Project review vs weekly review

Hi everyone,
With the ability to review projects individually on their own schedule, do you exclude it from your weekly review?

It depends. I have most projects set to review weekly. Some I review less often; those I will usually not review until their scheduled time comes up. Some are set to review more often than once a week. For those I’ll review them in the weekly review as well as the daily review when they come up.

I schedule different review intervals for different projects/Single Actions Lists (SALS).

Anything that has a lot of changes gets reviewed more frequently. I use this to make sure that my projects stay up-to-date with the latest changes. Some are daily. Others are every 2-4 days depending on how much change occurs. If I have a major project that must be done ASAP, I’ll set it to 1-2 days.

Projects that don’t get changed a lot will have a longer review. Usually staggered throughout the week.

When I’m doing the daily review, I used the review as the tickler for me to check up on each project or SAL. I ask these questions:

  1. Did I complete a task and forgot to check it off as complete? That would make the next task available.
  2. Are there any tasks or projects stuck?
  3. Can I rename or re-arrange the tasks to get it un-stuck?
  4. Were there any tasks that needed to be broken down into sub-tasks?
  5. Do I put the project back to On Hold status when another project gets higher priority?

In the Weekly Review, I go to a custom perspective that shows my “On Hold Projects”.
Screen Shot 2021-08-23 at 10.57.48 AM

In this perspective. this shows all projects that I have committed to working on “someday.” It’s not a “Maybe” project. It’s a “Someday” project."

When I visit this perspective, I make the following decisions:

  1. Is this Someday project still important? If it is no longer important or relevant, delete it. If I can delegate it to someone else, I’ll print out this project and forward it to that person.
  2. Is there anything I can do to un-block this project? Maybe I need to re-arrange the tasks to kickstart it? Maybe I need to add new tasks to help prepare the project. Tasks like “Get new file folders from the supply office” and “install new MacOS update and new versions of Adobe InDesign” to get the project started.
  3. After looking at my calendar to see how busy I am next week or next month, can I start the project? If I can start the project in the near future, I set the defer date to next week, next month, or 2 months from now. Then I change the project status to active. The project will still be unavailable but I know that it will pop up in my list of available projects that will be shown in the next custom perspective I have.

Now, I’ve taken care of my Someday projects in the weekly review, I can set my eyes on the currently active projects.


I check the status of my current Active projects in the Weekly Review in this perspective:

I have a list of my currently active “Big Rock” projects. These are the projects that I am currently working on. I have limits. I can’t work on every project in OmniFocus. I set limits by putting almost every project to “On Hold” status (Someday). When I visit this perspective, I make the same decision choices from the list above. This time, I’m asking the same questions of my currently Active projects.

I try to keep my currently active projects to a minimum. I need to make buffer for the daily shenanigansthat pop up in my daily life. Customers can come in and temporarily delay my work. An emergency such as a flat tire can take a couple of hours to address before I can resume work. Sometimes, I might just lack the energy because I didn’t sleep well last night or I caught the flu. Sudden email requests can come in. These email requests put food on the table and I can’t necessarily ignore customer requests. I do have a whole other decision tree to make for those requests (saying no and passing it to someone else or scheduling it into my calendar into an agreed-upon time). Life oftentimes gets in the way of carefully laid plans. I focus my efforts on a few projects to get those done before thinking about tackling a Someday project.

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