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The weekly review: give every project its next step

Once a week, give every project its next step: empty your inbox, check each project, write any missing steps. How it works, and a dypt setup.

AuthorDane PoyzerDane Poyzer
•about 12 hours ago•9 min read
Three blank project cards pinned on a corkboard, each with a small green sticky note pinned beneath it as its next step, beside an empty letter tray
On this page12 sections

Your to-do list worked brilliantly on Monday. By the following week it's full of things you've already done, things you no longer need to do and projects you haven't touched, and you stop trusting it. Nothing went wrong in particular. The list just drifted out of date while you were busy doing the work.

The weekly review is a way to catch that drift. Once a week, you sit down with your whole list and give every project its next step. It comes from David Allen's Getting Things Done, and it's simpler than it sounds.

The weekly review at a glance

  • What it is: a regular check-up for your to-do list, done once a week.
  • The core move: make sure every project you've committed to has a next step written down.
  • The three steps: empty your inbox, check each project, and write a next step for any project that doesn't have one.
  • Who it helps: anyone whose list is accurate on Monday and out of date by the next.
  • The catch: it only works if it happens, so book it like an appointment.

Where it comes from

The weekly review is part of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD), first published in 2001. GTD has five steps (capture, clarify, organise, reflect and engage), and the weekly review belongs to the fourth, which Allen's site sums up as "Review frequently". (GTD is episode 18 of our Do the thing series.) Allen has called it the "critical success factor" in making GTD stick. Capturing tasks is the easy part; keeping the list current is the hard part.

The David Allen Company publishes a full checklist on that page, grouped under three headings: get clear, get current and get creative. It runs from collecting loose papers to reviewing your someday/maybe list. This article doesn't reproduce it. Instead it uses a simplified, three-step version focused on your inbox and your projects' next steps. If you want the official version, read Allen's own checklist. (GTD Weekly Review is a registered trademark of the David Allen Company; this is our plain-English take, not the official programme.)

This article sticks to the review. For the whole system, see Getting Things Done, plainly explained.

How the weekly review works

Why a list stops working

A to-do list is a set of promises to yourself. Every day you add some, finish some and forget about others. Projects are where it goes wrong most often: "Sort out the garden" sits on the list for weeks because nothing on it says what to actually do next. When you look at the list, you skip it, and soon you skip the list.

Allen's term for the fix is a next action: the next visible, physical thing you'd do to move a project forward. We call it the next step. "Garden" is a project. "Buy seeds" is a next step. You can't do a project, but you can do a step.

The weekly review is the moment you check that every project has one.

Three panels: an inbox tray emptying, a row of seven days zooming out to three project cards, and each project card getting a green next-step tab
Empty the inbox, check each project, then give any project without one its next step.

Step 1: Empty your inbox

Start with everything that's piled up since last time: notes on your phone, scribbled reminders, emails you flagged, things people asked you to do. Allen's checklist calls this getting "in" to zero.

Go through each item and decide what it is. A quick job can just be done now, which is the two-minute rule from episode four of our Do the thing series. Anything bigger that you need to do goes onto your list, as a task or as a step under the project it belongs to. Keep reference material somewhere you can find it, set aside ideas for later, and bin what you no longer need.

When you've finished, the inbox is empty. Not sorted, empty.

Step 2: Check each project

Most of the week you look at your list a day at a time: what's due today, what's next. That's the right view for doing the work, but it hides the projects that have nothing due.

So zoom out from your days to your projects. Glance at last week and the week ahead on your calendar for anything that needs a follow-up. Then look at every project you've committed to, one by one. Allen's checklist describes the same thing: review your project lists and make sure each has at least one current next action.

Step 3: No next step? Write one

For each project, ask one question: what's the very next thing I'd do?

  • Garden → "Buy seeds"
  • Website → "Email the designer"
  • Holiday → "Pick dates"

Make the step specific enough that you could start it without thinking. "Work on website" isn't a step; "Email the designer" is. If a project has finished, tick it off. If you've lost interest, move it off your active list rather than leaving it there to nag you.

That's the review. Every project leaves it with a written next step, so next week, when you look at your list a day at a time, your projects are on it as things you can start.

The catch: book it, like an appointment

The weekly review has one weak point: it's easy to skip. There's never an urgent reason to do it, so the busiest weeks, when you'd benefit from it most, are the weeks it gets pushed back.

