It was not long ago that the word Notion did not have a particular meaning in my life. However, it only took a 25-minute video by Kharma Medic for it to become the most prevalent word in my vocabulary.
After watching how Nasir seamlessly organised his tasks with this platform, I knew it was time for my entire life to be translated into the app. Three weeks after playing around with templates and dividing my life into strategic sections, I managed to finish setting my ultimate productivity system.
You can imagine that by the amount of time invested, the system is nowhere near small or very compact- in the end, it is my whole life summarised and automatized into different pages. So for now, I will give a very high-level overview of what it is and how it works, and delve deeper into each section in further blog posts.
Welcome to my Notion setup, divided into three overarching categories: My life hub, the daily planner, and my inbox.
Let’s start with my inbox which I initially based on Khe Hy’s GDT Dashboard. This is the place where I jot down any tasks that comes to mind, whether it is buying a box of milk or remembering to pay some of my business taxes.
Once or twice a day, I will come back to the inbox and organise all of these tasks by adding some context and a due date- which will be key for it to be translated into my daily planner.
Before we move into the daily planner, let me briefly touch on the other sections included on this page:
- On the top right, I note down any orders that I receive for my business. Later, I add some context and dates to these so that I can organise my time and know when to fulfill and deliver each of them.
- On the left bottom corner, I quickly jot down any words in Italian that I do not understand so that later, I can search for their translation, learn them and achieve my goal of being fluent in such language before the end of the year.
- On the bottom right there are quick links to various pages that I need quick access to., as well as my “Quick Notes” page. This page is like a blank sheet of paper where I write down anything that comes to mind and cannot be put into any of the earlier categories. Later, when I have time, I come back to these notes and assign them to the relevant pages and systems.
In summary, my inbox is a single-stop to quickly store information and make sure no idea, thought or task gets forgotten or lost in my memory.
Let’s now jump to my Daily Planner which is divided into four sections:
- Orders due today: Displays the business orders that I have to fulfill and deliver on the day.
- Today: Shows any tasks that are due today or which are overdue from prior days.
- Tomorrow: Useful to know at a glance how busy my next day is and if I have the capacity to allocate extra tasks to it.
- Recurring Tasks: A modified version of Thomas Frank’s recurring task template that reminds me of tasks that are repeated after a certain interval of days.
If they have a daily frequency, the tasks do not disappear from the list once done, but instead, get a green tick for the day which is then turned into a red alert the next morning.
This is my favorite section of my daily planner because it takes the guesswork of repetitive and mundane tasks and also provides visual motivation for things like working out or learning a new language.
My daily planner is the single most accessed page in my system. I review it often to tick off any tasks and get a sense of what is left in the day. The fact that it updates daily, allows me to keep organised and not have to worry about making to-do lists every night as they are automatically made for me by the powerhouse that Notion is.
Besides the Inbox and Daily Planner, my Life Hub stores all the areas of my life into different categories, sub-categories, and pages. I will dive into each of these sections in later blogs but would love to share a very quick overview of the different things included in there.
For example, I have a “Learnings and Resonance Page” where I store all the important content that I learn- a quick and huge shoutout to Ali Abdaal for providing the inspiration for this page.
Is there any particular area that you would be interested to explore? Let me know down below! Thanks for following along in this very quick tour of my Notion setup. This is just the start of a longer series where I will not only cover each section but also go behind the automation of each system and even share some of the templates.
Stay tuned and for now, head over to Notion and start bringing efficiency, productivity and organisation to your life- if you haven’t already.
