- This video is sponsored by Notion.
If you want to get your life more organized check
out the link in the description
to try out Notion for yourself.
Unfortunately, I'm not one
of those naturally organized people,
but I absolutely love organization.
And I would put money on it that somewhere
in your brain, you just went, "Yup.
I know exactly what he means."
It's something that I have to work pretty hard
at all the time to get it to where I want it to be.
And ever since I heard the phrase, there's an app
for that, I've been trying to find an app, or two apps,
or five apps that could help me to make organization
and productivity easier for me.
And then I came across an app called Notion
and it had the flexibility, simplicity,
and customization that I wanted
from all those other apps, all combined into one.
So in this video I want to take you
through my super simple setup inside Notion that I use
to organize my life, my YouTube channel, my goals, and more,
and hopefully it can do the same for you.
All right. So this is my Notion dashboard.
This is kind of where it all starts
for me as far as organization and productivity.
And if you've ever watched any other Notion setup videos
this is going to look really simple, but that's by design.
What I really needed out of a productivity
and organization app is simplicity.
Something that can hold just enough information
that I won't forget about things
or I can take down my notes and those kinds of things
but it's not so overly complicated
that I'll get overwhelmed
and I won't want to do that stuff in the first place.
So while Notion is an incredibly powerful app
and there are so many things you can do with it, a lot
of the things that I've done are very basic.
So if that sounds like you this might be a good way
to set this up.
So taking a look at the dashboard first we've got pages
over on the right hand side here.
This is just quick links to all those other pages.
And then we've got our task list, all blown out
on this left-hand side.
And this is really just a to-do list.
This is for relatively quick things that I need to do.
I can just add them on here.
And when you check them off, for example
like plan Notion video, I did that.
You can probably tell.
I can check that off and it'll disappear.
Now, within this task list you can actually open this up
as a page if you want to.
So I can click tasks here,
and now we can see a little bit more
of an expanded version of what we saw on the dashboard.
I like to keep it on the dashboard though
so that I can see those little things just
in case I want to work them into my day.
My task list is a really simplistic table
that just has a couple of properties in there.
So I've got the task, the name of it.
Then I've got a checkbox for when it's done.
I've got the priority and there are three options in there.
You can choose low, medium or high.
And then I've got it sorting by priority descending
so that the highest priority ones come out on top.
Then I've got categories
and I've just got a couple of different categories.
So Donna Did It being my YouTube channel.
Home which is like anything kind of personal
or for my house,
and then work which is my recording studio.
And then on the far right here, we've got time.
And this is just kind of an estimate
of how long I think that thing will take.
I find that putting
that in there kind of gives me a realistic idea
of how long I should set aside
within my day to get that thing done.
So for example, following up
of Lens baby is probably only gonna take me 15 minutes.
Now let's say I came up with something new
that I wanted to add to my to-do list.
I can just click new.
I can add a title.
So let's say I need to take out the garbage.
We're gonna set it priority as medium.
I'm gonna call it home.
And it's gonna take me 10 minutes.
A lot of people's to-do lists will get really complicated
and there are so many more categories
and tags and all that kind of stuff
and I actually purposely made it
so this would be really easy.
I wanted it to make it, so it would take me less
than 10 seconds to type in a new to-do.
And I don't mean to knock anybody else's to-do list.
There are a lot of really fantastic ones out there,
but this is just the way that I needed it to work.
So that again I wouldn't get overwhelmed by all
of the different options and tags and those kinds of things.
I'm a big fan of the tables within Notion.
I have a tendency to use them
to kind of build out everything.
And I love the fact that you can do different views.
So for example, right now I'm on the all tasks view.
So I can see literally everything,
but if I wanted to filter it
by just Dunna Did It Tasks I could click that,
and it's a different view.
Then I could go just home tasks, just work tasks,
and then I can see all the things that I'm done.
So heading back to the dashboard you can see we've got
that task list on the left-hand side.
It's nice to have that right on the homepage.
So I can just get a quick look of what I've got
to do, potentially slot any of that in during my day
when I go to start planning everything out.
