Maybe you have gone through many productivity apps already. Although those apps look promising, you did not get anything done as you supposed to be, and you felt embarrassed about yourself at the end of the day.
Maybe, you did a certain amount of work, but you are not satisfied with the productivity you achieved by these apps.
Maybe you have gone through Notion because most people talked about it. But quickly exhausted because of template making, or you downloaded templates but not happy how they function and going along with your needs.
So you concluded that this app is not versatile as you expect it to be and probably moved on. Is this you? If that so, you are definitely missing out!
If you find yourself shifting through many tools and tech, like Trello, google drive, Evernote, OneNote, journal apps, but ended up with more frustration, cheer up! There is a better way.
I must know because I went through the same thing a couple of years back. But, I gave Notion a chance. I did not completely move on. I kept coming back to my Notion workspace while managing my student life and my personal life in various other apps.
But, at some point, I overwhelmed because I was using so many apps to be productive, but at the end of the day , spent most of my time shifting through those apps and trying to make a connection between them.
There are syncing capabilities among many current productivity apps.
But, if you are using more than two apps, there is no proper advantage of using them to manage your life (In the long run) because it will definitely waste your time-shifting and managing these tools than getting real help from them.
At this point, I just realized I need a reliable, all-in-one app that I can store all my files and data to manage everything that is happening in my life.
Guess what! I retook a glance at Notion. And this time with maximum effort.
What makes Notion special?
I suddenly realized what I did wrong for the first time when I was using Notion.I was just ended up with a huge blank canvas, and I did know how to use them to my advantage.
I did not use relational databases in Notion to manage my workflow. (We are going to talk about relational databases in a bit) , which is the extreme strength of Notion.
Notion’s greatest strength is also it’s greatest weakness: you can use it to do nearly anything.
Marie Poulin
Although there are thousands of templates out there, Notion does not come with pre-structured workspaces. So have the full authority to make it your own. And that is awesome.
You can create separate databases/pages for habit tracking, meal planning, research work, day/weekly/monthly/yearly plan, reading lists, movie lists, and many more.
The difference here is that you can access all of them on a single page and update them. So, when you starting your day in the morning, you just need to go to one page and track everything that was signed for today.
And I was amazed that I can do all the cool stuff that I meant to for a long time. Such as my productive morning ritual. Listen to a podcast, maybe a ted talk, workout schedule planning, a quick glance at a book chapter, meal planning, habit tracking, financial tracking, learn a new word, etc.
You see, the problem before was there were many things that I wanted to do, but I had a hard time tracking things and going to different places. Eventually backing up due to this difficulty of “Shifting.”
This is where Notion differs from many productivity tools out there. You can make it to be functioned as a second brain. Which is the whole point anyway!
Where should I start?
You always have to start small and stay small when you are just starting out with Notion. Because it is just not managing your files. It is also about managing your brain. So the question is, where should I start? So , let’s get started.
You must have an awful lot of work going on with your professional life and personal life. So first thing, first! You have to come up with a better management plan to sort and store all of your stuff.
Many of us (Including me) trying to store all of our ongoing works in some workspace without sorting out them first. This will lead to complete frustration when a lot of things going on with your life.
There are lots of ways to sort all the things going on with your life. You can follow your usual sorting if you are satisfied with it. If not, I highly recommend Thiago fortes P.A.R.A concept to organize all of your digital information.
I personally follow this method, and it works! Far better than all of the sorting process I developed before.
Basically, he describes all of our days to day work can be categorized into four sections.
(1)Projects (2)areas, (3) Resources, and (4) Archives. All of your projects(That has a deadline) will go into the projects section. Areas that you are working on such as reading, Meal planning, Workout planning will go into the area section. All of your topics of interest, such as habit tracking, movies, books, research articles, will go into the resources database.
All of your inactive issues that will eventually be included in the above three areas will go into archives. Such as ideas for projects. Exciting content from the websites.
This is more of a thinking process. You just have to calmly go through all of your “Stuff” and sort it out into these four categories.
Let’s dive in.
You can either make a separate page in Notion for each section. Or you can just manage all of your things in a single dashboard. See the attached preview of my panel, where I keep all of my data. When you want to access any of these sections, you have to come to that specific place. And to edit or add content to them. At least that’s what I thought. There is a more natural way to do that. It will make you not to miss anything along the way. They are called relational databases.
What are relational databases, and how to make the most out of them?
You can relate databases to another database by adding an advanced property “Relation.” You can access any database from anywhere by using this method. This will significantly boost your productivity when you are using Notion daily.
In the long term, you will not have the time to go through everything in your databases because they will be massive when you frequently add content to them. This will also come in handy when you’re managing your tasks, especially if you have a tight schedule.
You can also add a master task management database, which you can embed into every database, so that you will not miss anything.
Importance of Master task management database
There are some apps specially developed to track all of your tasks. But there is no point using another app to manage your job because Notion can do it so well. Create a separate database (In your dashboard or on a separate page) for managing your task.
You can link with the database with your calendar, habit tracking, daily / weekly / monthly monitoring, and many others.
Routine tracking in Notion
Adding a routine tracking section will be the final building block of your perfect notion workspace. You can track your progress daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and also yearly.
You might be thinking now, this is already too much! How is this thing going to be kind of a second brain? Again. Been there myself lately! The trick is, you don’t want to update everything, everywhere, every time.
You just need to go to one page, daily (So basically it will be your journal) and update everything from there. This is where the relational databases and linking databases to another page come in handy.
These functions allow you to connect all of your content into a single page. Which I found as one of the best features in Notion.
Free template
Conclusions
If you already exhausted dealing with tons of different tools and tech and want to be more productive, there is a better way.
The Notion can boost your productivity in a way that it will eventually become your second brain. You can keep track of your day to day life with the minimum effort and time. Your notion workspaces will collect your data each day every day and sort them out for you.
I hope my free templates will undoubtedly jump-start your “Notion of productivity.” Be proactive and be productive!
If you have any questions on the process I followed or are confused about anything, feel free to comment below !
Image Courtesy – Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash , Notion icon
