Getting Things Done in Notion (but make it ✨ aesthetic✨ )

hey guys welcome back to the channel today i'm going to be taking you through a tour of my notion dashboard i know this app has gotten a lot of traction over the last year or two and i personally have been using it for about two years now which means that i have a system that i have consistently been able to keep up with and because of that i feel confident sharing the way that i use notion with you and hopefully this helps you get started or to kind of figure out different ways that you can integrate certain strategies into your own notion system so i think you'll enjoy this video and let's get started so what you're looking at right now is my notion dashboard and we're going to come back to this first i want to show you guys what really is the backbone of all of my notion personally and also something that i think a lot of people miss out on when they're setting up their notion process i see a lot of videos of people who try and use notion like a bullet journal so they just open up a page they add in some task lists and then they delete it all and start all over again and that's fine but really at that point all you're using it as is just a blank web page to write things down instead of writing it down on a sticky note or in a journal where notion really shines is in its databases you can really think of it as an aesthetic excel that's a little bit more user-friendly so what you're looking at here is my all task database and every task that i need to do whether it is running an errand doing my laundry editing a video planning a trip everything and anything goes into this list first and first we have the name of the task then we have its status so this can be anything from next action reoccurring in progress waiting or done next action if you're familiar with the getting things done work setup i will link a video explaining it below i'm not going to go too far into it right now but next action essentially just means that this is a task that you can work on right now so for example if i have a video to edit there might be a bunch of tasks filming and scripting editing and finally publishing right so i can't do all those things at once for example i can't edit a video until i filmed it so there's no point in having editing and filming in my task list at the same time and looking at both those things when i can only do one of them at the same time i don't want to lose track of tasks that i'm going to have to do in the future so whatever task i need to do in order to move a project forward is the only task that gets tagged with the next action and that way i know exactly what to focus on and then next we have due dates and then we have our contacts so where i can perform these tasks or if there's a certain mindset i need to be in so for example in order to post this spotlight i need to be home because i need to be at my desktop to be able to post it and it's also a combat culture task which means if i'm sitting at home and i am in combat culture work mode i can just filter this task list by tasks at home that are under combat culture and i can batch my tasks that way and then everything gets assigned a priority now my projects list is the second database that's very important here the projects list and my all task lists are linked which means that if you were to go into move to new york this was a project that i had back in june and july when i was preparing to move to new york i linked my all tasks database into this project and i filtered it so that it would only show tasks under the project of move to new york and now every time i add a task to this list within this page it shows up in my task list might be kind of confusing but essentially all my projects if i put tasks into them they go into my task list if i added something my task list it goes back into my project so because i have all my tasks and my projects set up into those two databases i can now set up a new database that is linked to all tasks and you can filter and sort so for example here i have these all filtered where the status is next action i also have these sorted by priority and due date so anytime i'm trying to work on something i just go into this page and it'll automatically tell me what the next action is that i can be doing and it'll tell me what i should be working on based on due date and priority now we can go back to my dashboard as you can see i have my dashboard set up in a halloween theme right now i have this really cute floating gif of these ghosts and then i made a custom icon with this witch's brew and a couple different cats and a pumpkin just trying to get into the spirit of things since it's still 90 degrees outside in new york right now my dashboard starts with my word for the year which is the year of recalibration this is part of my annual review that i do at the end of the year i can do another video on that if you're interested let me know in the comments below and then i'll just put in whatever quote i'm feeling at the time right now i really like this one i have all my intentions affirmations values here and the navigation of the typical links that i use and down here is another place where i link my all task lists and this one is actually filtered by next actions waiting in progress reoccurring and anything that is either due today or before today which means that this list is automatically telling me which tasks i have i can currently be working on that are due today or that i have missed the deadline for and this automatically updates so i don't actually have to go through and look through my task list to see what i'm going to be doing for today which again is one of the really beautiful really powerful parts of notion being able to have everything just link through different pages through different databases so that you can spend less time organizing and tweaking and setting up your day and actually doing things and getting things done i also have my clorox work toss down here as well then down here i also have my morning routines afternoon evening routines cute little good luck sticker and this is an embedded playlist from spotify i've been trying to make new playlists every month that kind of fits my mood or what i'm into so i wanted to have that linked there and then going back up here i have a little notes section as well as my weekly goals and monthly goals although i do like having everything automated and having all my tasks come up when i need them i do also like to have a very quick jotting of the things that i need to get done because sometimes all the