Notion Office Hours: Weekly Planning 🏁

good morning everybody welcome to office hours let us know where you're coming in from see a lot of familiar hey I'm here with didi Medina I'm super excited today because we're going to talk all things weekly planning weekly retrospectives and how we've both kind of built this in as a really integral habit as part of our weekly routine so if you've never been to an office hours before you're more than welcome to ask questions about notion or kind of you know the conversation that's happening but I do recommend using the ask question area below just so your question doesn't get missed we will do a bit of screen sharing if that's cool but also we can kind of leave this open to where the conversation goes because I know didi you've got some strong opinions about weekly planning a weekly retrospective so I'd love to pass it over to you and just to maybe how do you tell us a little bit about the work that you do and kind of why weekly retrospectives are so powerful for you yeah let's see so for me a little bit background of myself so I'm a product designer by background I lived in Silicon Valley for about five to six years working with some awesome companies like T spring mix book and then moved back to New York for a bit I got into product management further in my career now I live in Israel I'm a consultant I build and rebuild product design teams so I pretty much go into companies usually pastor series I help them more formalize their processes and I am a massive process junkie but I'm also very creative so I try to find a way to benefit from process in a way that it doesn't make the things I love doing boring but at the same times more predictable and I guess like the predictability is that is a key part because like when it's things are not predictable you end up putting out a lot of fires and one of the biggest things that works for me is obviously as part of my system on a weekly basis looking over or what it is I'm doing why am i doing it what I do last week how far did I get along one of the things I need address and I found that if I didn't do that periodically turns out to be on a weekly basis things just started to slip and things became way less predictable and just blow up in my face across the board so it serves me nice been significant than most people doing things throughout my week I find that a lot of people start with the question of like doing retros planning it's super super taxing on time right like I got to block out two hours to do this it takes that long in my opinion and honestly I find it like to be a massive investment and then of the day like I spent two hours doing that and I spend maybe nine ten hours on average not putting out fires throughout the week so there's your there's your savings right so today I'm gonna be excited to like share kind of like the theory and kind of like my process of finding this is gonna be meta my process of finding a process that works for me yeah and I've got a process people driven here or you know just excited to learn a bit about that I don't know if you saw the polls below and if you haven't answered those polls I was just asking people kind of do you already have a weekly planning process nobody has have said yes and I love it so most people said kind of but it's not a habit yet and no please send help yes and I'm curious about improving it so it's kind of interesting to see where people are at with that so I'm curious because obviously you've done a lot of iteration and exploration to find like the weekly was was kind of that frame of time that made a lot of sense for you so do you do things like quarterly planning a monthly plan and kind of tell me a little bit about how you landed on weekly being that kind of magical timeframe so yes so I find that planning happens on multiple levels it's not I do weekly planning I don't do any other planning um I do yearly planning I do quarterly audits and refactoring on my yearly plan and then I do weekly planning and retrospectives as well so retrospective for those who are international because that's like kind of like a big weird word that most people don't know it's just the process of reflecting and looking back at what you did and then the planning comes after that so I like to call it Wiggly retro and planning and because of that it's how I wrap up the week it's the wrap right that's that's how I like to call it but yeah I definitely do yearly quarterly and weekly anything do you want to dive into any of the specifics of your weekly planning or do you have some pretty strong opinions that you kind of want to share or any of those sort of deeper for loss he's kind of just why it matters so much so let's say what the question of like why not plan bi-weekly right so we know there's different increments like we do a year everybody understands why we plan a year right that's kind of obvious but why to do a quarter also makes sense but why a week why not two weeks so I guess it's not after the habit it's okay to do every two weeks what I found from my my practice of doing these planning and retrospectives is when I try to plan today what I'm gonna do say two weeks out I started having a massive amount of diminishing returns like it starts getting significant like not this week but next week the week after that on a Wednesday I'm gonna be ready to do X like it tends to not be true right and obviously planning two weeks takes longer than planning one week so once I started seeing like the diminishing returns on going that far out I trimmed it down and I said fine let's try one week and then it kind of like worked and so the obvious next question is like why not do daily planning right why do weekly planning and I find that when you're working on more complicated objectives more complicated tasks there's it's let you don't really finish anything within a day right say for example take design I'm from the world of design I tell myself I need to design a website a lot of tasks make more sense to break up into multiple days right I might come in on day one and say today I'm gonna brainstorm it but I need some like time to myself to kind of let it sit before I start working on it again so it's more beneficial to me to be able to look at the week and say Sunday I'm gonna be like brainstorming it Tuesday after like two days of kind of sitting on it I'll be able to start my first design session then I need to sit down and again and then Thursday I'm gonna wrap it up now when I can do that now I have other gaps to fill and again because I can look at the week I can more prac productively fill my time whereas like if you did it by the day you find yourself being really reactive and you're not stacking things and sequencing things as effectively yeah so I'm guessing you you probably find yourself just working a lot less now like you said you're not putting out fires as much so I'm assuming that's like one of the things you've noticed since doing these weekly retrospectives and just weekly planning process absolutely but sometimes like I find myself like breaking the habit I'll stop doing like red shows like I'll come back from vacation I've been off for like I'm I'm not getting back into my full routine and I get like really frustrated where things are slipping and I'm like dee dee you're not doing your retros and I'm like no it's fine and then you go back I'm like Oh everything's back into where it's supposed to be yeah but yeah I find the exact same thing if yeah if I don't do it it it's like the whole week is like a Domino's and it just impacts everything else right yeah yeah and and also I think more than anything when you plan your week right work a lot of people think about their retrospectives are planning around work because that's where if you mess up there's the highest cost right but to me it's like what happens if I mess up with a client well I need to fix that I need to like stay overtime I need to like figure out a way to make something work at that moment but what does that come at a cost of well it comes at the cost of me not being able to attend to my friendships my relationships my personal life and all that different stuff and and to me that's like significant more important right it's a lifestyle it's like I work not so I can make money I work so I can have a life and by giving a little more planning I can assure that yeah I have two hours set aside to talk to my sister about her career plans I have you know the weekend to like actually take some rest right and that I think is also really important it gives you that sense of clarity which is also why personally I like doing it on Friday right so I do my retros and planning on Friday because Saturday I'm like oh right it doesn't matter what happens I'm not going to work and when you do it on Friday before you go into your day off or your weekend off you're more clear-headed right you're never questioning throughout the like weekend did I get everything I needed to get done done am I gonna have a week to get that because I know this is still open but I know I can do it next week but will it like backfire is it like set aside like but when you can answer all those concerns before you go into the weekend trust me you sleep like a baby a baby really like that you know I really like that cuz I've done mine on Sundays but I think you bring up a really good point is that do it as part of your end of week wrap up before you do this latter day check out I just love it uh yeah I might have to make that wrap so we can write you I'm planning it's a wrap so the other question I have about that is how much of the like personal life ends up in your weekly planning or does any of it or when you do your weekly planning is it just your planning work so that you're just leaving that free time for your personal life or is there any kind of blend of the two it's always a blend of the two so I don't believe in planning in a vacuum I believe that everything serves your lifestyle that would be like the top and I call it's just like a very fluffy thing I call it a lifestyle huh your happiness is a byproduct of you being in a situation where you feel like you're living the way you want to live you're carrying out your values all these different things and your personal life and professional life kind of try to occupy the same time right you will feel like you're living the life you want to be living if you have the time to do the things you want to do and these things are constantly it like odds with each other like I need to work more to make more money I need so like view my friends more like you have to find constantly the balance and it's a negotiation that happens on a weekly balance really I think cadence and you know I when I write down takeaways I'm not limiting it to like work I I might find that I couldn't get something done because I just broke up with my ex for example right that's really important like okay there's a personal issue that's affecting my performance with work right that and when you kind of separate them out you're looking at half the scope you're not gonna find any really