How to Build a Second Brain in Notion (+ Free Template)

today we're going to talk about how to create a second brain inside of notion a second brain is essentially just a method of organizing your life digitally and in this case we're going to do it inside of notion so the second brain method was coined by Thiago Forte and I'm going to leave links down below to learn more about this method what this method is in a nutshell is we're going to create a system for taking notes or capturing information inside of a digital notebook and then organizing or filtering those notes into different buckets of your life first let's just take a look at how the second brain works in a graph a second brain system has a few different sections so we're going to start with something like a funnel where at the top of the funnel we're going to have capture and in the capture database we're going to capture information one piece of information could be manual notes another one could be web clippings like web articles or maybe tweets and a third type of capture may be an imported file like a PDF file okay so once we've captured this information we're going to organize it into four different bins and this is something called the para system one bin could be projects the next bin areas the third is resources and the fourth is archive so in each one of these blocks this with the connection to a captured note to projects we are using notes in an actionable way if your Note is not connected to a project it may be connected to an area in your life this isn't going to be broad categories but rather actionable projects that do not have an end date so something like Renovations on a home or learning a new language is something that's going to be ongoing areas in your life now the third one here resource this is if your captured information doesn't fall within projects or area we're gonna just automatically put it into the resource category the fourth is going to be archive so archive is essentially whenever you of course archive a note but it's also in this system going to be where we're storing archived projects and areas we are creating a notebook to capture information and then organizing that information into projects areas resources and archive now the last bit of this dashboard we're going to create a section for sharing so there are two places to share information from one is a project you want to share for example if you want to of course launch a newsletter that is something you're going to launch publicly so there's going to be a publish date you could also share notes so this is basically what it's going to look like it looks a little crazy with all of these arrows but I just wanted to show you how we're going to build this and what parts of this system go where so let's just get right into it in this follow along page you're gonna have four different sections or toggles that are just going to help you follow along with the video each one of these is a new chapter in the video and we're going to create different databases here right so in each one of these databases like capture the top of the funnel I do have a list of properties that I'm creating or if you just want to know what each one of these properties does if you're just using this template straight out you can utilize this page okay so let's create the first database which is going to be capture by going to the body of the page and just going forward slash page and we're just going to create a new page here and we're going to call it capture and I'm going to go down to add new and go to table from here I'm just going to go to new database the first thing I would do is maybe give this an icon via this button here and maybe I can give it the icon a dashed Circle no Rhyme or Reason for this but I just like how it looks now in this first database view you can add a new database view via this plus button the one we're currently in I'm just going to click it go to rename and this should bring up the database menu which you can also access via this button next to New I'm going to rename this to active this is going to be all of our active notes I can also change the icon of each one of the database views via this icon button maybe I'll give it the sun icon okay so now we're going to add a few different properties and we have a default property already given to us called Tags we're actually going to keep that I'm going to add a new property via this button here and I'm going to select the type via this type menu select we're just going to rename it type this is going to give us a drop down menu of options to categorize each page in the database and we can add our options in this drop down menu via this menu here or if I click away I can just go to the cell underneath this column a few options the first is going to be a note might be adding just a manual typed out note directly into notion so if you want to change the color of each option you can just go to the menu of each option and change the color there another option may be a web clip and I'm just typing it out and pressing enter now a web clip could be an article from the web but maybe I want to separate my articles from tweets so I'm going to add another option called tweet and the last type of captured note is going to be a file now a file could be something like a PDF you want to summarize or any other form of media like an image or a video let's create the next one I can actually adjust the width of each one and drag it around the table the next one is going to be called created time this is going to give us a time stamp this is an automatic property meaning you do not have to manually change it I can also change the date format of this date here and actually within this view I don't really need to see this so I'm just going to click the header and go to hide in view if I go to open up this note you'll see created time here but just not in the database view speaking of opening up notes there are different ways you can visualize doing that so by going to the database menu and going to layout I can choose open pages in side Peak like you just saw or Center Peak personally I prefer Center Peak now the next is going to be a property for Source or URL this is important for web clippings the next one for files will need something like a files and media property to upload files to and you can upload more than one file here if you'd like I'm going to name it attachments