Hi, everyone, welcome back to our ongoing
series of how to build a Life Operating System in Notion, a system that helps you facilitate
be more productive, to be more efficient to get things done, and to manage all the knowledge
in your world, the information that's coming in and your thinking and your, your idea processing,
how to bring that all together have an interconnected and very streamlined and that's what we're
doing here in Notion. So today, we're going to look at how to design
a flowchart that maps or models the entire Notion system. So we're going to be outside of notion this
episode. But it's going to be highly relevant in terms
of how we then build our system inside of notion. So while it will be we'll be working in a
tool called whimsical today, the whole point of this is to better implement when we get
back into notion. So a flowchart will give you a very graphical
visualization of the entire system, how information data and assets flow from one part of the
system to another how information and data enters the system, how action and other ideas
and information leave the system, it maps out the whole flow throughout the system,
and where the anchors are where the assets that manage process store, and better enable
use of data and actions within the system. And if it's helpful, I'm going to make available
the actual flowchart that we're going to be looking at today, which is a flowchart of
my system, the one I've been demonstrating through all these videos, and will continue
to demonstrate. So this will also serve as sort of a roadmap
of where we're going to go after this video with future videos on this channel, it'll
show the different sections coming up. So we've done two or three of the core sections,
which I'll show you when we get into the flowchart. And then I'll show you where the systems around
it interrelate and those will be the systems we get into in future videos. So I'll make the publicly available whimsical
flowchart available on my templates homepage, which you get access to when you subscribe
to the newsletter, of course, you can unsubscribe at any time, so it's free, even if you don't
want the newsletter. Just subscribe and unsubscribe, it just it
just triggers the automation for access to the templates. But I do hope you'll give it a chance I work
really hard to pack a lot of valuable information. The newsletter is all about the science and
technology that enhances human capabilities. So it's super relevant to what we're building
here in notion the link for that is below in the show notes. And one other piece of information. this coming Friday, I will be on notions office
hours with Murray pool, I'm super excited to join her and talk about the system we've
been talking about here on this channel, we'll be promoting the link to join that crowdcast. Soon I don't have the link. But as soon as they have it, I'll put it in
the show notes below. And for those of you watching this video,
after it's released after this coming Friday, I will have the link to the recording below. So you'll have access to that. And we'll be looking at some key pieces of
this overall system. But from a different perspective. And with that, let's dive in. So I have often recommended to clients and
to people new to notion, once you get a sense of how notion works. lay out a flowchart, it's gonna let you play
with things, figuring out what you want to do with your notion system, how the data will
interact between the different assets within the system, before you spend a lot of time
building it. Because if you build it, and you're figuring
this out as you go, you're gonna end up rebuilding and rebuilding and changing and throwing away
and redoing, and it's just a less efficient way to go. If you sort of map out what you want to achieve. That helps you get there a little bit more
efficiently in a flowchart is a great way to do that, though, just to be clear upfront,
you need to know what notion can do before you can map out the flowchart otherwise, you
won't know what to map out. So you need to get your hands dirty and just
mess around with it if you're brand new to notion. But once you see how databases work, how pages
work, what is possible. The next thing is to figure out what you want
to do how you want to apply it. And that's where a flowchart comes in. So let me show you what a flow chart looks
like for my system, and how I've organized it. Okay, so here is the command center dashboard,
the top level starting point dashboard in my system that we talked about earlier in
the series on this channel, you can go back and look at that video if you want to see
the detail on how to build this dashboard, and why you might do so. But if you recall the very bottom was an embedded
flowchart. Now this flowchart was created in an application
called whimsical and notion fortunately has the ability to embed whimsical flowcharts,
which is a great feature. And that's what I've done here. The the alternative flowchart software to
use is one called Miro MRO. And that's a great tool as well. And notion has an embed feature to embed blocks
of mirro flowcharts. Also, I've used both, they're both great both
have free plans, you can do three or four free flow chart charts without getting a paid
plan. So you don't need to even pay for this. Both are great. I'm a little partial to whimsical for flowcharts
Miro has a wider range of Whiteboard functionality and applications beyond flowcharts that are
handy when whimsical doesn't cover it but I think the flowchart functionality is slightly
better and whimsical. So that's why I've migrated my flowcharts
over there, but both are great and this is a demonstration of whimsical. So from this if you just click original, you