Then on the right-hand side
we've got all the different pages.
We've got YouTube videos which I'm gonna save
because it's kind of the biggest, most complicated one.
So we're gonna save that for a little bit later
but below that we've got notes,
which is basically just a notebook.
If we come in here we can see another table.
Again, I really love the tables.
I've got all notes, Dunna Did It notes and home notes.
I should have another view for work notes
but apparently, I don't know, have any work notes yet.
That's why.
I call it recording studio 2021 plan, set that for work.
Within my notes I've made a bunch of different tags just
to make things a little bit easier to kind of search.
Set it as goal setting.
And then we can open this as its own page
and then I can start typing notes in here.
So I'm gonna add a view.
It's gonna be a table view.
So that's the same as this one.
And create.
I'm going to filter, add a filter,
and then only category work.
We'll rename it work notes.
There we go.
So now got all my categories
so I can see the different types of notes.
And as you can see, it's super easy to add
and take away different views or different categories.
(indistinct) you can constantly be moving this around.
Even just in planning this video, I did a lot
of work moving things around and creating new pages
and creating new tables and that kind of stuff,
because it's just so easy
to move things around and customize.
Next on the list we've got our projects.
Now projects and tasks are very similar.
It's basically like a task is a quick to do something
that I can get done in a couple hours or less,
and then a project is something
that's a bit bigger of a scope.
So when we go into projects, we see a Kanban board layout:
Different categories for where different projects are.
So the first category is idea,
and we've got doing, waiting and done.
Sometimes you get that idea you're like, "This is a project
that I want to do eventually."
So we throw it down there.
Then we've got doing.
So if we're in the process of doing that project.
I find that there are a lot of times
where I might be doing a project
but I'm just waiting on something to happen.
And if I see something in the waiting category, sometimes
it means that I need to check in with people,
that kind of stuff.
And then of course done means they're done.
And so let's say I started planning my March today.
I can move my March into the doing category,
and I can start thinking about March.
And move that back so I don't trick myself into thinking
that I already started that.
Again in the projects page we've got a bunch
of different views.
The cool thing here is
that you're taking the same information
and just filtering it and looking at it a different way.
So all of these different projects
that I want to do, I can also look at by the category.
So you can kind of break it up, still the same stuff
but all in different categories.
So depending on how I want to look
at it, I can look at a full list.
And then there is a calendar view
although I don't think I have...
I do have one thing in there
that actually has a date attached to it.
So again, I've kind of got the tasks page which is my kind
of smaller to do's
and then I've got the projects page
which are my bigger projects.
The goal here is to try and make it as little friction
to get from me having an idea and me putting it down there.
So next on the list we've got our contacts.
This is actually something that I've just started
so I haven't really filled it out
and it has a lot of personal information on there
so I'm not actually going to open this one up.
Essentially it's just another table
that looks very similar to this one.
But in the first category
it's got their name, telephone number, email address,
what company they work for, those kinds of things, just
so I can keep track of my main contacts kind of all
in the same place.
And then the last page
that I've got here is goals and dreams.
This is another one that's fairly new.
One of the things that I want
to start doing more of, is thinking about
and kind of journaling down my goals and dreams, things
that I want to do that are just like big huge ideas
and just notes that I can take from them.
So not so much things that I have a clear action plan
for yet, those will go more in the projects.
But these are just like,
when I have a big idea
or if I need to brainstorm somewhere I can do that here.
I haven't done anything fancy with views yet on this one,
but I've just got a couple of little ideas.
This would be a great place
for things like new year's resolutions, that kind of stuff:
Any kind of goal setting that you might want to do.
Again, really, really simple stuff.
Probably the most complicated thing I did was took some
of my photos and put text on them so
that I could make little headers for some of the pages here.
And then finally kind of the main reason that I got Notion
in the very first place:
I had a whole bunch of different apps that I was using
to plan the videos keep track of my different sponsors
and payments and those kinds of things.
Notion really allowed me to combine it all together
in a single page almost.
Now this all did start out with a template that I got
from, I believe it was from Thomas Frank.
