The Weekly Review

In this bonus-length final episode of The Weekly Review, Jean and James wrap up the series by recalling favorite projects finished and lessons learned since the podcast began. Thank you to all of our listeners who have joined us in this journey of personal productivity successes and setbacks. Although we are still not gurus, we hope our experiences have given you some insights and smiles along the way.

In our penultimate episode, we focus on Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals. Jean talks about how the book influenced her thinking about the time she spends. James reflects on the fact that we have spent 249 of these weeks so far making a podcast that we have both enjoyed. Jean also mentioned the Yonks app, for counting time up or down, and We Croak for random daily reminders of mortality.

In this episode Jean and James talk about recent conversations which have led to a consequential conclusion. The episode also includes topics such as cardboard boxes and getting your taxes done early as well as an implicit example of the word antepenultimate.

In September 2020, we decided to record an “emergency backup” podcast. We wanted to have one recording in the vault that we could publish if we were ever in danger of missing our weekly Friday publication deadline, because we hated the idea of breaking our perfect streak. Due to various travel plans and a major life disruption (see Episode 246), this is the week we decided to break the glass and use our backup. The topic is evergreen: productivity lessons we learned in childhood.

On Christmas Eve, Jean had to make a hasty departure from her apartment when a water pipe burst. Thankfully, Jean is safe and well although she is dealing with the aftermath of having an unexpected water feature appear in her living room. Jean and James talk about how the experience made Jean think a lot more about the short mental checklist of items to grab on the way out the door in an emergency.

James and Jean decide not to assign themselves to-dos for the week between Christmas and New Year, other than to take stock of what has turned out to be a busy year filled with things that weren’t exactly planned.

In this episode Jean describes her recent experiences helping family members with a cross-country move. Topics include packing, old-school boarding passes, and the importance of being at the correct gate. James swaps one to-do for another to finish a long-outstanding task—plus a little musing on the foibles of human nature.

James updated his car for several reasons, not the least of which is wireless CarPlay support. On the other end of the accessory spectrum, Jean gets yet another CD-player-slot iPhone mount so she can show off her Deep Purple iPhone 14 Pro.

In this episode, Jean describes how her family's Secret Santa for adults has made the holiday season less stressful and more enjoyable for everyone. James talks about using his trusted system to keep track of gift ideas throughout the year. Jean and James discuss giving experiences instead of things—especially shared experiences like going to a concert or show. Conversation turns to the belated celebration of James’ garage-iversary as well as the practice of receiving a stocking filled with gifts or goodies.

As is our tradition in this season, we take a moment to express our gratitude for the things in our lives that make them better. So much better. To those that celebrate, we hope you had a good Thanksgiving.

A few months back, Jean starting a journey of journaling with a goal of making it a daily habit. After an uneven start, she received some advice to try during a two month experiement. In this episode, Jean reports on her progress. Also, James ends up doing a panoply of weekly todos all in one week.

James talks about a large Black Friday purchase he is making. Jean will not go Black Friday shopping without a specific list, or otherwise she’ll buy things she doesn’t actually need. Dexter the Cat is unmoved.

In this episode Jean and James both talk about unexpected travel plans due to family matters. The conversation turns to not always knowing the correct course of action, especially as events are unfolding. A trusted system can track the actions you want to accomplish—but we still need to do the work of deciding what those actions should be.

In observance of the holiday, James and Jean discuss some hacks for Halloween. Figurative hacks only!

This week Jean talks about a book she read recently about managing your home and how it resonated with her. The author, who also writes the blog aslobcomesclean.com, does not claim to be a guru, just someone sharing her insights of things that work or don’t work for her—a philosophy shared by The Weekly Review. Also Jean and James are happily surprised someone left a review of the podcast! How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind - Dana K. White

James talks about the advantages of his digital photos, the collection that never needs dusting and never takes over the dining room table. Jean had a flashback to her attempt to pare down her contacts. And we have some Siri silliness at the end.

Jean and James revisit the topic of habits as Jean tries to establish a regular practice of journaling. Jean describes a new habit-tracking app as well as her idea for an extremely focused, simple habit app. James realizes that he continues to form habits—just not the ones he would like. Jean's nephew has a comment about her use of Chuck and James talks a bit about the OmniFocus 4 beta. Atomic Habits by James Clear Good Habits, Bad Habits by Wendy Wood

James and Jean talk about how things get done even if they don’t necessarily make it to our to-do lists or our trusted systems, and James reports on how his experiment in paring down Active Projects is going.

