How to do a weekly review
Thirty minutes every Friday that keep your task list trustworthy, with a template and a saved view to make it a habit.
Last reviewed
A task list only helps when you trust it. The weekly review is the habit that earns that trust: once a week you empty every inbox, look at what happened, and decide what matters next. It takes about thirty minutes.
Why weekly
Daily planning is about today. A week is long enough for things to drift (a promise in a meeting, a note on paper, a task that slipped three times) and short enough that catching up is still quick.
The three steps
- Get clear. Collect everything that landed in the last week: paper notes, flagged emails, the Inbox. Turn each into a task or throw it away. Use quick add to type them in fast.
- Look back. Skim what you completed, then deal with everything overdue: do it, give it a new date, or drop it. The Today view puts overdue tasks first.
- Look ahead. Check next week’s calendar and pick three priorities. Mark them
p1so they stand out, as described in the filter guide.
Set it up in OpenTodo
Download the Weekly review template and import it. It creates a project whose tasks repeat every Friday, each with a small estimate so the review fits into half an hour on your Week calendar.
Then create a saved view with the query @review & due <= today and pin it to the sidebar. When Friday comes, that view is your review checklist. Saved views show a live count, so you can see at a glance whether the review is done.
Make it stick
Put it in the same slot every week, ideally Friday afternoon when the week is still fresh. Keep it short: if it takes longer than thirty minutes, you are doing the work instead of reviewing it. Skip a week if you must, but never two.