Notion Office Hours: Bullet Journaling 📝

good morning everybody welcome to office hours welcome welcome let us know where you're coming in from and the sidebar hopefully some of you know the deal if you've been to an office hours before you know that you can ask a question and they ask a question area below so it doesn't get lost and we're going to do our best to cover those questions yeah first rule of bullet journal is tell everyone about bullet journaling really excited to be here with Matt Ragland and Brittney Berger to fellow Productivity nerds who are really excited about bullet journaling and the thing I love too about notion is of course everyone's notion space looks so different so I'm really excited to see what bullet journaling looks like for each of you in your own space so again what we're gonna do is Brittany's gonna share her space so Brittany if you want to do a screen share we're gonna start we'll do a little bit of a tour again if any questions pop up just add them to the ask a question area I'll keep an eye on that and we'll look to our best to to answer those as we go we have had a few come in so maybe I'm gonna read a couple of these in case you have your own opinions about this as you go through your tour but a few people have asked about what are your biggest time-saving tips looking forward to learning from you I have a bullet journal set up in notion but never ended up using it so maybe you guys will have tips on on how to actually make use of your bullet journal I recently bought a physical journal for bullet journaling but I find I haven't started because I've been too intimidated what are some tips and where are some good places to start with bullet journaling in general and what is your process when transferring what's written on paper to digital so those are some great questions to start with you can either cover them as we go or maybe we can just do a bit of a tour you can kind of decide how you want to address some of those questions first thing I have to say about being too intimidated to use a notebook is good notebooks were meant to be used no man like I've never personally I do understand it but personally when I get a really good nice or pretty notebook I understand that some people like want to keep it that way but like no it was made to be used you've got to let it live its purpose it's the first page right it's the intimidation of like what's the first thing I'm gonna write it has to be epic and it doesn't that's why I love the index with the bullet journal just like I'll figure this out later I just need to write down like the one yeah all right so can you see my screen yes we can awesome so you know like we said this is everyone's bullet journal setup can be super different and customized my overall theme with work in general like whimsical there's lots of bright colors and funny quotes like I know I got the idea to put a quote up here from a YouTube video where someone had an inspirational quote I have Paris Geller from Gilmore Girls but that really is like a quote that hit me once and I find very motivational and inspirational so let me just open up notion on my phone where I have my plan for today so this is my bullet journal but how I get to the bullet journal in general and my kind of workflow is I have my launch pad which is where everything opens up the Sims is kind of like my analogy for life and productivity and self-care so I have a good Sims Jeff this lets me jump straight to a different area and working on myself takes me to my bullet journal and so that's usually how I get to my bullet journal and the launch pad is just a lot of other stuff that you know we can talk about if there's time but it's just like quick most frequently referenced stuff and like the tasks that are due today and stuff like that and so then in my bullet journal kind of the overall division of stuff is this top section is kind of made daily Brittany just a quick note I noticed because like our videos are like covering some of your space so if you're able to scroll down a little bit just to give a little bit more visibility sure I think there we go is that good that's please okay cool yeah so it's divided into three areas um kind of the same way that I used to divide up my actual bullet journal and the inspiration for all of this is just how I actually pull it journal because that's what's gonna be the easiest workflow for anyone to keep up with is what they were already doing or you know it's close to but so it's very adapted for what I was already doing on paper and you know at the beginning I have my future log this takes it's in a different area but so this is my calendar that generally set up in notion but just I borrowed the bullet journal language when I first created it so that's actually a link to a different area of notion like my para area and then the same way that I would have my physical bullet journal set up i have monthly spreads weekly spreads and daily journals and along with my habit tracker health habit tracker and word count since I do a lot of writing and these are all basically different these are all databases that are connected to each other in some way so like see the monthly spread you can see there's December and you can see I haven't connected it yet but I'll connect it to the weeks and then the weeks are connected to the days and whatnot and this is a link to database of the future log with just the just the December stuff come up and yeah it's just um linked entries to everything work and personal and it's color-coded so you can see personal stuff like birthdays and holidays and stuff like that any projects that have the date set and then down here is I haven't actually done this yet but my monthly goal setting for December and I usually do it on the first Friday of the month today is like my admin and reflection day so this will be filled out by the end of the day report back yes now I have the accountability and then yeah the month then drill down to the weeks personally I find it really helpful to just like my view of planning is kind of top-down so like I start with the months and then I go down to the weeks and then I go down to the days and so it's just very much organized around again the way my brain naturally flows I do not want to stress that enough that's the way everything is organized it's because my brain already thinks that way and then the weekly spreads I think I actually started from one of your templates Marie but it's just like the layout of the week he's actually do have some personal client stuff in there so I'm not going to go into them um yeah and then the daily spreads are like just my daily journaling and you can see how it's evolved to here's where I started using templates that automatically added the automatically added the icons and like sometimes it's business-related reflection sometimes it's good place spin-offs I want to see it's just like a brain dump at the end of the day I just I saw a tweet that's the end of the night about good place spin-offs and I could not go to bed until I got out all the different ideas for them that I had as well and so that ended up being my my daily journaling that day and then I also these are all based on templates so we go get these so this is the one that I use most often it's the daily recap and some of the different fields that I have are just the date so that it's organized I can organize it you know using those formulas and stuff like that then here all the different relations