Hello and welcome to Collaboration Coach. My name's Matt.
Today we're going to talk about a productivity technique called The Weekly Review
and I'm going to show you how you can use Microsoft's task manager To Do to implement it
and if you stick around to the end of the video,
I'll share a tip on how to schedule some focus time with Teams so you're not disturbed while you're doing your review.
The weekly review is from one of my favorite books on productivity
and that's David Allen's 'Getting Things Done',
and the basic idea is to dedicate time to capturing your tasks,
prioritising them and then scheduling time to complete them.
it should be about an hour long but it's entirely up to you.
The weekly review has a lot of steps to remember so a good way to help capture them
so you can repeat them in the same way every week
is to set them all up in To Do.
So first I'm going to create a new list called The Weekly Review
I'm going to put three tasks into the list.
The first task is going to be called 'Get clear'
and we're going to use this to capture any information we've been carrying around with us that needs actioning
and there are three categories so I'm going to add three steps to the task.
The first step is 'Loose paper',
and this is where we capture all the receipts, the business cards, letters and things like that.
So you can skip this one if you're completely digital.
Step two is called 'Get in to empty',
and this will be for capturing your digital notes, chats, emails and texts and anything else that is incoming.
And step three is to empty your head.
So this is for anything you've been carrying around in your brain that you don't want to have to remember.
Now i'm going to schedule this task by adding a due date
and I'll choose 'pick a date' and then I'm going to pick the next Friday.
Then I'll set it to repeat weekly.
If you want to know more about To Do then check out my To Do Essentials course.
It's got everything you need to master task management with Microsoft To Do.
You can buy it stand-alone or as part of our Collaboration School subscription.
If you're interested I'll put the links in the description.
The task for the next part of the review is to 'Get current'
and this one is about reviewing what you did over the last week and what you're planning to do next.
It has six steps so let's put all those in
Step one is to review your next actions list,
and this could be any list you keep in To Do, Outlook, OneNote or wherever else.
Step two is to review your previous week's calendar
and step three is to review your upcoming calendar items
Step four is to review anything you're waiting for other people to do for you.
These are the dependencies you have on other people doing things before you can finish your work.
Step five is to review your project plans
and step six is to review any other checklists you have.
I'm going to add a due date to this task as well - the same Friday as 'Get clear'
and again I'm going to choose a weekly repeat.
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The last task we're going to set up is 'Get creative',
and this is where you think about all the work that you could do
and there are two steps for this one.
Step one is called 'Review someday maybe list'.
If you keep a wish list of all the things that you'd like to do one day
like ideas for your business, books you want to read, courses you want to take,
then this is where you'll review those
and think about when you could fit them into your week.
Step two is called 'Be creative and courageous'.
In this step you review those ideas that you only dream of doing
and if you could weave any of them into your next week's work
You can obviously customise any of these steps to make them work for you.
These examples are taken from the book and they're just to get you started
but over time you should definitely develop your own.
So that's the steps and now I'll set the same due date and repeat
just like the last two.
When it comes to actually running the review
treat it like an important meeting with your best customer.
Protect it and don't be disturbed or distracted during it.
Block out the time in your calendar so you can't be invited to another meeting,
and if you plan to have the review on the same day at the same time then add a recurrence in Outlook.
I do my review on a Friday afternoon because I think it helps me download everything from my head,
disconnect from work for the weekend
and also sets me up for Monday morning.
If you use Microsoft Teams then you could use the 'Focus time' feature to block your calendar
and that will mute chats and notifications so you won't be disturbed during your review.
To book Focus Time, open the Viva Insights app in Teams and go to the Protect Time page
Find the day that you want to run the review.
You can change the name of the time to Weekly Review
and then choose 'Book time'.
This will add an appointment to your calendar in Teams and Outlook.
Now go into Outlook and you'll see the booked time on the calendar
and you can edit that time if you need to.
You can move it around either by dragging it or opening it up and changing it there,
and that change will be reflected in Teams.
You can make it recurring from here too
if you're planning to have the review on the same day every week.
Okay so now that time is booked and protected.
When it comes to starting the review we can go to To Do,
and each of the three parts of the process can be worked through and ticked off as we go.
When we're all done I can complete the task and as you can see,
because it's on a repeat, the original task is moved to the completed list
and a new task is created for the following week's review.
I could do the same with 'Get current' and 'Get creative'
and they also are recreated in the same way with the new date.
I only need to set up my weekly review once in To Do
and after that they're there for me every week.
Okay so that's how you can set up your weekly review using Microsoft To Do, Outlook and Teams.
I hope you find this useful
and if you're doing a weekly review already then please let us know how you do it,
like which list you set up, what tasks and what steps you have
and please let us know in the comments.
So thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
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