The Weekly Sweep

One of my favorite productivity habits is the “weekly preview”. I started doing it when I used the Full Focus Planner a couple of years ago, and I’ve done it every week since then. Some weeks are deeper than others, depending on how busy I am that day, but I never miss it.

The timing of these reviews can vary a lot among different people. Folks like Michael Hyatt love to do them on Sunday, some wait until Monday morning, but I prefer to do mine on Friday afternoon. The idea for that came from Laura Vanderkam’s “Before Breakfast” podcast, and I broke down my thoughts a bit here. Really, though, the timing is irrelevant and whatever works best for you is the one to choose.

In looking back at past posts of mine, I noticed that the “weekly sweep” isn’t a big factor in my overview of my weekly preview. I mention it a bit in the “Last week” part of that post, but I largely glossed over it. Since that time, the sweep has become more important and it’s a key part of my week. In short, I go through all of my input buckets and make sure things are clean. Specifically:

Disposable Notes
I make sure my disposable notes system (currently Google Keep for me) is empty. It tends to stay pretty clean, but I take this chance to deal with any notes that have been hanging out in there too long.