My Notion Set-up Tour | A Complete Notion Life Management System Overview 2021

the quest to build the ultimate productivity system that's where my notion journey started eight months ago at the same time as starting this channel when i was seduced and then won over by a simple but life-changing idea your brain is for having ideas not for holding them and this is the result my notion life operating system i want to give you today my 2021 template tour and my guide to how i organize my life an entire creative workflow in notion hi everybody welcome to better creating if you're new here my name's simon the channel's about simplifying creative life and i make videos about productivity intentional living creating better content it's the big video that i've been promising today i want to mark the launch of my new set of notion productivity templates that i'm making available for you guys to download in fact this very system and i want to take a full tour of the system i use to try to stay stress free and manage my life it works most of the time [Music] ah come on why sorry my notion life os home screen breaks down into four sections that kind of define the process that i'm using to get things done visualize collect action and maintain that essentially means visualize your goals collect knowledge and tasks action what needs to be done and then maintain and review the system and the whole process it would be great if this kind of linked into a nice cool sounding acronym but it doesn't so there you go suggestions in the comments below for better headings so as we go let's take a little look at the kind of key principles that guide the approach to building an effective productivity system and i want to show you kind of how it all interrelates the kind of key features that link together to enable a simplified workflow and create connections between knowledge and ideas that in turn add value to the project output work that you're producing if you would like to get a copy of this template you can download it from my website along with other great tools and notion templates let's dive into the tour right here we are in the office at the computer i want to give you this tour over two home screens actually the one that i actually use with all my junk in it um you can see here look there's all my tasks over the week and this which is called my life os and this is the template i'm making available uh to download the difference is it doesn't have my stuff in it and it's laid out exactly the same but what i've actually done with this one is adding instructions to use the system so we have a kind of system setup guide which kind of talks you through how to get started with it and also gives a load of kind of examples of videos you might want to use it also has a guide to all of the different sections and how to kind of get started with them i've built this view for quick access to optimize it for both desktop and mobile viewing using columns and toggles you can see that each section lines up so that it will on a mobile work to the divider and follow it down and then start from the next divider so it means you can lay out for desktop effectively but also see things in the right order these indify widgets here are um brilliant they show weather and the time pretty simple the top of the home page has the key links to my various dashboards under which i have my task and knowledge inboxes because these are the key tools i need to easily get to on the go so i think a good productivity system always has the most used and essential tools at the beginning and most accessible so that you reduce the friction and the number of clicks from getting things done to kind of maximize your energy to output being able to do quick capture is one of the keys to a great productivity second brain system if you look at david allen's getting things done approach you look at thiago forte his second brain and the para method or even more recent people like august bradley and his pillars pipes and volts they all rely on that same idea and it's no different here in this system the first thing i usually do in my day is a quick journal entry so the quick capture i can either use this button or use my backtap function to jump straight to the journal and use the daily reflection template that speeds everything up i can use that template to view one of my a copy of the task list and add any tasks in there and then just delete it which is really useful and that's a way of clarifying my focus for the day and focusing on what that one thing i want to get done is the journal also has 14 templates that can lead me through different types of reflection and thinking on subjects like character gratitude setting goals all inspired by the stoics i can also add tasks right at the top of the home screen in the inbox here they are filtered into the system when i add them to a related project through the day i'll log any daily practices um that i'm working on in this habit tracker over here now more on how i set that up in the visualize section later on now this here my knowledge inbox is a filtered view of my second brain knowledge database so it's the database that serves the notebook system and my knowledge bank where i store things like references links articles i keep all my notes and references and media links all here to be searched in one database so that it can then be linked to projects or the content creation dashboard later on i can put things on my reading list and store inspiration and research to feed into theatre projects and videos my theatre company called this uh having like a bibliography of inspiration on productions so i've kind of taken that and turned it into this uh um bits of content that resonate with me um ali abdul does something really similar with his resonance calendar if you've seen that i can mark things uh to be shared in my email newsletter here and most usefully i think again link them to the projects that i want to reference them in i believe that a good second brain system reveals connections between things and helps you see things that you otherwise wouldn't an effective second brain should always allow us to capture information like this and then effectively return it to you at the right time and place and enable you therefore to use that information to feed into making more valuable outputs whatever it is you do you know for me it's theater productions film stuff youtube content right it saves time and increases the value and quality of your output and with that in mind let's move on to this action section so this is how i typically use the system uh in my daily workflow i tend to start with any quick easy tasks and then move on to the one thing so i have a column called the daily priority that allows me to tag any of the tasks um in that day so that they're in an order of a kind of normal to-do list so beyond kind of giving them a due date like it does here when i put it into the task inbox it will allow me to then order them in the list i use this notebook dashboard to do most of my freelance work in so it displays various views of the notes in this database i go here and use it just like a normal notebook really so if i'm in a meeting or working on projects i'll probably have this open or otherwise it will be this content creation dashboard for most of the day where i think up and develop ideas for content and youtube videos and it manages the process of making them you might recognize it as heavily influenced by thomas frank's system his template it's really hard to beat right but what i've done is made lots of simplifications to it tweaks to suit my workflow and that is the joy i think of notion it shapes it allows you to shape the system to serve your personal process you'll see i have a new video template that generates a page with all the things i need to guide me through the video making process it's honestly halved my uh the time that i take to actually make one of these videos this template will return all the notes media references and relevant journal entries right next to where i'm scripting here meaning that my research is right there to inform and add value to the content that i'm making and i use this dashboard to basically plan script film edit and publish so it's also ad has that added advantage of course as well of indexing