The weekly review

This is the habit that makes the rest true. Without it, smart lists slowly fill with actions you finished in real life and never ticked, and with projects that have no next step.

Keep it short enough that you will do it when you are busy. Forty-five quiet minutes is plenty once the system is in motion. The first review after a long break takes longer because you are clarifying a backlog, and that longer sitting is the restart described in why.

Do it on a phone, once a week, at a time you already protect. Friday afternoon or Sunday evening both work. Put a repeating reminder in Next, tagged anywhere, titled “Do the weekly review”, if you need the nudge. That reminder is allowed to be dated.

Open the Weekly Review list and walk down it. The steps below are what those checklist items mean.

Get clear

Empty Inbox. Clarify every item with the questions in capture and clarify. Inbox at zero is the definition of done for this step.

Check Today and Scheduled. Overdue items get done, given a new date, or stripped of a date that was wishful. Look a week ahead in Scheduled so deadlines on project subtasks are visible while you can still act early.

Check Waiting. Open the Waiting smart list. For each item: is it still with that person, do you need to nudge, or has it arrived and needs a context tag again? Turn on When Messaging for anyone you are likely to see in Messages this week.

Get current

Open each active project. Work through Projects section by section. For each project:

Is the outcome title still what you are committed to?
Is there at least one subtask you could do now, with exactly one context tag?
Have finished subtasks been left unticked?
Are later steps still in the notes, rather than cluttering the context lists?

A project with no live subtask is easy to miss, because it appears on none of the context smart lists. Give it a next action or move it to Someday.

Scan Next. Anything in Next that now has more than one step becomes a project. Anything you will not do becomes Someday or gets deleted.

Review Someday. One pass. Promote, delete, or leave. You do not owe Someday a full sort.

Clear stale flags. Flags are for the day you meant them. A flag from last week is a decision to remake or drop.

Get creative

Look at the horizons note. Open the single Notes page where you keep goals and the longer picture. Spend about ten minutes. If something there has become a real commitment, create the project, in the right area, with one tagged subtask. If nothing has, you are finished.

After the review

Tick the checklist items, or mark the whole Weekly Review list complete item by item. Next week, show completed and tap them back to open, or create a new list from the Weekly Review template and delete the tired copy.

Then stop reviewing and do one action from the context you are in. The review serves the work. It is not a second job.

When you miss a week

Do the next one. Start at Inbox, then projects with no subtask, then Waiting. Skip the horizons note if time is short. A slightly stale system you review is still a system. A perfect taxonomy you avoid is not.