can go to the original flowchart and this is the flowchart now looking at it in whimsical
which is after the operation Within a browser window, just go to whimsical
calm. So let me just give you a sense of how this
is laid out. The core functionality is in red and in the
center. So a lot of the stuff we've done videos on
already is in red and in the center. So this rectangle just to give us sort of
a starting point, the red rectangle is the action zone dashboard, what I've also referred
to as the daily actions home dashboard, we did a whole video on this very recently, if
you haven't seen that, that video will explain this red box. This is the dashboard that I spend by far
the most time and day by day, it lays out everything from every other part of the entire
system that I need to do on any given day. And as I go through the day, it tells me what's
next, and what's next. And what's next. So it manages my hours within each single
day. And as each new day appears, all the new tasks
for that day automatically roll in based on their due dates, the do dates that we've talked
about. So this red rectangle in the middle is the
action zone dashboard with views of today, views of this week, this month in the action
calendar, the waiting on section and project and goal outcomes at the bottom, but it's
really the today. And the month action calendar that I focus
on that is red and in the center, because that is the core of my interface with the
system. Now there's a big pipe going from the top
up to a stack of databases, just to give you an overview of the shapes on here. And what they represent. The rectangles are dashboards, you go to the
lower left key, the rectangles with different colors or dashboards for different functional
areas of my life. So the action zone dashboards is the central
one that every action from every other zone flows into. But the other zones around it, which we'll
come back to would be business, the business dashboard, content production, my media production,
like this video, the health and fitness dashboard, the home and family dashboard, social dashboard
for friends and group activities I do. And then the mind expansion dashboard, which
we'll get into. But that's basically my vaults, the knowledge
management, the knowledge that fuels all these other activities. Again, we're gonna get into that in more detail. So the rectangles are dashboards for different
functional areas, plus the central red dashboard of my action zone that has the action tasks,
action items from every other functional dashboard flowing into it. That's why it's the most important, it's the
aggregate of all my tasks of all my action items from all the other dashboard zones,
then you've got these flat cylinders, those are notion databases, every cylinder in here,
every cylinder you see around the sides is a database inside of notion. So this is really laying out where we need
databases and what their function will be. So notice many of these dashboards around
the side circling the action zone board have their own databases even more significantly,
the big pipe connecting that from the top of the action zone dashboard, it connects
to a stack of databases, this stack of databases are the core databases of the entire system,
they are the central ones, we're going to go through them in just a minute. But just realize that this stack of core databases
connects to a big pipe to the daily action zone. Now the stack of databases is in order from
bottom to top, it has meaning and significance, the red ones are the most central ones fueling
my daily actions. So starting at the bottom, this is the one
database we've really looked at in detail is the action items database, also known as
a task database, the bottom of what I call the pillar to pipeline pyramid, I call it
that because pillars are sort of the elite narrow aspirations and structures of our life
that are ongoing, always and need to be maintained to keep the roof up on our world. But those are a few very specific items that
everything supports the bottom, we have the action items, which are many, many tasks. This is the database with the most numerous
entries, because it's every little thing that builds up to each level above it that support. So every little item you need to do ends up
in the action items task database that's at the bottom directly above that is another
database called projects. This week, we'll be doing a video on the project's
database, that is the next level up, that's the next most numerous. Now the projects are broken down into many
tasks, which is why the database 100, the task database is bigger and a broader base
on the pyramid, then we come up the projects, but we do have a lot of projects throughout
any quarter or any year. So projects is pretty broad, but not as broad
as the tasks. Above that we have the goal outcomes. These are the measurable outcomes we're working
towards. And we develop projects to move us toward
completion of these goal outcomes. Above that, we have another database called
vision goals. And we're going to do a whole video too, on
the relationship between vision goals and goal outcomes. So right now just think of them all as goals. But each has a database. And you'll see why as we get into that. Then above that we have pillars so it's the
most narrow to broader to broader to broader to the bottom base. And you have the broadest, which is the tasks,
but you have this whole alignment, a whole stack of databases that work together and
flow from one to the other in this sequence. And above that we have this diamond, which
is the guiding principles. These are the values and identity elements