and the last two properties are going to be check boxes checkbox type and the first one is going to be called share so like I said in the beginning of the video there's going to be a share section where we can accumulate all of the notes or projects we're sharing to the public now what you can do with properties just like you can with database views you can change the icon so I may change the icon here to a share icon and with check boxes I can actually narrow the width all the way to the icon I'm going to create one more property that is a check box and also call this one archive I'm also going to change the icon to an archived box and do the same thing okay great so let's add some examples of notes the first one is how to make a cookbook and maybe we got this information from a tweet and the tags might be cooking and writing and then the source would be where this tweet came from so we are going to go over how to capture uh web clippings with an extension so you won't have to do this manually we can also determine if we want to share this information or archive it okay so the next one may be something like recipe ideas for a cookbook and this could be just a regular handwritten note for cooking and brainstorming another one can be tips for learning Spanish this may also just be a note and we can create more tags here or maybe languages and Spanish so when it comes to tagging I recommend keeping it short and simple try to keep it between one and three tags per note and maybe the last one is newsletter content ideas and maybe we're grabbing this from a file maybe a PDF file can give this a tag as well maybe newsletter marketing and let's say this is archived and maybe tips for learning Spanish is something I want to share so now that we have some examples here let's talk about how we can filter this database view to show only active information so firstly what I want to do is go to the database menu and I kind of want to get rid of these vertical lines in the table because I don't think they look very nice I can do that by going to layout and just hiding those vertical lines next what I want to do is create a filter and that's by going here to filter and just making sure that the archive checkbox property here if I click on it is unchecked now if I go back I also want to add a sort I want to sort this by created time now lastly what I want to do is I'm thinking of the future so I'm thinking I'm going to capture a lot of notes what I want to do is be able to group these notes so I can access them a little bit easier and I'm going to group all of my notes by created time and specifically I want to see date by month which is something I prefer to group date by if I go to hide empty groups I will now see May 2023 so we'll be able to access active notes by the time and the date that they've been created okay great now that we have our active section I actually just want to create an archived database view that looks the exact same so I'm going to go to active here click on the title and choose this duplicate option which is super helpful and I'm just going to rename this to archived and maybe change this icon from a sun to a moon and all I'm going to do is change the filter I'm going to change the filter from archive unchecked to Archive checked so we can just stop here if we want to or if you want to create even more views maybe for each type of note that might be useful so I'm going to do is again go to active duplicate maybe create a view where I can view all of my notes and change this icon maybe to a writing icon and I'm just going to make sure that this filter has another filter in addition to Archive being unchecked so this is just going to be active notes where the type is also a note and what you can do here and probably what I would do is get rid of this grouping but that's up to you you can do that by just going to the database menu going back to that group and we're just going to get rid of grouped by created time and just choose none instead so now we have our notes all of our active captures and archived now another view I think is really helpful is if you to just view all archived and active notes in a calendar view so we're going to create another view here and go to calendar and I'm going to name it all in calendar we can actually show either as a month calendar or a week in this case I'm going to show as a week press done and I'm not going to have any filters here I'm just going to sort by created time and in properties I do also want to see the type now let's click away if I select this today button it should get me to this current week now there's another way we can visualize all of our captured notes we can duplicate active again and I'm going to rename this by tag so we're going to visualize all of our notes by tags specifically and I can change this icon again I'm going to change it to this list bullet indent and I'm just going to change the grouping so instead of grouping by created time I can Group by any property here like tags and then just hide empty groups and now all of our toggles are going to be each tag now if you want to close all toggles at once there is a shortcut that's command option t t for toggle so that's just another way to visualize your notes or retrieve your notes what you can also do is in each page of course in the body of the page you're going to write out all of your notes now if you do have a file like a PDF that you're trying to summarize there is a block called PDF where you can embed PDF into the body of the page um also we're going to have a section up here for comments if you're using this for personal use I recommend going to the page menu in any page in your database going to customize page go into top level page discussions and just turning that off this will be turned off for all pages in your database and all of our properties are at the top of every page like metadata and I can rearrange some of these to make it look a little bit neater I can also hide some of them so for example maybe sources and attachments I can click on source and go to hide property and hide when empty and the same for attachments and now that property will be hidden I can also add an icon or a cover image to each page and if I want to quickly navigate through each page my database there is a next page button up here at the top left hand corner and I can just go through each one I'm just going to go to my archived