so that it can attach my habit tracker health writing week also something we'll get to and this further down on the bullet journal main page is important feeling moments so those are just kind of celebrating my wins so yeah I go through my daily at the end of the day I do brain dump I do so these stats this is just more linked database view so this is just you know I filter it to the right date and I have this reminder to myself to do that and my health tracker habit tracker and word count tracker yeah and then it also I'm trying to work on my word counts right now and so it also has a formula field that adds up the word counts from my writing tracker and I think that that's like a formula field or a roll appeal or something like that and then what other templates do we have I also have a version of the 5-minute journal because I love the 5 minute journal I have the app for my phone but I was finding that I don't I try not to see on my phone as much during the during the morning and night when I'm turtling and so I found it easier to use it on my computer and it's just the same kind of things that you fill out in the app or the five minute journal and then the final template I have in here is just because I deal with a lot of chronic anxiety and so I have an anxiety brain dump where this is just kind of how I process anything that's really really causing me a lot of anxiety and stuff like that and I actually take these two therapy with me yeah so it's really useful as a tool and the health tracker I take with me to the doctor because I have a lot of chronic chronic illness as well and that's those two things are really by I how I finally got consistent with bullet churning like I had burnt bullet journaling I had done it like on and off but then when it really became a priority and I had to start tracking this stuff for my health bullet journaling was the answer that ended up being the answer to do so so yeah so whenever I have something that's making me really anxious I'm kind of listing out what happened how I feel about it and what I can do about it just kind of helps me adjust my mindset doesn't necessarily solve the problem but it helps me through it for the time being it just kind of helps me separate like feelings from facts it helps me recognize what I actually can do something about and the things that I can't change and yeah it just it really helps a lot at least you know for until I can get to a therapy or deal with the problem better yeah and so that is those are my regular like daily weekly stuff like that and then I also have the collections and these some of these are some of these are also databases and some of these are just lists but eventually I probably want to start turning as much as possible into databases just since I love like you can see you know I can didn't make it all pretty and stuff like that but yeah so I have just a list of journaling prompts when the anxiety prompts aren't doing their job celebrating all my wins this is like my brag box I used to call it but yeah my objective proof against impostor syndrome these are just like the backs of my career or my life that I cannot deny I'll oh yeah this is just like some manifesting mind that stuff favorite quotes I think this is actually also is this yes so this is actually also a length database from like articles and books that I read so and there's a lot from the book method yeah yeah and how to do nothing is a really great book I just totally recommend it yeah so that's actually another link database going out to another area of my notions set up my watchlist love TV and movies and so that's just a place to compile things actually make something interesting for my book list in that I just I like having it in notion and being able to get to it from notion but I linked out to it on Amazon because something not everyone realizes is that anything and you're in your wish list on Amazon if it's on sale it says so in your wish list and so I like to like once a week just click through to this and see what books I want to read are on sale and so it's just easier to keep it all collected in there because then I can do that and buy lots of books yeah just an ongoing shopping list of stuff I want and then ongoing health notes is just another thing that I can bring up for my doctor when need be oh I don't think I showed my habit and health tracker I don't know if I want to but I'll talk about it so the habit tracker just goes through like the regular habits that I want to do daily it's like divided into different views by like my morning routine my evening routine and it's just all checklists and so then I can just it's easily embedded in the daily journal the health tracker is stuff like what meds I took this is what meds I take depends on the symptoms I have which I also track what food I ate and just in overall ratings and then something that's really helpful for me that can be helpful for anyone with chronic illness is that I made a checkbox for when I was in a flare-up so that way when I go to my doctor once a month or once every other month I can have a view that I literally just bring I have a dedicated view of things to talk to him about and that's pretty awesome and incredibly helpful especially if you if you're a chronic illness is one that has brain bugs because otherwise you do not remember this stuff that is so important to remember and so it's kind of a catch-22 that bullet journaling and tracking and notion can help you get out of yeah and then the word count tracker is something that's really important to me because I went through a thing earlier this year where I felt like I was not writing at all anymore because this year I pulled back a lot on client work for my personal brand business like Brittney Berger calm to do to start out my own my own community and stuff like that and so I was writing less client work and more short emails and social posts and landing pages and stuff like that and I realized that well it felt like I didn't write it wasn't writing as much anymore because I wasn't writing like multiple thousand word blog posts a week or whatever I was still actually writing more than I was before it was just different writing and it was smaller pieces and the word count tracker totally cured me of that impostor syndrome I'm a writer who doesn't write anymore thing I mean knowing there's like I'm actually writing more it's just different and we're split up yeah so those are the rest of the trackers and then the last big thing in the bullet journal area is just these are just kind of like links from my Paris set up I haven't fully decided how I want to like kind of integrate bullet journal the bullet journal area and the para area that I set up like once I had gone through building a second brain I guess it was in October I think September or October in the fall so I haven't like totally reconciled that yet so for now it's just a link database and this just says some learning stuff like these was this is where I have some notes on the courses I'm going through right now self-care is a lot of like mental health and more anxiety stuff and life admin is like house chores boring stuff I love how though you even made the not so exciting stuff colorful and fun really I understand and the gameplay color just imagine the same myself winning the game the game of life that's another game like my area yes yes so this is the main bullet journal area that we're talking about some other kind of notable areas are let's open