Three Lessons After 6 Months Using Notion
After six months of playing around with Notion, here’s what I learned.
December can be a really crazy time of the year. The to-do lists seems never ending.
You want to finish the year on a high, so you’re scrambling with work objectives, fitness goals, and personal projects you want to put to rest. For a good chunk of people, it’s also time to catch up with family and many, many, many holidays are happening. Meaning present buying (for some), meal planning, travel coordination, etc.
If you’re in Australia, like me, it’s also the end of the school year and the start of summer so we need presents for the teachers, sorting out kids spare school supplies (all while making the list of what’s needed to buy for next year) and planning holiday activities to keep kids busy. All during while living through humid 30+ degree days.
If you’re in Australia, like me, it’s also the end of the school year and the start of summer so we need presents for the teachers, sorting out kids spare school supplies (all while making the list of what’s needed to buy for next year) and planning holiday activities to keep kids busy. All during while living through humid 30+ degree days.
It’s a lot. It’s a freaky hurricane full of to-dos thrown at us from every direction. And some of the to-dos on our lists are meant to be fun, but they can feel like a drag when it’s ion the middle of a crazy super duper long list of things to do.
So how do you go from overwhelm to feeling like you can handle it?
- We’re going to start by making a list.
- Then checking it twice (for urgency and important).
- To find out what needs to get done or not.
You think I’m being cute and Christmasey, don’t you? Except I’m not. This method works.
The magic of the Eisenhower matrix
If you haven’t heard of the Eisenhower matrix before, let me explain things quickly. It’s a way to sort out all the things you think you need to do into one of four categories. To know what goes where, you simply have to decide how important a thing is, and how urgent it is (that’s the checking it twice part…)
Making this happen magically with Notion
Now that you understand how we’ll categorise your big to-do list, let’s start with a basic brain dump and come out with a beautiful list of prioritised to do in your Notion system.
1. List out all of the things on your mind.
Check your inbox, your calendars, those random sticky notes on your desk, notifications on your phone. Anything that can help you remember all of the things you need to do, put them down there.
Add each “thing” to a basic Notion database in the first column. Add a date and space to write a milestone (text format).
Fill in as much details as you can. Maybe you don’t have all the dates, or specific milestones. That’s okay for now. After a little while, it’ll look like this:
2. Add extra properties
Next, we need to add two extra properties to “check” our tasks. Both of these should be b”Select”.
- Add one that’ll be a Priority Level (options should be “Very Important” and “Not Important”)
- Add another which becomes the Urgency Level (options should be “Super Urgent” and “Not Urgent”)
It should look like this once you select some options:
3. Add a formula
Finally, the magic step. Add one more column, this time, make it a formula. Copy and paste this formula:
if(
and(
and(
How urgent is it? == "Super Urgent",
How important is it? == "Most Important"),
"Do This First",
if(
and(
"Do This First",
if(
and(
How urgent is it? == "Not Urgent",
How important is it? == "Most Important"),
"Add to Your Schedule",
if(
and(
"Add to Your Schedule",
if(
and(
How urgent is it? == "Super Urgent",
How important is it? == "Not Important"),
"Delegate",
if(
and(
"Delegate",
if(
and(
How urgent is it? == "Not Urgent",
How important is it? == "Not Important"),
"Don’t Do This",
"Undefined"
)
)
"Don’t Do This",
"Undefined"
)
)
When the formula works, you should get a pretty clear result of what you should do about each task on your mega to do list. It’ll look like this:
5. Sort out your list
This list is still a bit messy. And sorting it by due date is not the goal of the exercise. The goal is to figure out the most important AND urgent tasks to tackle.
So look for the sorting icon. It looks like arrows going up and down, just to the left of the “New” button on the top righthand side of the database. This little guy 👇
Choose to sort by the formula you created. I named mine “What to do next?” It’ll sort out your items in an ascending alphabetical order. In this case, it’ll give you the order you need to get things done really quickly. Like this:
6. Get things done
You’d think “Do This First” is what you should, well, do first. But I think you should stick with the order you get from the sorting for a few reasons:
- Once you’ve added an item to you schedule, unless it’s something you chose to do today, the peace of mind knowing it’s written down and will show up on the right day will mean more mind space to tackle to important and urgent things.
- Same thing goes for delegating. The more of your to-do list you can pass on to someone else, the more room to breathe you’ll get.
- Once those items are sorted, all that’s left to do, are the things that matter the most.
When you end up with more than one “Do This First” items on your list, now is the time to look for the due date (and time if it’s related to an event or a specific deadline. You can do a second “sort” by date to help you figure this out.
Want a little extra magic for your to-do list
You’ve read this and while it’s not rocket science, you kind of wish it was done for you right? Well, I’ve got your back.
You can get access to my template, for free, which also comes with a couple of extra features:
- A demo video where I talk you through the template and about how to choose between what’s urgent or not, and what’s important, or not.
- A status property that helps you move things along, so you can check things off when they’re done, or change its status so you know it’s been delegated to someone else.
- Automations already set up for you so that the status matches the results from the urgency and importance levels you first choose.
- Some extra views to visualise your to-do in a way that works for you (I’ve added a few options).
Save time by using a pre-made Notion template. Delegating can sometimes mean using a pre-made solution because we don’t always have other people we can simply hand over our to-do list. This is me helping you “delegate” making a new database from your list.
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