of who you are and who you want to be. Again, we're going to get into all of this
very soon when we look at the alignment dashboard. I'm thinking we'll probably do an introduction
to the lineman dashboard this week as well, that's going to be a super important one,
we'll also be talking about that in the notion office hours parallel to that, on the side,
directly to the right of it are the cycles. Now, these are each a database as well, but
they have a very different function. This is basically the review function. And the review elements loosely coordinate
to various levels of the core database stack, which is the action items, projects, goal,
outcome, vision goals and pillars and guiding principles corresponding with those are the
daily tracking, which largely correlates to the action items and tasks that you're doing
every day, then the next database up is a weekly review database. So this is basically the weekly entries in
their own database, where we review the past week, what was successful and what was not
successful highlights and disappointments. And I map out what I want to happen. The next week, we'll do a whole video on these
reviews and how these review databases work. But essentially, what happens is you have
a database for each cycle, there's the daily cycle, there's the weekly cycle, the monthly
cycle, the quarterly cycle and the annual cycle. And while that sounds like a lot, I have designed
it so that none of them replicate the others. So each is kept pretty manageable and small. So the act of sitting down for my weekly review,
or my monthly review is pretty quick, because the month is doing something different from
the week. And the quarterly is doing something differently
from the month. Essentially, the daily tracking, which is
measuring the metrics that we've decided are important to quantify whether we're moving
closer or further away from the things we want to achieve. That's not so much review, that's just daily
tracking, but it does fit within the stack because that's the Daily Record. The weekly records monthly records quarterly
and annual our reviews on those periods weekly is largely designed to look at projects and
make sure the right tasks for the week are aligned and set up in terms of the projects
that are our highest priorities. Right now. The monthly review is more about looking at
the goal outcomes are the projects were queuing up delivering on the goal outcomes, vision
goals tend to be reviewed more on a quarterly basis, because those don't change that frequently. But you want to see if there are shifts in
what your priorities in life are. Or if certain things are getting stopped up
at the vision level, you want to reassess. But you don't want to be doing that too frequently,
because it just takes too much time, then pillars and guiding principles tend to be
annual things things you're not changing very frequently at all, but you do at the outset
of each year won't have a sense of where it's going. But we're going to get into all that I don't
want to drop the horse because this video is really just about seeing how to map things
out. If that was confusing, don't worry about it,
we're going to go into that in great detail in dedicated videos for those functions. But I lay out my cycles, which are my periodic
reviews based on different time intervals. And I'm laying out my core databases which
have the actions projects, goals and pillars, which I think of as a pyramid, right. So those are flowing into the daily action
zone, which is primarily where I interact with all this stuff day to day, I interact
with these other databases like projects, goals and pillars during the weekly reviews,
monthly reviews and quarterly reviews. But you can see how they're all linked up
to the level at which they come into play in the system, particularly my activity with
the system. And then the third kind of element on the
flowchart is this oval with a lighter shade inside. So that's a data input. So on the outskirts of many of the databases,
there is a an oval with a lighter shade feeding that indicates data that needs to come into
the system from outside the system. So the prot the tasks that are being created
from projects, those are being created from within the system, because the project's database
is part of the system. But there are some tasks that are not fueling
projects are not delivering on projects. They're just to do items that need to get
done. And you're just entering those on the fly
either on your mobile phone or wherever or in the computer, but you're entering them
as one offs. They're not dependent on this core stack of
project goal databases. So I do want to map where these entries are
coming into the system. Because again, systems are very much about
what's entering what's moving through it and what's exiting the system. So we've got external to dues coming into
the action item database over here. On the right, we've got the blue ones that
I've color coordinated. So the blue is the health and fitness. The green is business, the purple is content
production, you know, so there's a coordination and organization by color as well. Red is the central stuff feeding my daily
action zone. The blue over here is an interesting data
input because it's fueling two databases. This is information on health and biometrics. So I've got my aura ring sleep data, I've
got my Withings data scale, capturing biometrics, and I've got my Apple Watch capturing other
biometrics and those things are feeding both my daily tracking terms of my health elements
of the daily tracking that daily tracking also has business elements and personal relationship
elements. But a lot of the data coming in is the biometrics