this up like I talked about my launch pad is my inbox which I just brained up things in throughout the day and usually once a week or more often depending on how full I get um I move things out to where they go can quickly do my journals projects and tasks are part of my plan area and this is the the para setup and I like to say it's like where I get my ducks in a row and yeah I've got my Gold's areas projects tasks and routines that's kind of how I like organize my it's kind of like my modified para because I really like thinking in terms of routines I'm just embracing my creature of habit side and then this is like my archive maybe someday ideas things I'm waiting on that is actually really helpful and it just has like what orders I have placed and haven't received yet for like online shopping it's again brain fog I'll forget and then sometimes things don't get here you know like that you know it happens oh this is the home of my future log even though it's linked to in the bullet journal and then the weekly schedule is just a length database view of recurring tasks from John's area yeah and then yeah just here are the areas there all right and pretty and they're themes to like anything like money-making related is a piggy bank and anything writing related is a keyboard and that actually really does make things easy as well as aesthetically Venus yeah that's I mean really that's one of the biggest draws of notion I think is just being able to make it so visually appealing and fun to use and yeah and I really like doing so so that it really does serve a purpose like there are emojis all over but then when it comes to like my few your log I'm actually using just boring colored dots instead of like fun more fun emojis or something because like that's just easier there but yeah everywhere else like I know that like piggy banks means money and like keyboard I know like my brain it's made the connections yeah so that's pretty much everything I suppose I can stop my screen share now a couple questions that popped in here sure let's see if and I'm sure it'll be great Matt to answer as well when you're on the go and you have a thought that you want to put in your journal how do you set up notion to make that process as quick and frictionless as possible I actually write down on paper a lot on the go I am still very much a paper person for a lot of things and so part of my daily review process is taking anything important that I scribble down that's not like useless sharable by the end of the day and putting it into the inbox and then sometimes also I do you have the apps drafts on my phone just since uh it is a little it is quicker on and like more design for brain dumping and stuff like that's an ocean but it has those actions because it's really designed to be like a holding space for information and not like a home and so it makes it really easy and quick to copy it out and into the ocean inbox cool I know some people have mentioned oh do you have a thought on that Matt that's what I was just gonna say that I like Brittany when I have like that initial thought and my head and I want to get something down I still use same thing a notebook a lot of times like this is just a simple field notes notebook here that I'll just keep with me because the my ability to get distracted in small women like as the smallest action that I want to do on my phone is so high and I know this was gonna and we're talking about this a little bit and the chat is there are like a couple of steps it seems to go through in order to capture something quickly in notion and so a lot of times because I can get just as distracted going through and be like oh I also need to do this and ocean instead so for a quick capture if I am doing some kind of quick capture in my phone I'm often doing it on the bear Notes app knows that I don't even know how to close the screen share okay oh there's an X button that was that was a screen share screen sharing inception didn't see the very obvious all right all right yeah Matt why don't you pull up yours and then we can go through at the end and kind of cover some of the questions that have popped up yeah awesome yeah thanks for having me I mean this is just an honor and like a thrill for me to be on as well so let me go ahead and share my screen and here we go we'll be off and running okay all right can you all see everything all right I can't see me sharing the screen okay great so this is this is my I keep things one of the things that I seem to have become a little known for in terms of the bullet journal space is keeping things really simple and one of the reasons I do that is because sometimes I'm not like capable of too much more too many things being more complicated than than they are and so I also really value a speed as much as I can and so the more like simple and minimal I can get things the faster that I can get to them and kind of understand what's going on and I'll also say as like full disclosure I still do like like Brittany is saying I still do the majority of my planning in a paper and like a regular notebook journal and so what you're gonna see here is how I do use of you know the bullet journal methods in notion and you know how I would transfer those back and forth so one thing that I can drop in that I can drop in the chat I'll put in there earlier but a lot of people were asking like how do you how do you transfer things between an analog bullet journal and Digital bullet journal in notion and actually have a video about that that I'll drop in the chat a little bit later on because there is like there are a couple of concepts that I use to understand how I want to use those two things separately because obviously there are some things that you can do in notion or any kind of like digital productivity tool that are near impossible to do with an analogue style bullet journal but the way that my layout looks and works is right at the top I have my like yearly themes things that I want to really focus on and pay attention to 2018 was a relatively unhealthy year for me and so I made like it was just self-care and health a bigger priority and theme going in going into 2019 and then what I'll do is so I actually have the set up by month and then I go into each month and I have like kind of the sub the sub weeks and there is kind of subcategories so let's just go into December and I'll show you like this is what this week has looked like I've been practicing this you know like that a little bit more coming into coming into this this workshop - into the office hours but what I'll do is as I go into a week I'll start using like the to-do items as kind of that classic bullet journal you know just like to-do item or task item and so this is how I do my rapid logging with the to-do boxes if I have something that's really important like I'll pop that up right at the top like Tuesday I wanted to hold that I wasn't going to have any meetings any kind of any kind of like solo meetings or little things that I have to do that are not I'll talk about the future long in a second but they're not like super important and they're just like things to do I'll put those in obviously as date items and if you all haven't done that in you all haven't done that in notion before it's as simple as saying like I we've said like 10 8 today 10 a.m. brunch Bronx Bronx no y'all but typing live on video is something to be avoided at all costs has it just I'm just gonna leave it at brunch yeah but then I can just see