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Originally published 14 April 2006
I’ve already said that I think the Weekly Review is the thing that makes the whole GTD system work. Recently I ran across an excellent checklist that someone had put together about what is in their weekly review. I started to think about my weekly review as well. I realized that I do a lot of the collecting and processing on a daily basis, and that I consider this separate from the weekly review. Here is my daily checklist so you can see how I handle the daily collect/process cycle:
Daily Checklist
- Gather the following into my physical in box:
- Postal mail
- Notices from my daughter’s school
- Artwork from my daughter (this gets dated, scanned and sent to the grandmothers)
- Papers from my wallet (receipts, appointment cards)
- Stray papers from work
- My moleskin notebook
- My PDA (I process Diddlebug daily)
- Fire up my computer
- Start up my email program
- Start up Agendus
- Start up Bonsai
- Process contents of my In box, deciding if action or no action
- Delegate: if partner, put on his desk or send an email; if it is something I need the results from, I make an entry in Bonsai and link it to a Waiting For task in my to do list
- Defer: if it is a non-electronic thing, I place it in my tickler file. Electronic items get put into Bonsai and/or my calendar.
- Do: if the item will take less than two minutes to complete and can be done now, I do it. Otherwise, an entry gets made in Bonsai and linked to my to do list
- Toss: I separate recyclable and non-recyclable stuff. Non-recyclable gets tossed in the trash. Things to be shredded get put in a folder for shredding at the end of the week. The rest gets put into a recycling folder that I empty at the end of the week.
- Someday/Maybe: Physical items get put in the tickler. Electronic items get entered into Bonsai and marked as a Someday.
- File: Physical things to file either get placed in the filing folder (for reference material) for filing at the end of the week or in the appropriate project file. Electronic things to be filed get put in the appropriate electronic folder, or if a paper copy is needed, printed and placed in the appropriate physical file.
- Save everything and Sync.
- Review my NA list on Bonsai and move things over to my To do list as needed
Update June 2007
I have changed a couple of things:
- My daughter’s artwork gets collected in a spot by the door for a week. Each piece is date stamped as it comes in, and at the end of the week she gets to choose one item to keep. The rest goes into an envelope for one of the grandmothers.
- Stray papers from work I keep in my covered binder, and the whole thing goes into my in box. I routinely stock these with project papers for on-the-go productivity, and I clean out what needs it weekly.
- My Bonsai system has become the main workhorse (see the Bonsai article series), and everything electronic gets processed there. It only gets moved to Agendus at the end of the day.
- Email: I only start up email once a night (if that), and it’s not the first thing I do. After all other processing is done, I will start it up and process all emails into my electronic folders.
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6 comments ↓
Hi LJ,
I have been following through your blog closely and I am happy to say that I have setup my Bonsai sysetm as stated in your blog and I find it very useful. Now I am starting to get things done as much as possible with this setup.
After going through your Bonsai setup I believe you collect and process all your actions in Bonsai and link up the NA items to Task list. So everyday you look at your Task list for the works to be done, am I right to say this.
Now I have one question in regards to your point 6 in this article. When you say you process your inbox where is this inbox? Is it in Palm or in your desktop? If its so what program do you use as your inbox? By the way I would also like to know how do you use the @Daily category in your task list.
Once again thanks for your wonderful blog.
Regards
Venki
Thanks for the kind words, Venki! I’m glad you’re finding this blog useful.
For point #6, I’m referring to my physical in-box that sits on my desk. Anything that has a physical presence ends up there. This includes my PDA. I process things off my PDA “in-box” (I use Slap and Diddlebug to make entries, when I don’t put them directly into Bonsai) at this time.
Side note: I could probably simplify and only use Slap, but sometimes I end up writing notes with a less-than-accurate stylus (read: fingernail) and I need the flexibility of Diddlebug.
I was thinking about how I handle my e-inbox. Outside of email, which has a built-in in-box, I have a folder that resides on a thumb drive. I use it both at work and home, and use the program FolderSync to keep it up to date. The e-inbox gets processed once during the weekly review, mainly because I haven’t found a need to process it more than that. Things don’t pile up there like they do in my physical in-box.
I hope this helps!
I got it now. Thanks for your detailed explanation.
LJ, I think in my previous comment I had asked you, how do you use the @Daily category in your task list. What are the things you put in there and how do you maintain that list, like how does it get repeated daily.
I have few tasks that needs to be done daily and I want to make it a habit to look at the Daily list and complete them as soon as I get back to office. Would like to know, once checked off the list how does it gets repeated daily in the task list?
Thanks and Regards
Venki
Venki, regarding @Daily:
I’m sorry I didn’t respond on the last one and you had to ask again. Yesterday was very hectic!
My @Daily is stuff that I am using to build positive habits. I try to choose one habit a month to learn. Also, my @Daily has things I want to read every day.
Example of reading: some of the things I want to read every day include “Don’t hurry!”, “Move with the flow and be present” and “Try new things”.
Example of habit-building: “Do one line journal” and “Set up checklists for tomorrow”.
As far as how I do the repeating, I rely on an old Palm program called ReDo. It allows you to set up items and then at a set time it will wake up your PDA and push items into the Palm task lists. ReDo allows not only daily repeats, but other periodicity…it’s very flexible. I will try and swing my review of ReDo over to this blog this week.
I also use Agendus as a Palm application overlay, and this also does repeating tasks, but I choose to stay with ReDo because I don’t like the clutter that comes from tasks hanging around until the next time they need to come up. ReDo puts new tasks in to the the task list, rather than adding a repeat on existing ones. I really dislike changing a repeated entry in Agendus and getting the message “Change All? Current? Future?” — and I’ve had problems with the functionality working correctly. I’ve never had a problem with ReDo.
I also use HandyShopper as a checklist program for things that are already habit but I want to make sure I complete. I have certain things I need to do daily with regard to the house (such as setting up the robotic vacuum in certain rooms, children’s laundry on certain days etc.), and these are set up there. I also use a program called Look At Me that will ring an alarm and bring HandyShopper (or any other program) up so that I remember to actually *do* the checklist. I use Handyshopper for this type of thing because I really don’t want these items cluttering up my to-do list.
I’m not sure if either of these will help you, but you might want to look into them. HandyShopper and LookAtMe are free, and ReDo is low-priced (and worth every penny!)
LJ
LJ,
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I am wondering how internet has changed for the good of people like me , so that we can get help from people we have not met in person. I am really thank ful for having found your blog since I am now pushing on the right track to productivity. Thanks once again.
Thanks for introducing the wonderful small softwares like lookatme and redo. I am now reinforcing few habits that I was procrastinating for ever.
I will let you know once I have finalised my system.
Just to share with you, while working on something if I get to remember or think of a job to do, I will note it down in Bonsai without even going to the program. I use autohotkey to do it. Its a small program that runs in my pc. I use Win+B to launch it and enter the task. It gets saved under my current outline in Bonsai. This way I dont have to switch between applications to capture the task into Bonsai.
If you are in simillar situation, I would like to share with you the autohotkey program for better productivity.
Thanks and Regards
Venki
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