---
title: "Weekly review"
description: "Bringing a task system back in line with reality — about an hour, roughly weekly. What makes the rest of the method work, and the first thing people drop."
canonical: https://taskpocket.io/glossary/weekly-review/
lastUpdated: 2026-09-01
---
1. [Home](https://taskpocket.io/)
2. [Glossary](https://taskpocket.io/glossary/)
3. Weekly review

# Weekly review

A weekly review is a scheduled pass through your whole task system to bring it back in line with reality. David Allen puts it at eleven steps in three phases, and calls it the critical success factor for the method.

By [Bohdan Stefaniuk](https://taskpocket.io/about/) Last updated 2026-09-01

## Why it exists

A task system decays quietly. Things get captured and never processed, projects finish without being closed, and a list you have stopped trusting is one you have stopped reading — usually without noticing when that happened.

The review is the maintenance that stops it. Not because reviewing is virtuous, but because a system you trust is the only kind that lets you stop carrying things in your head, and trust needs upkeep.

## The shape of it

Three phases — get clear, get current, get creative — and eleven steps, from emptying your inbox to reviewing your [someday/maybe list](https://taskpocket.io/glossary/someday-maybe/) and deliberately making room for new ideas. Allen suggests every seven to ten days.

The full checklist, with what each step is actually for and where people give up, is at [the GTD weekly review checklist](https://taskpocket.io/guides/gtd-weekly-review-checklist/).

## Where it goes wrong

Two failure modes account for most of it. The first review is not an hour but three, because it is really a backlog cleanup wearing a review’s clothes — do that once, separately. And a review that happens “when there is time” happens four times and stops.

## Sources

1. [David Allen — the official GTD Weekly Review checklist](https://gettingthingsdone.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Weekly_Review_Checklist.pdf) checked 2026-09-01
2. [Getting Things Done — the power of the GTD Weekly Review](https://gettingthingsdone.com/2018/08/episode-43-the-power-of-the-gtd-weekly-review/) checked 2026-09-01

## Related reading

- [The GTD weekly review checklist](https://taskpocket.io/guides/gtd-weekly-review-checklist/) — All eleven steps of David Allen’s weekly review, in order, with what each one is actually for and where people give up. Works with any app, or none.
- [Someday/maybe list](https://taskpocket.io/glossary/someday-maybe/) — A holding place for things you might do but have not committed to. The point is that it leaves your active lists entirely, rather than sitting there tagged.
- [Projects and areas — things that end, and things that do not](https://taskpocket.io/features/projects-and-areas/) — A project is something you finish. An area is something you keep doing. How the two work in TaskPocket, what the free plan allows, and how other apps model it.