good answers and notice just noticing those patterns right like since since kind of tracking all of that stuff in the last year being like oh interesting how my moods when I track those compared to what was happening in my life compared to how productive I felt that you can see more of a big picture of look what's really happening and so I'm curious I mean obviously this is something you've developed over time for a long time I'm not sure how long you've been using notion and using notion to maybe do your retrospectives but I know personally I feel like the tracking has become an easier habit to adopt since using notion but I'm curious for you were there other tools you were using using notion now kind of what has that looked like in terms of haggis having the tools support the process yeah I was doing no Shizu retros before I was using notion I've been doing retros strictly for about two years now since I have gone self-employed and I guess like when you go self-employed you realize you can't like way more structure yeah yeah yeah you have to learn how to self manage to a whole another level and so I started off in Dropbox paper I was doing them once a week in there then notion finally launched it's a you know it's new version I think it was notion to write and I looked at it and I was like okay I was using an air table for my CRM I was using Dropbox for for for my retros and documentation and all that different stuff and my serum was like fire I had so much automation going on in there when I came to notion I bit that you know lack of API bullet real hard like when I con them on that gecko so like this is a little ping because I know it maybe I am I need to get back to my zapier life but the thing is for all the automate all the time the automation saved me consolidation saves me double right so it's like I saved way more time money to ping pong between several tools more than the time it saved me to run some like cool automations in the background on my CRM so like when I came into to notion I started building out like my stack I also inherited a lot of the things I was doing in in an air table I kind of build a lot of architecture there is how my crm works how this works all the different stuff and I kind of like ported it over and I started doing weekly retros and planning and notion I think now for about a year a year and a half I think like since version 2 I was like in there like after like right after got a couple questions that have come in let's start with the easy one tangent question what cameras didi using looks better than a webcam okay so this is like a fun story so I was looking for a webcam I have an external monitor like a lot of us do and my laptop connected to it and webcams from Logitech are like 200 bucks and I'm a designer so I own a DSLR and then there was like this little item that's called like a legato cam link which is just allows you to use your HDMI feed from your camera as a webcam source right so and that was like a hundred fifty so it's cheaper than the really good Logitech cameras which don't come close so I was like I'm gonna do that and then it kind of built on that now I got lighting I got good microphones and it's just like right if I'm here I might as well like splurge you know it's an Apple store it's like I need a laptop it I'll get an iPad 2 I got a pencil I'll get some new air pods you got it you know like that's kind of like what happened so now I'm glad everybody's benefiting from it Chris asked the mental block I have with planning weekly quarterly yearly is that you cannot control the future there's many unexpected variables that have completely destroyed any past efforts of planning in the past how do you account for this in your planning process love this question so that's an amazing question so I'm going to give the answer I got when I asked this question to my mentor like I think like several years back he answered with like the statement where she sings no war has ever gone unplanned no war has ever gone according to plan right the purpose of a plan is not to be bulletproof so let's start there set your expectations right now this is also why like I said I don't plan more than a week because like you said there's like diminishing returns there's at a certain point like you over plan and it doesn't go according to plan it's like what was the point of doing that but there is a sweet spot there's a certain amount of planning you want to do that gives you benefit there's also a certain process you want to go with us or in methodology if you may to go with that definitely yields more results than others so you can assess how people plan and see that there's massive differences so not all plans are made equal hopefully today we can share some really really good tips but yeah it's a lot we're gonna share a lot of the theory as well so like you'll be able to like take a lot of what I share or the the templates I'm gonna share more as like a starting point and feel free to like just remove certain sections and add other things and find the thing that works for you if I showed like what my template will look like two years ago it looks very different than what it does now and that iterated over several times like more like I think like 12 times I changed the order of which I do my my retros right like do I start with like takeaways do I start with like you know different things like I've rearranged order and see how that affected things so you know definitely want to find the sweet spot that works for you there's definitely best practices and we'll share those and yeah I think there's definitely still value in planning so see that yeah I love I love that you brought that up it's like the the sometimes even just doing the plan or kind of tracking your time or even just it's just about awareness of how often is what you're putting on your schedule to three times more than the actual time that you have and I think Jess Oh Jessica who's here has this amazing formula roll-up that she did inside of her I think it's her daily agenda might be weekly where it actually adds up all of the available hours that she has and gives her like a margin number so she can actually see a number that goes you have 30 more hours scheduled in in your calendar than you actually have time for so sometimes it it's like turning the Titanic around it takes time so it's just like slowly getting a little bit more and more accurate and still knowing that the plan is always gonna change you know like I just got asked to speak at a conference next month it's like well that wasn't in the plan but now I got it I have to make time for that and so leaving a bit of that margin has to be part of the plan as well right yeah yeah just remember like nothing's fatal either right like it's just like everything is negotiable you summit throws a wrench in let's just call that person life right doesn't a lot I don't know why they don't stop it doesn't stop it just constantly throws wrenches into it and you just like you have to just and with good methodology like overall your your net productivity is gonna be higher right you're not looking at was it accurate a hundred percent of time it's to say doing this in comparison to not doing it does that yield me more results and if it yields me more results then it's worth doing if not don't do it right there's definitely you want to look at like the cost and you know gain ratio and say fine if I'm exerting two more hours what am i gaining from it for me it was like I spent three hours doing retros and planning every week I gained about seven to twelve hours and I sleep like a baby and my sleep is actually more important than the time I say so that that's what does it for me and and there's always like there's extra stuff on top of it but definitely keep yourself honest and that's also part of your retros I think like this is one of my biggest things like while I started this process is in your retros as meta as the sounds reflect on how you're registered like serving here really and that's really important it's like am i feel like this is working know like what's not working well how can I improve it what's the the nuance what am i avoiding what is working like all that different stuff put it in there as well I find asking yeah what what could I do better and I have a daily question that I ask that up and then my weekly agenda rolls that up so I can see a list of all the things that I said I could do better this week and you'd be surprised how many are actually the same week after week it's always the same thing like get outside go for a walk like do those things so if you don't write them down they disappear yeah it's like a contract with yourself yeah totally we have a couple other questions that came in that might be a little bit more specific to your actual notion set up or your process so I don't know if you wanted to hop into a screen share if there's anything else you wanted to chat about before we go technical let's see is there anything else like on theory yeah move over from Evernote yes what's realistic Lisa well I'm wondering I get people asking a lot of questions around how like this seems like it takes a lot of time to learn notion and it does it does take a lot of time but I think people see these really advanced setups and think like oh no it's gonna take me forever to get there but honestly just having a really simple page where you're asking those questions I think is a good starting point right so just just start with the basics before you kind of need to go all crazy with the roll-ups and formulas and stuff so I don't know how long it's dad I just just don't don't fear it not working a hundred percent day one right and this is like everything like if if you want like an insurance policy on your life's decision you gotta go find another planet like there's none of that right so you've got to be you gotta have some tolerance to like try it out you're gonna see what works what doesn't work and constantly try to refactor and trust me it took me over 300 hours over the course of two years to find the architecture and set up in my notion process that works and that process is very taxing it's it's it's worthwhile because saves me a lot of time I value that a lot but and I enjoy the process of designing these these systems so I definitely prefer to do it over other things I can be doing so I'm not equal to everybody who tries to avoid this stuff but definitely feel free just to go in notion is like an easy thing to use up front it's just a document you have to look at it as anything else and over time experimenting with different things as you experiment with different things your brain kind of accumulates new dots right and remember like your brain the thing that it does really well is connecting dots so as you try new things whatever it is also you might have like a Eureka moment like oh when it makes this feature with that feature and makes it with that holy like and that's that's where the magic happens and you tried more complicated things and that's how I got my setup to where it is it's not like I came in like a