tasks are due today i'm not going to be able to get them done sometimes i just have like a quick reminder and i don't want to add it to my task list so when i wake up in the morning and i look at all my different tasks for the day and see what's due i will actually go through once really quickly and kind of write down a checklist just so i have a really quick overview of the things that i want to focus on one of my favorite pages is my inbox which is super simple it's just a blank page but it's basically my open notepad that i write in every day if i have a thought or i come across a quote i really like or there's a recommendation i want to capture anything that's in my head goes down onto this page and then when i go through my weekly review every sunday i sort through everything i've written down in my inbox and that gets put somewhere into my task list or into another page and it just gets organized and filed and that way i never have to worry about forgetting anything which is a really nice feeling because i used to forget things all the time i also have a habit tracker here which is really simple just a database with a bunch of check boxes i try to track my mood and all the dates are down here look at this my september has been really good this might not seem like a big deal to a lot of you but i have not had this many good days in a row probably since 2020 maybe not even then so i'm actually really proud of how much green is going on here not so proud of the amount of habits i've been checking off but all gotta start somewhere one thing i did borrow from the bullet journaling method is to have a collections page these are a combination of databases that do link back to my all tasks lists and just general pages that i feel like having fun with and writing things down so for example i have a waiting on page and this is my all tasks but it is filtered to only show tasks that i currently have marked as waiting and this is really nice because if i'm waiting on a package or a refund or just need someone to do something i can just go here and check to see what i am still waiting on and then if we go back my someday maybe it's just a bunch of tasks that i don't want to put into my list yet but i want to capture it for the future i also have a future log again this is part of the bullet journaling method where i just put any sort of holidays birthdays reminders they all go into here and every month when i go through my monthly review i make sure to check off any tasks or holidays and it's just a really nice reminder for the things that you have coming up i also created a 2021 notes list so anytime something significant happens or there's a memory i want to jot down i try and put it in there it really helps me with my annual reflection at the end of the year which is another end of the year project i have again if you're interested in that or my annual review let me know this is just a general notepad with different pages of things i won't take notes on my quick list is just a very quick shopping list in case there's something like a pair of scissors packing tape that i need to pick up i just put it on there um ideas lists ideas for different videos drawings i want to do yeah some of these are just really simple like to watch lists tv shows movies i try not to get too fancy with anything that is not really that important or doesn't need to have a lot of information surrounding it i know people have these crazy like k-drama and anime trackers and what they thought about it and if that's something that's important to you great do it but just remember that every single page you decide to create and that you need to maintain and update is going to take more time out of your day and at the end of the day this is this is supposed to be fun but it's also supposed to help you do the things that are important to you and organizing your notion is not necessarily important unfortunately and that's coming from someone who really likes to organize things but yeah that's why you'll see some of these are really simple quick lists and some of them are more complicated and use different roll-ups and databases it just really depends on what your needs are and then i did have a plant tracker which i haven't been keeping up with because i abandoned all my plants back in california i had this tool kit which i really liked it's kind of just a self-care tool kit with physical mental emotional and social ways to make myself feel better if i'm feeling a little bit down so i can kind of just pick and play whatever i want to do um i have some tattoo ideas if i ever get the courage to actually get a tattoo um oh this meal planner is really cool i was using this a lot at the beginning of the year and then my life kind of went like into shambles so i haven't updated this in a while but if you're someone who likes to cook a lot and you're planning for not just you but you and your partner you and your family i think this can be really helpful again this is another way that databases really come in handy in notion so everything here is based out of these meals and at the beginning of every week i would i would add new cards for different meals i wanted to make so for example we have this one which is a korean soup and then you add in the ingredients here write down whatever you want you can tag it and if you go back here what's really cool is that all of the ingredients that you add to those meal cards automatically get added to the shopping list crazy and if you go into weekly view you can actually put under lunch choose the soup and there it is and then you can just fill out the rest of your week with whatever meals you want and kind of move them around play with them figure out how you want a meal prep and then i also have this cookbook if there are meals that i really liked and i wanted to repeat i put them in here along with a link to the recipe and any notes about it and that way i can just move a copy of this into my meals for the week and again automation it's great i used to have a workout calendar as well again life has been kind of crazy i've been working out the way i should have but back when i was doing this i would just kind of plan out my calendar if i had a workout plan any references or notes you can see march was the last time that i did this i have all my gift cards scanned and uploaded here i also use ali abdol's book reports you're only going to see two here because for the last few years i've been adding book reports to my evernote um so i was doing something similar there and i haven't had the time to migrate those over i don't know