The Operator's Week

Use when — Every Friday afternoon (or last working hour of your week), recurring calendar block.

David Allen calls the weekly review the 'critical success factor' of his whole system — the habit that keeps every other list trusted and current. Without it, your task system silently rots and your brain stops trusting it, so you go back to firefighting from memory. The review is what makes everything else on this deck actually hold.

1. Get Clear: empty every inbox — physical, email, notes app, your own head — into one list. Don't action yet, just capture.
2. Get Current: review your calendar two weeks back and four weeks forward, plus every open project, and update each to a real next action.
3. Get Creative: skim your someday/maybe and goals; add anything that's now worth starting.
4. Block 45 minutes and protect it like a meeting with your most important client — because it is.

✓Done when — You end Friday with an empty head, an updated list, and you already know your top 3 for Monday — no Sunday-night dread.

David Allen, Getting Things Done (2001/2015) — the Weekly Review as 'critical success factor.'

Use when — A recurring daily (or near-daily) block at your sharpest hours, defended like a meeting.

Sophie Leroy's 'attention residue' research shows that switching tasks leaves part of your attention stuck on the previous one, degrading performance for many minutes after. So an hour of focused work isn't equal to four 15-minute fragments — the fragments lose huge chunks to residue. One long block of single focus is where your hardest, highest-value work actually gets made.

1. Block 2–3 hours on your calendar at your peak-energy time, recurring.
2. Before it, write a 'ready-to-resume' note for whatever you're stepping away from — Leroy & Glomb found this cuts residue.
3. Go full single-task: phone in another room, notifications off, one tab/doc open.
4. Defend it. When asked for that slot, offer a different time rather than fragmenting it.

✓Done when — Most days you ship a meaningful chunk of real work before lunch, and you can name what you made.

Leroy (2009), 'Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work?' Org. Behavior & Human Decision Processes; Cal Newport, Deep Work (2016).