pro like just as naive as everybody else it's a process it's it's funny it's like it's a process to find your process someone asked Chris Rogers in terms of theory one of the challenges is planning planning the cognitive overload watching Murray's planning process seems overwhelming is there tip suggestions to make this easier to comprehend I don't know if that ties in with what we were just saying is just that like my setup is like the result of a year and a half of like obsessively tinkering inside of notion but there's no reason why that couldn't just be a document with with the most important questions being asked see I don't you don't need to go from zero to hero I think the process of just asking those questions is really what is most important right now yeah I I completely agree and hopefully like while we're sure things were will share the theory as well along the way so that way you can take the principles home and say it fine I get this principle I get why this is important how can I experiment with this principle see the thing that dee dee did as an example see the thing that Marie did is an example of that principle but take inspiration from it and then say maybe I can execute in a different way and really it's just like learning the underlying thinking because really good planning is built on like some really basic core principles and you can do it like what's significantly less I also see people's notion set ups a lot of time and I'm just like dude you don't need to put this in a table and write really advanced formulas it's really cool but like I mean really like it's so extra like over and through and the thing is I think a lot of people that do like go down these routes of like having a very overkill solution to a very simple problem it's because they enjoy the the complexity and like intricacy and yeah the problem solving it's more of that and then like they and they'll brag like it saves or like changes their life and then you know even because I know how you went through this a million times and then like six months down the road abusing I'm like probably can go get away with half of this process and get the same result so you know you're always keeping yourself honest but don't get intimidated there's there's a thousand ways to to get the same outcome with like sniffily less work and and it's if you understand the principles you'll find the fastest route there I like that Michael asked I have a personal notion account and I'm just starting to build a separate notion workspace for work how would you recommend doing a retro with two workspaces meaning you want to share your retro with both your team and yourself like what do you mean by having a retro for two workspaces yeah I think that would also depend because like I have my work and personal all in the same notion and also you can totally embed tasks databases and things that live in your workspace into your own workspace as well so I think it I think it depends if you're self-employed or you're working with a team I think that might change how I would recommend doing that I would keep it simple I'm Ashley duplicate the retro temp have one in the company workspace one in yours everything that is as it pertains to the company put there everything that pertains to you put in yours and in yours linked to the company one just so you always can go find that information when you're poking around and trying to go back on and like information but there is a certain point where separation of context helps mainly because you just don't want to person with yours and just add that divide but make it accessible for you so that way you can see both these information it was there's nothing you can do there but the same principles and theories will apply across the board if you just want to keep certain permission private then put into two separate documents I don't I don't think it has to be more complicated assuming that's what he meant by his question yeah hopefully we can elaborate on some of that when we actually do show our spaces but so some great great other questions are coming in like Tricia asked I make plans but I let daily tasks take over and I forget my plans I want to try living by my plan how might I break my bad habit of ignoring my weekly plan oh yeah so you're gonna see mine I don't said just objectives I I also have like time blocks right like and we'll go into that more detail and I think we're gonna have to jump into like showing this template if we want to have enough time for all of it and you want to make sure that the time is already blocked from your calendar and then it's just up to you to honor it right and to get better at blocking out times in a way that's convenient for you like you don't want to give yourself you know really hard work to do like at 7:00 p.m. when you're exhausted like just don't do that but you know as long as you're setting it up you're blocking out the time then your calendar should reflect the Delta which is how much time you have left over to do all the other things and then when somebody comes up with another thing hey I have like something I need to talk to you about you're looking at your calendar and you're saying hey okay I have two slots otherwise it comes at the cost of something else yeah if you're negotiating this with a client it's very responsible to say hey I get this is really important and you want to do this I have these five things on my docket for this week that all the times reserved for happy to reira serve the time for the thing you want to talk about but it will come at the cost of either one two three things you can choose right everybody's known it back off from that yes I think we're back on think about okay this is important to me but not the cost of these other things you need to take care of which is also important to me so I'll wait until next week but if you don't block it out you won't know even having like non-negotiable days or a non-negotiable half day a week building in buffer blocks like I block chunks in my calendar from an hour to two hours every week that's just like the that comes up that wasn't planned for so like actually put that block in your calendar if you struggle with this and you find stuff comes in that isn't a plan for like Edgar just asked how do you handle spur-of-the-moment ideas and aha moments that come up as you're working on a weekly task that's relevant to that task and then it might throw the plan schedule off the train tracks a bit I think there's going to be some level of is this essential is this nice to have is it like a thing I can add down the road and just building in that buffer as part of your weekly planning for projects every project everything needs a little bit of that margin and your own schedule needs that margin too so put buffer blocks and strategic blocks in your calendar make them busy non-negotiable give yourself those non-negotiable spots in your calendar yeah give yourself like you know an hour a day like you said buffer to like audit your your initial plan but the more you find yourself doing things reactively instead of methodically the more you'll find yourself like you know making spatially sporadic things but at the cost of something significant that just takes longer to manifest so you might not notice it upfront but then the end of the week comes along you're like oh I couldn't get this other thing that's really important done because being too reactive to these small things so just try to do it a little more methodically and give yourself some time to like just sit down with yourself and be like alright once a day you have an hour I know that I can sit down and reassess what it is I can prioritize and worst case I just won't be able to do it today but I'll be able to by the end of the day we prioritize it if I want to do it tomorrow right and just try to put a little more friction between you and just like responding things should slow down and calm down yeah and if you know that your tendency is to kind of you know explore these sort of rabbit hole have to build that into your schedule build that creative time build that buffer but make that a thing that clients cannot book that spot with you right yeah oh yeah why don't we dive into your setup a little bit and then that way I'm sure people are going to have more questions and some of them are a little bit more technical in terms of your specific setup so do you want to share let's share let's look under the hood all right move that there and share my screen let me know when you can see this boom there we go boom we're alive okay so everybody there's a dope website some some really generous guy made it his his name happens to be didi Medina it's called bitly forward slash notion toolbox where I started publishing a bunch of my templates there here you can duplicate them so that's bitly bi t li ly sorry forward slash notion toolbox good looking through today is the weekly retro planning it's right on the process and you can duplicate it it's gonna be available to duplicate it right in the top corner and you can start playing with it cool so let's start off with some really simple things this was one of the biggest takeaways I had over doing retros for I don't know now two years really you know aggressively I find that net naturally retros is like where you start by saying what's working what's not working or takeaways then you play the next week right and when you start off with like a bullet point list and you're just like what's working what's not working psychologically the things that pop to mind are the things you're most sensitive to so it could be the things that cause you the most pain the things that have been most recent and honestly a lot of times that that sabotage it doesn't actually allow you to assess the things that actually stand to have the highest impact on your next plan forward for the next week right so first thing before anything the first principle I guess you can say is reset like jog your memory before you start writing down anything right so I have like a really simple kickoff checklist which is review yearly objectives right this wasn't always like here I used to like just review the previous like retro but I found that after doing that sequentially for too long my plans per week built on the previous week but also in somehow like diverged for my yearly goals right so I find that if you have yearly goals just read them that's it you don't have to do anything fancy just skim through them so review yearly objectives after that review objectives from the previous weeks retro right what you set out to do for the week jog your memory and what you expected of yourself and then also review the time allocation on your calendar your calendar should read like a story like a great story it should it should be able to tell you where to anoint I'm Darrell hopefully yeah I try to make a habit of like even like when things aren't like invites that I send out to people I'll block it out on my calendar so then again like an end of the week I can go back and jog my memory it's like what exactly happened this week now