Time for your weekly review! For those in a Monday-to-Friday work situation, Friday afternoons are a good time to review your to-do lists, inboxes, and desktop (both virtual and real) and prepare for next week.
Review To-Do Lists
Todoist handles my to-do lists these days. I love it because it is easy. When something I think I need to do pops into my brain, I make a new to-do list item. Sometimes these items get deleted because it no longer makes sense to me. Most of the time the item is a quick fix: make an appointment for an oil change, ask my husband about something, etc.
I also look at to-do items that don’t have due dates. In my experience, a to-do without a due date tends to shuffle along and never get done. Fridays are a good time to assign due dates to items. If the item can be broken down into parts, I’ll make subtasks and give those due dates. I’ll mark as done tasks I finished and prioritize the active items.
Review Your Inboxes
Most people hear “inbox” and think only of their email. You actually have several inboxes. Besides email, I have my downloads folder which by the end of the week is pretty full. Most of it just needs deletion, but there are usually a few files that need to move to their real home. These are usually related to my programming projects and just need relocation to the client’s folder on my computer.
My “Camera Uploads” folder on Dropbox also gets reviewed and emptied. These are images I take with my smartphone and are uploaded automatically to Dropbox. Most images get filed either in a client folder or in a folder I’ve set up for all photos in a certain year.
Finally, I use Evernote as my “Second Brain” and during the week just send everything to an inbox folder. These include highlights from Kindle and Instapaper, quotes I’ve saved right in Evernote, interesting facts I want to save, and research notes and images. I process everything and drag them into folders. Evernote has very robust search features, so where I save the files isn’t as important as making sure they will make sense to me in the future.
Review Your Calendar
Review the appointments you had during the past week. Are there any follow-ups needed? Usually, a quick email is all that is needed; if it needs more action I’ll put it in Todoist.
Next review what is on your calendar for the weekend and the following week. Is there anything that needs to be done before that appointment? For example, I had a doctor’s appointment this week. Last Friday I took the time to write down all of my prescriptions and supplements as well as my recent blood sugar tests. I put these into Evernote so I could just open it up and rattle off all of the information to the nurse and doctor.
Next week is a family member’s birthday so I will arrange now for a gift card to be delivered to him on the day of his birthday as well as a Todoist task to call him.
Review Works in Progress
As a programmer as well as a Tarot Consultant, many projects are in progress at any one time. I review all of my work in progress to identify the next step. If I’m waiting on information from someone else I fire off a follow-up email. Project updates, usually just a few lines of “hey, here’s where we are at” go out to each in-progress client.
Review The Piles
I work hard to keep stuff from piling up on my desk, but by Friday there are usually several books, assorted pieces of paper, unopened mail, a magazine or two, and just “I don’t know what to do with this” stuff on my desktop. All of this is put where it belongs, added to my ToDoist if needed, or photographed and stored in Evernote if I feel I need to keep it. The goal is a clean desktop.
My computer desktop is usually clean, but I do check it for shortcuts that appear magically or orphaned files. The only thing on my computer desktop is my trash.
Review Bookkeeping
This task is one I usually put off until forced to get it done, but now I try to update Quickbooks with bank and credit card imports on a weekly basis. Client invoices are usually up-to-date, but I check for any that need to be sent out. On the first Friday of the month, I try to reconcile my bank statement.
Finally, Plan for Next Week
At this point, everything is organized and I have an idea of what is coming up. I schedule a time to work on any long-term projects, prioritize what must get done in ToDoist, and throw in some tasks that will chip away at personal goals. For example, I’m learning Spanish and having trouble with some of the irregular past participles. I added a task to ToDoist to hand-write out the conjugations for the words I’m having trouble with.
Do you have a weekly review? What steps do you take? Let me know in the comments!
What Clients are Saying about Sophrosyne Tarot
I was advised to ask open-ended questions instead of predictive questions which I thought was helpful because I never would have known if it weren’t for the reader. The reader provided the reading along with some advice too so the entire reading was very thorough and explained in an understandable manner.
Everything said was accurate and helpful for me to identify my flaws in order to grow as a person. I have learned a lot about tarot and what it does to help me.
Sounds as though you had a great week due to your productivity ritual.
Enjoy the weekend!
This is excellent, Diane!!!!!
I do my planning at the end of each day. If I were to wait to the end of the week, (a) it would be overwhelming and (b) I might miss something that needs following up
WOW what a detailed plan you have! I need to write everything down or I forget but it’s onlyon scrap paper. Then I lose that and have to go back to my brain. I really need to start using my note pad on my phone. Thanks for all the great advice.