And again, like I've mentioned a couple of times the beauty
of Notion is that I can take his template
and I adjusted it to what I needed.
So we've got another Kanban board here,
where you can see I've got idea,
and I've got on deck.
So that means like I'm gonna do this (indistinct) kind
of category.
So I've got scripting, which is basically
like planning the video.
and I've got production,
and I've got scheduled for when I've got it uploaded
to YouTube and it's ready to go for my next publish date.
And then I've got a published category
which I don't need to see all of those.
I can go in there at any point if I want to.
Now here's the coolest thing about this.
Let's say I get an idea
and I want to do a video about how to photograph frogs.
That's my video idea.
I'm gonna click into that.
At the top You can see all the categories
that I can fill in.
So I've got the status so that's where I put it.
It was in the idea category.
I can rank it from one to five stars
as far as like how strong I think that idea is.
This Kanban board is set to sort
by the better ideas at the top.
Once I know when I want
to publish it, I can choose the publish date.
If there's a sponsor, I can add them in there.
I can put the price in there.
This is to check off whether they've paid or not.
Then I've got tags so I've got a bunch of different types
of videos so I can tag up which one.
So how to photograph frogs would probably be a tutorial.
Let's fill this all in.
That idea is a four.
So you can see it's higher in the list now.
Publish date:
Let's say we're going to release this on Christmas.
Sponsor is Frog boiz.
Sponsor price is $13, and they prepaid for this video.
And then I've got a spot
for the URL after I've already published it.
Now, down at the bottom here is
where I always click my Dunna Did It project template.
And this is a template again that I took
from another template and modified to fit my needs.
And I've modified it probably four or five times.
We're going to click project template
and watch it all appear.
There we go.
So we can see we've still got our same cover.
We've still got our same title,
but now within the actual page itself,
it's filled in all of this different stuff.
So first and foremost,
when I'm planning videos we've got our outline.
And this is where I just really try and get the idea down.
This is gonna get me started as far as planning.
So the first thing I say is what is the problem
of this video?
People don't know how to photograph frogs.
How old this video solved that?
It will teach them how to photograph frogs.
Any important points that need to be covered?
So this usually is a little bit longer
because it'll be like macro ideas, lighting ideas, pitfalls
to watch out for, lenses
to use, other gear getting the frog to stay still.
Those are the things that I want to make sure
that I say within the video.
And then if the video does have a sponsor
which this one was Frog boiz for $13, we can
then put any notes they want.
They wanted us to make sure to throw to their website.
That's our basic outline.
By just opening this page and looking
at that, I know the whole idea
of what this video is gonna be about.
Then below that we've got four different little kind
of categories.
So under content here, there are three different pages
that are automatically created when I hit that template.
Research and notes is literally just a blank page
that says any notes, research and test results go here.
That one I really just need because I do reviews
on different pieces of gear
so I have to have somewhere to keep all of that information.
The next one is a script.
Again, pretty self-explanatory.
It's a blank page ready for a script.
And then the third one is a shot list.
And again, the shot list is just another blank page
but the difference here is that instead
of just being a bulleted list,
this one actually has check boxes
so that I can check off when I get different shots.
I did a lot of research and I've tried a lot
of different shot lists with different tables
and different categories and all that kind of stuff,
and honestly, I just found it more headache
than it was worth for the way that I shoot,
and it was just easiest to just have a simple list
that I could check off.
Or on the right-hand side here, we've got all the metadata.
So we've got keywords here.
So this would be like trying to research for our title.
We've got title ideas.
So if I wanted to put down a bunch
of different ideas I can do that there.
And then we've got sponsor information.
So again, just another spot where I can put the URL
of the video and the call to action.
Which now that I think about it I've got the URL here
and sponsor info here.
So some of the stuff gets left blank a lot
of the time.
I'll show you that in a second.
Next, we've got our checklist.
So I've got the video creation checklist
and then a publishing checklist.
So if we take a look
at the video creation checklist, literally all
of the things just to make sure
that I didn't forget anything.
But a lot of the time I'll make a video and then come look
at this list and be like, "Hey, yeah, I did enough.