once you do this now you're ready to start because now you kind of remember the entire context you're not going to biased towards the things you're most sensitive to but rather all of the information that's relevant to the entire week that make sense yeah it's great cool the next thing is situation summary so I used to have the bullet point thing which is like what's working what's not working found that to be complete by the way should I not curse on this I know I am I I'm from Brooklyn New York it's just something that comes like a great night the only thing I am not apologetic for is like the fact that I never did anything to change that but I will survive just so back to situation summary I used to have like bullet point lists of what's working what's not working and again I found that to always yield like really really like non contextual not really deep insight so what is the situation something how does that differ instead of writing what's working what's not working I'm just writing out the story of what happened that week like literally just start like a journal I started my day on Sunday morning Beauvoir and you'll see like things just like slipped through and you're gonna write out the entire story you can pass over things you don't have to be like for like you know if the write a book it's not a novella you can just you can write a couple of paragraphs and then naturally as you write you'll notice that what's working and not working is gonna be written out in plain English and you can go back on your text and just highlight green and read the working and not work right so I find that to divulge significantly more context when I do situation summary and then I reread my situation summary and highlight like both green and red the working not working and then I have takeaways takeaways are your lessons learned don't put stupid in here I think like one of the biggest thing that I tell people is like if you have no takeaways it was a vanilla week things went according to plan and there's nothing really like there's no wrenches in there there's nothing that you need to change don't put anything here right but and that way when you do have a takeaway you take it seriously if there's a takeaway that means there's got to be something you got to do about it there's like you got to put up a plan to like do something about it if not it doesn't have any consequences don't put it right if it's too small if I can have any consequences don't put it in there right don't clutter this thing up so take away title and then take away description that's usually a format that I put so I give it like a short handle of like what I call it and then like a description to explain where I got this takeaway from why it's relevant just again just write naturally I think like we as humans were very decent storytellers so I like to build a lot of my process around just writing normally instead of like trying to write in some constrained what comes to mind if it comes out to be two cents is great if it comes out to be a paragraph all like that's perfectly fine there's no there's no heart rules here as long as you understand that that's all that matters right so this is like kind of like the thing I think takes about an hour plus to do okay past this point everything starts cruising I'm self-employed so I have stats right this is my funnel I know that in order for me to bill a certain amount of money it can be both like backwards to the amount of context I have so contacts is like the amount of people I just add to my hit list that's just a spreadsheet of people I don't know that I want to get to know right then it's like how many people that add into contacts that convert it into relationships that means I met them in person or over a video call right from there how many like of them converted into opportunities from there how many of those opportunities went into screening discovering deciding working closing invoices built now this is really important for me because if I'm not billing and I see there's a lot of zeros the answer is like right there right and if there is a lot of zeros the way it's like do the work right like make the contacts do the outreach you got to do the hard work so this brings us the next like principle which is design systems that hold you accountable and what I mean by hold you accountable they make it harder for you to lie to yourself yeah right because it's really easy to like say oh I'm being accountable I'm putting in the work whatever it is because you're not going into the details and you can't really see that you're really not actually doing the work so you can abstract it and then float on the potentiality that you are putting in the work but when you design these kind of systems it's like very clear it's written like a night and day you didn't add any context you didn't make it here new relationships who are you to expect that there should be new opportunities that you can potentially capitalize on right so that's why I have that your pipeline can look a little bit different I think just in and just over just like an overlook of my pipeline screening is when I look at an opportunity lightly I may be talked to like a founder a new client like for a quick chat discovering was I do like due diligence I'm I talking to the team were in detail and I'm trying to figure out the details of project and put together a plan deciding is when I actually write up the plan the final plan and I sign the contract with the the client working is when I'm working on the project closing is after I'm done working on it I have a closing protocol which is like I reach out for testimonials all this different stuff so that's a separate stage as well but I like to have stages that are very agnostic like I don't use words that are too specific so I can apply what they mean under different contexts instead of having several pipelines for different types of initiatives a question just popped up are there any formulas in the stats section or is it just a section that you manually add the info I assume you're manually adding that info manual which is another thing that's really good I think like for you're gonna see this also like in the financial section is like you could automate a lot of things and there's times where you don't want to automate it because the deliberate act of writing it transcribes it into your brain and again that enables accountability so I could always just go back into my records and figure this out if I want to figure it out so why document it because it holds me accountable it makes me like confront the thing I'm trying to avoid right so manual work can actually play to your benefit don't always try to automate everything I mean I just it's like again another reminder right like you could have those numbers be popping in but just not be really conscious of how many sales am I actually making yeah that repetition I think is really helpful totally now we get to you can see how we go from like wide down to like narrow we're getting more actionable as we go so now we're at the section which is objectives and time blocks no fancy tables nothing crazy it's just you set the goal per initiative and then the time blocks so let's let's give an example of what that means what is the difference between an objective and a time block let's say my objective is to launch my new website right so first and foremost that's the objective what's a time block a time block would be to say all right what are all of the tangible things I can block out in a calendar that I can do that get me to that goal so I you can say it's gonna take me two hours to brainstorm the content that's the first time block second time block it's gonna take me one hour to sketch out some concepts on my iPad right second time block then there's a like a third one to actually do some rough designs fourth one etc you you're literally now that naturally you sounded to ative to you we're like you probably start and stop work right these are separate time blocks and you'll see soon what we do is we take these time blocks and literally put them into the calendar before you like end the retro and then you can see like do I have enough time for all these things or do any negotiate how much I can get done in this week now what is product/service content right and also what's an initiative because we've spoken about objectives and time blocks an initiative the difference between an initiative and a product a project is a project has an ending right a project is design website an initiative is something that doesn't have an end date it keeps going for example a company is an initiative a team inside of a company is an initiative the website that they're building is a project right so what is the initiative for my website it's my consultancy I'm creating the website for my consultancy so the initiative is my consultancy I write consultancy because I don't have a name for my business I saw myself as didi medina right so there's no like formal name but if you have a client let's say have a client their name is salto right i'm is one of my clients if i'm have like if i have objectives for the week for that client i first put the initiative salto and there I put the objective which is iterate on landing page design hypothetically and then in there I put the time blocks right you can see like we can open this up and then there's a good time block and you put in the time blocks and lastly what's the difference between product service and content so service is like time that I sell for money so anything that's like a client that I'm like doing design work for or a leadership work for that would be under service product is anything that I'm creating that I have intent to sell right so if I'm writing a book or I am working on a master class that is product content doesn't have any intention of making money it just is stuff that I create that I put out in the world either altruistically to help people or as marketing to generate new potential clients that come insert like for service initiatives or content that promotes the product create right so that's kind of like how I split my work and how I look at it I see products service and then content these are three separate verticals I try to keep a balance of these verticals so that way I know like I'm building products because that brings me passive income these are the harder things to do they're not urgent but they're very important then there's service which usually is more urgent and also somewhat important and then content which is probably on the lower end of not urgent nor like super important all right so that's kind of how like distribute them does that make sense sure yeah does anyone have any questions around that I really like the way you've separated out those contexts and of course I love the idea of just locking it in your calendar as part of that process because I think we often as we've touched upon we're bad at estimating large chunks of time so if you actually have to say put an hour to something blocking in your calendar you're very quickly going to see those blocks