section here and give newsletter content ideas and icon as well okay so now we're done with the capture database so let's start with the next page we're just going to have an empty block here and I'm going to create a second column by just grabbing this block and sliding it next to capture I'm just gonna go forward slash page again and I'm gonna name this one project so we're going to start connecting captured notes to these projects come down here and choose table and then new database again now of course I can also give this an icon and just like with captured notes I'm going to make sure this first database view I'm going to rename is going to be active projects now a few different properties we want for projects firstly I'm not going to have the tags property to delete a property I'm just going to select the title and go to delete property I'm going to start with a property that is a check box it's just going to be a simple done check box we're going to keep this Project's database rather straight forward the next property is going to be a date called due date and we can also change the date format here if we want to and then another date property that's going to be called to publish so this is different from a due date maybe you want to launch a newsletter for example and the due date may be May 17th but the date you want to publish is May 18th so let's make that a project launch newsletter the last property is going to be another check box for archiving so this is going to help us archive old projects and I'm just going to give that an archived icon so that I can make this as minimal looking as possible we know via that icon what it is doing another project could be launch a cookbook notion template and we'll just use these two projects as examples maybe the due dates the 26th and the published date is the 31st okay so the first thing that I want to do is go to the database menu go to layout and just make sure these vertical lines are gone and what I can also do is go to sort and make sure this is sorted by due date and again like we did with capture we can go to layout and just make sure we're opening these pages in a center Peak and you can go through all these options yourself and customize how you'd like now with most projects you probably want to break it down into smaller tasks and that means we're going to go to the database menu and go to this other option we haven't seen yet which is sub items Now by clicking that you'll see in this preview window what we can do is create sub items of a parent item so sub items going to be renamed to subtasks and parent item is going to be project let's create that and now what you'll see are two added properties that are called relations and an invisible toggle next to each entry if I toggle down I can now create a sub item and for launching a newsletter maybe a sub item would be write newsletter content and create newsletter template so for both of these relations I do want to hide them by going to the title and hide in view for both so now we can easily break down these projects into actionable tasks for this one add recipe layout and create recipe maybe categories you can give these uh subordinate tasks due dates as well now let's say for launching the newsletter it is finished all of its subordinate tasks and the project itself and as a result I want to archive all of these sub tasks and the project itself as well just like with the captured database we're going to create a view just for archived projects firstly for active projects we're going to create a filter by going to this filter button and we can go to Archive and make sure these are unchecked I'm going to go to active duplicate and rename this to archived give it a moon emoji and make sure that filter goes from unchecked to checked and now we'll see launch newsletter in this section here and what I can also do as archived projects become more abundant I can go to group and just make sure this is grouped by maybe due date by month again like what we did in capture database and hide those MP groups let's create another database View for a calendar call it due dates if you want to see all of our due dates for projects in a calendar view maybe go to properties and see that done check box great can sort as well via this button to sort by due date ascending we'll see that in a calendar which is nice maybe we can duplicate this and also see a calendar of all the dates to publish projects to do that we're going to go to layout and make sure that show calendar buy instead of due date is to publish and that should shift all of the calendar items okay now let's make some connections we go back to the dashboard and go to capture I want to connect maybe how to make a cookbook to a certain project in my projects database I can actually add properties via any page in a database and it will create that same property for every page in the database so let's go in here and go to add a property and let's add a relation so relations are Advanced properties if you're new to notion it's connecting one database to another or one database page to another database page in the same database like we did with parent and sub items with the projects database that was a relation that was internal this relation is going to be external so it's prompting you to pick the database you want to relate to either to itself capture or maybe to projects so let's select projects we'll see in the preview window that capture is now going to connect to projects maybe we also by toggling show on projects want to also connect projects back to the captured database like a backlink and this new property and projects could be called from capture and just add that relation here now we have a relation called projects and if I click through I'll see all of the projects and tasks we just created in this case it's going to be to launch a cookbook notion template what I can also do to visualize this a little bit better is click on the menu next to projects show as and I have three different options I can just show as a property as is or as a page section I'm going to choose page section just to give it its own section down here and I'm going to go to customize shown properties and maybe I want to show the due date of this connected project Okay so we've captured how to make a cookbook tweet and connected it to a project that we can easily open as its own page you'll notice we are now in the launch of cookbook notion template project page and the parent page is the projects database speaking of projects let's also clean up these pages maybe I want the done and archived checkboxes at the bottom due date and two publish at the top firstly I'm going to get rid of this comment section by going to the page menu again and going to customize page top level page discussions and again we're going to turn that off so I'm going to click on subtasks which is an internal relation and show as page section I'm going to visualize these subtasks a little bit differently I'm going to go to customize shown properties and some things that might be useful is seeing the done check box so we can click through completed subtasks within the project page maybe a due date if that's relevant and I can also move these around in different order what I'm also going to do is from capture that external relation I'm also going to show as page section below subtasks or I can bring it up above subtasks and again I can visualize what properties I want to see like maybe type so I know it's a tweet and also Source might be useful and attachments so I can click through that link right from this project page okay great launch a cookbook let's say that the ad recipe layout subtask is completed if we want to keep track of the progress of each project I can actually create something called a roll up which works directly with relations so let's create a new property here and go down to the roll up type and I'm going to rename it progress and we're going to create a progress bar the first thing I'm going to do is select the relation that I am using in this case I want to use subtasks and I can select the property that I want to look up from the connected subtasks in this case because we're creating a progress bar I want to select done go to calculate and I'm just going to calculate the percent checked and I'm going to change it to a bar and I can even change the color of this progress bar maybe to Orange and then click away and we'll see that this project is at 50 percent completion let's take a look at how we can organize these captured notes into different areas so we're going to create another page yet again I'm going to grab this empty block and again just slide it next to projects go to forward slash page and make an Aries database I'm going to go down to more here and we're actually going to create a gallery and go to new database so areas unlike projects are just areas in your life actionable areas like learning a new language that do not have a definitive due date so again this could be something like renovating a home or learning a new language so let's add an icon here we're going to make this rather simple I'm going to go to the database menu and go to layout now for gallery you'll see this to do check box and completed to do we're actually visualizing the inside of the page and we can change what we're seeing in this card preview by going to the card preview option and choosing between none page cover or page content I'm going to choose none and go back just like with our other databases I'm going to create a database view here called active and another one for archived I'm going to go to this page one and open this up as a full page to add some properties firstly what I want to do is get rid of this comment section by going to the page menu again customize page and top level page discussions off delete this created Property don't really need that and I'm also going to delete tags so with a clean slate I'm going to first add a property called status this will give me a drop down menu as well except a status drop down menu is going to be divided into to do in progress and complete and we can actually add different options to each one of these so I'm actually going to click on done here and complete it and rename it to completed and those will be our statuses so the reason why I'm choosing this status option instead of a done checkbox for areas is because it's ongoing I just want to have a signal that shows that this ongoing area is in progress now completed we're going to assume means archived with that in mind we're going to not utilize the archive checkbox here what we are going to add is a relation to capture by selecting relation and I'm going to direct this relation to the captured database and I'm also going to show in the capture database a property called area the areas database has a relation called capture to capture and the capture database now has an area relation to areas now let's add that and what I'm going to do is actually select rename this to from capture and in the menu of from capture I'm going to go to hide property and always hide so what I'm thinking with this relationship is that there's probably going to be a lot of notes in these areas because they're ongoing so with that in mind let's actually rename this area maybe to learn how to speak Spanish and from capture let's select tips for learning Spanish as an example of a note I'm just going to go to the parent page here areas back to that database and I'm going to create a template for areas by going to this drop down menu next to New and new template new area you'll see your editing inside of a template via this bar up here let's just open this up as a page and what I want to do is link all of the notes connected to each area in the body of the page as a database a database that you can sort and filter so there are two options to visualize relationships either in the page section which we've been doing or with this option so to create a linked database View I'm going to go to the body of the page and go forward slash linked and the first option should be linked view of database so we're going to add an existing database to this page and here it's asking what data source do you want to link to in this case capture is what we want to link to great I'm going to choose an existing view from capture remember we created an active view notes view archived view tag View and all which was that week view I'm going to choose active so now we're seeing this almost like a portal I'm just going to click away you'll see the capture link to the database you'll see this little arrow here indicating this is a linked view like an embed or a portal I can go ahead and hide this database title and I am going to make sure that every time I add this template by going to the page menu here that it is a full with page like this okay so what I want to do is for every area I want to see all of my notes in this style like I said so I can search better I can sort through all of my notes better because there's probably going to be a lot of captured notes and I think I'm going to remove grouped by month so I'm going to go to database menu go to group and just make sure grouped by is none so we just have a list of notes in a table I'm going to make sure this filter which currently has archive unchecked I'm going to add another one I'm going to make sure that the area relation in this note by clicking area contains the title of this template new area which should be at the very top now everything should disappear and what will happen is when we select a new template it should automatically connect to whatever page we're in so I'll show you what I mean but first I want to create an archived view duplicate active rename this to archived quickly change the sun to a moon and just change this filter from archive unchecked to checked again we're keeping that area relation to new area and then I'm just going to go back to the areas database click on learn how to speak Spanish and see what happens when I select now in the body of the page this new template we just created new area firstly full width page and all of our active notes connected to learn how to speak Spanish what we can also do from these area Pages let's say I have a note that I know is going to go to this area I can just go right to this learn how to speak Spanish page and add notes inside of here and you'll see with each note that the area has now populated the page we're in learn how to speak Spanish so what I want to do is actually go to tips for learning Spanish and open this up we did create a page section for projects that these notes are connected to I want to do the same with areas so I'm just going to click on area show as page section [Music] and maybe show the status so this is our notes page for tips for learning Spanish if I go to capture we're in the captured database and I can see that this is part of the area learn how to speak Spanish I can click through there and now I can see all of the active and archive notes for this area maybe give this an icon now that we're in here I want to add some more properties for areas the first being I want to count how many notes I have so I'm going to use a roll up again go down to roll up and I'm going to call this number captured and the relation is from capture property is going to remain name and I'm just going to calculate count all in this case it should just be one and then I'm going to add another property called formula and what I want to do is create a label that label is going to be called capture label and I'm just going to create a string that says blank number of captured notes and I'm going to visualize this inside of our Gallery cards what a formula does is give you the ability to aggregate or calculate information from your database so we have properties over here on the right hand side that we can work with this is going to be pretty straightforward I'm just going to say if and click on this property here number captured this is a number if this is greater than zero then I want to format this format is a function you'll see here formats its argument as a string what I want to do is format the number captured as a string Plus the string captured notes otherwise if numbered captured isn't greater than zero just a blank space okay so we have one captured note I'm going to go ahead and hide this roll up now if I go to areas and go to the database menu the first thing I want to do is go to properties and show captured label and maybe show status as well and because we're only seeing active areas I want to make sure the filter is status is not complete okay and now what I want to do is just duplicate active to archived and make sure this is a moon emoji and this filter instead is status is completed so from the beginning of the video I mentioned that a note will only be connected to either a project or an area that makes it an actionable note and when we're capturing notes we want to keep this in mind we want to make sure we're not just capturing notes for the sake of it and that it actually has an actionable purpose let's go to each one of these and start making connections so recipe ideas for cookbook might have the project by clicking add projects launch a cookbook notion template tips for learning Spanish the area of course is learn how to speak Spanish in archived we have this note newsletter content ideas which is a file and I'm just going to add this to project launch newsletter we're archiving projects that are completed and areas that are completed how do we know when to Archive notes so we could just manually by looking at it go I don't really need this right now it's not actionable but it may be useful to see if the project that it's attached to is completed or not in order to visualize that I'm going to go ahead and create another property here called project progress and we're gonna go to roll up so again the roll up close project progress we're going to choose the relation projects the property of done and we're going to calculate the percent checked and maybe we can create a progress bar here so if all projects connected to this node are at 100 percent we may want to go ahead and click that archived checkbox and I can inside of the page maybe hide this okay so now let's talk about how to capture notes from the web I have an article here as an example how to write a newsletter that will help a brand borrow from Forbes and I've downloaded an extension which I'll link down in the description below called save to notion so what this extension does is it allows you to add forms that connect to your notion workspace so that you can easily capture web articles and images and videos into your notes database in fact let's create a new form together add a form and I'm just going to select the database in my workspace called capture okay so in this form what do I want to do whenever I capture an article do I just want to bookmark it or do I also want to extract the content now the fields that I also want to manipulate template isn't really necessary but we're going to add a new field here for type another field for projects or areas so I can select an existing project from my projects database specifically and from areas like learn how to speak