In the last article in my GTD and Evernote series, we'll explore the things that make the whole thing go smoothly week in and week out. These are best practices that you can implement to juice your system and make it work for you. By this time you should have a powerhouse GTD system that chugs along for you, driving you toward success in the things that you want to accomplish.
We're going to focusing mostly on the Weekly Review. This is the engine behind your ongoing care and feeding of your system. It ensures that nothing slips through the cracks and that each and every item gets attention and thought. When you are consistent with your weekly review, the rest falls into place.
We'll also talk a bit about physical space. While this is a paperless system and one that exists completely "in the cloud", you've still got to interface with it somehow. This can make a big impact on how effective it is for you.
Weekly Review.
Of course you need a time that is set aside for making such judgments as assigning the !CRITICAL tag, determining your top three projects, and for managing your system in general. The weekly review is one of the most powerful components of this system. This is where it all comes together into a giant life progressing engine. Once you add the weekly review, this system goes from an organizational system to a full fledged dream fulfilling machine!
In order to fully trust your system, you have to have a time where you can take a step back and work on the system itself. The weekly review is the time for performing clean-up on your lists, making sure your inbox is empty and processed, and reviewing the plans for your active projects. Everyone's weekly review process is different, and you will develop your own style and methodology, which I recommend you record as it evolves. Regardless, you should block out probably 2 hours a week for this purpose and this purpose only. During these two hours, you remove any distractions and simply perform your review. Often times a good time to do this is Friday afternoon, while everything from the week is still fresh in your head. Plus this allows you to get cleaned up and your mind emptied so that you can enjoy the weekend knowing that everything is in order.
Process Email - You want to make sure that your inbox is as close to zero as possible. That's not to say that you won't have action items that you still need to do, but that they're appropriately organized. This is also a good opportunity to follow up on any items that you're waiting for - this ensures a weekly check on any open items, which seems like a good frequency to bug people without annoying them.
Process Evernote Inbox (Untagged Notes) - you probably find that you do a lot of this throughout the week, since tagging notes is really not that time consuming, you likely tag as you go. However, if you've had a busy week and you haven't gotten around to tagging all of the notes in your inbox, this is a good time to do so. Again, this gives you the trust and knowledge that when something goes into your system, it gets acted on, and nothing gets tucked away in the corners and ignored.
Review Goals - This is the time to pull out your goals sheet that we worked on earlier, or whatever you're currently using to track your goals. (you DO need to have your goals written down somewhere). Read through all of your goals, evaluating which ones you're making good progress on, and which ones you need to focus on more. Do you have another project that you should start to move down the path towards achieving any of your goals? If so, add it to your goals sheet and add it to Evernote. Some of your goals may need to be updated as you progress or taken off the list altogether as you complete them. This is a great time to 'check in' with your long-term desires and re-motivate yourself - this also helps to keep your goals fresh in your mind. A little bit of visualization here never hurts...
Review Projects - Here you'll want to review all of your currently projects, and any new projects you just created. You want to make sure that you at least have a 'next action' identified for each project. You may plan out the next several steps, or you may not. As long as you have something that you can go out and do today that will move the project along. Here's where you can do some informal prioritization of your projects. Some people subscribe to the idea that you should have a top three projects that you are really focusing on each week. This is a good time to identify which of your projects are going to be your top three for next week. Where is your focus going to be and what is important to really drive forward? Items on these top three projects can be identified with a !CRITICAL tag, ensuring that they'll float to the top at the beginning of next week.
Review To Do Lists - You want to make sure that everything you completed got a Done tag. Read briefly over all of the tasks that you have open. See if any jump out at you as no longer relevant, or needing an update to keep it accurate. Part of this review includes reviewing any habits that you've been working on establishing. How did you do this week? Do you need to renew your efforts on any particular habit next week?
Review Someday/Maybe List - Again, the power of the Someday/Maybe list is knowing that it's not an idea graveyard, that it does actually get reviewed on a regular basis. This is when you do that review. Are there any items that you're ready to do now? Anything that needs to be moved into Active Projects? Are there maybe's on the list that you've decided to definitely not do that can be removed completely?