So treat it like an appointment, not a good intention. Pick a slot that suits your week, put it in your calendar and keep it the way you'd keep a check-up. Which slot you pick matters less than the fact that it's booked.

While you're there, you might also glance at any methods you've tried lately, such as the ones in our Do the thing series, and keep whichever are earning their place. That's our suggestion, not part of Allen's checklist.

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • It's small. Three steps, once a week, on paper or in any app.
  • It looks at the right thing. It focuses on projects without a clear next step, which are easy to miss day to day.
  • It's a regular check. Once a week you get a chance to spot a missing step before the project goes quiet for longer.

Limitations

  • It needs a booked slot. Left to good intentions, it tends to slip.
  • It doesn't choose for you. The review makes sure every project has a step; deciding which step matters most this week is a separate job. The ABC method is one way to do that.
  • It's one part of GTD. If you want the full system, with contexts, waiting-for lists and the rest, Allen's book and checklist go much further.

How dypt helps with the weekly review

The method works with a notebook. Where dypt helps is step 3, because a next step is exactly what dypt is built around: any task can be broken down into smaller steps, called subtasks, and those can be broken down again.

In dypt, a project is just a task with subtasks. "Website" is the task; "Email the designer" is its first subtask, which makes the next step part of the project rather than a separate note.

  1. Open each project. Click a task (or select it and press →) to open its page and see its subtasks.
  2. Add the next step as a subtask. If none of the project's unfinished subtasks is something you could do next, add one, for example "Email the designer". On desktop you can also select the task, press + and type the step without leaving your list.
  3. Keep the next step at the top. In Hierarchy view you can drag subtasks to change their order, so the next step is the first thing you see.
  4. Stuck for a first step? Open the task's AI menu and choose Suggest subtasks. dypt adds suggested subtasks, which you can then edit, reorder or delete.
  5. Book the review itself. Create a task called "Weekly review" and give it a deadline at your chosen time, plus a reminder if you want a nudge. Then open Repeat, choose Weekly and your day, keep Deadlines selected so each week's copy has one, and press Start Repeating. How repeating tasks work covers the details.

Subtasks are on every dypt plan, including the free plan, and count as ordinary tasks towards your plan's task limit. Suggest subtasks uses one AI action each time; the free plan includes 25 AI actions a month. For more, see the hierarchical task manager, AI task breakdown and how to break down large tasks.

Wrapping up

Your list stops working when its projects run out of next steps. Once a week, empty your inbox, check each project, and write a next step for any project that doesn't have one. Then book next week's review before you close the list.

If you'd like each project's next step to live inside the project, try it in dypt, free to start.

Sources and further reading

Part 20 of 23

Do the thing

Productivity methods, one at a time: what each method is for, where it really comes from, and how to try it in dypt. Most parts go with an episode of our Do the thing videos.

PreviousDon't break the chain: how to keep a new habit goingNextPersonal kanban: the WIP limit matters more than the board
  1. 1Task prioritization methods: how to choose the right one
  2. 2Eisenhower matrix: sort tasks by urgent and important
  3. 3The Ivy Lee method: write tomorrow's six tasks tonight
  4. 4'Eat That Frog': tackle your most daunting tasks first
  5. 5Eat the frog vs the Eisenhower matrix: which to use?
  6. 6The two-minute rule: do small jobs now, don't list them
  7. 7Parkinson's law: why a 10-minute job takes all afternoon
  8. 8The Pomodoro technique: one task, 25 minutes, a break
  9. 9Time blocking: how to actually find time for your work
  10. 10Pomodoro vs Time Blocking vs Timeboxing: Start, Plan or Stop?
  11. 11The 80/20 rule: find the few tasks that matter most
  12. 12Pickle Jar Theory: fit the big work into busy weeks first
  13. 13Most important tasks (MITs): do your top three first
  14. 14The 1-3-5 rule: plan one big job, three medium and five small
  15. 15MIT, Ivy Lee or 1-3-5: which prioritization method to use?
  16. 16ABC method for task prioritization: the ABCDE version
  17. 17The MoSCoW method for task prioritization
  18. 18Getting Things Done (GTD), plainly explained
  19. 19Don't break the chain: how to keep a new habit going
  20. 20The weekly review: give every project its next step
  21. 21Personal kanban: the WIP limit matters more than the board
  22. 22Task batching: group similar small jobs into one session
  23. 23Timeboxing: decide when to stop before you start
Dane Poyzer

Written by

Dane Poyzer

Chartered accountant turned developer, building the tools I always wished existed.

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