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For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

Invalu­able struc­ture for those who look forward

Since I tend to look for­ward rather than back­ward, I need to have a well-thought-out struc­ture in order to get the ret­ro­spec­tives done. There­fore, I make it part of my week­ly rou­tine every Mon­day to look back four weeks on my cal­en­dar to see what I have done and if there’s any­thing I need to do (that I have missed to add to my to-do list).

In addi­tion, I always make sure to have a con­crete next step on my to-do list for all ini­tia­tives, projects, assign­ments, and oth­er big­ger tasks that I want to keep mov­ing for­ward. When I tick off the last defined task in some­thing big­ger, I for­mu­late the next step as a new to-do task before mov­ing on to oth­er tasks. Noth­ing big should be left hang­ing in the air.

Do this

Do you rec­og­nize that big­ger tasks you have to bring to har­bor over time can start hang­ing in the air, only to be for­got­ten and fall between the chairs? Do you feel that you’d ben­e­fit from cre­at­ing a bet­ter struc­ture to avoid this hap­pen­ing again? If so,

1. Think about where you see these big tasks and thus where you can be remind­ed of them. Is it in the cal­en­dar? Or in your overview of large tasks and projects in your to-do list tool? Or is it in some doc­u­ment, a mind map, or a list, where you can see every­thing big­ger you’re respon­si­ble for now? Or, do you have a list in your sys­tem to han­dle such mat­ters where you see every­thing that’s ​“yours”?
2. Think of a way to get this ret­ro­spec­tion done with­out you hav­ing to remem­ber it. Is this some­thing you do at a cer­tain time each week? Or, do you take it upon your­self to review the whole overview every time you leave work with one of the big tasks there? Or, do you set up a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion meet­ing forum where you skim through what has hap­pened late­ly so that noth­ing that has come up need­ing to be addressed gets forgotten?
3. Test your new ret­ro­spec­tion method for a cou­ple of weeks and then eval­u­ate what dif­fer­ence it has made for you. Have you missed few­er things than usu­al? Have you caught more loose ends? Have you got­ten oth­ers to come back to you more than before?

Few­er dropped balls

If you cre­ate a good struc­ture for look­ing back in order to not miss any­thing you have going on, you’ll drop few­er balls. you’re able to keep larg­er tasks going for longer, which means you’ll also more eas­i­ly reach the goal with all of them. you’ll get the impor­tant things done soon­er than oth­er­wise and it won’t be as often stress­ful right before the sharp dead­line. Isn’t it worth a try, then?

How do you do it?

How do you look back at reg­u­lar inter­vals to make sure you don’t miss any­thing? Feel free to write to me and share!

(So, you’ve added the next step to your to-do list, which just keeps get­ting longer with both small and big tasks. Have you tried cat­e­go­riz­ing it? Check out my tips on how to make the long to-do-list man­age­ably short!)