’m away from coaching,I'm often drawn to aviation metaphors and there's a good one here for understanding the GTD Weekly Review.

The GTD Weekly Review acts as your own air traffic control system.

Control towers don't fly aircraft and they don't make decisions on behalf of pilots. Their role is to maintain visibility:to know what's moving, what's waiting, what's approaching a critical point, and where intervention might be needed before a small issue becomes a bigger one.

Your GTD Weekly Review serves a similar purpose.

Before launching straight into action as one week becomes the next, we recommend that you step back during a GTD WeeklyReview, look at all your commitments, and establish a clear view of your airspace. What got completed? What moved forward? What is still sitting on the runway?

The GTD Weekly Review creates visibility, and, just like with planes, visibility enables clearer decisions, safer flying, and the avoidance of 'uncontrolled contact with the ground'.

Why the GTD Weekly Review Works: Four Questions to Ask

GTD's core principle is that commitments belong in a trusted system, not in your head, and the Weekly Review is wherethat system starts talking back to you in a helpful way, like the control towerdoes to pilots.

For example, a next action that sat untouched on your lists this week might mean nothing, but a next action thathas survived six consecutive reviews without moving forward is data.

It might be too vague. It might belong to a project you no longer care about. The GTD Weekly Review gives you a place tonotice this in a way that you probably won't when you're flying about with yourhair on fire during the day-to-day.

Four types of question tend to help the things in your world consistently land safely and smoothly:

• What's making progress? Which projects are heading steadily towards their destination? Progress is often quieter than urgency but you need to notice it to put your mind at ease. Also, if you don't actively acknowledge it, the week can feel like a confusing and unrewarding blur of other people's priorities.    
• What's in the Holding Pattern? Some projects inevitably end up in the 'stack', circling while they wait for a decision, a response, or available landing capacity. That's not always a problem - the question is whether they're holding deliberately or simply because nobody has noticed they're still up there!
• What's Running Low on Fuel? If something has appeared on your list, review after review, without moving forward, it may be approaching the point where it needs urgent intervention. Perhaps the next action isn't clear enough. Perhaps a difficult conversation is being avoided. Perhaps a ball has been dropped. Either way, something needs attention before it becomes a bigger issue.
• Which "Aircraft" Are You Avoiding? Not every commitment needs immediate action, but the items we consistently avoid often contain useful information. Avoidance usually points to uncertainty, missing information, conflicting priorities or an uncomfortable decision. The GTD Weekly Review gives you an opportunity to establish contact and decide what happens next.

How a Weekly Review Protects Your Weekend

A good GTD Weekly Review won't make your working life perfect but it will help you navigate more quickly, more easily and more smoothly, and there's also a big benefit elsewhere in your life...

Without doing a regular review on a weekly basis, your brain will tend to keep running a background scan all weekend:open loops, half-remembered promises, the vague sense that you might have missed something important.

A GTD Weekly Review gives your brain the evidence that your world has been checked. Not perfected, but checked well enough to keep it happy, and that means you can then actually stop, rest and refuel.

Every weekend should be a holiday destination, and it can be if GTD and your WeeklyReview are working well for you.

Join a Live GTD Weekly Review Session

If you're one of our GTD Alumni and you're nodding along to the logic of the above, but also feeling slightly guilty because you've not been actually doing it, then come and join us for a GTD Weekly Review session.

It's an hour of quiet time, online, to do your Weekly Review with the support of a GTD coach, as well as the presence of other GTD practitioners 'in the room' doing the same to help keep you focussed.

If you'd like more information, email us at info@next-action.co.uk with 'Weekly Review' in the subject line and we'll send you the details of our next session and link to book onto it.

You're cleared for take-off.

‍