Last Sunday I considered my weekly review. The goal is really two things. First, I want the previous week that has already past to be reckoned with: what went well, what didn't, what was accomplished, what is left? Secondly, I want to plan the next week: what will I do, what should I accomplish, and is there any new drive I have towards something?
Depending on which direction I am leaning at the given moment, I'm likely to think of weekly review as either review or vision and planning. When I considered this more, I decided that they should be their own unique sessions. I will be better at evaluating the previous week if I am doing just that. I will be better at planning the next week if I am doing just that.
I'm going to call the examination of the previous week, week in review. This should include any and all steps that involve exaimining the previous week, making judgements about it. It should be a deadline for all work before it, so that any task that could cross the week in review boundry must be broken into a smaller task before hand.
It would be a good thing to create a checklist and then to use that to go through the review process. One must come up with their own review process, these are some items that I find helpful.
I found the best place in my schedule for this seems to be the end of the day on Friday. I want Sunday morning to still be reserved for planning. This leaves me the space between Friday evening and Sunday morning.
For my schedule, when I considered this blank space an idea came to mind.
I spend more time than I'd like on the computer. If I am in my office and bored, I have a number of patterns with the computer to take my attention. It is a disturbing feeling when I close a webpage because I am done and don't want to see it anymore, and then a few seconds later I automatically open it back again. I don't like that I do that. Sometimes I take proactive steps by blocking websites, but getting away from the computer for an extended period of time on a regular schedule isn't something I've done until this past Saturday.
It made sense to me then that this Saturday between the week in review and the weekly planning should become special. It should be a different type of day than the days of working or planning or reviewing.
So for this day, I set rules and structure on acceptable behavior rather than rules on directing my attention through timeblocking -- granting the exception of the fundemental routines. The goal is to create rules and structures that result in differences from all of the other days. These differences may then teach me things about myself and my interests.
My ruleset is exceedingly simple right now. On Friday after week in review, I close all of the windows on the computer and then unplug the monitor. This way, even if habit makes me touch the shift key, nothing will happen with the computer monitor. On Saturday night, right before bed, I plug it in for use in the morning.
Saturday then will be a time for physical work, reading and writing, visiting with friends and socializing. This first Saturday also had about 3 hours of laying on the floor in various rooms looking at the ceiling and wondering what to do. It's been a damn long time since I've done that, so I'm considering this pretty successful so far.
Once Sunday arrives and the morning routines are over it's time to begin planning the week.
To begin I use stream of conciousness free writing. The times when I get the most value out of this exercise my mind and hands sort of just take over and it's like watching yourself write. Computer keyboards work rather well, I use a typewriter for this and it's the most effective for me to get into that sort of a rhythm because of the way my arms move up and down to use it. I've never been able to approch that in handwriting. This is a good way for me to shake out loose thoughts and see them, and it tends to play very well with the next step.
Once that is done, my next step is to list all of my desires. Listing them until I have no desire left unlisted. Asking myself what I want is something I should be regularly doing. Asking the deeper question of what it under that desire and deconstructing it is useful for large ones.
Through this process, desires can be better understood. Some desires may be simple and easy, some complex. The change from now to the desire being manifest or fulfilled may be minutes or years. Some may require epic projects, while others may need a 3 minute task done every day. The goal at this stage is to understand what getting to that desire really involves and what I really want from it.
I don't want to maintain a list of desires, however. I want a list of projects, habits and tasks. Habits, for me, need to be scheduled and on a checklist. I like to group them together, morning, after brunch, after nap, after dinner. I have four places in the day to stick something I want to happen every day, and it's a matter of updating the daily sheet to contain them.
For projects, if it's something I want to do but I'm not going to do it this week it goes on a physical piece of paper that contains a list of projects. The point is that I don't want projects I'm not working on this week to be anywhere near my actual project system. That should be clear by the end of the week.
After updating the projects list, I'll go through it to decide if any project should be worked on, further planned, broken into tasks and added to the system for the week.
For me, that system for the week is a printed timeblock schedule and daily pages that act as the source of truth for the day. I discuss it more in Framework For Action. Aside from that, there is innumerable software packages for managing tasks, habits, and schedules. The important thing is you're comfortable with it and make use of it.