GTD Weekly Review

Hi everybody, it is that time of the week. It is time for our weekly review, GTD style. Hi, I'm Crystal from A Crystal Clear Life, where we focus on planning, organizing, and living a more simplified life. So glad you could join us today.

Today is our time for our weekly review, GTD style. Now, in this series of videos, I have been going over all of the steps of the GTD process. What's GTD, you might ask? Well, GTD stands for Getting Things Done, and it's a productivity, uh, process that was, um, written about by David Allen in his book called Getting Things Done, which you see here. We've been going over the five steps of the GTD process, and in those five steps, we have covered capture, clarify, organize, and today is review, or reflect.

Now, when you talk about GTD and review and reflect, there is actually an 11-step process that goes into doing that weekly review. And David Allen and his trainers recommend that you give yourself at least an hour to do your weekly review. Now, some people don't want to spend that much time, or they get mentally exhausted doing that, so they break it down into chunks. And David says that's fine. Remember, this productivity tool is about being flexible and customizing it to meet your needs.

One way that I customize it is I try to do an end-of-the-day review where I go through and check off the items that I've done and completed, and add any new items to my next actions list and that kind of thing. So, in essence, I do a mini review at the end of every day. So then, when it comes time to do my weekly review, it's really not that big of a deal for me.

Now, I'm not going to go through the entire hour-long process with you today because I don't want to produce a video that takes an hour. But I will show you the strategies and the 11 steps that he talks about, and I'll briefly share with you what I do during those 11 steps because, of course, I can't follow directions. I have to do things my own way. So I have, of course, modified David Allen's GTD weekly review process, and I'll show you exactly how I did that. But for now, let's take a look at the original. Let's take a look at the master and see what's going on here.

In my computer, you can see in my reference section that I have a GTD weekly review checklist. Now, this is the original checklist from David Allen's website, and I will link that down below in case you would like to get a copy of this checklist for yourself. You can see in bright orange that it's broken down into three main sections: the getting clear, the getting current, and the getting creative. Now, getting creative is the most fun part, but you gotta do the other work before you can get there.

Remember, I was talking about how some people like to break this into steps? Well, some people like to do the just get clear part, and then they'll take a break, and maybe they'll come back the next day and they'll do the get current part, which leads to the get creative part. You can do that if you'd like, or you can do what I do where at the end of every day, I go through and really kind of get clear, clear up all of those things, add anything new into my list that needs to be added. And so that when I'm ready to go and do my weekly process, it's really not that hard. I can just start from where I left off and move forward. But I want to take you through all these steps so that you understand them.

Now that you've seen David Allen's review checklist, I have taken the same information and I have bullet items and and reminders for myself for what I need to get done as I'm going through. So let's take a look at that. Here in this box, you see the get clear process is listed here at the top. And the first thing on the list, step one, is to collect loose papers and materials. That means to go around and gather all those, he says, accumulated business cards, receipts, and miscellaneous paper-based materials and put it in your entry.

I have some bullet notes there for myself because I collect different things. I need to grab my church bulletin from each week so that I have notes to add to my prayer list and upcoming events and that kind of thing. Since I'm one of the leaders at the church, I have to keep track of all this stuff. I also go through my purse for any receipts that I haven't pulled out yet. I go through the back of my iPad, and I have this little pocket that I have on here where I put extra notes and stuff. So I take those things out as well. So now that's empty and ready to go. I also go through my bills drawer in the kitchen and I pull out any envelopes that may need to be processed, not necessarily bills to be paid, but any other items that might need to be followed up on, like this one. So that's the first step in getting clear, collecting those loose papers and materials. You might have a briefcase that you need to go through, or a work bag, or a book bag, or a school bag. Remember, this process can be used with kids as well. So if you're new and just learning the GTD system, you might want to include your kids if you have any and teach them the steps as well because, you know, it's always helpful to go through their backpacks and and think about what they need to do and make a list for them and let that carry forward to through to the next week. I know most schools have an agenda book that the kids already are trained to use, and so why not just add some home tasks in there as well? But I digress. Back to the process.

So, I've completed step one, collecting my loose papers and materials. Step two in the official list is getting your inboxes to zero. Now, you'll see that that, uh, is listed here, and I also have an arrow next to it that's pointing down. Getting your inboxes to zero says, process completely all outstanding paper materials, journal and meeting notes, voicemails, dictations, emails. This is reviewing and reflecting, not doing, unless you're using the two-minute rule, which means anything that takes less than two minutes to do, go ahead and do it. It probably takes you longer than that to schedule it in real life than it is to just get it done. Now, I don't know, because scheduling in OneNote is pretty fast. So, getting your inboxes to zero is step two.

