The Weekly Review

This week, Jean and James discuss attempting to bounce back from weeks that turn out far from perfect as well as trying to balance personal accountability with not beating yourself up too much when things don’t go as planned. The conversation moves to identifying the next actionable task in a project and how that can take ‘big rocks’ and turn them into manageable pebbles.

Listeners: We encourage you to do your weekly review, if you haven’t already! And after you finish your weekly review or if you reach a goal like hitting Inbox Zero, we’d love to hear from you on Micro.blog (@TheWeeklyReview) or Twitter (@WeeklyReviewFM).

And if you’ll be in San Jose during WWDC week, you’ll find James and Jean performing LIVE near WWDC at the James Dempsey and the Breakpoints benefit concert for App Camp For Girls. Tickets are available at http://livenearwwdc.com .

This week, James and Jean review their respective crazy weeks (ukulele conference! three nights of nephew wrangling!) and how their task management goals suffered. Progress was made, because we didn’t let ourselves give up and adapted our methods to fit reality.

Listeners: do that weekly review, if you haven’t already! We find it to be a great stress reliever, even when we are way behind on what we are trying to get done.

Going to be in San Jose on June 6? Come out for a fun night of geeky music and support App Camp For Girls at the Seventh Annual LIVE near WWDC show, featuring the inimitable James Dempsey and the Breakpoints! (Jean will be there, as always, playing guitar on a couple of numbers, as well as many of your favorite Mac and iOS developers.) Tickets are on sale now!

This week, James and Jean look at that gaping maw that devours time and motivation that we call email. We’ve tried a couple of tools for clearing out our inbox, and we are pleased with the results.

Have you done your weekly review yet?

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The true test of a system is whether it works when the going gets tough. Our well-planned recording schedule was unexpectedly thrown off when James’s father passed away a few weeks ago. James talks about how having a trusted system and doing weekly reviews helped him keep his focus where it belonged during a stressful time.

Welcome to the first episode of The Weekly Review. Whether you are new to task management or you’ve fallen off the wagon a few times, this podcast is for you.

Once a week, Jean and James review their progress toward a more organized (and less stressful) way of life, and talk about highlights, challenges, and questions. Two friends, who are not productivity gurus, hold each other accountable for sticking to the program and doing that important weekly review.

This week, we review our histories with getting organized and make plans to tackle some of the big projects like email box reduction and home decluttering.

We also debut our fabulous original theme song, The Weekly Review.

🎵 Credits:

• 🎼 Composed by James Dempsey
• 🎹🎸 Instrumentation and Production by Jonathan Mann
• 🎤 Lead Vocals: James Dempsey
• 🎤🎤Backup Vocals: Jonathan Mann and Jean MacDonald