for my health. So that's fueling the data tracking. It's also fueling my fitness activity database. If I we're managing a nutrition database, I would
have that next to health and fitness as well, that'd be a second one. At other times in my life, I've done that. And if nutrition is an issue that you want
to improve, I would recommend having a nutrition database and tracking that as well. So that would be attached to health and fitness. But you'd have a system probably an app that
would be capturing your nutritional intake. And then that would be another oval feeding
both the daily tracking and the fitness. In other places we have in the business section
over here external data from our from my CRM, and my accounting data from my accounting
software, which in my case is zero could be QuickBooks or whatever you use fresh books,
that'll be external data coming into the databases that are fueling the business dashboard. Alright, so we've got the top we've got the
external data coming in one more down on the bottom, that's important media resources. So again, this purple area on the bottom is
my mind expansion dashboard, which is about information and content management, knowledge
management. So I've got the notion Web Clipper feeding
stuff into the media resources database. I've got Evernote, which is also feeding information
into my media resources database, both because I have a large legacy of information captured
in Evernote. And when it becomes relevant to a project
I'm actively working on, all my active activity and projects are in notion. So I will at that point, bring in old Evernote
clippings and articles or information into my notion database. I also use Evernote for sort of an endless
shoe box of maybe someday might be useful notion I useful things that are actionable
in in play right now. But things that I might use Someday, I'll
use Evernote and just throw it in because it's a little bit better for capture. It's also good for bubbling up and has incredible
search. And I don't want to clutter up my notion stuff
with endless piles of information that I'm not using, I bring it into notion when I'm
actively engaged with it. But when I'm just throwing it into the endless
pit of maybe someday I'll want to be able to access this, I tend to just dump it into
Evernote, like I said, and then that becomes an import into my media resources database,
when it becomes relevant to something that I'm active on. So around the the action database, in my case,
and these are going to vary for everybody. But some of these might be universal. And I'll just give you an example of what
I have surrounding my action database. So you can think about what would be relevant
to you and your notion system. So first over here to the left of the green,
which is the business dashboard. And within that I have an admin business admin
section, I have client operations, I have sales and marketing. So those are fueled and powered by the two
databases of the sales process database. And the client database, the client database
is the more important one, that's where I have all the active client engagement stuff. So I have my internal notes and preparations
for work I'm doing with clients on one page, and then there's a separate page for each
client. That's a sub page. That is the shared workspace that we both
interact in that we both create tasks in that we put admin and billing information, we put
documentation of all of our meeting notes, in some cases, actual meeting video recordings,
we put the deliverables all go in there. So there's one hub that each of my clients
has a link to go to, to access everything we're working on together, and then tandem
to that I have my own notes in preparation, so that I can be prepared and able to deliver
when I'm interacting with the clients. I have one of those for each client, each
client is a record in the database with its own page. And then each of those have the sub page of
our shared workspace. I also have a separate database for sales
process. That's just the ongoing conversations I'm
having with many people about potential client relationships and potential projects we might
do together. But I need to keep track of that which ones
are active, which ones I need to follow up on, and check in with. So that's also very organized there. And all that fuels both of those databases
fuel, my business dashboards, the content production database, we'll be doing a video
on that very soon we'll be doing a video on all this the the business databases base,
the business database, the health and fitness, the content, the family, all of it. So content has a production pipeline database
that feeds my content production machine dashboard provides all the information and a calendar
of everything happening in my production of videos of blog posts of articles of anything,
of course material, anything that have been created. If I'm doing social. If I'm doing a series of tweets or social
media, it would all be in the content production. To the right we have health and fitness, the
dashboard, that dashboard will have a fitness activity area, a diet nutrition area, and
a meditation area. So that includes both physical health and
mental health. And right now the only database I have functioning
with that is an actual fitness activity measuring my workouts, but at other times and with certain
clients depending on priorities and goals. You might have a nutrition database, you might
have meditate patient tracking database I like to track my meditation in my daily tracking. So a lot of this which is why these inputs
are going both to daily tracking To the fitness database is because the daily
