Coping with an "all hands on deck" moment
Question for the GTDers out there:
The past few days, we've been in a really intense cycle at work. So much of one, that I haven't been able to carve out time to sift through my inbox and next actions. How does everyone cope with these moments? Do you just put in a hard stop to allocate time for inbox processing, or do you let it pile for a day or two and then have one larger session?
Currently I'm using the task emailer and just shoveling things off until the workload lets me focus back on my normal todos, but that feels like it's in violation of the daily review. This is especially true if something in my inbox was supposed to have a due date.
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2 Posted by Proximo on 28 Sep, 2010 02:04 PM
Jakob,
There is nothing wrong with missing a weekly review if you are extremely busy. David Allen himself said that sometimes he won't get to his weekly review for 2 weeks due to travel.
The important thing is that you do set aside some time to do the weekly review because it's the most important part of GTD. There is no law that says you will go to GTD Jail if you missed a week, but don't make it a habit.
David Allen also said the only reason he calls it a weekly review is to emphasize the importance of doing it, but it's no the end of the world if you skip a week due to your schedule.
With that said, what I do is set some time out for my weekly review that takes priority of everything else. There is always an exception to the rule, but I usually don't allow anything to cut into my weekly review time. If it takes you two weeks to get to it, it's fine. The important thing is that you do it and don't get in a habit of letting it slip. If the weekly review starts to slip into 3 weeks or more, your GTD system will start to fail you.
My suggestion is to find a date and time that works for you to conduct the Weekly Reviews and stick with it. For me, it's Monday mornings. The very first thing I do on Monday mornings is start my weekly review. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will usually see my tweet about it. I have also done some step by step weekly reviews on twitter.
The reason I tweet my weekly review to others is for accountability. If I feel that others are expecting me to tweet my Weekly Review reminder, I tend to be more responsible and accountable to it. It's a Jedi mind trick that works for me.
May the force be with you. :-)
Note: You can follow me on Twitter if you like. @DamianCastillo
Jakob Heuser closed this discussion on 08 Oct, 2010 06:51 PM.