How to Manage Your Time Better: context is everything. Build this Notion productivity system with me

hi everyone i've just got out the shower oh i feel so much better today you see i spent the whole day actually out in a studio making some work with some other people it was quite a strange experience given that i've spent the last four months pretty much cooped up at home that has had some advantages i've been able to get one with some other things and make these videos but it's made me realize i'm going to need to be a little bit more strategic about how i manage my time so today's video is a quick one all about batch tasking context is everything that'll make sense in a moment we're gonna see how quickly i can take you through the basics of setting up a task and project management system using notion that you can get using tomorrow if you [Music] want i'm really hungry i got home and didn't eat enough lunch peanut butter is great isn't it i mean look at that that's just pure happiness and protein right there oh it takes a while to you know anyway [Music] my name's simon this is better creating where we are trying to simplify creative life so um if you're not subscribed already please hit that subscribe button because this is a place where we're gonna help creative people uh make more meaningful work and hopefully live more intentional stress-free lives in the process and we're exploring all this kind of stuff like productivity but also um a bit of film and video stuff some simple living and some other creative tools and help with whatever whatever it is you're getting up to so check out the rest of the videos so batch tasking i was inspired to kind of understand this when i um was reading about um how we can so easily be distracted i think we live in an age of distraction at the moment uh you know every time your phone goes off and beeps some news comes up or we remember we've got something to do on another electronic device it's really easy to not stay focused on the task at hand as i'm finding at the moment kind of thankfully i'm starting to have more competing jobs vying for my time so i need to be out the house i need to be at the computer i need to be filming these videos and writing these videos and so actually it's very difficult to actually get a load of jobs done in a small amount of time so the idea of battery tasking is to contextualize your work so that you're able to do things you need to do on a computer at the same time a great example of that is email right how many times have you found yourself checking your emails throughout the day but not potentially really replying or getting a load sent so recently since i'm starting to leave the house a bit more i've been thinking about how i can batch responding to emails in the morning and then once again in the afternoon and then that's it that's the only time i spend and as with email or anything else the way it works is to give it a context that's why i'm saying context is everything a context is either a person a place or a thing so by giving each task a context what you're then able to do is filter by that context and then therefore focus on the right thing so let's say if i click um computer that's a thing i know that i can do all of that the computer sit down filter it and do it all at the computer the idea of context is a key idea in david allen's getting things done if you want to read a bit further on the subject so context is everything and that is how you can more effectively batch task by focusing on where when and how you do the jobs you need to do still got peanut butter in my teeth and here's how to make a system in order to do it so let's take a look at my notion home screen if you want to know more about how this system works check out my other video that i put out the week before this exploring productivity i'll put a link later on and it talks about how i've built this and the thinking behind it okay so you can see from my home screen we have a set of uh an inbox flag priorities things due today or overdue and things during the next seven days these are all kind of filtered copies or mirrors of the main task and project list in my task list then here you'll see context person place or thing if i click on it you'll see that i can list as many different things as i like and that's how i am able to filter to where and how i'm going to get things done so i can filter by project to focus purely on the project i want to focus on but i can also focus by a person a place or a thing and you'll also see here high energy and low energy this is a great idea from david allen so high energy might require clearing some space and just focusing intensely on it low energy can be ticked off a bit more easily [Music] three two three two one go i can't do that right let's go so this is what we're going to build uh have a little look over here under system you'll see um task list and project list if i click on task list all my tasks with the related project and project list you'll see all my projects with the related tasks that little arrow says basically means it's a linked database and relates it to it so you'll see that each project has all the tasks listed under under it and then each task has the project it relates to so they're linked and it allows me to have lots of control over how i view things so here is an empty page on notion let's see how quickly we can work through it we're going to start by creating a table a database here it is you can add yourself an icon it will normally do it simply and you can even add a cover it will do that automatically and you can change these but there you go there it is i'm gonna name it task list in fact let's do the icon there you go we're gonna put a nice little check box now the tag i'm going to check it's a multi-select which is what we need but we're going to change that to context and i like to give myself a reminder of pp or thing that's the place or thing the files we don't actually need files you might want to put files but we're not going to do that what we do need though is a due date and we want to change that to a date yeah so this is property type i'm going to make it a date the next thing we're going to add i think is a priority list now in getting things done what was in gtd is we'll call it for short now we can have a priority but it has to be very sparsely used and that is going to be a check box so that we're able to check things now you remember i had the related projects i'm not going to do that yet because i haven't created that database yet oh and we should probably have a tick box for when it's done right so let's do that and you'll notice at the moment when i tick it nothing happens it stays there we're going to be able to filter that in a moment let's now create ourselves a home screen where we can place the task and the project list so i've started a new page i've called it dashboard we're gonna go to templates and i'm gonna click this personal home which i think is rather good and the reason i pick it is it gives us two columns quite easily so we're gonna go for that use this template if you click up on the top right you can make the page full width that really helps and then we could move this over there we go and this we could call this like system that's what i call mine yeah i'm gonna delete these for now because we don't need them there you go so um there is my home um so obviously you can customize this and we can do that later on in fact why don't we do that great as they