The Weekly Checkpoint is where many tactical decisions will be made regarding the practices. As your schedule is shaping up for the upcoming week, you’ll have a much better sense of how and where the practices will fit most effectively into your life. I (Todd Henry) like to schedule my Weekly Checkpoint on Friday afternoon because it gives me a cliff-top perch from which to view my upcoming week and plot my course. Others I’ve worked with prefer to wait until first thing on Monday morning, or even to do this checkpoint over the weekend. If you have an organizational system that you’re already comfortable with, you can also find ways of working your weekly checkpoint into your existing systems. For example, I’ve used David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology for years, and I like to lump my weekly checkpoint in with the weekly review suggested by David’s system. Whatever works for you is fine, but be consistent.
During your Weekly Checkpoint you will think about how to implement the practices into your upcoming week. Here is a complete list of the practices we discussed in the book:
- Focus: Challenges, the Big 3, Clustering
- Relationships: Circles, Head-to-Heads, Core Team
- Energy: Whole-Life Planning, Pruning
- Stimuli: Study Plan, Notation, Purposeful Experience
- Hours: Idea Time, Unnecessary Creating
Block off twenty minutes on your schedule for the Checkpoint, then work through each of the practices and where appropriate schedule them in your calendar.
Weekly Checkpoint Prompts
Focus
Challenges: Look at, or create, a comprehensive list of your projects. Do each of them have associated Challenges? If not, create them.
Big 3: What are your Big 3 for the week? Write Challenges for each of the Big 3.
Clustering: Are there ways you can structure similar work this week so that there is less task switching? Block specific time on your calendar for these activities.
Relationships
Circles: Do you have a circle meeting on the calendar? Do you need to prepare for it? If so, put time on your calendar.
Head-to-Heads: Do you have any head-to-heads this week? Do you need to prepare? When will you do it? Put time on your calendar.
Core Team: Do you need to reach out to a member of your core team for advice on something? If so, add it to your task list for the week or fire off a quick e-mail.
Energy
Whole-Life Planning: Are there any potential conflicts this week between work and personal activities or expectations? How will you get ahead of them?
Pruning: Is there anything that you’d planned but now realize may not be a good idea, given your upcoming schedule? How can you prune it? Additionally, are there any “hard runs” in which you’ll have all-day or back-to-back meetings? How will you plan something energizing around or between them to prevent burnout and stay energized?
Stimuli
Study: When will your personal study times be this week? Put them on the calendar. What will they consist of? Take a look at your Stimulus Queue and map your week’s stimuli.
Notation: Take just a few minutes to glance at your notes from the previous week as well as the indexes in the front of your notebook.
Purposeful Experience: Do you have one on your calendar this week? When will it happen?
Hours
Idea Time: When will you structure your Idea Time this week? What will you focus on during these sessions? Put it on the calendar with the associated project name.
Unnecessary Creating: What will you do for Unnecessary Creating this week? Put it on your calendar.
* Source: The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry