(gentle music) - Everyone, it's Amanda, welcome back. I hope you had a good day today, or are about to have a good day. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about digital productivity apps. If you didn't know, I'm a fan of something
you might've heard of it, I don't know, there's thing
called bullet journaling. I've just been dabbling
in it for a little bit. Of course, I'm joking, you guys know, or if you don't know, then welcome to the channel,
'cause you must be new, that bullet journaling has
been my main productivity tool for the past five years. It is my ride or die, I love
it ever since I discovered it, it's just been such a lovely journey, and it's just what works for me. However, recently I discovered something that might change the game and it's been something
that has been talked about a lot recently, especially with regards to productivity tools, and that is Notion. Now, I know what you
guys are all thinking. "Amanda, does this mean you're quitting bullet journaling forever? Amanda, are you switching from
bullet journaling to Notion? Amanda, are you using both?" So I'm here to answer all
those questions for you today. Now, before I get started, this video is sponsored by Notion, but I do actually have a
really funny story about that, which is that Notion actually reached out to me to make a sponsored
video about their app. almost, I wanna say over a year ago, maybe almost two years ago, but at the time of course I
was happily bullet journaling. I didn't really feel the need for a digital productivity tool. And since I didn't actually
use it in my everyday life, I didn't feel like it would be authentic if I talked about it in a video. So I politely turned them down from a sponsored video
all those years ago. But then in the past couple of months I actually kind of rediscovered Notion and I started using it, but for kind of a different
purpose than my bullet journal, which I'll kind of get into later. So because I started using it a lot more, I was like, "why doesn't the
name Notion, sound familiar?" Like I didn't put two and two together that this was the brand
that had reached out to me almost two years ago for a sponsorship. And then when I looked
through my old emails, I was like "Oh my God, wait, the app that I've been using
for the past couple months is the app that reached out
to me all these years ago." Anyway, all that to say, I actually reached back out
to them, and I was like, "hey, I don't know if you remember me, but I actually love
your app now, I use it, and I would love to work with
you if you're still down." And luckily they were so
awesome, and they said yes. Just wanted to tell that story because that shows you
that this sponsorship is genuinely authentic and I
wouldn't have been doing it if I didn't actually use this. Anyway, let's just get started, I have a lot of things that
I wanted to talk about, and then course in the video, I will also be showing
you my Notion setup. First up, what is Notion? If you don't know what Notion is, it's a digital productivity app platform. What's really awesome about it is that it's very customizable
when you first log in, it's really like open and it's just kind of your playground to put in whatever tools and features that suit your lifestyle best. Of course, you can use it
as a productivity tool, a lot of people use it for school, like taking notes and stuff. If you have a lot of research or if you wanna use it as like a database, you can definitely do that as well. Or you can use it as a collaboration tool, which is what I personally use it for. So yes, this now gets into the, what do I use my bullet journal for versus what do I use Notion for? Because as you guys know,
I'm an avid bullet journaler. I don't know if I could ever fully get rid of my little bullet journal notebook. And at this point the bullet journal is so much more to me than
just a productivity tool, it is like a way for me to
express myself creatively, have some me time, like sit
down and doodle and stuff. So the bullet journal
is just so special to me that I wouldn't be able to
give that up completely. So I still use my bullet journal in every way that you guys are used to in terms of productivity. I still write my to-do
list down and everything, I still journal some of my
thoughts in there as well. However, the reason why
I started using Notion and the reason why I love it so much is because it's awesome
as a collaboration tool if you have a team of people. I've seen a lot of Notions
that have videos online from people who are students or people who are
balancing school with work, and I can definitely see
why students love this app. If I was a student, I would have definitely been using Notion, it's just so easy to organize
all your different information and core syllabus, taking notes, organizing productivity, like to-do list and everything, and it's really great for that. But personally, the reason
why I started using it in conjunction with my bullet journal and the reason why I
currently love it so much, is because it is awesome
for a collaboration tool, especially for my team. So I'm about to hop on my computer and show you guys my full Notion setup, but you will notice that it
is maybe a bit more minimal or simple from other
people's Notions setups. And that's just because, like I mentioned, I don't use Notion for
