Note that this is not asking the question “what do you want to do this week?”
Of course, asking what you want to accomplish will lead you determining what you want to do, but has the advantage of focusing you on the results you want to obtain.
Over the years, I have found this to be a very helpful question to ask myself. I am not sure when I first began using it, but it must have been when reading Covey’s classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Then, when I got into implementing Getting Things Done (GTD), I got away from doing this for a while [that also coincided with the when my wife passed away]. GTD was so good at letting me “crank widgets,” as David Allen says, that I got into the mode of being more geared toward processing my inbox than focused on ensuring I was doing what was really important.
When I recognized this deficiency, I created the !Focus “context” in my GTD implementation, to help ensure I did not lose focus on items that I considered to be the important ones for the week.
Now that I have been retired for over a year, I have found that I have drifted away from consistently deciding what I really want to accomplish in the coming week. Part of the reason is that I have become lax in implementing my weekly review, and more into the mode of just doing what I want to do. And, there is something to be said for doing what you want to do.
But, we all need some mechanism for ensuring that we also do what we need to do, and that we do something that adds purpose and meaning to our lives. I think this weekly question is one good way of doing that.
Note that you can (and should) be even more forward-looking than the coming week. For example, one of the things I want to accomplish this week is to be ready for a major project that starts next week. This will require reviewing a bit of material, as well as getting my attitude in line with implementing a major project.
Hopefully you are already doing this sort of questioning of yourself, and hopefully you are more consistent at it than I have been during my retirement. If not, this week is a good week to start developing this into a habit.
Related posts that I recommend:
- Questions to Ask Yourself Periodically
- Customize Your GTD Contexts
- Tag Tasks with GTD Contexts AND Covey Roles
- Is Technology Holding Your Back?
Your thoughts? Any related tips and tricks you use to help ensure you stay effective?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Bruce –
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you — for the reminder and review! Life moves fast – we need to remain focused. I appreciate your incite – I will be taking time to re-think my goals…
Glad you liked it tmiller !
Very interesting! I have recently finished reading (studying) David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done” and have been trying to implement it. However, his advice to not prioritize projects or next actions has me stymied. I feel that if I simply go with contexts, I could easily miss doing the most important tasks.
First of all, I’m using Outlook and Windows Mobile with Pocket Informant for my PIMs. In order to not lose focus on my priorities, I have been reviewing and setting up my tasks/next actions that I want accomplish in a week for Friday of that week. I prioritize them using Pocket Informant’s ABC/123 priorities and tweak them daily as needed.
I am still trying to set up my contexts/categories so as to be able to perform non-prioritized tasks depending upon the context I find myself in. This has proven to be a sticking point for me as I have LOTS of tasks that I would have to change. I want to make sure I do it right the first time.
Anyway, just wanted to say that it’s comforting to see someone else who thinks that prioritization is important.
Hi Danny. It’s good to hear from you.
Regarding those “LOTS of tasks,” my recommendation is to first see which of those are Someday or Maybe tasks. If it is something you don’t seriously want to give attention to until the following month (or even two or three weeks from now), or even later, set it aside in a Someday category. You may even find several tasks that are really “Maybe” tasks, too, ones that you are not truly decided to spend the time on.
Best wishes on it. It’s pretty easy stuff once you get past that initial categorization of stuff.
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