The Weekly Overview

I did my weekly overview on a plane ride recently...

In a seminar last week, I talked about (like I always do) how great the weekly overview really is.

It is my:

- time to get back to it all
- time for me, to meet with me
- time to focus on what I think is important
- time to renegotiate what's not so important

and on, and on...

It didn't take that long, it wasn't that hard, I did need - however - the space. On a plane, I'm not connected to the net (yet), I can't make phone calls (yet) and - with the center seat open, and the other person asleep on the window - I didn't have anyone to talk to. (I guess the only other distraction would have been the movie "Monster In Law," but I passed on that one!)

So, what did I do? It's no big secret...and, chances are you can start with what you've got. Take out your planner (Palm, Treo, DayTimer, backs of envelopes, yellow-legal pads, whatever) and go through it line by line. Is it current? Is it complete? Has it changed? Are you really gonna do it?

Before I started studying productivity - books, courses, seminars, audio-programs, etc - I used an ongoing "to-do list." Everything mixed in, pages and pages long. Now, it's still pages and pages (I've got over 300  actions and outcomes right now) but it's a bit more intuitive to manage.

I like to carve this time out of my week, every week - doing a complete weekly overview - so the rest of the week, say like right now, I just work off of those updated, clear, current, complete lists. (For example, I decided to write this Blog post because I have a "Blog Ideas" category in my Treo organizer. There I add anything I see, hear or experience that I "might" want to write about some time.)

Comments

[RH]

Sorry, Andy...Jason's bad...maybe he'll gift you an expresso as an apology.

[Andy Cunningham]

"I was gifted a book..."

"Gift is a noun". You might have been "given a book", or even the slightly redundant "given a book as a gift". But you give something, not gift it.

This is one of only three abuses of English that annoy me to the point of making pedantic comments. The other two are putting an "x" in espresso, and the mistaken belief that "My bad" is a sentence (I always reply with "Your bad what?")