everything in my life, which a lot of people do, which is totally fine of course, the best part about Notion
and bullet journaling and productivity is that
you can mix and match things to make it work for yourself. So yeah, don't feel like you
need to go all in on one thing, I think that's something that
a lot of people get wrong about productivity, is that
there's not one way to do it. So this works for me, it might not work for you, but yeah. So my Notion setup is
definitely a bit more minimal and that's just because I mostly use it as a tool for my team and for my work. Anyway, let's hop on and I will show you guys my Notion setup. I think it's pretty cute, not gonna lie, I'm pretty proud of it. So here is my beautiful
little Notion homepage, I've called it main dashboard. And just as a note, I am on the team plan because I do want the capabilities
to be able to add members to my team so they can be
in the same workspace as me, but they have a lot of different
plans like student plans. And especially if you're just one person you don't need the team plan, but in my case, I do,
so that's what I have. Anyway, this is my
personal main dashboard. When you have the team plan you can actually make
certain pages visible to your team and certain pages private, so this is only for myself. And as you can see, I tried
to make it as cute as I could. I have this cute little Gif
with the like waves rolling in, and I've made it to all this
nice, like pale yellow theme, it just makes me very happy
and serene looking at it. And for the cover photos,
I used some images from one of my favorite illustrators who I will leave the
name up on screen here. But as you can see, this main
dashboard is really simple, it's just these three sections. I have one for home, one for
YouTube, and one for shop. Super simple. I'll go into each one, but
let's just start off with home, which this is my personal homepage. Oh, by the way these are actually
duplicates of my actual page. You'll see that some of
the things are empty, and that's just because I couldn't show everything obviously, there's a lot of top secret
projects that I'm working on. So I just made a duplicate Notion setup and just took out all
of the actual like items and tasks and stuff, so that's why there's nothing in there. Anyway, so this is my homepage, I have a cute little anime sky
with the clouds rolling by. And I also have one of my favorite quotes from Bruce Lee which says, "Empty your mind, be formless,
shapeless, like water. If you put water into a
cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle,
and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot,
it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can
crash. Be water, my friend." So I really love that quote, it reminds me to kind of
like go with the flow, and yeah, so I put it in
this call-out section here. On Notion you can have different types of I wanna call these like widgets, I don't know what they're actually called. But this is a call-out, so it just makes things stand out. And as you can see, you
can easily drag things if you want it to be smaller, it's just really easy to reformat things. And you can also change the little icons and the colors to make it match. I have a nice light blue theme here. And then as you can see,
I have my directory, which just goes into the YouTube
and just the shop section. It's the same as the main dashboard, it's just so that I don't need to go directly back to the
main dashboard to go to things. And then I also have
this nice little Gif here of this window with the curtains, I thought it matched
the cover page as well, or the cover photo, cover page. I'm so used to bullet journal lingo, cover photo up top here. And then okay, here in the center, this is where I have my team priority. As I mentioned, I mostly use Notion for my team and for collaboration, so this isn't my full to-do list. I do all of that in my bullet journal. and you know my regular weekly spreads like you guys always see. But this is mostly for my team. So I'll put my priority tasks here, as you can see, I just
wrote some example tasks that says, film Notion
video, upload footage, plan photoshoot, and then if there's any bonus tasks, then I'll put those down here. I also just put my
playlist here just for fun, just so people can have,
you know, some music, if they want to, you can embed playlist and YouTube videos in stuff in Notion as well. And then down here, I have a weekly focus, which I might actually
change to a monthly focus because honestly time is moving so fast that weeks turn into days, and I just can't tell what's what anymore. So I think I'm gonna turn
that into a monthly focus. This is just super simple
homepage priorities nothing too special about that. And then if we go back
to my main dashboard, this is where things get a
little bit more interesting. So I have my YouTube page here. So this page in particular is
a part of my team workspace, meaning anyone that I add to my team plan would be able to have access to this, whether it be my editor or my assistant, which is really helpful if you're working on things that require a lot
of moving parts and people. This might be my favorite Notion page in terms of the theme and the aesthetic, because I just really
