I love consuming data. Books, magazines, audiobooks, blogs, podcasts, tweets, grams.

I like highlighting, clipping, tagging, collecting. Usually in Evernote or Bear. Sometimes as screenshots.

I do all this because I think it’ll come in handy later. Or I’m afraid I’ll forget.

So I’ve got all these clippings and highlights and tagged articles. But the reality is I only come back to maybe 10% of it. The rest of this super important new knowledge is left forgotten and un-acted upon.

One reason for this is I lack a weekly review. I don’t review the highlights from the books I read. I don’t go back to the clippings from the audiobooks or podcasts I saved. I don’t review and clear out my Evernote inbox.

By not reviewing I’m not putting the new knowledge into action. All that time spent consuming is pretty much wasted. Sure, some of it gets remembered in my memory bank. But I’d get more benefit from consuming less and acting/reviewing more.

One thing that has stuck in my memory bank was when I interviewed Gina Trapani almost 10 years ago for You 2.0 (when she was still editor of Lifehacker) and we were talking about GTD (Getting Things Done).

The one that makes the biggest difference for my sanity and calmness and getting to that feeling of completion is the weekly review, which is a Getting Things Done concept. So that idea that once a week at some point I sit down with all my lists and piles and read them over, cross off things that I’ve done and add on things that i need to do. Cross off things that were a dumb idea to begin and just have this overall sense of where my career and life is going. “This is where i’m heading, these are the things I’m doing to get there.”

Weekly review – the glue that holds it all together.

Consume less, review more.