Experiments

Weekly resetTwenty minutes on Sunday
buys the whole week.

The weekly review is the highest-return twenty minutes in any productivity system and the first thing everybody drops. It gets dropped because it is usually described as a ritual with eleven steps, and eleven steps on a Sunday evening is not a habit anybody keeps past February.

Free, no sign-up. Worked out in your browser, nothing sent anywhere, and the result imports into EvyOS.

Start with what moved last week, even if it is one line.

Everything is worked out in this page and saved in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Share this
✦ How to use it

Three things that make it work.

1
Do it at a fixed time

Sunday evening or Monday morning. A review with no slot is a review that happens twice and then stops.

2
Be specific about what did not move

"Too many meetings" is a finding. "I was lazy" is not, and it suggests nothing you can change.

3
Three outcomes, stated as finished

"Draft sent", not "work on draft". A week has about three slots that survive contact with everything else.

This is the short version: what actually moved, what did not and why, what you are carrying, and three outcomes for next week. Four questions and a list. It takes about the length of a coffee.

The carrying question is the one that does most of the work. Anything you have carried three weeks in a row is not a task you keep failing to do; it is a decision you have not made, and this is where that becomes visible.

✦ The limit

An answer is not a record.

This works something out and then forgets it. It cannot tell you whether the number moved, because it has no memory of the last time you ran it and no idea what you did in between. Every calculator on the internet has that limit, and if it has never bothered you then this one is yours for free for good.

EvyOS is the same structure with the work recorded against it. Send the result across and it becomes real goals, tasks or habits with their dates — then the next answer is computed from what actually happened rather than from what you remember typing.

Questions

Weekly reset, answered.

About twenty minutes, which is why this version has four questions rather than eleven steps. The eleven-step version is better on paper and nobody keeps it past February, and a review you actually do beats a thorough one you abandon.
Sunday evening or first thing Monday, at a fixed time. The time matters more than which one — a review with no slot happens twice and then stops.
Because anything carried three weeks running is not a task you keep failing to do, it is a decision you have not made. Marking repeats with a ! makes that visible, and the fix is to do it, hand it on, or drop it — all three are better than carrying it a fourth time.
Because a week has about three slots that survive contact with everything else. A week claiming seven priorities has none: when Wednesday goes wrong nothing is protected, because nothing was ever chosen over the rest.
For most people it is what they will actually do, which makes it better than the thorough version in practice. If you run a full GTD review, this is the planning half of it and the capture half belongs in the brain dump.

Keep the answer.
And the record of doing it.

Goals, projects, tasks, habits and skills in one system, with the work logged against what it belonged to.

Start for free