I've had a hard time getting the review to be a regular thing. When looking at why this is, I realized that the full-on weekly review was just so daunting. It would take hours to get through it all, and the only time I could corral the time for this (Friday afternoons or over the weekend), I would have a hard time getting myself into it.

I heard an interview with one of the GTD coaches on the David Allen podcast, and the coach said that she describes GTD by using four areas:

1) Collect 2) Process 3) Review 4) Do

I know this isn't new to anyone who's read the book, but in hearing it again, I realized that my trouble with the review is that I'm doing #1, 2, and 3 all at the same time. For me, these are three very different brain functions. Once I got done collecting, I could rarely get myself into the processing phase and almost never into the review phase to finish the process.

So instead of doing a weekly review, I decided to try doing one of the first three processes for the first 15 minutes of work every day, before I start doing. Some days, I'll do a 15-minute brain dump. Others, I'll process everything in my inbox and focus on being sure to have next action verbs. Sometimes, I'll just review my someday, waiting, ticklers, and action lists to be sure everything is in the right spot.

I've only just started this breaking up of the weekly review, but for the first time, I've actually gotten through all the stuff I'd wanted to do -- in steps instead of one whopping group. So far, it seems to be working.