like hit hit the @mention and start to bring up either a person or a date it took me a little while to figure out that I could do more than just mention people but also mention a date with that intervention pages view so if you wanted to mention another database to write you could anyway yeah you can quit yeah actually my writing log almost as much as possible like I try to actually link to the actual piece I was writing in my content area ok well that's awesome a no because like you can see right here that I had yesterday I put in and this was just to an original page so I was doing a link right there so you're saying it's the same thing just to like do the @ symbol for that exactly yeah oh man this is great yes fantastic but this is how I'll set it up so I'll use the - I'll use the to do block for those to-do items date-date calls and then these are I guess what you're saying we've been sick all week at the house that's been kind of rough but these are like little notes so I'll just use the bullet points in the notion database as my notes whereas you know in because partially you know in notion it would just be that quick quick - but of course that becomes a list item in notion and most other like markdown places so that's how I'll lay out my my week and then what I'll do just to kind of clean okay so for the weekend usually I'll just also have a little bit more fun and use the emojis here and then the way that I do different capture and so what I'll do down here is that I have these three four places that I post the different these kind of act is more of my capture pages for the weeks as they come up and so I'll have something here for my work at podía stuff with home and family Frieden Bound is my own business and then miscellaneous tasks and so I'll have all of these places and I'll just continually in notes i'll continually add in notes to these capture areas so that when the new week comes up so let's say for example what i'll do is i'll take everything from monday ii i'll just drop it directly into the archive change this to the 9th and I will then drag something from the capture list up here and just start going through it again so that would be at this coming Monday yeah should've put the 11:00 a.m. and Matt do you have a daily a daily entry as well I got a daily journal or something like that yes so what I do with that so this is everything that I do like for from a task perspective and then coming back into the main layout this is where I go into the daily tracker and so this is where I show different this is where I show different things like I'll put I say these days were bad cuz everyone was sick just I have a select property here and it'll just be simply saying like select an option again I try and keep things as simple as I can so good ok bad red yellow green kind of using that stoplight analogy I'll put in the amount of sleep that I got and then like my basic like three the three core habits that I know when I do them I'm happier and so that's where I put them in and then I do like any daily journaling that I'm doing is all in I won't click into those but they're all in here as well so in terms of like the daily journaling I'll just put them in this database view yeah one of the reasons I asked because I know that when you selected everything from your weekly like December 6 or whatever I'm curious is there a reason that you don't just like move all of those into the daily entry at the end of the day yeah and that's that's a good that's a good point I probably should just get it yeah you had a reason word I was just curious yeah I didn't the only reason was that it's just right there yes that and again and this this may not be useful for you or helpful but just something to be aware of is knowing that you can mention other pages you could have run day at December 9th and you could like you could kind of have a quick link to that and or like I wear I have Monday 9 I would just be like you know mention right December 9th or whatever goes down here and then you could select all of those height those two dues at the bottom and I would just hit like command chef P move those into December 9 yeah if I was just curious if you had a reason that I don't that's fine like I love the way other people's brains work and kind of what is helpful for you yeah no I really like that I'm gonna I'm gonna start using it so yeah like I said a lot of I think you know something this is you know just for me in terms of like how I say in my brain works a little bit is I tend to I'm not a I'm not a fantastic I'm not a fantastic optimizer a lot of times I just find that the thing that can work in a relatively quick amount of time and as long as to me the act of I know y'all are all fantastic with it too but the act of whatever I can do to be consistent is the most important thing to me and I do a lot of like if I try if I try something else to a point and I feel like it's throwing me off like my ability to stay in a daily or every other day rhythm with this then I'll just kind of push it to the side for a little bit until I get on an office hours call and you can tell me directly a better way so well I mean there is a good thing as like over your like going overboard over optimizing making things too complex and then you kind of have to I think pull back a little bit so I think it's so important to find like what is just enough and not taking it you know tweaking that 99% that's not actually helping you at some point right no but I know what you're saying is right here I actually have a running list in notion I think it's in the inbox of like things I want to do and no haha because it would be so easy to get like caught up and like oh I could do this I could do this I could do this that when I have an idea I put it in that list and then I have like Advent I'm blocked out and my calendar and that's when I can let go and review that a lot of it I just end up deleting and then I can sorry that might buzz again so ignore it um but that yeah to just do things as they make sense and instead of implementing things as soon as the idea comes to me I kind of like kind of put it in purgatory yeah I don't like using that word I really like that Mattox out of it you are trying to move but trying to move stuff into December third you can't actually move it into the mention but you can actually do commit like highlight it all click on the dots on the left and say move to or or I just hit command shift P I use move to all the time but then you can just you know type in the place that you want to send it and yeah there you go and this is great yeah I'm getting like coaching here y'all great and then down here this is where I'll do my weekly review and then I just use toggle lists for all of these so that way I can keep it all in that way I can keep it all in one place at the end of the put into I'll dump it into the archive and keep going the months past months go in here and then usually what I'll do just to keep things clean is I have this month template right here that I just drop in change the emojis and everything and I keep going from there so here are my past months as I started doing more digital bullet journaling over the summer so that's where I drop in all of the archives from the past months so just you know go right in there and then like Britney I do a lot of linked databases as my collections so I have like some writing projects that I might be doing here and I just you know have have several of those and then I just