New Year. New possibilities, endless opportunities. So where to start? For me, it is mostly a question of returning to proven technology. What works? What doesn’t ? Hold on to the first, discard the second.

So the first week of the year is always a good time to put in place again the ways of working that I remember from the past.

1) Work on your weekly review

Remember the prerequisite within the GTD methodology of doing a weekly review? AS soon as you feel overwhelmed with your weekly activities, very well possible you haven’t been doing your weekly review. I know I have fallen in this trap many times…

2) Look at the next day on the night before.

It’s a combination of hacks that have proven ability to increase your productivity. Look at your schedule the night before so you can start right away with the most pressing task in the morning. Also known as ‘eating a frog first’…

3) Starting in a new journal for 2018 is a good way of making a fresh start.

Even if your old 2017 is not completely filled, it has a sense of looking a new beginning of the year. So I bought this Stalogy A5 notebook from Japan. It has all the features to make the best of your bulletjournal.com activities. Look at how Ryder Carroll makes a fresh start with this video on yearly migrating the bulletjournal.

4) Planning in your day/week/month.

As you plan your next day, I find it equally important to plan occasionally for week or months to come. With several pan-European projects and ad-hoc actions filling up my mailbox I find it necessary to carve out time in my agenda for the different roles and responsibilities I have. What really worked last year was setting up quarterly meetings in Brussels to make sure that connections with EU partners remained on the agenda. I find if you don’t set it up like this, your meetings will get swept away by occasional upcoming events. In that way you look back after a year finding the important but not urgent meetings fell through the cracks of time…

If you want to know more on how I plan productivity, feel free to leave a comment or let me know what system works for you.