have unsplash and we could say computer and there you go there's loads of options it's a bit like my one with all these things find the joy find the pleasure it's the little things that make all the difference so it's ready to go if i go back to where i was here's my task list i can click here and go move to and then i can click my personal home and it will be moved to that spot there it is there's my task list i'm going to move it over to system and it sits under there now let's create a new page here we're going to create our project list and you can do it on the page so i'm going to click forward slash because we'll bring something up we've got a table full page there it is now you'll see that sits up here under personal home lots of shortcuts to do this great so this is our project list now in the project list there's ways to filter them we can set up weekly reviews and that could be for another video if you want to know more about the weekly review check that other video i'm mentioning link below um but i'm going to keep my files that's quite useful let's delete that great so what we're going to do here is we're just going to place in um some projects so let's invent some projects there are our projects and again with these we can open these up and this is actually where you could turn this into a whole kind of board where you keep all the information for that project so there are my projects let's just give all of these a little icon just so that we can tell that they're what they are there's my project so now i want to link my tasks with my projects [Music] now what we're going to do is link the two databases together so we're going to click on our task list and you'll see i've inputted jobs to do i've got those in to give us a little example this is where it gets interesting i'm going to add another column for this column we're going to go to the property type we're going to make it a relation i'm going to click on that and then it allows me to select a database now the other list project list is a database so i'm going to find that i'm going to click on project list and i'm going to create relation if i um just rename this quickly and i'm going to click here and now you'll see the projects that we created in the project list come up fantastic and i can just work through so call erica that's the film shoot with erica um email erica film shoot with erica let's just populate that and there you go they're related to a project simple on the project list and you can see now under each we have the related tasks to get done fantastic so they are now linked that's all very good very well and good it's quite hard to actually use it and that is why we kept this space on our dashboard ready you'll see now on my personal home i've got this tasks thing so i'm going to put in here i'm going to do forward slash h2 so that's heading 2 medium section heading create a heading and i'm going to call this due today nice so i can give it a color for example of the background let's make that green and this is where it gets fine i'm going to do forward slash create and you'll see create linked database i'm going to do that and this is basically going to create as an image of one of those databases i'm going to find the task list and what you'll see populate is based our task this database is an exact copy of this one over here why is this useful it's useful because it allows me to filter and get a view and we call this due today because we only want to see tasks that are due today which at the moment is only pay the electricity bill there it is yeah so we're going to create a filter we're going to click on the due date and we're going to add filter and it's going to say when due date is today and you see what it's done it's changed it to only showers to pay the electricity bill the other thing i want to do though is make sure that when i tick it it disappears so we can click on done add a filter there and i'm going to put when done is empty there we go so then when i tick it it disappears from here you simply repeat the process and create different views of your databases using the appropriate filters here's how to filter for tasks in the next seven days we're gonna go to due date we're gonna add a filter and we're gonna do when the due date is after today because i don't want to see anything that's due today in that list but also we want to add another filter and say that the due date is within the next week what's great about that is it means that tomorrow mum will graduate up into today's tasks fantastic and that's how it filters it now i could have an everything else right where due date is empty so that's filtering by date i've created a priority view works just the same way um you filter so that priority is ticked and that done is uh not ticked but you'll see that it doesn't actually say priority in it and that's because i've kind of filtered the way i can view it if we click on the little dots and go to properties you'll see you can change what you see in the view also we know that anything in there isn't going to be a priority because it's in the one above so i can now hide that and it just kind of cleans up what's there finally we should talk about how to filter by context so you're going to be able to batch task at the with the people the places and the things that you need to do those jobs in more condensed periods of time a really simple way to do this if we go to the task list is just to click on each one and give it a personal place or a thing [Music] and so on and so forth now of course to view it we need to have a system so we click on add view and i want to view it as a board because that will do it via the um the tags clipboard create and you'll see immediately there they are you can see things under context so here's one i made earlier so if we look at my home screen and click on the table view of the next seven days go to board view and you'll see i've now filtered this so it works for everything under computer everything under ipad so i can now search per place and thing that i'm working batch tasking it's so brilliant well it's certainly very helpful anyway look that's a little guide to creating a task and project management system in notion i hope you found it helpful if you did hit the like button and if you're not subscribed already hit that subscribe button it's free it just means my videos will pop up in your youtube feed and it means we stay connected which is brilliant and thank you so much to everyone who's doing that it has really made a difference i'm so excited to see the channel grow and it's really spurring me on and supporting me to create this work so uh keep doing it thanks i'll see you again in the future i'm gonna relax now stop doing all this work and yeah i'll see you later bye you know i just walk behind the light and come back i mean it's just lies honestly right bye

Channel: Better Creating

Views: 46,614

Keywords: gtd Notion, notion, to do list, notion gtd setup, notion gtd dashboard, notion productivity system, notion app, productivity system, notion setup, how to use notion, Getting Things Done, to-do list app, productivity, time management tips, Bettercreating, time management strategies, how to manage your time, building a second brain, task list management, to-do list, productivity tools, notion app tutorial, notion tutorial 2020, Notion GTD, better creating, Weekly review gtd

Id: tpdD6pCHsEU

Length: 15min 43sec (943 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020