Step three is emptying your head. Now, you'll see that I also have an arrow on emptying your head. Emptying your head is doing a mind sweep or a brain dump. That means that you're putting in writing and processing any uncaptured new projects, action items, waiting ons, someday maybes, any random thought that comes into your head, write it down, get it out of your head, and get it on paper somewhere. I do this right in my digital inbox, which I showed you in a video last week, and I will link that above where I use tags in OneNote to help me process things as I write them down. So if you'd like to check that video out using tags, I'll link it above. And if I'm doing my brain sweep and nothing comes up, then I have a triggers list that I will use as well. So the reason that I have arrows on those two items is because I like to kind of do my brain dump because then I can process those things, and that helps me get that inbox down to zero. So sometimes I do the the mind sweep or the brain dump first, and then I get everything down to zero.

So let me jump over to my inbox and I'll show you what I'm talking about. Okay, here's my current iteration of my inbox. And basically, you see here that I have all of these tasks that I have thought of so far in the month of October, and they all have different font colors and different little checkboxes next to them and all that kind of stuff. Those little checkboxes are my tags. And if you'd like to see the video about that, I'll link it above. Some of the checkboxes are checked off, meaning those items are complete, so I don't really need to look at those anymore. But if I'm going to do a brain dump, I'm going to do it on this page. So let me do one or two just to kind of give you an idea of what I'm talking about. So let's see, I'm going to jump down here and I will just do a brain dump.

Okay, I'm going to jump down here and add a few things, and I'll be right back.

Okay, my little pumpkin got out of alignment there, and this is what happens with a brain dump. You start thinking you only have a couple of things to write down, and the more you clear out of your head, the more things float to the top and you're able to get those out as well. So you see I ended up in just that few seconds coming up with six different things. Now, it says that we're supposed to process those, and process means putting them on the correct list. So let's see, calling my sister. I'm going to go back up here to my tags, and calling my sister will be a phone call to make. So there's call or text. So that gives her the proper checkbox. Update Zoom church service. Again, that's something that I need to do when I am at my computer. Take my donations to church. That is an errand that I need to run. Drop off clothes for the homeless. That also is an errand that I need to run. Halloween goodies for the neighbor. Now, I already know what I'm giving them, but I'm not going to say because they might watch this and then they would spoil their treat. So I am going to say that that, um, at the moment, goes on my something to buy list. And treats for Dakota is also something to buy. Okay, so there we have it. They're already on the right list.

Now, remember, because I use tags, I don't need to take those items and copy them and paste them to a specific list because if I do my find tags summary, that will appear right on my screen. So I'm going to slide over to the other side so you can see the tag summary.

Here's my tag summary, and I have it set for showing everything in this notebook and showing only the unchecked items. Okay, so if you were to look here at, uh, some of these items that have check marks beside them, they will not appear on my tag summary because things that I've already completed and that I've already checked off do not appear on this list. That helps me focus on the things that I need to do, not the things that I've already finished. Okay, so I've emptied my head, I've gone through my paper items, and I've gotten things from my notes written down that I need to take care of. There's one more that I just thought of.

And this is how it happens. These things just come out of nowhere. Okay, so I have checks to deposit, and that is a budget task. Okay, so, um, the other thing that I like to do is as I'm going through my inbox on my email, what I do every day by the end of the day is anything that has come up that needs an action item, I go ahead and add it to my to-do list either here on my inbox and notes or actually on the week that it occurs. And that way, my inbox, my email inbox is always up to date, and any of those flagged items that have action items with them, I've already added them into my list. So that's part of getting your inboxes to zero. You might also want to go back and look through your text messages to see if there's anything that someone has texted you about, or if you're on something like Teams or Slack or any of those other kinds of communication, Facebook Messenger, any of those things that that you communicate regularly with people, you might just want to look back through your current contacts and see if there's anything that gets triggered that that you need to add to your list as well. All right, what's the next step?