tracking will be very heavily involved in health and fitness. Truth is some of my business metrics are also
feeding my daily tracking. As, as our many family dashboard elements
are going to daily tracking, then I have a dashboard for home and family. This includes family and household admin includes
spouse, kids, parents, whatever you have in your life, you want to document projects you
have going on with them. You want to keep track of, you know, your
activities, your conversations, your ideas, the things you want to build as a family,
those are projects just like your business projects, those are family projects. So you'll see my projects database, I'll have
business tags in a multi select, I'll have family tags, and life tags and health and
fitness tags. Just like I have these different categories. And then each of these databases are also
linked to project databases, as well as task databases. In addition, we have family projects and family
finances, it's all under the family dashboard. Then on the lower right, we have the social
dashboard, which would be friends and social interactions that I'm planning that I'm developing
and cultivating their hobbies and interests, and their travel and experiences not business
travel. But personal travel, though, that could overlap
with family. Or it could be more personal exploration. Again, these have external correspondence
and club membership information, feeding it as outside data entering the system. And then finally, at the bottom, we have the
mind expansion dashboard, which we're going to do videos on as well. But it's a little bit different than the others,
which is why it's directly under as a support holding it up. So in that we have three key areas, the media
database in the media dashboard, which is about articles, videos, and podcasts, that
are providing information that's useful for projects and tasks I'm actively engaged with
all these elements in the database could be linked to tasks as well, so they're easily
accessible, and they don't get lost. They're connected to the action items that
are relevant to that information. I also have a separate dashboard, a database
on books, because books I organize and store and search for and based on different criteria
than articles and videos and podcasts. So I have a different organization in that
database. But also books I do a lot more elaborate notetaking
I do much more summarization, because a book is a meaningful effort and investment in time. So I want to make sure I get everything out
of it that I can if I'm going to spend that much time reading a book. So I've got a lot of notes and whole notation
system, we'll do a video on that in the future. And then courses and training, I do some courses,
I do some training sessions, both live and online, probably more online these days. But wherever there's an opportunity to learn
from someone who I think has a lot of insight I buy and participate in programs like that. And I have a whole database for that. So I can do all my notetaking in that database. So it's very organized. It's very systematic, and it's very accessible. And then we're going to do a video on this
in the future as well. But the special database called the active
workspace database, or the inaction workspace. So this is kind of a creative studio where
I take all of the information from these other areas. And I organize this particular database by
theme by idea or theme. So there's certain actions that I'm taking
that need to for, you know, a theme might be sales and marketing scene might be growth
hacking, a theme might be product development of a particular product. So one of them is the pillars, pipelines and
vaults concept that I'm fleshing out more fully so that I can explain it and share it
with people more easily. So in that I will have, I'll be drawing from
media articles, videos, podcasts, books, training conversations I have with people thoughts
I have. So I've got an aggregated workspace on that
theme or topic that's drawing from all the other databases and all my thinking and all
my effort and all my research. So that's not based on the on the media format,
the way that books or courses or articles are. But that's drawing on my aggregated thinking
across all these different types of information and interactions with people and building
a knowledge base around that specific theme or concept. So I have a whole database that's just about
active workspaces. On ideas I'm developing, or subject areas
I want to become more capable in or build more expertise in. Again, it could be sales and marketing. It could be family communication, it could
be a lot of things. We're going to do a whole video on that. But that's an area where I'm aggregating knowledge
from the different other sources based on theme rather than in the other cases. The entries are based on the article or the
book or the course, this one's based on the topic. So it will pull information from articles
and courses and books and conversations. So that's really the most important one. That's where my ideas are developed. And they could be at any stage of development,
but as they progress, that area gets more complete and more organized. Then from that, I will write articles and
create videos, perhaps ultimately write books be creating courses. So that is basically the knowledge base for
application of knowledge, not the aggregation and storage of knowledge, resources or informational
resources. This is using the stored and saved resources
to put my ideas together in an organized way so that I can use them. Okay, so that's pretty much it, you'll see
one other organizational element is this line in the middle here, the top half is core database
