design-weekly-review-process

Design Weekly Review Process

Build a structured weekly review ritual that clears the mental backlog, processes all inboxes, reviews all commitments, and plans the coming week — creating the clarity and control to work intentionally rather than reactively.

Why This Is Best Practice

Adopted by: David Allen GTD methodology (millions of practitioners globally), Cal Newport's weekly planning ritual, executive coaching programs (Stephen Covey's Quadrant II planning) Impact: GTD practitioners report 40% reduction in stress from open loops and incomplete commitments (David Allen Company research); weekly review practitioners report consistent improvement in "in control" feeling from 30% to 75%+ (GTD practitioner surveys) Why best: Allen's insight (2001) is that the mind is for having ideas, not holding them — the weekly review externalizes all commitments and open loops into a trusted system, freeing cognitive resources from background monitoring.

Sources: Allen "Getting Things Done" (2001) Ch. 8; Newport "Deep Work" (2016) shutdown ritual; Covey "The 7 Habits" (1989) Habit 7

Steps

1. Schedule a fixed weekly review time — block 60–90 minutes at the same time each week (Friday afternoon and Sunday evening are most common); treat it as a non-negotiable meeting with yourself.
2. Get clear: collect all loose items — gather all physical and digital inboxes: email, notes, paper, Slack, notebooks, receipts, browser tabs; nothing remains unprocessed by the end of the review.
3. Process all inboxes to zero — for each item: if it is not actionable → delete, archive, or reference; if actionable and <2 minutes → do it now; if actionable and >2 minutes → add to task system with a next action and project.
4. Review all active projects — scan every active project in your project list; ask for each: "What is the next physical action?" Add the next action to the appropriate day or context list.
5. Review waiting-for list — for each item you are waiting on from others: has it arrived? If not, should you follow up? If yes, add a follow-up action.
6. Review calendar past and future — scan the past week's calendar for unprocessed commitments, promises made, or actions needed; scan the next 2 weeks for upcoming events requiring preparation.
7. Review someday/maybe list — scan items on the someday list: have any become relevant now? Move to active projects if yes; delete if no longer relevant.
8. Define the week's priorities — select 3 MIT (Most Important Tasks) for the coming week — tasks that, if only these were completed, would make the week successful; these become the top of the task list.
9. Plan the week's deep work blocks — schedule deep work sessions in the calendar for the coming week aligned to the 3 MITs; reserve creative energy peak hours for the highest-priority work.
10. Close the review with a shutdown ritual — say the shutdown phrase ("system is clear, week is planned"); this completes the review and signals to the brain that it can stop monitoring open loops.

Rules

• Weekly review must be completed weekly — a biweekly review accumulates twice the backlog and loses the "trusted system" feeling; once skipped, twice the effort to recover.
• Every actionable item must have a concrete next action — "think about project X" is not a next action; "draft outline for Project X on Monday morning" is.
• Inbox zero is the target at every review — items left unprocessed accumulate cognitive load across the week; the review is complete only when all inboxes are at zero.
• Someday/maybe list must be reviewed — items added to someday/maybe that are never reviewed are psychological debt; prune and promote regularly.
• The 3 MIT selection is mandatory — the review is not complete until the coming week's priorities are set; vague "I'll figure it out on Monday" is the antithesis of the review's purpose.

Common Mistakes

• Reviewing without a defined ritual — "sometimes I look at my tasks on Sunday" is not a weekly review; a ritual with fixed steps completes reliably; improvisation does not.
• Skipping inbox processing — jumping directly to planning without clearing inboxes produces a plan built on incomplete information.
• Reviewing without a clear next action for every project — projects without next actions stall; the weekly review's primary output is a complete next-action list for every active project.
• Making the review too long — 3-hour reviews become unsustainable; a well-structured 60-minute review covers everything; reduce scope before reducing frequency.
• No calendar review — plans made without consulting the calendar fail to account for conflicts and preparation time; always review both past and future calendar.

When NOT to Use

• Periods of genuine crisis management where weekly horizon planning is impossible (hourly decisions dominate)
• Roles where scope and commitments are fully managed externally with no personal planning autonomy
• Individuals with very low task volume (fewer than 10 open tasks) where informal review is sufficient