The weekly review is a common productivity practise. It basically involves putting time aside to figure out what’s happening in your life, chase anything that’s fallen through the gaps over the last several days and basically get a clear picture of everything. Every weekend on Twitter I see hundreds of people announce that they are doing their weekly review. But has anybody asked why it has to be weekly? Why not monthly, or even daily? Why, oh why!
So, why not do it daily? If the benefits of reviewing your work on a weekly basis are so great, it surely makes sense that doing it daily will result in… seven times as much greatness? Well no, because we aren’t machines who work 24 hours a day at 110%. We simply don’t do enough work in an average day to need to review our results at the end of it. All you’d be doing is checking a couple of next actions here, jotting down a few forgotten about projects there… micro-managing sucks.
Reviewing monthly then, is a big no-no. If reviewing daily makes you focus on little things, then doing it monthly spreads you too thin. That’s four whole weeks without clearing your head, chasing up loose ends and closing those open loops. Ouch.
Not enough happens in a day that you need to review any of it, but plenty happens in a month, though by then you’ll probably be lost in a foggy haze of unfocused-ness to do anything about it. Doing it weekly is thus the ideal compromise… or is it? I’ve long thought that reviewing as and when you need to is the best approach. What are your thoughts?
March 31, 2009 at 06:14AM
In my experience, it seems that the weekly review basically serves two functions:
I tend to forget some of the things I experience throughout the day, so I try to reflect on my life daily. Even if things weren’t eventful, I still try to figure out why they weren’t eventful and what I can do about it.
As for catching up, if I were to do what I set out to do, then I wouldn’t have to do that (making daily catching up unnecessary). But I don’t always do things perfectly, so in a weeks time there will usually be things for me to catch up on.
Ideally, (or at least my hope is that) one would do a review quite frequently at first. As one becomes better at doing what he hope to achieve, the need for review would become less. I see a review as a safety net to catch you when you start to fall. Do you agree?
March 31, 2009 at 04:36PM
Thanks for the comment. You make a good point about starting out with regular reviews until you get comfortable. Doing it weekly does seem rather specific, though it is a good target to have if nothing else. I think the need to review is so dependent on how much you have going on in your life. The more I’ve simplified my life and what I do, the less things there are that need reviewing.
March 31, 2009 at 11:38PM
It’s tough to say that seven days is the magic number for everyone. I’d rather say that each person should decide how often they should do their reviews, based on the needs of their own time management system.
For example, my mother is retired, and her needs are very different from mine, and I can imagine that she doesn’t need the same frequency that I do.
Also, when I moved from Florida to Jamaica, I noticed that my need to review increased due to the more hectic day to day lifestyle that I started to lead.
Given that each person has their own goals, career, job and system, I think it makes sense to say that each person should use the same principles, but they might very well arrive at different specific practices.
April 2, 2009 at 06:27PM
So it seems that we agree it’s a need based thing and not necessarily seven days. But I do think seven days is a good starting point for people just getting going with the concept of reviewing and are not yet aware of their needs.