Field notes · 3 min read · Reflect and learn

A weekly review you can finish and want to return to

A weekly review can become a project of its own. You tidy every list, sort every note and build a perfect plan for a week that will almost certainly change. By the time you finish organizing, you have little attention left for deciding.

The review below is deliberately small. Give it 20 minutes, ideally at the same time each week, and stop when you have answered six questions.

The six questions

1. What did I capture and not look at? Read what came in this week. Turn the useful pieces into an action, a note or a decision, and let the rest go. An idea does not become a commitment because you wrote it down.
2. What has a real date? List what is due in the next two weeks, and for each one write the next step clearly enough that you will know when it has happened.
3. What is stuck or waiting? Name what is blocked and on whom. If you are waiting for someone, decide whether to nudge them this week.
4. Which important things stayed quiet? Pick the two or three areas you care about and look for what you actually did for each. On paper, check your calendar and sent mail. Which moved? Which did not, and is that a choice?
5. What did I learn or notice? Write two or three sentences. If a lesson seems reusable, mark it to turn into a rule later.
6. What will I do next week? Choose one important action, the commitments you must keep, and nothing more. Account for the attention you really have, not an empty calendar.

Why a review at all

The weekly review is the habit David Allen's Getting Things Done puts at the centre of the method: his view is that lists only stay useful if you go back and update them. Research gives a narrower kind of support. A meta-analysis of 138 experiments found that prompting people to monitor progress toward a goal helped on average, and helped more when the progress was written down. That supports keeping a record, not the weekly review specifically, and the results varied. Try the review for a month and keep it only if it earns its time.

Where Trellis helps, and where it does not

In Trellis the same questions have places to look. Captures hold what you have not reviewed. This Week shows deadlines, blockers and the important Focus Areas next to the evidence for each, such as days without activity. The Timeline shows what you did, and reflections and Playbook entries hold what you decided to keep. Trellis has no "waiting for" list. A blocked Action with the person's name in its title is the closest thing today.

Try this week

1. Pick a fixed slot, for example Friday at 4pm, and put it in your calendar.
2. Run the six questions with a timer for 20 minutes, and stop when it rings.
3. Write the one important action for next week at the top of your list, and see on Monday whether it helped.