Review Calendar - Here you want to go back through the last week's calendar to jog your memory of any action items that you took from any meetings, any follow-up items that you discussed during an event. You will also want to review the upcoming week, identify when your downtime is going to be this upcoming week. Walk-through your week and ensure there aren't' any conflicts. Mentally prepare yourself for what you have upcoming and make sure there isn't anything you need to be doing in order to be prepared for each event.
Review Your Finances - While not directly related to this system, this is a good time to review your spending for the past week. Compare it to your budget, how are you trending? Do you need to scale back your spending next week to get back on track, or are you coming in low for the week? Most of us budget by the month, but it's not a bad idea to get a weekly touch-point to make sure that we're staying on track.
Review Your Diet - Have you been eating healthy? Did you slip and eat a bunch of junk food this week? You can get really detailed about this and track measurements and times for your eating habits, or you can just do this based on a loose recollection of your eating trends. Both are helpful for keeping you aware of what you're putting in your body and serves as a good checkpoint to make sure it's what you want.
Character Review OR Be Creative and Courageous - Did you do anything last week that went outside of your comfort zone? Did you push yourself to do something that made you uncomfortable? If you're not taking risks on a fairly regular basis you're going to get stagnate. To keep growing, you want to constantly be living on your edge. Some time reflecting about your edge, and how you've pushed it lately is healthy and can be a great prod to ensure that you're growing as a human being.
You may want to add other items to your weekly review. Please contribute your ideas in the comments.
Don't RUSH your weekly review. Set aside the time and be thorough. This is probably the most important part of the system as a whole. This allows you to have confidence that nothing will slip through the cracks, as well as raise out of the muck and the 'doing' to step back and to do some strategic planning. This allows you to stay on the course that you have chosen, so that you can be assured you'll end up at the goal you desire.
Physical Space.
This has made a big enough difference to me that I thought it worth mentioning in this guide. If at all possible, if you spend any significant amount of time in front of your computer, or use it for a good number of your tasks, I highly recommend getting a second monitor for your machine. Having two monitors side-by-side, hooked up to the same machine, has changed the way that I use the computer. It allows you to compare and contrast, to drag from one window to another with ease, to reference one document while working on another, and any number of other efficiencies that you'll find you gain. Specifically relevant to this topic, if you have your Evernote window open on your second monitor with your GTD system up on it, you have instant access to your target actions. You also have the ability to dump ideas in their proper place as soon as they come to you.
If you're in the middle of something, and you get distracted and feel the familiar pull to take a quick detour, simply hit CTRL-N, pop open a new note and jot down the idea that you just had. You can come back to it when you're finished with your current task. Don't let every little stray though derail your current flow. Jot down the note and get back to the task at hand. After a while your mind will become accustomed to this process and you'll find it much easier to stay focused. It's almost as if your subconscious will realize that you're serious, you won't be distracted, and will eventually give up.
Flat-panel monitors have come down so much lately in price that you really have nothing to lose by adding a second screen. If you use a laptop, you can use the laptop screen as one screen and then an external flat-screen sitting next to it for the auxiliary screen.
Conclusion.
We've reviewed the need for an organization and time management system. It's going to allow you to be more successful at reaching your goals. A good system will have the unique effect of lowering your stress levels and raising your productivity. You'll find you get more done without expending more effort. When you are properly organized you'll have that comforting feeling of knowing that everything is being taken care of. It allows you to relax completely when it's time to relax, and focus on what needs to be done when it's time to be productive.
We've reviewed one example of an organizational system, based on GTD. This is the system that I'm using currently and it's working really well for me. When I find improvements that need to be made, I make tweaks to the system, that's the beauty of it. Share in the comments what you use for your organizational system and what tweaks you've made for efficiency. There are certainly multiple approaches that can be adopted.
This concludes my series on GTD and Evernote. If you haven't read the previous articles, I recommend starting at the beginning.
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