have a book a book list so those are those are the things that are that are most important to me I also do I have intermitted success with being consistent with this I do have trying to keep an emoji key like so weird showed this too but that way when I when I glanced at something and I just see like this group I know that this is family related work side business time off adventure fitness like any of those things so if I see that dropped in and I know without reading the two or three words that are on them that that's something that is that's that's what it's related to one thing that I do like in the bullet journal or sorry in notion way more than a bullet journal is is the future log and the way that I reference us a little earlier but the way that I use the future log against things that are going into the weekly spread is if it's if it's a pretty like relatively small thing or something more specific to the week like I did a webinar for our customers a couple of days ago on Wednesday that's you know just that's just kind of something that I do when I use the future log for a lot more is being it like big like more of the big events so like I taught at a mastermind yesterday my parents are in town football game tomorrow when my wife works on a podcast so some of these things are a little bit more they're not as normal they're not like a regular part of the rhythm of my week so I want to have like an aware of higher level of awareness of when I'm glancing through like things that are outside of the normal like that the normal rhythm and cadence of a week I just drop these in here into the future log and something that I can do that I do fairly regularly and y'all have shown me new and better ways to do it is like just mentioning or linking to them so whereas this I just did at tomorrow 3:00 p.m. I could also do if I wanted to all right there so I can rub that in as well yeah so those main things for me in terms of yeah how I do bullet journaling on on notion in notion happy to share other stuff but that is a kind of the the main way that yeah I know a couple of questions trickled into that were are definitely going to be relevant to both of you so people were asking about whether you also use Google Calendar yes yeah you know because like I work for company with podía and like that's what we use so it's it's really difficult to get away from yeah and I use it but I use it differently so there's some stuff that I put on my calendar but not in notion there's some stuff that I use for notion for but that would never go on my actual calendar like all of my client deadlines are in my future log but I would never put those on my actual calendar because there's like multiple a week and they're not time specific and it's just a lot of clutter on my actual calendar but in my future log it it's helpful and then it's also database to the projects so yeah it's just how I map the due dates for different things and then there's stuff like those on those so yeah um yeah so I do still use Google Calendar but very differently so it's not it sounds annoying more annoying that it is yeah yeah I think you gotta kind of find your groove with like what's a quick ad versus what needs to become a task versus what goes into calendar it takes a little bit of time - yeah and struggled with like how the best way for me to manage client deadlines because there were too many for my Google Calendar but then if I logged in to like say something else it just it didn't work as well and so this actually solved something that I've been trying to figure out for a while so I was asking are there any bullet journal templates on notion that you can share let me drop the link in the yes I did create a template like database type of thing for all of the different trackers that I have so I'll put the landing page in there you decide for my newsletter and you'll get it it's an amazing newsletter so yep and I'll do the same right in here right after I sign up for britain created notion templates so let me know if they don't work and I'll fix them later today one thing I have noticed is sometimes there's trickiness if you're sharing a template that already has pre-made relations so I'm still working trying to figure out some workarounds for that but that's something to be aware of Jessica asks what's the formula for getting the word counts okay so yeah we can dive into that a little bit more I'll share my screen again we'll just create a new entry so you can't see too much of my client work all right so if we go to journal come on there we go so it's just the date and the word count so it's very simple in itself and then where the magic happens actually is in the daily log let's look at that alright so yeah so this is let's see this is a rollup and it's connected to the writing 1 and so then the roll-up is just configured to be a sum of the different word counts connected to the writing there has to be a relation first so because she's related to her writing database already then she can pull up like any property that she wants from that database yeah so yeah I just can't explain it well but yeah so anything that's connected up here it will sum up the numbers yeah will sum up the totals there I just dropped a link into the chat as well because I'm seeing some like totally normal comments in the chat about like you know just the getting set up of notion can feel a little daunting in a can because I think like a lot of when and cuz you know it's two sides of the same coin something that is as powerful and flexible as notion is it can be like well how do I get started with something that's super and you know a lot of times bullet journaling can feel very similarly cuz you're like well there are these like legends and keys and there's an index and there's collections and there's like migrating and like all these different things I actually talked about this on a video collab did yesterday with a guy who's trying to get into like has failed at bullet journaling um like many times and I found it really interesting that he would say that because he's one of the best like habit coaches that I know I'm like Anthony you already know how to do this you just think of it like a habit instead and he was like trying to do all the things and what the way to get over this is not to try and do all the things or have like the most elaborate setup whether it's bullet journaling or setting up notion try and do like the first basic thing that you can figure out and learn how to do like or just play around with it a little bit I always like no matter what I'm trying to do or like someone that I'm working with when I was at convertkit or now Cody or when we're doing like bullet journal stuff is have like one simple goal to start with and try and do everything that you can to get to that like one kind of simple like starter goal because as you even kind of struggle through that a little bit then you'll have like really specific questions to follow up with about reaching that initial goal rather than trying to like blow your own mind with everything that you could do as they can it can get overwhelming I'm big on what I like to say baby steps for big progress and just doing one thing at a time and then actually the thing that kind of convinced me to finally use notion for bullet journaling was the bullet journal method book it was so great and just managing a lot of like kind of my yeah yeah yeah I like give it away to my member it's like the regular giveaway for my