liked the light purple and the clouds going on, so I have this Gif of some
purple sunset clouds going by, I made all of the headers lavender purple, and then I also have this image here with some ice cream clouds. And then on the left side here, this is just some quick links that I have to my YouTube channel, the shop, like Shop AmandaRachLee, Instagram, Twitter, Discord. I still need to put a
bunch more other links that can make things really easy. And then in the center
here, this is the main part, I have a section for my team directory. So this is the content schedule, my sponsorships, footage download, and then music for videos. And I think I'll also have
sometimes certain links coming in and out of this section here, depending on what's needed for the week, if I want something
that's readily accessible for my team there, I'll just put it right
in the team directory. So this content schedule link here actually links to this over
here, this little table, and these are called databases. So there's a ton of
different types of databases, and there's so many things
that you couldn't do. Honestly, I'm still kind of a newbie to Notion and everything, so
I actually used templates. This was really inspired by
twirling pages, YouTube video, Notion setup as well as (indistinct). So I'll link both of
their videos down below because theirs are so awesome, especially if you're someone who definitely does want
to go all in on Notion, they have some great templates. So I kind of built mine
based off of theirs and it was really helpful. So definitely make use of templates and other people's setups. It just makes it really easy for you instead of having to build from scratch. So like the title says,
this is my content schedule, which is where I will schedule
out any sort of content and I'll be able to organize
it really nicely here. So I just put some example videos here, but some of the headers that we have, we have the title of the
video, the status of the video, the edit to due date, the published date, the platform that it's
going on, the category, if there's a sponsor, I'll put little sponsor
information here as well, and then the final URL as well. And then below that, I also
have the sponsorship directory, this also links to this link up here. So when you click these links up here it actually opens the database
up to a full page, like so. So that's why I have them linked in case I just wanna only
view those certain pages. But the sponsorship directory, sometimes there's certain
information about sponsorships. If there's like certain links, or things that I need to
talk about in the video, or specific footage that
my editor needs to include, I can put it right in there. And what I love about Notion is that everything can kind
of become its own page. So like if we open this up here, this is my for example, Notion tour video, and I can change the status of the video if I'm filming it, editing
it, or if I need to signal to my editor that the footage
is ready for download, I am going to click this, and we can kind of like
organize it by that. And then underneath it, there is this whole little section here. Again, this was not my doing,
I got this on twirling pages, but I think she said she
got it from (indistinct). So I'm not sure exactly who the original creator of this was, But this is a template, and it has a bunch of
different sections here that I can use for when
I'm planning videos, like if I need specific
shots to add in here, I can add them there. If I want to write down my title idea, or any keywords, or sponsor information. So it's just really great to be able to have all
of this in one place and accessible to my whole team. Also your team members can add
specific comments to things, as well here. Like I can go like, "hi". So it'll say that. And you can talk to your team
members in the specific page, which makes it very easy. You can also open that as
a full on page as well. Let's say I wanted to post a weekly spread on Instagram. I haven't filmed it yet, so I'm gonna put pending, and I wanted to do it on Instagram, and I wanted it to it'd be a Reels, not sponsored or whatnot. If I open that up, there's a couple different
templates here that were made. And if I click that this pops up here which
makes it really easy, and I can add what photo exactly I want, what caption I want, if there's any additional
information that I want to include for that Instagram Reels, then I can include it all in there. So that is really, really awesome. And then something else that
is really great about Notion is that you can change the
view for your database. So for example, if I only wanted
to see my YouTube content, I could go and just click YouTube only and it would sort that out. And you can also change
the view of your databases. So if I wanted to see a calendar
version, I could do that. And as you can see, there
is a Notion tour over here. There's a bunch of different styles of views that they have. As you can see, there's
like board, timeline, list. Board is really cool, because if... Let me just show you guys here. For example it'll sectioned
off by these categories, and I can kind of drag my task depending on what status
it ends up being at. Because I'm a big chart person, I just really liked the table view. So that's the one that I