Spanish so this is just a form and maybe I can add that tags database to add some tags and then I'm going to save and go back now I'm here in this article and I want to capture it so I'm going to select that form maybe I'm going to rename the title here how to write a newsletter go to type this is a web clip and it is connected to the project launch newsletter no area but it does have the tag newsletter and marketing and let's save the page I can open the page in notion via this button I'm just going to go back to my sidebar and you'll see how to write a newsletter and the source in fact I may go to source and make sure wrap column is off you can open this up and it should give me the content of the article in the body of the page I'm just going to delete these images and even add an icon let's talk about summarizing so what's really important about capturing notes and Web Clips is summarizing these articles because you don't want all of this information in your notebook this is not useful what is useful is summarizing this into bullet points I do recommend reading it all the way through and making your own assertions for summarizing but AI can still be really useful so if you do have ai you can highlight the entire page of content and use the shortcut command J and you can then ask AI to generate a summary so what I like to say is generate a summary with a paragraph and a useful bullet points remember to highlight key words as bold text okay so let's replace this section so we do have a summarization up here it is a bit long so I could summarize this further now with that long article we have a pretty good summarization so I did want to bold keywords and it doesn't look like that happens so what I'm going to do is actually highlight these bullet points and I really like doing this with my summarizations I'm going to say bold keywords so it really stands out okay great this looks better in light mode but you'll see that all of the keywords and these bullet points are now bold and I can also turn this into by either going to the block menu and turn into call out or I can actually just go into the block itself and go forward slash into call out I can even change the icon of this call out maybe an info icon so that long article now looks a lot easier to digest going back to the capture database you'll notice in Project progress now that this how to write a newsletter has a project attached to it that is 100 completed so now I may look at this and go okay do I want to Archive this note it's not currently actionable for a task that I am currently doing anymore so yeah I may want to Archive that there may be captured notes that do not connect to a project or an area this would be a resource let's say for example that I want to capture this tweet which is uh about how to use an AI prompt this is actually my tweet but I'm going to use it as an example and I might want to just save it but I'm not actually working currently on anything that would utilize it what you're going to do again I'm going to utilize that extension save to notion and I am using that form we created I'm just going to change this name not to the whole tweak text but just something that's easier to read like a i prompt idea or notion database and I can make sure the type is tweet and I'm going to skip projects and area and go right to tags and select this notion tag now you'll notice at the bottom here for this extension which is really cool you can either clip this as a tweet none or a thread I'm going to choose thread just to show you what that looks like okay great let's go back to the capture database and should be right here AI prompt idea for notion database and we'll see in these call outs every part of that tweet thread great so now we've captured this I'm going to give it an icon now because it's not attached to a project or an area it is considered a resource so let's go back to the dashboard home page and create another page here forward slash page called resources let's give this an icon maybe a light bulb and this is not going to be a table this is just going to be an empty page and I also want to make sure that the page is full width so I'm going to the page menu and just toggling full width and I'm going to look for the linked database option in the database menu forward slash linked that should be the first option again we're creating an embed to an existing database we've created it will give us a selection to choose from in this case we're going to choose capture and I'm going to choose an existing view by tags I'm just going to click away really quickly go to capture just make sure I had this database title and that shortcut for collapsing toggles and a page is command option t for toggle great so we do need to add a filter here because these are resources I'm going to make sure they're active but you could change that and I'm also going to add a filter here where area relation is empty and the project relation is empty this should leave us with only one note that notion note we just saved AI prompt idea for notion database and that's all we really need to do for that page and I'm actually going to modify my navigation bar up here I'm going to create two different columns or actually three forward slash three columns create three columns of blocks I'm going to create a toggle here that says actions and another one for organize and the last one is actually going to be forward slash button and we'll configure this button at the end drag and drop capture into actions and organize of course we're organizing what we're capturing into projects areas and resources what we're also doing is viewing all archived projects and notes in a separate page as well so under organize I'm actually going to create another block here forward slash page called archived and this is also just going to be an empty page maybe add an icon for archive and we're going to make sure that this page is also full with and forward slash link database View so in this case we are viewing archived projects so I'm going to select the first data source as projects and then we do already have an existing view called archived with all of the appropriate filters in place so that's really all we need to do I'm just going to change the name here to projects and change this icon to a tool so we know it's for projects click away and I'm just going to hide this database title and because we selected that existing view