How to Achieve All of Your Goals: My Weekly Productivity System in Notion

I've tried time blocking task databases a to-do list menu a single sticky note my top three priorities just one priority calendars reminders I've tried physical and digital and a mix of both when I say I've tried almost every style of task management system there is I'm not kidding but after all of that trial and error I finally found a task management system that actually works for me and has been working consistently for over 6 months now and it is lifechanging in just 6 months it has allowed me to start this YouTube channel upload 28 weekly videos finish the first draft of my novel complete all of my out of hours admin for work stay on top of cleaning my house all while working full-time and having fun with my boyfriend on the weekends watching movies playing video games it seems almost impossible but this task management system is a big reason why I was able to achieve all these things I'm going to share my process with you just remember that all of our brains work differently so you've got to work with yours a lot of people swear by time blocking but I definitely have a rebel against the system kind of mind and by System I mean the system I put in place for myself the day before I set out these time blocks and then all of a sudden I don't want to be doing the thing that I said I was going to do at 1:00 everything just goes off balance as soon as I start not following it then I might as well just scrap the whole thing all together a little bit of black and white thinking but I'm working with the mind I have and I know that that is one of my traits that I have an all and nothing kind of mindset so time blocking isn't really for me and that made me go in the complete other direction where I had a task menu so I had all of my tasks and I could pick and choose what I wanted to do but of course that led to a lot of stale tasks where uh they would sit on that list for months if not years I'm so sorry fly screen I don't think you'll ever be replaced but my new system has a little bit of time blocking a little bit of task menu but it's kind of neither I'll first go through what my process is and then I'm going to tell you three things that you need to remember in order for it to work mistakes that I've made that you don't need to make I have tried so many different apps it is crazy to think how many to-do list apps I have tried but notion is what changed everything for me so here is the system it's pretty simple and that is the best part about it I do a weekly reset every Sunday night where I sit down or usually lay down on my bed and I go to my life dashboard in notion I enter the days of the week for the following week and I break these up into three sections before work during work and after work this is the essence of time blocking for me breaking it up hour by hour is really restrictive I don't know how long tasks might take and something might come up and throw the whole thing off so I break my day into the three sections sometimes I add a fourth if I've got some errands to run after work I'll put those in the after work section and then add an evening section for the things I'm going to do after I get back home so I usually start by looking at my calendar and seeing what things are coming up if there are any events or birthdays or a lot of the time as well I'll enter in things like canceling subscriptions or picking things up from the post office into my calendar so I look at my calendar first and enter anything in specific days that I need to do then I go through my days of the week tasks so I enter in when I'm going to get groceries when I'm going to mow the Lawns things that I've kind of got to do weekly and then I'll look at the leftover tasks from the previous week and see when I might be able to fit those in the important thing is to only put things on each day that you think you can achieve in a day that was mistake number one I used to put everything in the same day so I would put all of my tasks and then I would have carryover every single day because I could never get everything done but once a task has been carried over for a few days it becomes stale and we all know what happens then that task is not getting done or it's not getting done with without a fight there is just so much resistance attached to that task now I'm still haunted by the fact that I've never cleaned out my Google Drive it's literally been on my list for longer than a year but now that I only put the amount of things I can get done in a day I'm far less likely to have carryover and if I do I know that it becomes a priority to do that thing first now it's more common for me to get everything done and start looking ahead at tomorrow's tasks to see what I can get a head start on the second mistake I made was to have the days of the week as headings instead of toggles it is crucial that when you're on a Tuesday you can't see the Friday tasks it's too easy to pick the fun tasks from other days and then not have enough time to do the important tasks on the day that you set them I like to have a mix of tasks I'm wanting to do and obligations but to be honest I've designed my life in a way where I don't have many things that I feel like I have to do and that I don't want to do regardless there are always fun tasks like designing my vision board and not so fun tasks it's like taking the bins out for stale tasks what can help is picking a task and then removing every other task moving them to other days of the week and have that as your one priority for the day as long as you do that one thing then you might be able to start doing other things but having the other tasks no longer visible really helps you to focus on that one task and get it completed but at the same time does this stale task actually need to be completed I realized in my video where I was making my new life dashboard in notion that my master task list is really small and the reason for that is because I started asking myself this question before I put anything onto my list the question helped me to get rid of tasks that were taking up my time and my mental energy that didn't actually need to be done and the question was can this wait until after I quit my job if the answer is yes then it wasn't going on my list and it is amazing how many things we feel like we need to do like the fly screen that has holes in it but it can wait that can wait a year it's not going to hurt me that much eventually I'll get it done but for now I'm focusing on my YouTube channel and writing my novel and doing the things that I want to do in order to then quit my job and have more time to balance those life admin tasks along with my projects so that's what I did I moved everything that could wait into a to don't list and I've got to say it's been a huge weight off my shoulders I highly recommend this for any goal that you have ask yourself can this task wait until after I've achieved my goal your goal might be a week away or it might be two months away or a year away but can these other little trivial things wait because if it means you're able to focus on what you actually want to be doing I say why not and obviously don't use this as an excuse to avoid things that are good for you great now I can postpone exercise for the next 6 months while I achieve this goal make sure you're only postponing things that won't negatively impact your life or your ability to achieve your goals one once I've completed a task I drag it into a done toggle I use this as a reflection tool when I get to my monthly resets or my quarterly yearly resets so I can see where I have been spending my time and celebrate the big things that I've achieved throughout the year a little tip if you like batching tasks so for example when I run errands if I'm out of the house I'll batch those all together into a toggle but it's frustrating when you can't tick off a toggle so what you can do is use the strike through and just strike through the totle heading and then tick off the things within it I used to swear by a physical to-do list it's visible it's super flexible cuz you can literally write a my map if you feel like it draw pictures whatever you want and the feeling of physically Crossing things off a list is everything I still print off a list when I do a deep clean of my house because that's hard work and that deserves the feeling of Crossing things off that list the thing about physical lists is they're visible they might not always be with you which is a problem you're at the supermarket you don't have your list with you that's why digital is a game changer the important thing about digital is that you get in the habit of checking it frequently once you have that habit a digital to-do list is the best thing for your productivity my favorite thing is that you can swap and change the order of tasks hide things and then bring them back it allows you to reframe the tasks it's really flexible in that way yes physical to-do lists can be flexible because of the way you can write it but you can't then unwrite it or hide things all of a sudden you can't do that phone call that you had scheduled for today then you can just move it into tomorrow or maybe you think it makes more sense to mow the Lawns before your shower so you just switch it around I also always have my phone on me and so no matter where I am I'm able to add things to my to-do list when I think of them directly into the day that I'm going to do it instead of trying to remember that I need to note that down next time I find my list so this is my task management system it's really simple but that's what makes it so easy to implement if your to-do list is complicated you're going to be spending more time messing around with your list than actually getting the things done let me know whether you'll be trying out this task management system in the comments below I'd love to hear what systems have worked for you in the past and whether you're trying something new for 2024 I hope you guys have a wonderful week thank you so much for watching and I'll see you guys next time

Channel: New Roads Travelled

Views: 19,174

Keywords: notion, task management, productivity, to-do list system, weekly reset

Id: lqB3CAQhbY4

Length: 9min 30sec (570 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024