Every GTD practice that survives has a weekly review; nearly every abandoned one skipped it. David Allen calls the review the critical success factor of the method, and the reason is mechanical rather than motivational: a system you trust only stays trusted if it's periodically made true again. Lists drift. Weeks go sideways. The review is where drift gets corrected, cheaply, on schedule.
The 30-minute version
Block it on the calendar (Friday 4:00 works for most people) and run four moves, timed:
| Minutes | Move | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| 0-10 | Empty the inboxes | Email and notes at zero open decisions |
| 10-18 | Walk the next-actions list | Stale entries deleted, vague ones rewritten verb-first |
| 18-26 | Sweep the waiting-fors | Everyone quiet too long has a chaser sent or queued |
| 26-30 | Look two weeks ahead | Upcoming commitments have prep tasks captured |
The waiting-for sweep earns special mention because it's where the review pays hardest cash: a follow-up sent Friday afternoon saves a deadline that would otherwise have died quietly over two more weeks. The waiting-for habit in full, if the list doesn't exist yet.
Signs the review is working
Monday starts from a list instead of from excavation. Nothing on the next-actions list makes you squint at what it means. And the small background hum of "am I forgetting something?" goes notably quieter, because the honest answer becomes no, and your brain knows it.
If it keeps taking ninety minutes
The review is maintenance, not archaeology. When it regularly overruns, the daily processing upstream is leaking: inboxes aren't being cleared in the between-times, or clarifying is being saved up for Friday. Fix the daily rhythm (the processing habits cover it), or hand the email-sorting portion to Pidgy, which keeps the inbox clarified continuously so the Friday session really is thirty minutes of review rather than a week of deferred sorting.