membership inside because I just want everyone to read it and yeah it was so great and it was like it yeah I kind of had some even though I had been bullet journaling on an off since 2014 and then consistently since 2000 17 I still had like a lot of apparently like mine tough luck surrounded I guess and that was just an amazing book and it so much more than bullet journaling it's really not about yeah yeah I'm really pleasantly surprised my biggest takeaway from the book was that I actually Oh bullet journaling more even more credit than I was already giving it so like oh I hadn't connected this thing and this thing and this thing - bullet journaling but like oh that's why it happened um yeah yeah Marcus said something that I thought was interesting too when the idea is putting in more manual effort why a notion and not on not on paper I do think that is like it's a good point and something not to be taken lightly when you're doing something like this is if you're you know goal is to get ideas down as quickly as possible then a lot of times paper is going to be a better and quicker choice like we both we all said that kind of the beginning I said I'll drop the link back in towards in just a moment but I did a video about how to kind of balance the two because like obviously there's some things that you're seeing in terms of databases and relation relationships and like just obviously editing capability like people who write like right there either their blog their articles or like people who write novels longhand on paper is just totally bonkers to me so they're their pros and cons of each and yeah so but if your if your goal is to do like the quickest fastest thing then yeah a lot of times paper will be the best of the best option for me that's not always the case since again chronic illness and more physical effort likely you know it has a cost and so for me a lot of the times it's great when I my laptops nearby and I can just do less movements so one of the things that digital journaling started out for me was like when I was too sick or not feeling well or fatigued that you physically get up out of bed and write and stuff like that I could grab my phone and use digital journaling instead and so for me the the digital stuff is usually less effort and the main way I decide what I'm going to do offline first or digital versus analog is how much I'm gonna reference it because I use like smaller notebooks I have a lot of feelings so I know them up quickly and so if it's stuff so that's why I like stuff that's more that I'm like the habit trackers and like the kind of statistic stuff this more bigger picture I like keeping that online because otherwise I'm gonna have to grab a whole pile of notebooks just to get like a six month view or something like that so things go digital for me when it's stuff that either I you know don't have the energy to go get a notebook for or write or if it's something that I'm gonna be wanting to reference a lot in the future and like months away when I'm using a new notebook and you know to tie it back to what you were saying about how it's easy to forget your progress and say like oh I thought I wasn't writing but I actually was I feel like notion has helped me track things like again like I can't I could go through all my past notebooks and see this stuff but like I can see all of my feelings my effectiveness I can see my my gratitude over time like I just love being able to track all of this stuff I can look at what I read you know if I would just want to see it the reading view I can look back and see everything that I read I can see what I felt I could see what I was grateful for I could see my progress that's something I can do in seconds that I couldn't I'd have to go through you know pages and pages of notes that wouldn't really make sense so when I'm doing my yearly review this year I can be like what are the goals that I crushed like what did I say was important and what did I complete and so again what I'm doing that review I can say here highlights of the year here's what I did on a month-by-month holy crap like we forget what we we accomplished and so I think putting this stuff digitally is just so helpful personally I find to see my progress over time to really feel like I'm hitting those milestones exactly yeah and I really like like overall I know that some people are turned off from both notion and bullet because it is a lot of manual efforts but for me that's why it works i journal about the things that I need to be paying more attention to it was like like kind of my story around starting work brighter is that an automated slack notification is what finally got me to consistently take the ADHD meds I was finally I was constantly forgetting to take it was automation it was like tech and stuff like this that finally helped me get all of this like non work non productivity stuff in my life together whether that's you know slack notifications or todoist - dues for taking my meds or health trackers in notion it is effort but that ensures that I'm putting effort into those areas of my life so that's a really good thing if you're picking the right things to journal about and that's a self awareness practice but one of the big things when I was talking about how I oh so much more than I realized - bullet journaling is that I realized it's really a self awareness practice and that's been one of the biggest areas that I've grown in over the past few years and I hadn't realized bullet journaling is why until I read the bullet journal months yeah and something that Brittany said that I think is so like important and powerful is that like the act of journaling and getting those getting those thoughts down is something that will help in any kind of like healing or empowering process that you're that you're going through I get you know like I do a lot of that too like I can get super stressed about things that are going on with work or family or whatever it is and just writing those down can be like that's a great coping mechanism for me and I would encourage anyone who's kind of thinking about that - also like something that I hear a lot when people want to get started with maybe not even bullet journaling but just like journaling and writing down things is not to like and Brittany did such a good job of describing this early on is that you're just like trying to let raise your level of awareness about it and not like you're not playing anything like that just like you're being like almost like an objective like a third party observer - how your day is going and how you're being as a person and that is really powerful and you don't have it doesn't have to be fancy it shouldn't probably isn't going to be and that's totally that's totally fine so it's it's yeah it's a really powerful tool for me as well yeah and any fanciness that like I do have like all of the same number one over time yeah number two for a reason like I am like I said I am like a whimsical little like I have kind of in a lot of ways the attention span of interest of like us Hagler it's like the bright colors really do make an impact on my day yeah and they really do and there is like detail and reasoning behind each of them so I can make connections but also they weren't there right away that was like that was an Amtrak train when I had to slow like Wi-Fi to like do much I was like oh I can I can make things pretty so I think a journaling practice could be a really great first step even for people that are