and kind of banking everything so if i want to reference stuff later on i can let me know in the comments below if you'd like to know any more detail about any of these sections these sections and i'll i'll share more of it usually before the end of the day i will then zero my email by going to my email account and also inputting tasks into the inbox here for the next day from there i'll then zero anything that has been collected in that task inbox over the day simply by filtering it into the system for later on and i'll move any tasks down here in this calendar that i didn't get done on the day uh to a later day in the calendar so that it makes sure that my agenda is looking good for the rest of the week let's be honest right productivity your life what you want to get done never goes as planned like people like me who are kind of making videos about productivity can often seem like we have everything together and trust me uh i started this this morning and it's like half eight and i'm trying to cram it in because i've got to get on my motorbike tomorrow and go to a meeting so you know these things happen so that neatly moves us on to the maintain section the section where i keep everything on track as i said in one of the really early videos i put out when i first started playing with notion maintaining your system is just as important as actually utilizing it to get the stuff done let me show you what i mean i'm just maintaining the system it will potentially for you if you're not doing this kind of thing actually end up taking more time than you're used to but the idea is that if we get that right we get it set up it then leaves much more time in the balance of things to be there in the zone heard about the 100 meter runners that talk about being in the zone it's that moment where you're fully present in the moment the power of now as that great book title suggests to be purely singularly focused singularly on what you're doing in that moment is always going to be making space properly being creative so we create a brain to support our brain to be happy stress-free and more productive wow that was uh quite a shock to see me from however many months ago a great productivity system means that you don't have to think about what to do you just have to think about doing it and so as james clear says we rise to the level of our goals but we fall to the level of our systems so to maintain your system is key to making sure that it's holding you up so this section then is super important my weekly review now a weekly review is something you have to do you have to commit to right to review everything look over it get everything lined up make sure you're on track but i also have this filtered view of all of my project database items i tend to do a weekly review on a friday afternoon so most of the projects in here are set to be returned to me on a friday i can click on the project and inside it um view everything that is related to it so i'll add tasks adjust plans and work out what needs to be delegated deferred or prioritized it also allows me to see the tasks that are not actually given a due date and consider those as well after this i simply set the last review date to today and it will then come back to me again based on the set review frequency for example next friday or in a month the other key maintenance i do for the week is time boxing my schedule for the following week so for example i'll edit and update my google calendar using this indify integration so it shows me next to my tasks and i click here to jump to the calendar i can then also edit and utilize this recurring task generator button to populate the calendar with tasks each month and then kind of lay them out so i can plan ahead so i plan the week out and i'm good to switch off for the weekend you can see my video on weekly planning to kind of go into more depth on all of that if you're interested and finally i have a monthly and quarterly kind of prompted journal template within the journal that prompts a guided review of progress yep so i can show my a view of my goals in there the database and adjust those if it's needed and it will make me kind of think and reflect and make sure i'm on track the goal setting and planning of your year is what makes sure that every single action you're taking is focusing you towards reaching the goals that you're setting [Music] let's click goal setting and yearly planning i want to show you this in the empty template so you can see how it works first of all there's a guide to take me through it but we've got a couple of sections we've got visualize and action into the system first thing is to start a new yearly review if i click on that give it a minute it will generate a new yearly planner i will then drop it down review and learn so it's basically understand the past understand last year and visualize and plan i've got my wins and my losses so i would list in all the wins i could think about and if you want guidance you can use this category thing so i can go through all people in relationships first i could do experiences so on and so forth and then next to them i would write in my lessons as you can see on some of mine here the same with losses harder one to do but very very useful once you've done that you should then have a set of really clear lessons and kind of perspective on how the year went and what you might be thinking about for this year we then open this section up and then three key goals that's the most important part a key goal is a big enough thing to be scary but achievable enough that you can believe in it and milestones might be the key kind of things you want to hit or need to have done to hit them they might even be projects that you action into the system and then really importantly i put what obstacles might prevent me from achieving them and what the solutions might be to those obstacles that's a really useful guide when you go into action into the system we fall to levels of our systems you could put in to what is a goals template right a goals dashboard i put in each goal here you can set the year and all that from here i can then add practices so as an example here of daily yoga you'll see you would just put this information in so i can set if i what frequency i want it to be i'm generally using it for daily uh stuff and saving recurring tasks for my recurring task calendar you saw earlier you then put the start date and the end date and track it over a year and that will then generate how many times you have to do it and it will track it so it will give you percentage progress it will tell you when you last logged it it will tell you the status how well you're doing with it and when it's next due i would also potentially from here and what maybe set projects or link goals to existing projects and tasks so that you're able to really make sure that everything is linking back to these key goals pretty cool let me know in the comments below what else i should add there's not a lot of stuff around budgeting on there so i'm thinking about doing something around that hit the like button if you enjoyed it it goes a long way to help this get to other people and of course subscribe if you're not already and if you want that template go check it out on the website i've got kind of various versions of it so you could have this whole thing or you might want to just condense it or do different versions i hope you find it valuable and it's as useful to you as it has been to me it's thousands of hours i reckon of kind of playing and learning go download it enjoy it i hope it's useful whatever happens get off your device get off your screen get outside and i'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Better Creating

Views: 26,973

Keywords: notion tour, notion setup, notion setup 2021, My Notion Set-up Tour, Notion Life Management System, A Complete Notion Life Management System Overview, notion tour 2021, notion tour and template, how i organise my life with notion, notion gtd setup, gtd notion, Productivity system, notion productivity system, building a productivity system in notion, productivity setup 2021, second brain notion, how i organise my life, bettercreating, better creating, Notion, notion templates

Id: szTZdEQsiys

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 26 2021