A weekly review is a fixed slot, once a week, where you empty your inboxes, look at what happened and decide what the next seven days contain. On a kanban board it takes about fifteen minutes, because the board already holds the list you would otherwise have to rebuild by hand: you clear the inbox column, archive what is finished, deal with what is stuck, and pull the next week's cards into place. This post gives the steps, the minutes each one gets, and the board that makes them quick.
Most guides to the weekly review are written around David Allen's Getting Things Done and come with a checklist of thirty items. Those work, and they take an hour. The version below keeps the three ideas that matter and drops the rest.
What is a weekly review?
A weekly review is a recurring appointment with your own task list. You are not doing tasks in it. You are deciding which tasks exist, which still matter and which get your attention next.
The method comes from GTD, where it is described in three phases: get clear (collect everything loose), get current (bring your lists up to date) and get creative (look ahead and add ideas). The original is a one-page checklist from the GTD site. It is thorough, and it assumes you keep lists in several places. If everything lives on one board, two of the three phases shrink to a glance.
Why do a weekly review at all?
Because a task list decays. By the following Friday, cards you wrote on Monday describe a week that no longer exists. Some are done and not ticked, some were replaced by something more urgent, and a few were never real.
A board you do not review turns into a pile that you stop trusting, and a list you do not trust is one you stop opening. The review is the maintenance that keeps the list believable. It is also the only moment you look at the week as a whole instead of one card at a time, which is when you notice that Thursday has five commitments and no room.
How do you run a weekly review on a kanban board?
You need a board with four columns: Inbox, This week, Doing and Done. Later ideas can live in a fifth column called Later. Put a limit of three on Doing, so the review ends with a short list of things you are actually working on.
Then work through five steps, in this order. The minutes are a guide, not a rule.
- Empty the inbox (3 minutes). Open every card in Inbox and make one decision: it goes to This week, it goes to Later, or it gets deleted. Anything from your notes app, email or a scribbled page gets typed in as a card first, then decided on. Do not start the task.
- Close out last week (3 minutes). Archive everything in Done. For each card still in This week or Doing, ask whether it is really in progress. Move the honest ones back to the start of This week, and put the rest in Later.
- Look at what is stuck (3 minutes). Find any card that has moved nowhere in two weeks. Either break it into a first action you could do in ten minutes, or delete it. A card that survives three reviews without moving was never a task.
- Check the week ahead (3 minutes). Open your calendar next to the board. Count the hours you actually have, and write the immovable things as cards. This is the step that corrects optimism.
- Choose the week (3 minutes). Move cards into This week until the column looks possible, then pick the first one for Monday and put it in Doing.
A full pass leaves you with an empty inbox, a short This week column, and the first move already chosen. The second and later reviews are faster than the first, because step 1 has less in it.
When should you do your weekly review?
At the same time every week, and the time matters less than the repetition. Friday afternoon works if you want to close the week and leave work behind. Sunday evening works if you want to start Monday already knowing the plan. Monday morning is the weakest choice, because the first hour of the week is usually spent on whatever arrived over the weekend.
Pick a slot you can protect, put it in your calendar and give it a place to happen. The Todoist guide to the weekly review makes the same point about choosing a day, time and place, and it is right: a review with no appointment tends to be the first thing dropped in a busy week. EasyKanban has an optional Sunday evening reminder in Settings, which sends one notification a week and nothing else. A calendar entry does the same job.
What goes wrong with a weekly review?
Three things, mostly.
It grows. The first review turns up forty loose items, takes an hour, and you do not want to do it again. If the first pass is long, cap it: handle what fits in thirty minutes and move the rest to Later in one batch. You can sort Later next month.
It becomes planning theatre. You spend the slot making the board look tidy, color-coding tags, and never decide anything. The test of a good review is the end state, not the process: an empty inbox, a possible week and a named first card.
It skips the unpleasant step. Step 3, the stuck cards, is the one people leave out, because it means admitting something is not going to happen. It is also where the review pays for itself. A This week column with eighteen cards in it is a forecast you already know is wrong.
How is this different from planning your week?
Planning decides what you will do next week. A review comes first and checks the list you are planning from: which cards are done, which are dead, what has quietly piled up in the inbox. A plan built on an inaccurate list is inaccurate from Monday.
In practice the two happen in the same sitting, with the review first. If you only want the layouts for the plan itself, 5 ways to organize your week with a kanban board compares five of them. For goals that run longer than a week, personal kanban for goals and habits has a shorter review loop for one goal at a time.
What does a weekly review board look like on the free plan?
One board is enough. The free plan includes three boards with unlimited cards, so a weekly review board costs nothing and leaves two boards for work or study. Minimal kanban is built around this kind of small, calm board, and you can start a board with no signup to try the five steps once before you decide whether the habit suits you.
If you already use a board for your daily work, add the Inbox column to it instead of starting a second board. The review is easier when the inbox sits next to the work it feeds.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a weekly review take?
Fifteen minutes is enough when everything lives on one board. The first review is usually longer, since it clears a backlog, and thirty minutes is a fair cap. If a review regularly takes an hour, you are probably keeping tasks in too many places, and the fix is fewer places.
What should a weekly review include?
Four things: emptying your inbox into decisions, archiving finished work, checking cards that have not moved, and choosing next week's commitments against your calendar. Everything else in longer checklists, such as reviewing goals or reference files, can be added monthly instead of weekly.
What is the best day for a weekly review?
Friday afternoon or Sunday evening. Friday lets you close the week with nothing hanging over the weekend. Sunday means you start Monday with a plan already made. Monday morning is the weakest choice, because the week's first hour usually goes to whatever arrived over the weekend.
Is a weekly review the same as weekly planning?
Not quite. Planning decides what you will do next week. A review first checks that your list matches reality by clearing the inbox, archiving finished cards and dropping dead ones. The two are best done together in one sitting, review first, so the plan is built on an accurate list.
Can you do a weekly review in an app instead of on paper?
Yes, as long as the app shows you the whole list at once. A kanban board does, because each column is a stage and you can see them all together. The method does not depend on the tool. What matters is one inbox, one list for the week and a fixed appointment.