So we've finished the get clear. We've collected our loose papers, we've emptied our head, and we've gotten everything down to zero, and everything is now processed and scheduled on the right list. What do I need to buy? What do I need to do? Who do I need to call? Where do I need to go? So we've processed all of that. Moving down to the next section is called get current. And this says to review your next actions list. Well, remember, in OneNote, my next actions list is actually my tag summary. So let's take a look over here at my tag summary and see if there's anything that I can check off at the moment. I have all of my different tags open so that I can see everything. So I can glance down the list and say, did I check any of these things off this week? Okay, all right. So here we go.

All right, we did make a Christmas family plan, so I'm going to check that off. Uh, there are the Halloween goodies and the treats for Dakota and Savannah, and they're right there on the list, even though I just added them to my inbox. So that's good. Now, all of those items that I checked off have been checked off in their home location as well. So if I go back here and look to, uh, call Bobby, that will take me back to the place over here that I'm supposed to, that I was supposed to call Bobby about dinner. It's already checked off for me, so I don't have to double check it. It's already done. All right, so we did that. We reviewed our next items list, we looked at our tag summary, and we updated as needed. That's all there is to do. Review previous calendar data. Now, what I do here is I will bring up my weekly calendar here in OneNote, and I'll also bring up my digital calendar. So hang on a second while I bring up my digital calendar.

Okay, I have closed my tag summary to give myself a little bit more room, and I have also moved over my pages to give myself a little bit more room. And I need to look at the last couple of weeks just to make sure that I have completed everything. So the items that I have at the top here are things that I'd like to get done on that day, but they're nothing special that specifically needs to get done on that day. What I really need to look for is I need to look over here and see if there's anything that was not completed. So I don't see anything on my OneNote calendar that needs to be done. Let's take a look at my calendar.

And all of those things are already on my calendar, so we are good to go. Okay, at this point, what I do is I simply take the week that is completed, which is this current week, and I right-click on that, and I go down here to copy and move, and I make a copy of that. And I want that because we're still in the month of October, to stay in my October section. And I'm going to make a copy of that, and you see it puts that copy down here at the bottom. Now I'm going to click on that copy, and it is the exact same page at this point. So all I need to do is go in and change the date, and that will be October 18th through the 24th.

Okay, and then what I do is I go through and I clean up all of the completed tasks and uncheck everything that needed to be unchecked. So I will double check and see, based on my church bulletin, are these the same people that I need to be praying for? Uh, do I need to add more people there? I will delete my goals or my my main three tasks for this month. I'll delete those, and I will delete my meal plan. Okay, and then what I'll do is go down here and uncheck all of the items so that I start fresh for next week. And I will take away any activities or notes that I've made again, so I have a fresh place to start. Then I will go back and add new tasks. So I'm going to speed this up.

Okay, so now that's clean. What I can do is I can come over here to, hi Harry. Somebody wants to say hi. Hello, boy. Isn't he handsome?

Okay, you can lay next to me while I work. Now, what I can do is come over to my Google Calendar and I can add any appointments that I have. So I have hurt my back, and Dr. Tabor would like to see me three times a week to get things back in place and get the pain to go away. So I have an appointment with her. So that's that. Oh, full moon on the 20th. Oh, I do need to change my dates up here.

And my weekly review. So you see I have built into my weekly schedule my weekly review, and I keep it on my calendar and I keep it in my OneNote calendar because it's very important that you schedule that and you keep routine with that. And you see here that this is actually linked. When I click on this link, it will take me back to this page that we have been looking at today. So if I need to find my weekly review, it's always right there. And then when I go back to October, I'm back to the page that I was just working on. So that's fantastic. So, uh, all right, so I've checked my calendar for this week. Now, one thing that they recommend is that you go an additional week or two forward to see if there's anything that you might need to pay attention to. So let's look at the next week.

Pay the bills, so that's coming up. I could add that as a to-do item, but I think I'll just hold off on that. There's nothing special I have to do. I just have to be aware that it's coming up. And Halloween. So I've already added those treats for Halloween for our neighbors, so that is fine because we live on a farm. We don't get lots of trick-or-treaters. I don't have to buy bags of candy and all of that. We just get together, just, you know, the six of us, and, uh, celebrate that way. Then into the first week of November, again, I'm looking for big things that jump out. Daylight savings time will change back. I have to remember that. Absolutely. Okay, back to our checklist.