structure, we've got the core databases at top, there's some databases at the bottom. But those are more specialized, the specialty
databases, supporting specific dashboards, the ones at the top support everything. So projects, action items, go outcomes, will
be a part of every single other database down here. So they will all have relations linked to
these core databases. And all of that, therefore, will fuel and
flow into the action zone dashboard. So all of the databases and dashboards surrounding
the daily action zone will funnel into the daily action zone with what needs to get done
for all of them in the daily action zone dashboard, and the action items task database, I will
prioritize and determine all of all those competing things for my time, which I focus
on, on any given day, at any given hour. So it all flows, you'll see all these bilateral
arrows from all these dashboards and databases, to the central one, the action zone dashboard. That's why it's so important. But the other really important dashboard we're
going to have a video on later this week is the alignment dashboard, which basically takes
this core stack of of action databases, the action items, the projects, the goals, pillars,
and the principles, and the cycles of the annual review, quarterly review, monthly,
weekly daily tracking, it takes all of these puts them in the hierarchy in order, and lets
you see the interconnectivity of all of them. So it keeps all of the all of them aligned. So your tasks are aligned with your projects,
which are aligned with your goal outcomes, which are aligned with your vision goals,
which are aligned with your pillars and principles. And all of that is maintained by these cycle
reviews, which again, are kept manageable by not having any duplication across them. So each one's relatively short, you're just
doing various types of reviews on a fairly consistent basis. None of them take more than a half hour. So that's pretty much it. And then all of this flows to the right here. And as I've depicted it into these outcomes,
this is what comes out of the system. System outputs are my actions, the things
I do, is coming out of the system that's funneling my focus. And my creative work is that output from the
system, these videos, the the courses, I do the lectures, the speaking engagements, the
books I intend to write, all these things are outputs of the system. That's my creative work. So my actions come out of the system, my creative
work comes out of the system. And my personal and business growth comes
out of the system. So I'm growing and evolving and becoming smarter,
I'm becoming more capable of implementing, I'm becoming I'm getting closer to my goals,
my business is making more money, my business is doing a broader range of activities, and
interacting with more and more people and having more of an impact on people's lives. All of that is contained within this, this
yellow star that indicates the outputs from the system. So when you build a flowchart to map a system,
you want to look at what flowing into the system and what's flowing out of the system. And then of course, what's moving within the
system. You also want to look for where the bottlenecks
might be where things gonna get stopped up. And if they do get stopped up, where do they
pile up? And then how do you come back to it and release
that pressure from the pile ups, that's all stuff you need to think about. So that's all systems thinking, like I addressed
in my second and third video in this series. And this is a visual depiction of all that. So I hope this is helpful, I find it really
valuable because I'm a very visual graphic person. So laying it out visually like that helps
me understand it on a more intuitive level. It also helps me communicate it when I'm working
with clients and trying to help them understand their systems all the time someone has a process
for doing things, but they don't even know what the process is. So this forces you or forces a client or someone
you're working with, to explicitly express it in a way that they may realize. Or you may realize, even though you were doing
these steps, you didn't realize what the steps were. This becomes massively valuable when training
new people who you have to work with when you're training, bringing in new employees. When passing off at an activity you used to
do that you want to save time and not have to do anymore, you want to outsource it. This will help communicate to others very
precisely how to do it properly. And it'll help you see the redundancy and
the waste in your own processes and systems. So massively valuable and not only recommend
mapping your own system as I demonstrated here. But mapping out all of your processes that
are significant for your business, or your or the various practices in your life, you'll
become better at them when you understand them, and you'll be able to streamline and
make them much more efficient, much more effective. So after starting with a system overview a
month or so ago, this series of notion videos is diving into each part of a comprehensive
life operating system. If this is of interest to you, be sure to
hit the subscribe button and the bell icon to get updates on future videos. Leave thoughts or questions below and hit
like if you found this valuable. I also write a newsletter called mind and
machine on increasing human capability. I give away several of my best notion templates
including this flowchart to anyone who subscribes to the newsletter. You can of course unsubscribe at any time
but I hope you'll give it a chance. I work very hard to pack it with a lot of
valuable insight. The newsletter link is also below in the show
notes. Thanks for watching. Lots more to come.