a bit intimidated with notion and just learning how a database works and you know even if it's like a simple entry with a date and a couple prompts for yourself I think that's like a really great way to start and then over time you're going to develop what are better questions I can ask myself or what else do I want to write about and for me like the the daily journal was something that I've tried to have a daily journal for like you know a decade right I never stagger until until notion and now I'm like oh there's a pretty picture every day and then that's motivating like I will always take a picture every single day that represents the day and that's become a habit so slowly you're like layering in those habits I do a pic of the day I gratitude every day like slowly you start to become a better person about another book atomic habits who's read that like it is really about journaling inside my membership and starting a journaling practice and I recommend starting with two questions what happened today and how do you feel about it that can be one because that can be as easy as one thing if you had a stressful day that can be five pages it just kind of covers the bases yeah and I found tested I recommend with my weekly planner to like I on a daily basis and on a weekly and monthly basis I ask myself like how effective was I what was my energy and then like three words that just kind of represent how I felt about the day and about the week and overtime what I had over committed put in there like six weeks in a row it was like what are you going to do about it now like I keep writing this in my journal and in my weekly planner every week well how like if I don't want to feel that way then why do I need to do to make more space so it kind of forced me to confront well are the decisions that you're making everyday continuing to contribute to this feeling that you said you didn't want to feel so it has I think created more mindfulness for me personally it's like okay I have more control over what happens in my day and how can I create more space and if I want to feel less of this or more of this how do my actions need to reflect that so that's it's been so helpful for me personally to to start creating more of that space yeah I love it let's see if any more other questions if anyone else has any questions that you want to get in before we I know a lot of these we covered in your tours and such so they may not be as relevant like when you said how do people get started I think like you just have to start somewhere even if it's really a tiny action it doesn't have to be tracking every single part of your life it's just starting with something really small maybe picking up the role of journaling book - to get started a few people said I have a journal set up an ocean but never end up using it how do I use the ocean to make me use it more frequently [Music] do you have a routine around journaling because I know that like for me there's not I don't kind of live by my calendar but I live by I still do use todoist and that's kind of where I calendar block but it's more routine blocking or whatever else and it has like my morning routine and my nightly routine in there so there's not a specific time assigned to them but I do you know have the space or a kind of room set aside in my day for that and then one thing that I do like about using like another app to manage that is that to do is let you link out to other apps so I actually have that task linked to my journaling template and so I can actually you know it pops up and if you are a calendar person or like a notification person or you can set a due date either into duis or you can make this a calendar appointment or you can set an alarm on your phone that then includes the the URL the link to your notion journal and so it would pop up at the time of day that you want to do your evening routine or something like that and it would link to your journal completed or something like that Rachel did ask what's your method for learning more things about notion and trying new things we do these office hours every week and we do have a couple starting from scratch versions that might be really helpful for you I also posted a link to my YouTube channel and sidebar almost every week I make a new video about how to do something in notion and I try to very advanced use cases with just getting started cases so definitely check that out hopefully that's helpful and if you ever have requests for future episodes and things to cover definitely just let us know and we're always eager to to help out because I know it's a giant blank canvas when you first get started and it feels like a bit of a firehose and understanding databases versus pages I think is one of the most confusing parts so I do have a video that's like databases versus pages wrapping your head around notion and also their documentation is amazing a lot of people I've seen a forgotten or don't actually know that that question mark in the bottom right hand side has incredible documentation so I do recommend going through some of that like how to get started there's there's just so much in there I know it's a lot it's a bit of a commitment I think also checking out other people's pre-made templates is a great way to start experiment with those don't be afraid to kind of mess it up you could always move your information around you're never stuck with kind of where it lives so don't be afraid to play around and not worry that it has to be this perfect setup when you first get started I just saw a question come in about two duis integration to be clear it's not like an official integration it's that todoist supports linking to other apps and so I just have a link in that task that links to like the the URL of the notion Paige so it ends up being like a one-click thing and it's so convenient but it's not anything official someone said I'm someone who regularly thinks that I never get anything done especially when I don't journal I can see the value in the macro awareness that the notion daily tracking has I can relate and we have the same name so our Brittany is writing from another browser how long did it take each of you to get comfortable with notion or at least get your system fully set up with journaling and getting things done my Hairston tourneys been like a long one I created an account probably like a year ago but I just didn't really know what I was gonna use it for then this spring I launched the YouTube channel for work brighter and so that is when I kind of created my first thing and I started the content calendar and there and things have just been building since I think it was in like September that I started bullet journaling in notion and that was again after I read the bullet journal method and just kind of got really Rhian spired around my bullet journaling habits and decided to level up what I was already doing yeah and I make changes oh sorry no good oh and I make changes every week like I said I have admin time blocked out every week I like to call it my building time where I build in different systems and just kind of play around with tech and I have like the list of ideas I want to do and so I just like I play a little bit at a time and then having that having that kind of recess to play in there is great from keeping me from wanting to play around like in the middle of a Tuesday when I should be writing because I know that like I only have to wait till Friday yeah for me notion started as and still