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Personal Productivity and a Regular Status Review

Guest post by: Stephen Smith

Article Overview: Schedule a regular weekly or monthly appointment with yourself to review what you have accomplished, and manage what still needs to be done. Close the "Open Loops" in your workflow in order to reduce stress and invest your time wisely.

Personal Productivity and a Regular Status Review

From Getting Things Done, by David Allen:

"The real trick to ensuring the trustworthiness of the whole organization system lies in regularly refreshing your psyche and your system from a more elevated perspective."

The Status Review has real power, the power to heal your mind and let you get your things done. Left undone, life and work come at you too fast for your overloaded mind to keep up. Over and over again you will find yourself overwhelmed, surrounded by "opportunities to excel". When you are surrounded by things that need to get done, tasks to be accomplished and calls to be returned, you can get the feeling that you have nowhere to turn. Without a coherent plan you will have no way to decide what choice to make, and then the feeling that any choice is the wrong one will leave you paralyzed, only to submerge beneath the waves of tasks and responsibilities.

So what do you do? What's the next action?

Be Prepared.

Block out some time in your busy schedule and create a plan for managing all of the pieces of your workflow: what to collect, how to process it, where to organize it, when will this all get done?

The short answer is "now".

The Status Review Checklist is designed to keep your Projects and Next Actions from slipping through the cracks in your memory. Following from the principle of "ruthless iterations", it occurred to me that a Monthly Review and Quarterly Review should also be incredibly useful tools for keeping myself on track. This is how the current system is designed:

Download the the Status Review worksheet here [link].

1. Review the Tickler File ~ Look at all of the folders/pages from the past week, making sure that everything was done. Re-Tickle anything that didn't get done, if appropriate. Jot down any ideas that occur to you while reviewing and put them in the In-Box.

2. Process the In-Box ~ I use this time to pay bills, update my checkbook, file receipts and papers and notes, clean out my wallet, and other little "housekeeping" chores. After the in-box has been emptied, I review and clean up my capture device - a small notebook that I use to capture ideas and information.

3. Calendar Review ~ Simply reviewing the time-specific actions and information from the past week. Does any of it need to get archived for possible retrieval? Then I synchronize my diary with G-Cal, focusing on the full month ahead. My wife and I share a Google calendar, and it has made a world of difference. Finally, in the spirit of efficiency, I process any emails that are sitting in the inbox.

4. Project Review ~ First I close and archive any completed Projects, prepared to jot down any ideas that occur to me as I do this. Next, I update current and forthcoming Projects on the @Project List by asking myself if the Project is still worthwhile. I have saved a great deal of time by letting go of projects that had turned away from the original goal, or if the goal of the project had shifted. While reviewing each Project, I can check the status of Next Actions that are in @Waiting For, and tickle or calendar a contact action for the person responsible for getting back to me. (Do not actually email them now, the purpose of this exercise is review, not do)

5. Next Action Review ~ Clean up the @Next Action list with the focus on "is the action/project still worthwhile" and "what is being waited on". This is the third time the @Next Action list has been looked over by now, so any Next Actions remaining should be valid.

6. Review the Someday/Maybe list ~ Has the Review brought any ideas to the front of your mind that need to be logged here?

7. Review Support Files ~ Scan through these files and archives for inspiration.

8. Brainstorm Creative Ideas ~ What would your current projects look like from beyond the completion date? Envision wild success, what is the best possible result? Capture the features, concepts, and possibilities that you imagine as a result of this success.

When you have completed your Status Review, archive it with your notes in a dated folder, so that you can access it easily for your next Status Review appointment with yourself. Incorporating a scan of your previous Status Reviews into your regular Status Review is very important to your overall success. This scan lets you see real progress being made, which is always good for morale, and it exposes any bottlenecks or roadblocks that are keeping you from accomplishing some of your tasks or projects that do not seem to get anywhere.

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