So we've reviewed our next actions list. We have looked at the previous calendar data. We've looked at the upcoming calendar data. We've looked at our waiting on list. Remember, the waiting on list is anything that you are you that you have outstanding that you might be waiting on. So I'm finished with my calendar. Let me get rid of that and make the screen bigger so you can see everything. Okay, so I'm back here at my weekly review, and I am reviewing my waiting on list. I did a tag summary, uh, list over here on the side, and I've closed all of the other categories that I need because I'm just focusing on my waiting on list. And there's only one item on my waiting on list. That means all of my orders have come in, all of the things that I have delegated to other people have been completed, so I don't have anything else that I need to follow up on or check on.

You might though, let's say you would ask your children to do something, or your partner to do something, or someone at work to do something, and you've not heard back from them. You might want to schedule a task for yourself to follow up. You could simply send them a text or an email just saying, hey, following up on X project. How is, how's that going? Or have you gotten a chance to look at that yet? Something like that. So that's really what checking on the waiting on list is. You want to give a slight nudge to those people that you've delegated to to let them know that you haven't forgotten about the tasks that you've asked them to do. So that's reviewing the waiting on list.

The next item on our list says to review projects and larger outcome lists. So if you look at your projects that you have, what you want to do is evaluate the status of those projects and what their goals are and what their outcomes are, and look at them one by one to ensure that at least one item from that project is on your next actions list. For example, I have a project to work on my nephew's quilt. So let me show you that project. If I go here to October, this is Chris's quilt, that's the current project that I'm working on. And if I click on that, you see I have all of these next actions here. So what I needed to do was, this is my project plan, that the quilt is for him for graduation. So I have until June to get it completed. I've completed determining the colors, determining the pattern, creating the plan, ordering the materials. Now I'm down to cutting the material. Okay. Now, if you're not a quilter, you know that you really don't want to cut all of your material until you're about ready to start sewing because material can fray and that kind of thing. But that's the stage that I'm down to is getting ready to cut. So what I'm probably going to do is make a list of all the things that I need to cut and have that ready because as the days get colder and I'm inside more than outside, have gotten all of my garden tasks done, then I'll be ready to start working on cutting the material and the next piece, the next part, which is piecing the top. Okay, so that's what I'm talking about when you look at a project.

See if I have another project I can show you quickly. Okay, so this is a project that I'm working on with my friend Cheryl. We tend to share furniture and have for 30 years or more. I had a set of bunk beds, she had kids, she needed the bunk beds, her kids grew up, I needed the bunk beds because I had kids, and so they came back to my house, and now my kids grown, but now she has grandkids, so she wants to borrow the bunk beds again. It's a whole thing.

Anyway, she asked me the other day, can I have the bunk beds back? So in order to get the bunk beds back to her, I created a project plan, and that's getting the bunk beds to Cheryl. So I put my outcome here, what the purpose was, and when we would like to have this done. And then I started making a list of things that have to happen. So the first thing that I'm going to have to do is my daughter has her college tubs stored in that room underneath the bunk beds, and so I'm going to have to relocate those, and then strip the beds down, fold those things and put them away, make sure I find the pegs that connect the bunk beds together. You understand what I'm talking about? And then that got me to thinking, well, what am I going to do in that room when the bunk beds are gone? Because really, that's our guest room, and so we do have this black leather sleeper sofa that we will move from the library down, and that can be our new guest bed. Not that we have very many guests, especially not during COVID time, but anyway. So then I just started putting together this little design wall about, well, what are the other pieces of furniture, and how do I want it to look, and how am I going to arrange it, and all that kind of thing. So anyway, that's an item there. So what I probably need to do is I need to highlight this, okay, and I'm not going to make it just a to-do item. I'm going to make it a next action. So I'm going to click up here, and that's going to be a next action: relocate Samantha's college tubs temporarily in her room. So it's gone from being just a to-do action on my project to a next action.

Okay, so if I go back over here to my tag summary, I'll show you next actions. I have four next actions here, none of which say relocate. But if I hit the refresh button, there is relocate Samantha's college tubs. So I don't have to copy it from list to list. It just shows up. Have I said how much I love OneNote about a bazillion times? I'm sure that's what it means when it says to check your projects to make sure there's at least one next action on your list for each project that you're currently working on.

Now, you may have a project that you haven't worked on in a long, long time, and you know what? It's okay to move that to a deferred project. You see, I have a section up here that says deferred items, and that's okay. Just add it to that section and don't worry about it. You'll get to it later. It's out of your head, you've already planned it, you're just not going to work on it right now. For example, I have hurt my back, and I am not going to be moving boxes anytime soon.