add up and then if you've got yoga and friend hanging out and whatever that fills up very quickly so I just I love you breaking it up into context and kind of getting it in the calendar ASAP and there's definitely a better like there's best practices for when you write a time block a time block should not sound like a goal meaning it should be very tangible it's like if you put this out like for an hour on your calendar you know when you come to your calendar and is if you have the reference like a task list you know exactly what you need to do if not it's too ambiguous like you need to break it down further right do not use vague words like be very keen on using words like start off then every time block by writing block out time to and then write design new iteration of website that increases the size of the logo and changes the fonts that I'm using as a baseline right now that is a better time block instead of writing okay design website because that's the objective you want to break it down to a smaller piece also the reason why it's a checkbox is once you put it in your calendar that's when you mark this off you don't mark this off after it gets completed you mark it off after you put it in your calendar right the retro is something you're when you're done with you log it you're done you don't come open this back up your calendar should be your reference point from that point on I love the simplicity of this too again a lot of people get hung up on the features of notion or how to build this into a database and I know I go like really crazy on the databases and I love that but it I love that this just shows you it really does not need to be complex anyone can start a free notion account and just keep it really really simple yeah this is like this is all built up of like really really really simple stuff template with you so you've all got it now there you go you can just start writing it doesn't like connect doing different things the one thing you might want to do is you probably want to create like in your version where you can actually like create like instantiate this template every single time and in a table you kind of see like the week so I can show what that looks like the notion of sooo good do to do so like if you go to my workspace you'll see that here I have Dedes retros this is like just a table and you can see like all of the the retros I have right and in the side here you'll see that all I have is I like the scoring system that I do the end after I'm done with the retro I said exceeded expectation satisfactory could be better you could it be better unsatisfactory this is like so that way when I look at my pattern you guys can see like I'm there's I have down weeks right it's like very normal but I can see kind of like my pattern and you'll see that I don't really exceed my own expectations that often right like almost ever that's like a very rare occasion and that's when your planning goes well it's like this to me reefs like I'm learning right if it all if it was Green across the board that means you're not getting better right there's nothing to really take away but yeah you can create like a table a simple list where you can dump these retros into and just give it a timestamp and then sort them by time so they're nicely organized but that's pretty much it if you want to do it more drinky you can just like open it and just hold down alt on your keyboard and drag the page and we'll duplicate it and just keep doing that on the same page that's also fine you don't have to add this like table complexity if you want to someone asked is one time block always the same amount of time for you across product service content absolutely not right so some things take longer something like if I'm designing something is just I need like two and a half three hours like just to design the duration like it's not the same as responding to an email I don't really put that kind of stuff into my time blocks of time blocks I really reserve I guess is a good point to bring up time blocks should be focused around deep work not around shallow work for people who don't know the difference I'll give a quick explanation deep work is the stuff that you it takes you multiple hours to complete and you need to focus on you have to give you full focus you can't have distractions shallow work is a stuff that is very easy to do it might be time-consuming but it's very easy to do it doesn't take a lot of like brainpower like answering yeah it just takes like it doesn't require like my like mental like muscle it's just like answering emails or whatever it is now there is times where answering an email can be deep work like where someone sends you like an email about firing somebody you know this has happened to me before and something I need to give a lot of thought to before I respond so that is a deep work thing so it's not it's not mutually exclusive but you know definitely try to block out the things that are important and also require focus all the smaller things you'll find that it's there's diminishing returns and like trying to scrutinize yourself of like getting all the small things in there if you attend to the big things that deep work things the small things have their way of just getting done as well right and more than that like you make progress if you focus more on the deep work than you do like on all the shallow stuff but yeah I usually when I do deep what I put out objectives let's actually look at an example here in my own previous retros I'm trying hate when okay some private information guys don't don't like publish us anywhere so let's see here great you have here obd podcast podcast i'm working on you can open this up you'll see block out time to review episode with tom low hot and compiled edit notes very clear and then in in parenthesis i write two things the amount of hours it's going to take and the amount of sessions write sessions implies I might need four hours but it needs to be done over two sessions which means I don't want to do it in one sprint I want to start maybe take like an hour and a half to start it off and then I want to get myself a break to kind of get myself a night to think about it come back and do the other two hours the next day so this is the two things I put in to our like the amount of hours and the amount of sessions make sure it's clear and then also make sure you think about like the amount of sessions because it's also very relevant to different types of deep work that a lot of times there's diminishing returns trying to do six hours of one thing continuously you kind of have to give your your brain some rest too kind of recalibrate does that make sense absolutely yeah I love it cool alright before more personal information is shared you're sharing your space so that's like objectives and time blocks the next section is financials again this is something you your wife might be doing and or your partner might be doing and you don't look after the finances so you just excess out of your retro I don't know but this is really important to me I like auditing my spending every single week because I've known to be a spender like as you guys can see there's this crazy setup for like lighting and also print stuff cost me money i I probably don't need it so I try to monitor my habits that's like how I spend I simply you have like this table here how much money you spent this week right so look at your credit card statements if you spent some in cash estimated add it up and then you put in how much you have in liquidity how much you have in debt how much you have in investments and if there's any clarifiers you put that in the notes right and then the time frame so when you create a new row you're just going to go in here and choose the time frame you're going to set an end date so it's probably gonna be arranged we'll say it's for this week so we'll do here and the end date is gonna be the 25th or something right so that's your time frame so that way you can then sort it by the time frame that's pretty much it financials and then there's the wrap up wrap up is really simple some tasks can you to do before you shutdown the week so I put mine as examples but feel free to like refactor all this block out deep work sessions on calendar based on objectives set up set off of the week so I go back to what's in here I open up my calendar and I start putting things in that's pretty much what I do it should be pretty easy to do that the thinking's done you're just putting it in and then realize you overbooked yourself you start negotiating what you're gonna get done well you're not gonna get done and prioritize it's great do you know this retro throughout the week or is it kind of like you've done it because it's been time blocked and then you're kind of done with it or do you revisit every now and then I never reopened it until the next week where I look back I try to transfer the context that's in here that's relevant to me throughout the week to my calendar so that way I don't have to open this up and I guess that's another principle when you design processes for yourself and if upkeeping the process has too much friction you're likely gonna fail at it so for me when I designed it in a way where this became my point of reference and I always had to go back into the notion and go into it and like find it I would do that less compared to like if it's just in my calendar where I'm looking all the time and all the information I need the lucrative information I need is there so I don't have to open this up so I transfer out the context that's really important into Google Calendar and then that way I don't really need to open this up until the end of the week Nancy asked can you show how to move the table out of a template and link to it and Nancy I wondering are you are you referring to kind of embedding embedding a database so that you could kind of embed a database that lives elsewhere or is she talking about the the spending database here or are you talking about like the database where I create the list of rest rows she's referring to the financials can you show how to move the tape move the table out of the template and link to it yes so in essence all you need to do is move it wherever you want right I'm just gonna get us a unique name so I can find it let's say taco and then I'm going to move this into the toolbox right so now it's gone where is financials there we go and then you do here link to table link to page link to database wait is there a link to the database how do I do this last time is it like you can just hit well you should be able to do act and then the name of it no but you want to embed it not just like link to it there we go Oh database is a database is treated like a page so there's a little bit confusion there but like forward slash link to page and you can see here spending taco and when you do that now didn't do what I wanted it to do are you trying to embed it you can type slash create linked database create like database okay that's what I'm looking for so you can either link to it or you can create to create a link and