Yes, I have tried implementing GTD previously, but failed. On reflection, it is because perhaps that I was not actively reviewing my projects. The weekly review was just another diary entry. I hardly ever actualy used it. Good point. (I will implement it!) :-)

I dunno if this helps, as I haven’t been using GTD very long, but do you have your weekly review as a project, or penciled in on your calendar to be done at a certain time? If you don’t have it on the “hard landscape” it seems to me as though you may end up giving yourself permission to feel OK about not doing it. I also think maybe we should shift our paradigms about the weekly review, as being an exciting time to look over all the tings we are, will be and have been accomplishing in our lives, as opposed to this huge daunting task.

On that same note, I could be completely insane…but its working out well for me so far.

One of the most often overlooked components of GTD is checklists. Checklists are really just a subset of lists, only they’re lists that get recycled.

I’ve followed GTD for four years now, and I can tell you that the weekly review is the key to the whole system. If you don’t check up on where you stand in relation to your work and responsibilities at least once a week, things will start slipping through the cracks. Once things start slipping through the cracks, you lose faith in your system. When you don’t trust your system, you revert to keeping everything in your head… and that defeats the whole purpose of GTD.

The key for me is a checklist for the weekly review. I create it as an electronic document that I can revise easily. I usually print 5-10 at a time, so that I’m not wasting paper if I decide to add or remove an item from the list. I have found, however, that I rarely have to revise the list. Once you figure out a good weekly review checklist, it pretty much works.

My weekly review checklist roughly follows the order of initiating a GTD system in the first place: I start by collecting, then I check in on my “must-do-at-this-particular-time-or-die” list (aka, my calendar), then I check my buckets (lists, folders, trays, and e-mail folders), then I empty my head, then I get everything (especially inboxes) to zero.

It’s also important to have a set day that you do the weekly review. David Allen recommends Fridays, so that your mind is clear to enjoy the weekend. I like Monday mornings, because it allows me to plan out my week effectively, and I don’t have the problem of work bleeding into weekends, generally.

A weekly review checklist does help. Also, I make a FIRM appointment with myself to do my weekly review - for me, it’s Friday morning. I don’t allow anything to encroach on this appointment - door is closed; phone is set to “Do Not Disturb” - you get the idea. I try very hard to avoid having to reschedule it - I am simply unavailable to anyone on Friday mornings. Of course, there have been emergencies or something truly unavoidable, but in that case I clear a different spot on my calendar and hold THAT time slot inviolate. The trick is to always consider this one of, if not THE most important things you’ll do all week.

For my setup I have a script that audibly walks me through David Allen’s weekly review and I use iCal to automate it every week.

With iCal you can set an alarm to “open file” and then navigate to the item you want that event to open when the time arrives. So I just navigate to this Weekly Review script, set it to happen once a week (at 9am for me), and I’m regularly reminded when I need to complete my weekly review. It also scores me on how consistently I’m doing my weekly reviews, so there is an added incentive for me to improve my score.