Okay, moving on. The next step down here says to review any relevant checklist. I like to take a look at my morning and my evening routine, which I have listed on my weekly spread because, again, as the seasons change, my routines change. I also like to look at my cleaning routine, and I like to look at my focus areas and my goals, which you all have seen my goal setting page. It's part of every month. I like to look at my church service workflows again because I'm the person in charge of the online stuff, so I want to make sure that that's flowing well. My planner checklist, my budget checklist, my grocery checklist, my travel checklist. Do I check these every time, every week? No. But if I know that I have a trip coming up in the next month or two, then I'll check my travel checklist and make sure that it is, um, up to date and ready to go so that when travel comes, I don't have to think about it. It's already done for me. Camping checklist. Not at the moment, but I put it on the list just so I remember that I have one, and if I need it, it's there. Another list that you may not think about that you have is maybe your job description, which when you think about it, it's really a list of tasks that you're responsible for. And so from time to time, it's maybe good to check in with that, especially if you're somebody who has annual reviews and those things are coming up, and you have to start filling out evaluations or or even evaluating your own self and how you're doing against your job description. So sometimes that's a checklist that we don't really think is a checklist.

All right, so that's the get current part. Now comes the fun part, the get creative. This is when you look at your someday maybe list. And I showed you this earlier in this whole process on GTD. My someday maybe list. Let me see if I can get to that quickly for you.

Okay, so here's a quick example of my someday maybe list. I'm not showing you my complete someday maybe list on there because there are some things that are personal on there and I don't want to share everything with you guys. But these are some things that, you know, remember, this gives you permission to dream big and to think about those things. So, so just reviewing this and taking a minute to say, is there something that I want to maybe add to my deferred list? Is there something new that maybe I want to add to my someday maybe list, a project or an idea that I've been thinking about? So, for example, I've been thinking about setting up an Instagram account and a Pinterest board for Crystal Clear Life. So I'm going to add those. We'll put that on there. It's not important that I do it right away, but it's just the next step that I would like to do. So I will add that to my someday maybe list.

All right, jumping back to our Getting Things Done checklist. So we've reviewed our someday maybe list, and now it says, be creative and be courageous. Do you have any new, wonderful, hair-brained ideas, creative, thought-provoking, risk-taking ideas that maybe you want to add to your system? A project, a wedding anniversary trip that you want to plan that may be two, three years out? And this is really an opportunity to to to go back and look at your, what David Allen calls your horizons of focus, you know, your your three to five year plan, you know, your areas of interest and that kind of thing, and really see if there's anything that you think, you know, maybe in the next few years I'd like to retire, and I want to start thinking about that, or there's a big family trip out west that we've always wanted to take, and maybe I need to start looking into that and see if there's something that we can do. Maybe I want to buy a camper and travel across the United States. I don't know. I don't know what, uh, what kind of things you can come up with. How creative can you be? Maybe you want to build a tiny house or a tiny cabin in the woods somewhere. I don't know. I don't know. But getting all these things off your mind, organizing them, and trusting your system will allow your brain to be more creative and to have these ideas. And that is really the whole point, to free up your mind so that you can do more fun and creative and courageous things.

Anyway, that's the entire process for Getting Things Done, the weekly review. Here's David Allen's overview plan, and here's mine with notes and modifications, which is perfectly fine. That's what David says. You know, it's flexible. Do what you need to do. You do you, and he'll do him, and I'll do me.

Anyway, as you can see, the weekly review is really not that painful. Doesn't really take that long, especially if you stay on top of it. And, uh, there are lots of good things that come from it. You get a lot of clarity, you get a lot of peace, you get a lot of calm, so that when you have an opportunity to be with friends or family, you're not distracted by thinking about, oh, I didn't do that budget thing yet, or who's going to help me move those boxes, or, you know, what's the next step in the process? You don't have to think about all that because it's already here and organized for you. And thanks to OneNote and their wonderful tag system, it's even easier than it was on paper. Yay!

I want to thank you for joining me today. I really have enjoyed sharing my method of my weekly review with you. And if you've learned anything new, or if you've gotten some inspiration, or you've just had fun hanging out with me, go ahead and give me a thumbs up, please. A like really is the best compliment you can leave me. And if you hit that red subscribe button, it's completely free, and, uh, you can check back and see what other videos we're producing. That little bell will send you a notification when I upload new videos, which is usually every Friday. My next video plan is to do step five in the Getting Things Done process, engage. Hope you'll join me as we finish up Getting Things Done. Until next time, okay, bye.