externally and now we're gonna type in spending taco now you're gonna see it's gonna embed it here so now every time you kind of add something it's gonna be here and also in your centralized place and that's how I have it like I have a separate document in my notion that's called financials where the master lives and then inside the retros it's instantiated by the way do we have a hard stop it's 855 what's 1055 I'm a little bit flexible if you're flexible let's talk to you when I respect your time minute oh yeah it's the end of day I have like I can go over by 30 minutes but yeah I just wanna make sure people have there's like a lot of information yeah there's ask questions yeah well clarifying questions so I'm gonna just undo this but that's how you would do it so you could write when you get this I'm just command seeing until I see the think oh it's just loading there we go our back okay so this is here um so yeah so you can start off by taking this putting it else putting it up swear then linking it back into your template once you have your retro template then duplicate that don't touch the the master just duplicate it before you start creating your first retro that's how to do that so yeah so checklist blackout deep work sessions on calendar based on objectives set up for the week so we showed how to do that then block out workout routine on calendar for the week that's important to me again if you don't block it out it's not gonna happen or you send the higher chance of like moving things around and just getting a lot of things done well doing a lot of things we're not getting a lot of things done or or things are not getting the important things done right so there's that groom existing tasks lists and and add any new test reminders needed for the week groom hit list and opportunities so this is like my CRM send out outstanding follow-ups via email whatsapp Facebook Messenger etc notify team retros completed via whatsapp or email clear expenses in QuickBooks send out any outstanding invoices and mark paid invoices off and harvest that's what I use for invoicing so I guess like a lot of this might not be relevant for you but it's really good like examples so it can get your creative juices going feel free to delete them and put the ones that are relevant the last thing is to remember you are human so I have an audit that I do on my behaviors every single week these are this is like a survey I created that I continue to edit based on things I'm trying to work on myself so my survey is really simple as you can see there's a thread here hand did you refrain for buying things you don't need and spending money you don't have yes mostly no right did you generate new connections yes that would be roughly three mostly one or were you supportive and emotional conversations and Frank and functional conversations I'm a manager I lead a bunch of teams this is a really important one I try to really think about this every single week work ethic did you wake up early on weekdays yes six times mostly four times no less than three times did you get enough deep work sessions in this week so yes that would be six mostly will be three no be under two because that's the I assume I could get at least six deep work sessions to have a good week and there's a really important thing for me cuz sometimes I'm like ah I was really busy this weekend but I didn't get anything done and like then you realize well I really didn't have any deep work session so probably I was being really reactive and there's probably a bigger threat to pull on here than I need to go relook before I conclude that it isn't out of my control right did you complete what you set out to do for the week entirely mostly no did you meditate did you stick to clean eating did you work out right so this is my weekly behavior audit once I'm done with that I go back to the top I score it I have like that score of like exceeded expectations satisfactory whatever and I go to sleep like a baby like oh I don't know why because I don't like babies don't sleep I know so like in Hebrew we say your shameful booba which is like to say you sleep like a doll that makes more sense because right but like I never understood the baby thing some people are today like I sleep like a log okay but like babies don't sleep so I don't know where that came from but yeah I I check out and I'm usually really good I'm way better like two people that are in my life on my weekends I'm like way more tentative less anxiety I'm there and that's the more important part of my life is like I don't work to make money I work to have a lifestyle and if you're you don't practice your lifestyle if you don't have time for your friends you don't have time for the things that are outside of work you're doing it wrong it's not serving anything significant for so I I definitely love to see myself get to the weekend and you know be more tentative and be more available emotionally and mentally because I've locked things in with the open loops if you met yeah I could definitely I can definitely see why this would reduce your anxiety like you said the closing those open loops just like finishing conversations just closing the book for the week I think it's brilliant the loop is still open right like sometimes the loop is still open but at least you know that there's nothing to panic about it's an open loop I know it's there and I know I can get to it next week so even still the anxieties gone you don't have to assume you have to literally end everything you started you just need to know that it's in good sitting like you can you can leave it and nothing's gonna blow up yeah and that just that you have a plan for it for the next week right exactly so we do have a couple other questions let's see if we can go through some of these and some of them may not be relevant to your particular setup because you know DeeDee setup doesn't it doesn't use many databases other than the financials and I love the simplicity of it I know mine is very data based heavy and so I do a lot of roll-ups and things like that but there are parts of yours that I like that I think I might add as little prompts at the bottom of my weekly agenda too so Edgar asked please show how we can use wheat the weekly tracker to display relevant roll-ups that help visualize the important items that are on the front burner and so I mean that's more relevant in my setup I feel like I do I feel like I could probably do like another YouTube video that goes into my updated my updated weekly setup so maybe I can answer that in a separate call I don't know if we'll have time to kind of get into it today in detail someone else asks will you be sharing your changed updated new weekly agenda I will do an updated I'll definitely do an updated YouTube video on that Victoire do you do daily and weekly daily and weekly tracking is so how do you separate and connect the two so it looks like yours was less on the daily and your you're really doing it kind of at the end of the week so do you do you do any kind like daily checkpoints as part of this when you do weekly planning well you understand the benefits of that and all that you realize that daily planning contents right like it's not you're not really doing anything have you know what you need to get done it's already on your calendar you just double checking does this still make sense or do I need to nudge things by about 15 20 percent I find that I'm rarely wrong more than like a 20% margin because again you're not planning that far out you're getting very detailed you're also doing a much better job assessing the the past week in your situation before you plan assuming you stick to all these principles like where you reflect effectively your plan would be more effective and thus like when you go down to a day level you'll find yourself like tweaking maybe here and there like you're massaging things but like you're not making big shifts and I'm sure yeah sure it comes with experience right like you've you've obviously been like honing your process over years and years and you found the flow that makes a lot of sense for you so I do I do encourage people despite your resistance like to start simple and really give it a shot and see if it works for you and you're going to find the questions that are going to make the most sense for you but I think your templates such a great starting point that's super light it doesn't well that's subjective it's it's light on the notion technical features right it just it's just like it uses the things you're already good at everybody's good at journaling just write down at least reading this except for you if it makes sense to you it's fine like if I if I read out loud like some of the things I've journaled about oh my god your god that ya broke in English like it doesn't make sense like one like hat like train of thought starts another one ends and like it's fine like if it reads to you gets the information out of your brain like you'll find that the thing that works really well what journaling as opposed to like bullet point lists is like you need to like continuously get to the points by kind of progressing through the previous points you have to add the connective tissue and that prevents you from making too many leaps like where you go from this to that or rather you have the transition and a lot of time there's a lot of juice in that transition it's like why did I go from this all the way to this that is really important right um so yeah and you'll find it to be really natural so it's like this is what I did this week your wrench and I got really pissed and I know like you know play devil's advocate with yourself and talk and do we find I like that yeah lots of other little questions have come in what are your general min max lengths for a deep work session and how many do you typically have per week how many deep work sessions do I have for a week so I have ten deep work sessions a week three of them are already allocated to personal projects and also retrospective retros and planning The Wrap is a full deep work session right so the question is how much deeper excited to have ten how much will have available for clients usually on six to seven and if we retained consideration personal projects you're down to four right so that's kind of like how I look at it I do not measure any other time like I'm not meaning I put things on the calendar I do not know anything that is shallow in nature I find that taking all the time that I spent doing that and doubling down on scrutinizing my deep work time one I saved a lot of time because measuring your shallow work is kind of time consuming and not all of it gets transferred back into the deep work so you get some time back that's first and second that that stuff like literally has 90% 80% of the game so it's like where you should be spending all your time anyways love that do you also use a separate to-do list to do a board is everything live in notion good great question um I think yes I think I know I use a different to-do list I use things on my iPhone the principle that leads that is when you're