if i will just because it seems kind of like a time suck if i already have them stored somewhere else for free but i do like the way that he records his reading so for example kafka on the shore we have all this information about fiction genre rating date finish date started author you describe the book impressions about it who should read it quotes etc etc so i'm excited to start filling this out i think it'll be cool to keep in a database and then if we go back to my dashboard there is another page i want to show you guys which is my new york to-do's even if you don't live in new york i think this is a really great database you can use for the city you're living in places you want to explore but i just started migrating all of my restaurants and activities and wrecks for the city that i was previously keeping in google maps into here because i think it'll be really nice to have a lot more control over which recommendations i'm looking at at any given time because if you have dozens or hundreds of restaurant recommendations it's kind of hard to sort through them off of a map so right now i don't have everything in here i just kind of got it started so i can show you guys exactly how i'm choosing to organize everything but we have the name we have the category it can be anything from eats to workout shopping and then i add in the neighborhood the price or if it's free and then there's also other tags so for example if it's something that i can do with albie he's going to be moving here he's never been to new york before so there's a lot of stuff i want to show him or if it's just something that'll be really cool for date night if it's something i'd rather do with friends or as like a solo adventure if i have people in town then that's something i'll tag for visitors cash only is always something good to know if it's something that's good for a celebration like a birthday or a holiday vegetarian friendly good for brunch and then i have all the different types of food here as well i can mark it done if i've done it before if i've been there if not this is unchecked and then if i have done it i give it a star review one through five and if there's a note about reservations whether it is reservations only reservations are recommended walk-ins okay or walk-ins only i will put that there as well and then there's notes if we need that and what's really cool again because this is a database we can go through here and store different views so for example date night is one view where i have filtered everything that has a tag with albi in it which means that all of these are things that i want to show him or to go do with him so if we are planning a day together i can just go under this view and pick something to do restaurants to try [Music] this is a filter for anything that is under the category of eats and is not checked off so these are all the restaurants that i haven't been to my diary is just filtered by everything that is checked off and it tells me the things that i've done in new york what my rating was let's do something is a filter for any sort of shopping activity museums day trips if i'm just trying to figure out a way to explore the city so as you can see there's really a lot of ways that you can use databases in notion that can save you a lot of time from having to manually create this list as you can imagine if you weren't using this in a database and you just had a very manual checklist it would start to get pretty overwhelming having one that's a bunch of restaurants you want to try places you've been places you want to try with your friends it just becomes a lot to manage and again i am a huge fan of automation where it makes sense because that's more time for you to have back to yourself whether or not you want to do something productive or sit on the couch and watch youtube videos overall i am really happy with the system i've managed to set up i maintain it which is a really big thing and that means that it is working for me i would say the only cons that notion really has is one if you are someone who is really dependent on google calendar then that is not going to integrate well notion does have its own version of a calendar which is really cool because you can take your tasks and see them in a calendar view but it's not going to link back to google or ical that's not a big deal for me because again i follow a lot of the gtd method which is recommended that you only keep events in your calendar and not tasks so for me to keep all my tasks in notion is really not a big deal but if google is something you live or die by that's something to consider number two and i think this is probably my biggest gripe with the app is that it is a completely online application which means that if you don't have internet access if you are in the subway if you're just anywhere where you can't connect to wi-fi or to data you're not going to be able to connect to your notion and as something that completely rules your entire life that is not good but hopefully that's something that they will update in the future i don't know but for now it's something i can live with so far it's been fine if you're interested in any of the pages that i showed you today i will have some templates linked down below as well as some videos to help you get started with notion i know i didn't explain the roll ups and the databases that well so i'll try and link a video explaining it better i also have a pinterest board linked down below if you want some inspiration for backgrounds icons gifs that'll all be in there and yeah i hope you enjoyed this video i hope it was helpful i hope i didn't ramble too much i feel like when i'm explaining things my soul kind of leaves my body and i just keep talking but hopefully it all made sense and if there's any questions you have about getting started with notion or you're confused about anything just let me know i'm here to help otherwise happy organizing and i will see you all in the next video [Music]

Channel: Wesley Anna

Views: 2,952

Keywords: notion tour, notion, notion setup, how to use notion, notion tutorial, notion app, notion set up, notion template, plan with me, notion tips, notion workspace, how i organize my life, getting my life together, free template, organization system, life organization, notion review, aesthetic notion, digital journal, get things done, notion tour student, getting things done notion, gtd notion, bullet journal notion, digital bullet journal notion, plan my week, productivity

Id: 35EFUI7ecC8

Length: 20min 26sec (1226 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021