pretty much keep it at. You can also just kind of like, change the width of these
depending on what you need. So that's really awesome. Anyway, there's so many different ways that you can filter out your views and you can set them as
different clickable views here. So I have one for Instagram
only, all my content, and it just is really a
chef's kiss, I love it. And then that kind of directly connects into the sponsorship directory here, because as you can see, I have this sponsor here that says Notion. So if I click it, I've
linked it to a Notion page that is in the sponsorship
directory down here. So it's really awesome. So the reason why I love this, especially for working in a team is because it makes it really easy for all your team members
to see overall information, but then also filter it out for
what they need specifically. So for example, if my editor needed to see which footage was ready for download, they could sort it by,
footage ready for download, and be able to see, "Oh, that's ready," and they can also signal to me when they have finished the edit, and I can put the due dates, edit, yeah. I feel like I'm explaining
this really badly, because because again,
I'm not a pro at Notion, I'm just still kind of new and
getting used to all of this, but I love it so far, and I think that it's
really really effective for this type of stuff. Anyway, so this is my YouTube team page which I am very excited about. I have worked with an editor
for a really long time, but we kind of a bunch
of different things, different various calendar apps, the calendar app that comes on our phone, we just kind of texted before. But recently I have been looking into hiring a editing assistant
or production assistant, a new person to the team, and I think that would just
get way too hectic to organize, because there's more than two people. So that's why I was kind of inspired to create this whole home-based page that all members of my team can view. All right, so back to my main dashboard. Next step, we have a section
for Shop AmandaRachLee, and this is kind of similar
but kind of different. There's different members
of my team on the shop team and different for YouTube, which is why I wanted to
create a separate space for the shop team here. And the theme for this page is this nice light sage seafoam green. So I have the water
waves Gif as the cover, I have a nice little pencil emoji, of course, because it's
Shop AmandaRachLee, and some cute photos. Honestly, it's a similar
layout to the YouTube one. I already warned you guys, my Notion setup is really simple because I don't only use Notion. So that's kind of why
everything is really similar but it just is still really helpful. So I have similar things over here, I have quick links. So I have my shop website,
my shop Instagram, shop Twitter, my shipping
platform, as well as Shopify, so those are really easy to get to. And for the team directory, this is where me and my shop team will put any pressing
links or important links that need to be readily accessible. So I have a link to the
master to-do list database, which is down here. But then I also have other links, like our PR, press mailing list. Currently, we're trying to look for the production assistants, so we have a link to
that information there, this directory changes out depending on what is
pressing at that time. And then in the center here,
we have the general timeline. Now I know you guys are
gonna see this and think of, "Oh my gosh, Amanda, there's
a new product launch." I just put an example date here, so don't go speculating, okay? As I mentioned, this is just
a duplicate Notion page. So my actual Notion page for shop has the full product timeline, but I can't share that with
you guys yet, it's a secret. But this is how it generally looks like. So I have these... These are called the toggle list. So if I put, maybe for
example, I don't know, on June 16th, 2021, we want to... I don't know, it's my
birthday on June 16th, so maybe we wanna have
like a birthday shop sale, so I can put that there. And then what's great
about this toggle list is that you can put
information within there. So if I wanted to put a bullet list here, I can put like, I don't know, let's do a buy one get one free sale, or any other notes that I wanna put, and you can just like hide it in there. Same with the product launch. If I wanna put exactly
what we're doing for here, we can put washi tapes. So then you can hide all the information, and it's nice to be able to see like a general timeline here. And I can also drag things if I wanna, you know change up the order and see things in chronological. I really like having that general timeline in the center here, because
with everything going on, sometimes I lose sight
of the overall picture, so having that right in
center is very helpful. Then down here, we have
the master to-do list. Now this is a really similar database to the YouTube one, as I mentioned, but the categories are
a little bit different. So how it works with the shop team is I do a lot of things, but the main thing is
obviously product design. And then I have a couple people who help with the shop social
media, the production, the marketing, that sort of stuff. And then we also have a couple of other people on the