primarily continues to be where I plan and execute on my own projects you know we use some different tools at podía I'm working migrations with the team but we so for me I like Brittany I started with my YouTube channel in terms of putting the majority of like my content calendar and everything that happens with the video like a Trello style card view and then I use each one as part of the database and the content calendar for when I publish I did my entire I run really everything from my personal side business in notion I do a simple but keep bookkeeping database as well so I can keep those things kind of balanced out and visible and yeah so just everything everything with courses and like even physical products well we'll all go in there in terms of like consistent tracking planning I wrote the majority of like all the content for my latest course and ocean as well because because just to have everything in here and have it you know linked and have your deadlines and your reminders and your tasks is so nice yes yeah and same for a lot of that so I asked a great question he was saying do you guys have an ocean work space for your family personal and or one for your team or do you use one for everything it was hard enough to get my partner on juist and still not happy when I so it's the process I do have things family related in there but he is not you know like a shared user and then I just also wanted to add on to what Matt was saying was like moving all of his side business like databases into notion I do still have a lot of databases in air table but then when I love one of the things I love about the notion is embedding so I have a lot of you only versions of my air table databases embedded into notion and that is amazing especially for content because I have a lot of content automation going over an air table so you can automate that and then if I want to just like check in and see what's going on with those automated databases I can view it in notion I don't have to click out love it mm-hmm yes it's similar again very similar for me for a lot of for a lot of those my my wife is a nurse and so she has very little need for a lot of like the digital tools that I find so interesting and fun and so but what we have done kind of intermittently and I can I can this real quick because when we do something shared online with this we do have a database or a workspace that we use for you know like our family here and what that is is that we have an ongoing task items are you know agenda for the Sunday night review things that we need to have as it to do then we do kind of the same thing for expense tracking and we do a lot of our expense tracking in air table like from a from a big picture view grocery lists meals my PTO schedule I we haven't been using this as much but like an embedded Google Calendar is here that we can look at food inventory stuff to save for so you can see everything that we have in here is just a series of pages and databases that we have and then are like upcoming like summer summer trip and 2020 so we just have all of it in right here and even though we don't look at it every week here it is even though we don't look at it every week again or any more or for a while whenever there is something that we start to go in and plan forward this is what we always come back to yeah and I definitely have something like that in the life admin folder of my bullet journal I just don't have Alex you think I mean he's more than happy to leave you the links like we were on vacation I had a page that was just like all of our reservation information he was looking at the view only version of the link but like he I don't picture him learning how to use notion except for viewing like anytime soon he is a tax accountant so he is learning and that's much more confusing software and like he has yes tech stresses him out enough already and I'm just gonna let him you know like yeah look luckily and left my husband is pretty tech savvy and the both of us are pretty entrenched in notion so we can assign each other stuff and we use that for you know personal and business and that's all if I didn't personally enjoy managing it all so much myself maybe we wouldn't but like I am more than happy to be the project manager that's a long time ago before we were using a notion we started we tried to do some of this with Trello and you know kind of a similar thing but I'd be like babe app mentioned you on that car stared at me she's like you don't know what you're saying and I don't care no I can get it out when we like we were moving we used Google Docs and stuff like that and so like if we were to move again and he wanted to use Google Docs so it obviously just embed that Google Doc into my notion yeah I'll meet him halfway I think we covered most of those questions and I know that both of you have a lot of resources that answer some of these questions so I think what I'll do too is you know we did paste a lot of those links in the sidebar but maybe after this call too if the both of you want to send me any of those links we'll make sure to get those sent out through the crowd cast registration link anyone who registered will get access to those and you can check out both that and Brittany's amazing bullet journaling related and notion related resources cool thanks for having us yeah I think everything thank you so much for being so generous in sharing your spaces and sharing your process really appreciate it and yeah we will see you on the Internet where everyone can find you actually maybe put post a quick link in the in the sidebar there so people can find you whether it's Twitter or your YouTube channel I'm just putting the work braider URL and the two handles that I'm at on most platforms and personally that be Berg and then works writer is on Instagram at work writer awesome and that's where a lot of my bullet journaling stuff tends to go and then the personal stuff tends to be more marketing related thanks everyone for coming and just a you know quick reminder we do these every Friday morning you can watch any of the past ones if you click notions name in the top you can go to their crowdcast landing page and just see all of the past ones there's lots of beginner ones there's lots of advanced ones we've got one next week that's all on Heidi this is battle boards which is going to be ridiculous the way it's it's wild I love Hawkeyes brain works so it's pretty I think it's pretty advanced and pretty nerdy so I'm pretty excited to see now you're so lucky you can just say look format Ragland there is two other Britney burgers one is a marketer who actually we used to live in the same state and then another is a personal development person who came about with a book and so I'm like okay great both of my nations have another there's a music and in Austin Texas that we've struck up a quasi friendship he's like hey how he's like her you do you do stuff on the eyes like yeah you're toast that's okay I don't have any like it's impossible to get anything that's just matte that's worth anything because you know Matt Mullenweg just like snaps up all the good map domains great like squeezes people out of them thanks everybody have a wonderful rest of your week weekend and see you online thanks everyone Thanks

Channel: Notion

Views: 12,109

Rating: 4.9463086 out of 5

Keywords: bullet journaling, bujo, planning, journal

Id: 4XmC2Q8aRxU

Length: 65min 22sec (3922 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 06 2019