The One-Touch Guide to Doing a Weekly Review

Tiago Forte deflating the weekly review. People avoid it because they imagine a comprehensive life review requiring hours of introspection, or an overhaul of their productivity system. It’s neither.

Three jobs, nothing more: clear your digital workspaces · update available tasks against what came in · decide priorities for the week. Executed through a five-point checklist — email, calendar, desktop/downloads, notes, tasks.

The reframe that makes it stick: most advice points you at what to do today. But “our To Do list is the endpoint, not the starting point.” The review is what produces a trustworthy list; working the list without it is working from fiction. Firefighters check gear, pilots run systems checks, surgeons sanitize instruments — the chaos only surfaces when it breaks out, usually at the worst moment.

Flaubert, quoted: “Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

Pairs with The Weekly Review Is an Operating System, the same author on the same practice.

Notes

• They think it’s a comprehensive “life review,” requiring hours of intense introspection. They think it’s an “overhaul” of their productivity systems, which likewise requires hours of concentration.
• Specifically, your Weekly Review should accomplish three things:
  • Clear your digital workspaces: tidy up the virtual environment where you get things done
  • Update your available tasks: update your to do’s based on new information that’s come in
  • Decide on your priorities for the week: select a subset of to do’s that you are actively committing to for this week
• The results of all these experiments can be boiled down to this** extremely simple, 5-point checklist**:
  • Email
  • Calendar
  • Desktop/Downloads
  • Notes
  • Tasks
• Most conventional productivity advice tells us to focus all our attention on what we have to do “today” or “right now.” But the truth is, our To Do list is the endpoint, not the starting line.
• Firefighters have to check their gear and make sure pumps are in working order. Pilots have to do systems checks every time they fly. Surgeons have to make sure their instruments are sanitized and neatly laid out before surgery. But when it comes to knowledge work, we act as if preventative maintenance isn’t required. We let our email inboxes pile sky-high, continue dumping hundreds of files into every corner of our computer, stick any random thing onto our calendar, and have to do’s scattered across any number of places. Checklists
• This chaos only becomes apparent when it breaks out onto the surface. When everything seems to break down at once, which usually happens at the worst possible moment. Like a car breaking down on the highway during a long family road trip, our systems tend to collapse at the moment of maximum stress.
• French novelist Gustav Flaubert once said, “Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.” Quotes