In this episode Jean describes how she uses the app Due in her productivity workflow and her weekly MEOW. She also talks about a wonderful related discovery she made just before recording the episode. James compares and contrasts his process with Jean's. Plus, now that they both have a iPhone 14 Pro, James recaps the features to help Jean impress her nephews. Due App for iOS Due App for macOS

In this grab-bag episode, Jean and James talk about a variety of topics. Jean continues to refine and formalize her M.E.O.W system for doing a weekly review—see the show notes for a link to her blog post about it. Disney fan James attended the D23 Expo and gives a report of his experiences there. And Jean talks about how some tasks, like her recent need to recover from a laptop mishap, are difficult to interleave with other activities and require a focused block of time. Jean's M.E.O.W. System

We celebrate our annual tradition of watching the Apple’s iPhone announcements and then chatting about them. If you are looking for in-depth tech analysis of all of Apple’s products and feature updates, you should listen to a different podcast. If you want to know what we are buying, in what colors, and our reasons (or rationalizations), listen in.

This week James and Jean talk about the importance of backup equipment and backup planning for failure, inspired by a major technical issue that made Jean’s MacBook Pro unusable for podcasting. Work Clean: The life-changing power of mise-en-place to organize your life, work, and mind by Dan Charnas

In this episode Jean describes about her recent experience in trying Forest Bathing, which James misremembers as Tree Swimming. The conversation turns to related topics such as mindfulness and that our own well-being is an important piece of being productive. James realizes he hasn’t been for a walk in the woods for a long while but is inspired to do so in the near future. Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Forest bathing: What it is and why you should try it Kaiser Permanente The secret to mindful travel? A walk in the woods National Geographic Your Guide To Forest Bathing (Expanded Edition) by M. Amos Clifford

James and Jean have been traveling quite a bit this summer. We take a moment to review travel hacks and whether we’ve added anything to our travel toolkits in the pandemic era.

In this episode Jean and James talk about donuts of control, including recognizing things beyond your control. For Jean, this includes the heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. James tells the story of how hearing a song in a drug store reminded him things out of your control can be a happy surprise. Plus, a dash of out-of-date slang. 23 Skidoo! The serendipitous song mentioned in the episode: JeanLeloup by Simon Kearney on Apple Music

James and Jean read an article critiquing Personal Knowledge Manager (PKM) and relate some of the ideas by the author and the commenters to how we feel about GTD. We do not use the word BS spelled out (like the original post), because we don’t want the Explicit tag, and honestly, it’s not really our style to use expletives. Personal Knowledge Management is BS by Justin Murphy Ridwan’s link to the post and the comment thread

In this episode James talks about his first trip to the Atlantic Time Zone in three years. Jean talks about trying to beat the heat this summer. Jean and James talk about tracking important package deliveries as James was hoping a certain light-as-air M2-powered laptop might arrive before his cross-continent trek.

This week’s episode is a little shorter than usual, thanks to the summer temperatures that have made Jean’s office a bit too warm for podcasting. James’ new approach to active projects in OmniFocus results in a new acronym. We also chat about the wisdom of getting things done well in advance of their deadlines.

In this episode, James talks about using a new product for hanging things on walls. Jean learns that projects that depend on other people can be delayed through no fault of your own. James gives an OmniFocus update about his new use of flagged items and two new automation scripts he wrote to turn template projects into active projects. Jean and James talk more about automation, Shortcuts, and the tradeoffs in time between setting up automation or just doing a repetitive task. 3M Claw Omni Automation

To enhance her personal system for getting things done, Jean has added Tot to her collection of simple low-friction productivity apps, which already includes Drafts and Due. Drafts has worked for a weekly review checklist and Due keeps track of daily to-dos, and now Tot fills a gap left by Omni Focus for planning projects and managing their completion, thanks to the addition of Smart Bullets. Tot: Your Tiny Text Companion Drafts: Where Text Starts Due: Never Forget Anything, Ever Again

In this episode, James talks about adding some active projects after declaring ‘active project bankruptcy’ and how quickly they stack up. Jean finishes a task just a bit too early for Christmas in July. Other topics include a fairly lightweight way to keep track of what’s in your medicine cabinet, the conundrum of where to store something so you remember where it is, and how well Charlie Brown and Totoro would get along. Also, James mentions a game: KerPlunk Game

Early this year, Jean decided to step back from the classic weekly review made popular by the GTD system to create a process more tailored to what works for her. For no particular reason, her process is called the MEOW which could stand for My Excellent Organizing Workflow. On this episode, Jean reviews the steps of the Weekly Meow so far, and gets suggestions from James.

