Review week 04-2008; Goals, blog and GTD

On Sundays I’m looking back on the past week. How did I perform towards my goals? How did my blog do? And how am I keeping up with my Getting Things Done system and Zen to Done habits? 

Blog performance

Work on the blog was mostly behind the scenes this week. I added a section with popular posts in the footer of the page and I worked on getting the site work in all major browsers. Mainly Internet Explorer 6 was a pain in the a**. Even after I validated my site using the validation tool of the w3 standards organization (I had to correct 112 errors), it was not showing the site as intended. In the end I found out that IE6 adds a lot of margins by default to elements on a page. So adding a single line of code to the top of my stylesheet, setting all margins for all elements to zero, solved the problem instantly. So the site is now valid (well for a large part anyway) and it shows as intended in the major browsers! Finally

Subscriber numbers have continued to rise this week, which makes me glad, but leaves me puzzled as well too. Why do these numbers seem to rise faster when I publish less? Nevertheless I wish you all a warm welcome. There was a nice rise in visitors as well, due to StumbleUpon traffic. The misclassification report did no good by the way, never heard anything about it and they didn’t change a thing.

Progress towards goals

Having less goals to work at really makes a lot of difference. Looking back at the past weeks I can see a solid consistent progress on my goals. And working on them is more fun too! Having too many goals was dividing my attention too much to the point where working on one goal did not satisfy me, but made me feel guilty for not working on others. That wasn’t what I intended to accomplish with adopting the goal setting theories. 

The renovation project is coming along good. Cementing and painting sure takes a lot longer than I expected, especially if you take the time to let the material dry or cure into account. I want to outsource the plasterwork that still needs to be done, but it looks like that might be a problem. Not the outsourcing, but getting someone that helps me meet my deadlines. I need to put in some more effort into that next week. 

Zen to Done / Getting Things Done - weekly review

My system of working with my Moleskine is still working out for me. I get a lot more done because the important tasks are all in one place and I carry that little booklet around all the time. I have a lot less on my mind too, because it’s a place to dump my thoughts instantly. It’s not a GTD system as described in David Allen’s book, but it works and that’s the most important part.

I started drafting a weekly review checklist, with stuff that I want to do during my weekly review (on Sunday). So far it looks like this:

• Email
• Answer emails in @reply folder in Gmail
• Clear spam folder in Gmail
• Delete emails from mailbox at Argeweb (host for this site; emails are forwarded to Gmail, but not deleted)
• Paper
• Archive paper that needs to be kept in files
• Finance
• Download data from banks and import in offline banking software (I use Davilex Bank Offline, it’s for Dutch banks)
• If needed, shift funds between accounts to prevent being in the red
• Digital appliances
• Move pictures from camera to computer
• Move pictures from cellphone to computer
• Clear text messages from cellphone
• Make a back-up of important data on computer
• Blog
• Write post about weekly review

It’s not finished, and I would love to hear suggestions! What’s on your checklist, or what’s a good habit you do every week that you would like to share?