The video's done." (chuckles)
This is more of a just-in-case kind of thing for me.
And then we've got a publishing checklist:
All the different things that you might want to do
if you were publishing a YouTube video.
And then on the right hand side I've got a couple
of resources.
So Morningfame, Tubebuddy, Thumblytics and Thumbs Up.
So Morningfame is the website that I use to kind
of make my title and choose my different keywords.
TubeBuddy is another really great resource
for similar things.
Thumblytics and Thumbs up are both places where you can go
and test your thumbnails.
So before I mentioned that a lot
of this stuff sometimes just gets left blank.
I want to show you guys an example.
This DaVinci Resolve Color Grading Workflow Video
is already done.
It's ready to go.
And if you look at this, I didn't put an idea rating.
I didn't put a publish date yet.
I literally didn't fill out an outline.
I literally just like had an idea and shot the video.
So some of this is just in case I need it.
Sometimes I don't actually need all of this stuff
but it's really nice to have it there
when I'm having trouble pushing forward with a project.
The nice thing is that you can kind of get as simple
or as in depth as you want to.
So for example, I basically had this idea, I put it there,
and then it kind of just like moved along,
and eventually it will move into the published category.
Have I scheduled this?
No, I haven't scheduled it yet.
Actually, that's a good thing that we could do.
So this one is going to be going up next Monday on the 14th.
So when I click on the 14th under published date,
so now we can go over to calendar view,
and we can see the different videos
that I have all ready to go.
And the nice thing about this is like,
for example this Catalyst Browse versus Gimbal video,
it didn't happen because I don't have the Gimbal
that I want for it yet.
So I can move it to let's say to the 28th,
and it'll automatically update that publish date
within the actual page itself.
Some of the other views that I have for my YouTube videos.
So we've got our basic status view,
and I've got active videos which is anything
that's not an idea or published.
So this is all of the statuses that are
in there middle of our Kanban board here.
And then I've got my calendar, which we already saw.
Then I've got all of them ideas.
And then I've also got a sponsored videos page
which shows me all of my videos that have a sponsor
with them, whether they've paid up, how much typically
but I've left that off for now and who sponsored it,
and then the status of where that's at.
This is really handy for me
so that I can kind of keep track
of when I've got sponsored videos coming up
and I should be preparing for them, those kinds of things.
Most of this was built out of templates
that I either got from Notion themselves
or I got from other Notion users.
And then if you just learn enough you can go in
and tweak it to your own needs.
And this is the thing that separates Notion from all
of the other productivity apps that I've ever used, is
that it's so customizable and it can be as complicated
or as simple as you want it to be.
And that just works so well for me personally.
And I love that I really didn't have to do a lot
of work to learn even what I do know
within it, especially with the templates.
So you can just grab a template
from the templates folder here.
You want to make a journal or a reading list
or a set of goals.
Here's one, if you're looking
for new year's resolutions you can make a goals list
like that, all sorts of really cool stuff.
And all you do is just hit, use this template, and bam,
it is added it as a page in my Notion.
And on top of adding it it's also given me a bunch
of instructions on how to use it.
So that's kind of how I set up my Notion
and I absolutely love it
because I can take it wherever I want with me.
It's good on desktop, on the web, on my iPad,
on my phone, basically anywhere it's always there with me.
I can add a quick to do
or I can check my notes or whatever I need to do.
And again, it is so customizable.
So if you've got a similar style of organization
to me and this look great, you can just go ahead
and copy what you've seen here.
Or if you want something a little more complicated
or something a little different, you can totally do it
because it just molds to whatever you need.
Huge thank you to Notion
for reaching out and sponsoring this video.
If you want to check it out,
if you want to try it out make sure to go use that link
in the description to let them know where you came from.
I highly recommend it.
I think it can improve so many people's lives.
If you have any questions about my Notion set up
or want to know more, make sure to leave a comment
down below, and on your way down there hit that like
and subscribe button,
and hit the bell notification (bell rings)
so you don't miss out on future reviews and tutorials.
Thank you so much for watching,
and I'll see you next time.
(upbeat music)