trying to put into dues you want it to be really good at quick capture and quick access that is not where notion shines right like if you have an architecture inside an ocean you need to go into a page a project that's a third page whatever it is even when you use favorites it takes a while to get access to it it takes a while to put information in so you have to like have systems that and tools that work for different things and to dues are very reactive they're very like spawn spontaneous you want something I can work with Siri I like things because it works with Siri and also it works with email like if I email a specific email address email automatically comes up to do my to-do-list so it's really really good at quick capture whereas like notion really good a documentation really good at bigger picture stuff like more depth stuff not shallow stuff the depth stuff yeah so exactly so yeah definitely use a different one and I recommend you do lucky asked I'm considering implementing notion as a high school teacher for my students what two or three elements would you suggest we focus on first well it depends a lot on exactly yeah let's come back I will come back to that question do you use a yearly objectives template your weekly template says to review the yearly objectives I'm curious how you set your yearly objectives ah great question guys go to bitly forward slash notion toolbox under purpose which there's three columns purpose process practice on the purpose there's a year manifesto that is my template for setting goals for the year and that's also available we're not going to go into the details of that but you're gonna find a lot of common threads and there's documentation built into it so for every section there's a how-to that explains how to use it so I would use that as well to do your yearly planning in your notion sorry in your retro template link to that so instead of reading review yearly objectives like link the word objectives to you nearly manifesto so you can quickly like click on it open up in a new tab it just makes it easier but yeah you can use both alongside one another out of curiosity are there some features you would like to see a notion that are not there yet oh hell yeah okay let's see I know I there's smaller ones right like everybody can see the API that's like a cliche there's something I really really wish that was there is I use a lot of templates a notion I would love you know a feature where instead of having a text block I can have a dummy text block which means like I can put but when you click on it the second time it erases it resets it into a regular text box mm-hmm so like it's placed other text and that would be very useful because I use a lot of documentation that's only relevant before you start writing and no longer relevant after so I left up in my documentation as placeholder text a second you click on it it erases it and I can see that working kind of like you know has a configuration state and then it converts itself it involves itself into a regular text box so I can get clicked on so I'll be really cool let's see what else templates inside of tables I found executed really poorly so right now if you want to create a template for a database by the new button there's like a little drop-down you click on that and you can create a new template and it lives there right the thing that I like to do is I like to use a template button and inside a template button I use link to page which allows me to put all my templates in one notion repository page right and always link and it instantiates it I'm probably talking overly a lot of people's head you're advanced you know what I'm talking about if not don't worry about it it all works so in the tables it would have been really cool if creating a template worked exactly like the template button where you click it and then you have like a field where you can link to a page and instantiates it that would be really really dope that way I don't have to like manage like templates in seven the move yeah it's it's a bit weird yep totally agree with that lucky was saying he teaches AP World History I want you know right worth watching one of the we did it past office hours with this the student one and it was all about like I'm totally blanking I'll follow I'll follow up with some links to any any of the things that we mentioned here any of the templates but I have a office hour session I think might be worth you watching yeah I think that'll be helpful that's awesome like like it on it right now sharing can considering sharing my weekly wrapup with my investors is there a way to pull the relevant content into a different page or folder that could be shared outside of the organization don't really want them to know what personal habits I'm working on in other personal things definitely yes you can share those documents I don't know if you have opinions on that Dede but you can absolutely create you know client special folders and pages that you can share only those pages with investors yeah I I agree I I can like advise a bunch of tech companies where they have the same problem they use a notion for themselves they use it for their company and they also have to share with different people at different points in time my advice in that situation is understand the first asset work for you before it works for others because if it doesn't work for you you're sharing like broken information down the chain so first have something that works for you and now if you want to control privacy you don't want that to see certain things personally I would never share my retro would anybody because not because it's personal just because it's like very lengthy is written in a way only I can understand literally it should read like your mom's recipe book right it's like you open it up and you're like ma like I don't understand the meatball like recipe like what is this thing it only has a 20% that I usually forget like nothing else right and and that's the right way to write it it's for you not for anybody else so when you need to share stuff with other people that is a roll up of the information you wrote for yourself create a summary you'll save them a lot of time you'll make your it much easier for you to get your thoughts out if you're concentrating thoughts out in a way that's gonna work for everybody it's just not gonna come out so write it sloppy write it like dirty like it's fine and then you'll roll up separately in a summary way that other people can benefit from and it's framed in a way that's good for the investors and I think you could even have like a paint like a page I guess embedded at the bottom of that retro that could be the one that's intended to be shared with the investors and only share that particular page but as part of your process maybe you go in and summarize that be a checkbox summarize that summarize my summary and put it into me the one that I'm going to share publicly so that'll be like a really really natural native place to put it so if you're thinking about organization where should this investor version live I think that's that's golden it's like right there in in there is leave all the the roll-ups at the bottom that sounds really really cool Mike asked do you consider him do you consider improve your notion architecture deep work how often do you refine your notion system and how much time do you spend I literally have okay so I'm a product designer so I design software I design systems I'm better than like a lot of people who don't come from my line of work doing this and an analogy that I like to give when I give demonstrations and teach how to use notion and build processes inside a notion at different workshops is first understanding that notion if you have to compare it to let's say asana or to some other tool right is the difference between like getting an apartment that's furnished versus getting an empty plot of land right one is very opinionated right but it's ready to go like you can just go like right into the apartment it's furnished and do a deep dive right into your bed and like you're good you can go to sleep now an empty plot of land has a lot of potential but not everybody exactly not only is not eating right so you can get really overwhelmed and really lost and that's why it's really good that people share their templates because that allows you to have a starting point but you know there's a saying in management it's like sometimes you have to be careful not to give people too much rope they might hang themselves right so it very much applies even to yourself because you have the choice to give yourself that rope right and I find myself a lot of times giving yourself that extra rope even though I'm good and I'm good at this stuff and I choke myself out like I'm just like ah this was too much right get over engineer and then you step back a bit right and you kind of exactly and that's a natural process I'm not like against it I like going into deep end and be like oh that was too far let's come back and simplify right I've also had tables with roll-ups and went there for so many no mi retros and I was like this is night it doesn't add like a magnitude of like value it just increments it by two percent so I was like screw it keep it simple and it took me a while and to like you know simplify that's a process too but uh yeah I just say just like be careful don't crash the planning we call it right it's the yelling spending too much time on the planning Oh but actually like how much time did I spend doing it like do you build it and do you build it into your time like I guess I wouldn't consider that deep work you're probably like tinkering and playing as you go right it's not like you're I need a good two hours to like work on my notion setup right so my notion you'll find two types of people in notion and I think I found only one other person that falls under the second person where I fall category which is if you look at the side panel of people's notion you might see like a hundred um like files right and these people are in the band camp like where they you search a lot to find the things that they're in mine my notion has one thing like literally one thing DD's workspace my architecture went through a significant amount of deep work it's an application I designed there's like there's a natural path that's like where to find anything right and you can think about it very simply and get to it right and because of that I don't have a hundred things on the side and I never really just tinkered I mean I there has a moments where I tinker right but most times I do my retros I say like what's work like I try to find what's working what's not working and if there's any takeaways from that I literally give myself three hours on the calendar and pretty much I could find need to figure out how to solve this like and it starts with like wireframe like whiteboarding the problem creating an object map of how things talk to each other I keep an active current object map inside of a tool called whimsical which is like for mind maps and stuff like that of like my