the filter will already have archived as checked and grouped by month and year let's create another view for archived areas so I'm just going to select this plus button again and now we can actually select another data source in this case areas for this database View and select an existing view called archived again we already have our filters in place we don't really need to do anything here just rename it to areas and give it a new icon and of course I'm going to hide this database title as well we're going to view all archived notes so again we're going to select a new database View and select capture and again we have an existing view called archived just rename this to captured notes and change that icon okay so let's go back to the dashboard here and I might even move archived to an action and the last thing we want to add of course this is optional like I said in the beginning is the sharing option which is also an action and I'm going to go forward slash page again maybe call this to share give this an icon of a rocket ship and again this is going to be an empty page and a full width page so again forward slash linked linked view of database first I want to see all the projects and we do have an existing view called to publish so let's select that and maybe change this icon again and then lastly we want to view all captured notes to share just select active here captured notes and I do want to ungroup by created time and just choose none I can also filter this to make sure we add another filter where the share check box is checked I actually do want to hide this project progress It's not really necessary in this View so let's go to capture title here and hide it and we are done with setting up sort of the system itself now let's create a dashboard this isn't going to be a complicated dashboard but I just want to show you how you can create a home page for your second brain first I'm going to get rid of these instructions here and maybe throw this inside of a page called video help and below our navigation bar I'm going to create a call out so forward slash call out and I'm going to make sure that the color of this call out is default background and maybe change this icon to an info icon now inside of this call out I want to show all of my active projects and areas I'm going to call this projects and areas and I'm just going to go enter and tab in to get inside of this box I can just go forward slash link to create a link to view of a database or I can actually go directly to the link of the database so projects is one that I want to link go to its menu copy its link and then go down to where I want to view a link database View and paste and it will actually give me an option to create a linked view of that database in this case I want to see all active projects so I'm going to select active and just leave it at that and hide this database title and I am going to actually rename this project so I know which one it is and the next one is going to be areas so we're going to add a new database view here and just make sure this source is areas change the name to areas and then change this icon of course go to layout make sure it's a gallery and in card preview I'm just going to change To None again go back and make sure the property I'm seeing is the captured label and the status so that does look really nice in the front of my home page where I can see all of my active ongoing areas and the number of captured notes in them go back and I can sort Again by status and that's all I really need here I'm going to hide that database title and here in areas of course I can also add new areas from here this is going to be the extent of my home page you can just throw this video help down here give some space between our navigation bar and let's configure a button now buttons of notion are rather new I do have a whole video on it if you want to check that out and this button is going to add a new note and call it new note or add note you can even give it an icon as well and we're going to add the first step here we're going to add page two select a database in this case capture and the name of this new note will be new note title edit another property we could in type make sure the type of this new note is note now the next step is after creating this new page I want to open it up and start writing in the note so I'm going to open page and I'm going to open this new page that I added from step one so I'm going to select this one and I'm going to open this page either inside Peak Center Peak or full page in this case Center Peak is fine and press done this is our finished second brain template let's take a look at what happens when I select this button takes me right to a new note page I can maybe create a note for template ideas give it a tag notion and brainstorming and just get right to work and I can even add projects or maybe create a new project like launch a notion shop add new down here add new launch a notion shop in projects and get started here and when I'm done writing those notes I can maybe go to launch a new notion shop open this up as a page and now configure my new project I created and of course in the from capture section I can see my template ideas note here and that's the extent of it you'll also of course see our new project here in the home page which we can also add new projects from you can toggle down and add new tasks for this project to break it down further and of course you'll see this progress bar go up and down as well like I said full template and follow along page are down in the description below let's just go right into the outro I hope you guys enjoyed that this is definitely a longer video I wanted it to serve as a video you can come back to over time let me know down below if you do utilize the second brain system or if you plan to in the future and I will see you guys the rest of the week on Twitter and next time with a new video I'll see you then thank you [Music]

Channel: Red Gregory

Views: 161,702

Keywords: notion, notion second brain, notion tasks, notion project planner, notion notes, notion digital notes, notion GTD, notion organize, notion productivity, notion tutorial, notion how to, notion app, notion formulas, notion relations, notion rollups, notion dashboard, save to notion, notion web bookmarks, notion twitter, notion AI

Id: BM4IxYWhlSg

Length: 62min 10sec (3730 seconds)

Published: Wed May 24 2023