In this episode James belatedly sees the parallels between technical debt in a software project and what Jean dubs “organizational debt” in day to day life. James declares ‘active project bankruptcy' keeping his trusted system in place, but clearing the slate of projects considered active. Jean talks about a box of mail that is a longtime source of her own organizational debit.

James gives us a recap of the in-person WWDC event in Cupertino and the fun stuff he got to do this WWDC week. try! Swift Dub Dub

Jean consolidates her digital photo libraries while James finally gets off the fence and sends an email. James talks about his descision to take a year off from producing a LIVE near WWDC event during WWDC22 and writing. James also announces he will perform his ninth annual WWDC Week In Review song on Friday, June 10 at try! Swift Dub Dub, an online conference with free registration. WWDC try! Swift Dub Dub

Why is it that sometimes the simplest straightforward tasks don’t get done? James and Jean tackle that question. (Spoiler alert: we don’t have an answer.) Also, Jean recaps a book titled Wintering and how it’s influencing her approach to the summer of 2022. Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

In this episode Jean talks about a recent dog walking experience that did not go well. Jean and James compare notes about renewing Global Entry. And James realizes that a big part of mending fences is remembering they need fixing in the first place.

Apple’s announcement that the iPod will be discontinued gave us an opportunity to reminisce about our first iPods and how Apple got us to buy them.

This episode, James is recovering from a headcold and Jean gives some updates, including a scheduling snafu for renewing Global Entry. Conversation turns to physical mail and Jean's new undesired habit of avoiding a one big pile of unprocessed mail by squirreling it away into many small piles of unprocessed mail in different locations.

This week, James and Jean talk about side gigs and contract jobs, and we look at how these temporary and sometimes flexible commitments affect our productivity.

This episode is dedicated to _Big Little News_—accomplishing things that may be little in the grand scheme of things, but feel very big to get finished. Jean and James each share some big little new of their own as Jean revisits a podcasting passion project and James sheds some baggage.

This week we talk about tracking a daily goal, inspired by the web app doevery.day, by Barry (@bjhess on Micro.blog) and Shawn. Jean started tracking her daily guitar practice goal, which started out great, but then got tricky. (She was also wrong about whether it’s possible to check off a day in the past–yes, you can!) James points out that a break in a streak can be used as a moment to recommit, or not. Jean’s doevery.day tracking page

This episode was over a half decade in the making. James tells the story of a recurring task that is older than his trusted system and the consequences of it remaining untracked. Jean reminds James that they both have a long-running travel-related recurring task that may be coming due soon.

James and Jean talk about how they use the Safari Tab Groups feature, which syncs across their devices, to build pockets of productivity that are easy to use.

In this episode, Jean talks about her recent project of producing and hosting a geography bee podcast episode with James joining in as scorekeeper, or is that beekeeper? Conversation turns to bees of the spelling sort, but neither the honey nor quiliting variety. Topics also include differences between recurring mainentance tasks and single-shot tasks.

Jean figures out why she’s been so resistant to opening up her accumulated physical mail and gets a nice bonus in the process. We also talk about Micro Camp, event planning, and how negative self-talk can kill your productivity and joy.

This episode Jean and James talk about the announcements from this week's Apple event. Discussions include whether any of the newly announced products will increase their productivity. The conversation turns to the power of rationalization in deciding to get something you want, even if is not something you absolutely need. James orders something he's wanted for years. Also some talk of Green Stamps, paper shredding scissors, and pine-scented iPhones.

On this episode, Jean talks about her progress at adapting the weekly review process to work best for her. We also talk about a book (Dedicated by Pete Davis) and what Netflix can teach us about the paradox of choice.

In this episode Jean and James talk about their experiences trying out the Pomodoro Method—a productivity technique based on 25-minute work blocks followed by 5-minute breaks. The conversation also turns to estimating task lengths and shopping for timers. An attempt was made for this episode to last exactly one pomodoro, but it went just a bit longer.

This week, Jean talks about her project of adapting the classic weekly review to fit her style and needs better. We also talk about what attracted us to GTD in the first place. And we talk about food.

To mark the occasion of the 200th weekly episode, James and Jean talk about favorite moments and accomplishments, as well as new ideas for the next hundred episodes. The Weekly Review Index, Episodes 101-199 Total minutes: 2932 Total hours: 48 Average length: 29.6 minutes Special cat guest appearances: too many to count Holidays invented: 2 Episodes recorded in person: 1 Conferences attended: 1