Weekly Review
Also known as: GTD weekly review, weekly reset
A weekly review is a recurring session, usually 30 to 90 minutes at the week's edge, where you empty your inboxes, update your task lists and calendar, and choose priorities for the coming week. It fights procrastination indirectly but powerfully: most task systems fail not on day one but through slow rot, and a system you no longer trust sends you back to avoiding the vague pile.
| Origin | Codified by David Allen as a core habit of Getting Things Done (2001), though the practice of a weekly planning session predates it |
|---|---|
| Time required | 30 to 90 minutes, once a week |
| Best for | system rot, juggling many projects, Sunday dread, staying on top of commitments |
| Difficulty | Easy per session; the hard part is keeping the appointment |
How to use weekly review
- Book a fixed slot, Friday afternoon or Sunday evening are the common choices, and treat it as a real appointment.
- Get clear: empty every inbox. Email, notes, pockets, desk, downloads. Decide or file each item.
- Get current: go through every active project and ask what its next physical action is. Cross off the done, delete the dead.
- Scan last week's and next two weeks' calendar for loose ends and needed preparation.
- Get creative: skim your someday list; promote anything whose time has come.
- Finish by naming the three outcomes that would make next week a success.
The weekly review as a ritual has not been isolated in research; it is a practitioner habit from Allen's GTD, and honest labelling means saying no trial has tested it directly. Its plausible mechanisms have partial support: research on the Zeigarnik effect and unfulfilled goals shows that uncaptured commitments intrude on attention, and that making a concrete plan reduces that interference, which is essentially what a review does at scale. An academic analysis of GTD by Heylighen and Vidal argues its practices align well with what is known about distributed cognition and the need to externalise commitments. Supportive theory, absent trials.
Masicampo, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667–683.
Heylighen, F., & Vidal, C. (2008). Getting Things Done: the science behind stress-free productivity. Long Range Planning, 41(6), 585–605.
Allen, D. (2001). Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Viking.
Common mistakes
- Doing the tasks you find during the review. The review is triage; anything over two minutes goes on a list, not into the session.
- Skipping it on busy weeks. Busy weeks are when the backlog builds; a 20-minute reduced review beats none.
- Reviewing without planning. Ending with cleared inboxes but no chosen priorities leaves Monday morning back at a blank page.
Related techniques
Frequently asked questions
What is a weekly review in GTD?
David Allen's recurring habit of getting clear, current and creative: emptying all inboxes, updating every project and list with next actions, scanning the calendar, and reviewing longer-term ideas. He calls it the critical success factor of the whole system.
How long should a weekly review take?
Typically 30 to 90 minutes depending on how many projects you run and how well you kept up during the week. If it regularly takes over two hours, the fix is smaller daily capture, not a longer Sunday.
What day is best for a weekly review?
Whichever slot you will actually keep. Friday afternoon closes the week and empties work from your weekend head; Sunday evening points you at Monday. Both are common; consistency matters more than the day.