architecture fur notion so I can keep up with it and I've evolved the terminology I've evolved the architecture I've done all these different things on a much more significant level and much more deep level and absolutely it took a lot of deep work and I think in the past year and a half I spent north of like 300 hours doing it and I loved it it's it's it exercises like things I love doing but it's a good challenge but yeah it definitely takes a lot of work for me like you said there's that anxiety reduction when you feel like you have found the tool suite that really works for you and is helping you be productive so there's there is a fun element and optimizing right how can I make this a little bit better but not going too hard and that's the thing I opted in to being the person who buys an empty piece of land right yeah and accepting the fact that overhead that comes with that is you got a it's gonna take you right yes I think some work and there's less of the convenience of like everything's ready to go right and you're right sometimes when you find an apartment that's furnished it's exactly to your liking right but that rarely happens yeah it could happen it just rarely happens right and you're usually making compromises that's why people like you know complain about like oath on is so limiting and this doesn't do what I needed to do and then when they come to notion that call he thinks possible and two months down their journey like I'm so frustrated it's like what you think it's that's the cost of doing business here you know that's a great analogy I think that's exactly how to put it in for some people when they complain about they're like why would I use notion when I you know the Sun is already kind of ready to go and look great use a solder like if that's if it works for you you should totally use it but if if it's not working for you and there's friction and there's a better way to design something that's gonna work for you it might be worth exploring and process needs to be created and maintained don't forget that it's very like productivity a super personal process is super personal so you're gonna look at someone set up and template and be like ah that's like either too simple or too complex or doesn't work switch it out play with it you know try it out see what works for you yeah and just be methodical right it's like you're not gonna hope is not a business plan and it's not a planned period right like you don't just like throw things out and hope something sticks that's the equivalent of like putting a blindfold on taking a bunch of darts or throwing them at the wall hoping something hits the bull's eye now you might struck luck like strike luck once in a while but you won't even what do you do you don't know why it works so you can't reproduce the same result so try to be methodical try to use your retros and as an opportunity to really reflect and if you guys remember when I have like product service and content when I create myself tools that goes on the product right like I'm creating a product granted not selling it but it's for myself right but it is a creation of a product that's how I look at it it's a project that goes through the pipeline I do due diligence i I put I do a bigger like assessment of like what are the challenges what are the things that absolutely need to be improved I create a long list and then I sort them out between what's important versus what's urgent versus what's like both important and urgent hey Morgan sort of however you any like okay this is like 10 20 percent of the chunk that I can bite off in the next two months that stands to add the most value block out six hours in your next retros time block after you assess it and start getting to work right like it is I love it I love laying down the bricks some people don't ya love it no I think you gave people a really amazing starting point I did add the link below in the call to action there so if anybody wants to download those templates you totally should we had a last minute question pop-up what's the what's the biggest lesson that you learned about yourself as a result of doing these retros that caused a major change in your life in business that's a great question I put this I am full of that's that's what it is it's like the thing is like when you go down the path of creating processes some people might see it as like a way of taking creativity and making it mundane right and there is a place from like creativity and you should never try to over process things but you'll know the process is working when you can't lie to yourself right so we spoke about this and like there's so many moments like in the past year and a half where I'm like oh I'm so full of like I am NOT to yourself yet to myself and that is like it's like across the board like when you when you stop reflect and yet you have good tools you have good processes they hold you accountable I think the way I look at process is not this mechanical thing but rather the way I like the explained process or the balance of process is it pretty much police's human insecurities right that's the way I look at process you are human you are biased you are gonna do a bunch of things wrong then it gonna feel intuitive to you and then create clever stories to justify why it's right right and good process mitigates that yeah now if you create too much process you won't maintain it and you won't respect it and it's like there's no point of a process that is not honored right we're not used right so don't do anything that if even if it's a good process for me and it would work for you if you're too intimidated to uphold it right like it's it's too real for you it's holding you too accountable like it's just like too much at once back off right like that's also important to know like like bring yourself up know your limit right yeah exactly because like if you're doing it right you might have moments like that where you're like ah this is too real like kind careful yeah yeah you can step back a little bit and work your way into it it's not go for the compounding gains your work in progress or human it's it's fine but don't make things dry like make it a way to kind of have more time to think about what's next to to the if you have good process I find myself being more creative why because when I can standardize the things that usually get in my way of being true myself honest with myself and I take care of that one I turn out to be more performant now a more performant with less energy what's left over more energy so I can use that energy to be creative and do a bunch of cool stuff that I could had never even had the band what to do i when a more performant I can I can stop to be like alright where I want to travel what do I want like what climes matter what matters right and you can you don't really have the privilege to do that if you're not first getting a grip on the things that are very like you know just occupying your day-to-day and all that different stuff so I definitely think process has its place and you'll see that in my toolbox that's why I break down three main pillars I believe people are performing under three main criterias that are addressed purpose process and practice right if you don't have why you're doing what you're doing like front and center nothing you had a process to ever amount to something right then there's process the ability to standardize the things are you frequently to make things more predictable so you can have more time left over to figure out what's next which refuse into process but then there's practice like the actual act of doing the thing you need to do and if you don't like home that as well the system breaks so these are like three pillars you can think about them like a chair and with three feet you have something stable with two if so you have to keep it balanced I love that insight seriously I think this was like super valuable I hope other people got a lot of value out of this too and you know let us know in the chat if you feel inspired to either create a weekly process maybe you're going to use Dedes maybe you're gonna make your own I know I'm gonna be going and tweaking my weekly process so I really appreciate that I think it's I think it's really awesome seriously let's post the link in there again just in case people want to download that so DeeDee thank you so much for today's session seriously I learned a lot I really loved always hearing the way you know other designers think about their process and yeah I think it was it sounds like it was great lots of people are excited and so I will definitely record a video of my updated process too I always learn when I see people like yourself and so always tinkering and tweaking my setup so Edgar I will share in my next YouTube video I'll share kind of how I mean and to everybody you can also chat like follow me on instagram at that guy dee dee I'm trying to push out more content on tutorials around like process leadership because what I do with teams all the time so there's definitely breakdowns on how to do your Li planning and I try to consolidate it into something you can swipe through like in five seconds and really get the main points so if you want to learn some stuff check me out there that should be like a lot of fun and if you have any questions you can always like hit me up directly I'll be I'll try my best to answer fast so that's hi I'm DeeDee Medina calm and obviously we said check out the templates play with them if you have questions about them or ideas hit me up I'm always down for a brainstorm and for some feedback so amazing thank you so much everyone for coming today have a wonderful weekend yes I will include the we what we try to do is we send a follow-up note with sort of all of the links and takeaways and things from the session so if you did attend this session you should receive an email with a wrap-up for that oh yeah Reggie was asking about your your YouTube gear and setup and stuff like that so maybe that's something for for you to do a post on or to share with folks are kind of your whole set up like the other day I'm still like working through you guys can see like behind me to the wooden panels they're like half-made acoustic panels like you can see the foam inside I didn't wrap like it's still all in progress yeah yeah check me out on Instagram I post a lot of this stuff and hit me up if you're curious about the gear list I'd be happy to like respond directly I'm not a massive like youtuber or content creator so like you can just ask me directly I'm more like a personal person I'm trying to help and add value but like I'm still figuring out like how to find time to contribute back yeah so if I don't put the content up like just just reach out like oh I'll try to answer it I'm up awesome yeah thank you so much really appreciate it thanks love you see on the next office hours guys thanks everybody

Channel: Notion

Views: 10,751

Rating: 4.9069767 out of 5

Keywords: retro, weekly, planning, notion

Id: _eFRiDK4HZU

Length: 87min 36sec (5256 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2020