backend for customer service. So there's a lot of moving parts, and a lot of small to-do lists tasks. And even myself, even though I'm mostly
focused on product design and all of that, I still wear a thousand different hats. So it's kind of hard to keep track. So this is where this kind
of comes in with the team. It's probably easier
for me to do an example. So if I want to put a new
task in the master to-do list, I'll click here and let's say, this is an example, this is
not confirmation of anything, so don't get too excited. But if I write, design
2022 doodle planner here, I can change the status. So if I wanna put in progress, then the category would be design. And I can put any due dates over here, the published date, the type. So I can change the
categories here as well, like if I want it to
be for planner designs, tape designs, other designs. So I can write all of that here. And then like the other pages, if I wanted to open this specific task up, I can write more information. Like if I wanted to write
notes about the January theme, oops, weekly spreads. And in my case for this particular task, like if I was doing the
2022 doodle planner, I would probably create a
database table of some sorts so I could keep track of what pages that I still needed to do. I would create that down there, and that would just make things super easy for me to keep track of. And then like the other
database with the YouTube, you can sort the view. So if my team member didn't wanna see the that I had to do, they
only wanted to see their tasks. So like my marketing team, if they wanted to see
only the marketing things, they can just view marketing, and there, only the
marketing tasks show up. And I also put a marketing calendar view, so if my marketing team wanted
to see that in calendar view, they could see that. Similarly, if I only
wanted to see my tasks and not the marketing stuff, I could just change that to design and it sorts it all out there. So I really love that capability. That's kind of why I love
the team aspect of it is because you can have
this one main dashboard for your team, but then
everyone can kind of use it depending on what they need to
see, which is really awesome. And then also I have a section here for any archived and completed tasks. So once I changed this to completed, you can see here that all
of your completed tasks are sorted in there. So you can filter your databases out into a ton of different ways, and sort them out into a
lot of different views, which makes it easier for everyone. Anyway, so that was it for
my simple Notion setup, that is mostly used for
collaboration and teamwork. I know it's very minimal and
there's not that much to it, but honestly, that's kind of what I like, I don't wanna be too overwhelmed. And like I mentioned, I use this in conjunction
with bullet journaling, so that's kind of the main
differences that I use each for and how they all work together. A lot of times, of course,
there will be some overlap in what is happening in my Notion, and in my bullet journal, like
for example, in my homepage, if there's team priority tasks
or if there's certain things in the content schedule that I need to do, there will be some overlap naturally. But for the most part, I think I'm gonna be keeping
my Notion pretty team heavy. So it's any information that I think my specific
team members need to see, it really helps me organize
all of those moving parts because organizing team
members is hard, friends. If you've ever been the
person in the group project, like organizing everyone, then you'll know exactly what I mean. And that's kind of essentially what I feel like my YouTube
channel and shop is. It's just this like one
big school group project. So it's nice to have tools like this that are really easy to collaborate with. And then my bullet journal, of course, will stay exactly what it is. It's my personal productivity tool, mental health tool, just
like my own little notebook of thoughts in there. So that's kind of how I'm
separating the two out and using them together. Anyway, so that was my Notion setup tour. I know it was pretty simple, but hopefully it helps you guys out. If anything, I think it's kind of useful to see how a lot of people use Notion. It was definitely helpful for me to watch a bunch of different
Notions setup videos. Because when I first watched
a Notion setup video, I think I was just really overwhelmed by the people who used it
for absolutely everything, because there was just so many
things and elements going on. But once I really made it work for me, I definitely saw the value. And now I think it's just so awesome for collaboration and for
whatever you guys need it. Thank you again to Notion
for sponsoring this video, and for working with me, and for just being an
all around chef's kiss of a productivity tool. I know it's changed my life and a lot of other people's lives, so good job Notion. If you guys do wanna check out Notion and try it out for yourself, I will leave a link down
below for you to sign up. I definitely recommend
just going on there, exploring a little bit, experimenting with different layouts, and seeing all of the capabilities, because it definitely
helps to actually do it and play with it. I hope you guys enjoyed today's video, keep doodling, and I will
talk to you in the next one. Bye guys. (gentle music)
