hello everyone it is francesco here i hope you're all doing very well in today's video
what i thought i'd do is a tour of my notion account it's been a fair while since i actually
did a video about this um i'm going to be doing a workflow video soon to show you all of the
apps in the so the ecosystem that i use but in today's video i thought i'd focus in on notion
now um before we begin i'm actually going to be toning down on my notion videos i don't think i'm
doing as much of them just because i want to explore a few more applications in the market
um and naturally i've been doing motion videos for like closing in on three years now which is pretty
long time uh even for one application to focus in on i'm maybe i'm getting a little
bit of notion fatigue i don't know but you may see a lack of videos of notion coming out but
oh well don't worry it'll be okay so as you can imagine um i've been using notion since
maybe three years now uh it's a total and uh i've really enjoyed the experience and um
i've had a fair few changes in the last few months so maybe i'll show you around my
account and then explore that what those changes have been hopefully this will help so obviously
this is my workspace but in this case i made a copy to blank out some information
obviously i want to make sure to include everything that i do
inside of the account now i actually use two accounts now i i was actually for quite a long
period of time connecting the keep productive uh workspace into my own workspace however i've
definitely found in the last couple of months that um keeping them separate is quite good um so
that's been fairly recent um but i have a separate workspace which i'll talk about near at the end
so as you can see here is is really simple i actually have gone pretty lazy on it um although
i should probably need to just make these headings so as you can see here i have some core sort of
routine ones that i go into uh values projects and health so let's start with values so this is
actually something i've started to put together um with uh the help of chris stancy um it's more
of like a sort of list of uh things that i'd like to strive towards each day with different aspects
of my life i'm definitely looking into this more about how to do it better um but as you can see
here i've started trying backlink um but i want to sort of try and grow this a little bit more
and make this a bit more of a sort of crib sheet for sort of my main focuses so i guess
when i'm working on a new project i can look into this and go okay does this align with my values
the second thing is a project area as you can see here i've been doing for the majority of the year
a project per month but i'm more moved into quarters now in order to relieve a little
bit pressure for me because i tend to have found projects just moved around quite a lot and you can
see here that i'm using the board view um there is the ability to use timeline view maybe to not
sort of take advantage of it yet but now i'm sort of keeping sort of two to three projects per month
to sort of work on so i'll just take this one for example july 2020 uh once it loads you can
see there these were much more granular projects uh but i want to sort of do a little bit bigger
projects over a large period of time so i have an area called health this is fairly recent as well
as you can see here i've sort of set a goal at the top and what i'm doing is now logging my boxing
workouts um and what i could do better on them so if i go into this it's normally like what i did
and what i could actually do to improve it um when i'm going outside and doing that
so that's pulled in from my notes which i'll talk about in a bit but the notes have been quite a
good place to actually just organize and plan out i've also started this habits area as well
a little proper toggle for some stretches exercises that i might want to do at my desk but
i've also started this habits area to try and keep some good quality habits going for example like
plank for one minute uh you know small things that i can do across my day um that i can probably help
improve uh my day-to-day lifestyle and i'm going with a check score at the bottom so i can actually
see like okay how much have i checked so far so we've got um a house one as well um we're like
eventually gonna aim to get a new house a bit of a bigger one so that i can have a separate
room for an office and it's not the baby's room uh but you can see here that i've got a
few tasks uh on each of them like for example things that we can do inside of this house
things that saving sort of broken it down into like i guess five steps but this is quite nice
because if of an evening we want to like write down a few things that we want to do
then we can start taking them off on this list so i've also got one for payments this is more to do
with work i probably should probably put this in keep productive area however i found that
obviously i don't necessarily want to share what's coming up payments with other people in the group
um so i might want to just keep this one internal now so i normally put like the amount i'm
that's due and then the vendor and the type of it and whether it's been paid
and then i can sort of chase up what um i need to when i need to so in terms of notes
i've been using notes a little bit more than often everything from tracking weaning notes
all the way to uh calls and things like that that are starting but i've also been doing like um
like not meditations but like uh exercise um with sort of uh expressive journalism where
is it journaling where i can like sort of talk through anything during my day like what i'm
worrying about and things like that everything around sort of work so i'm sort of like constantly
adding stuff to this which is quite nice this is just alphabetical order i normally see it in the
card view but as you can see it's sort of really nice um way i can save stuff um it doesn't really
have any rules to it actually but i took a lot of value and notes from the tiago forte video
so this is um something i actually haven't used yet i'm connected i'm get i'm asking for a kindle
for christmas uh from uh my wife and uh her family and uh if i get it if santa's good to me
then i will probably connect it with read wise to help me start reading some books
so that should be really nice finances has been something that i've been using for
quite a while now inside of notion i really like this layout here it's quite simple but what i do
here is um i put the account um over on this left-hand side
the bank it's associated to who owns the account and an outline of what the account is about
and i start adding the amounts in here then i can sort of make notes if i'm on this left-hand side
so for example with the mortgage repayments i make a note whenever i call them and pay a little bit
more off if i can then any reference stuff appears here which is helpful for example for connecting
um other pages or notes that might be useful so i've also got we've also got an expenses area so
every a couple of months we then dive into this and actually update how much stuff costs monthly
and what we do is then see what the yearly cost is and that's simply just type by times get by 12
and also by six and we can see down here that this is our monthly or ideally expenses um going out so
obviously that's i've removed a few things but that's how we can sort of judge how much
we're spending and we also put occasional notes along this left-hand side to show for example is
there anything that we can improve on i also use the taxes area and this is really to like keep
updated with what tax i'm paying um and payments that we pay in regularly which is quite helpful
so this taxation area is is pretty decent and i also have a health area which if i have a problem
then i write it down and it's probably especially very useful now but if i for example felt a bit
ill a certain day i might write it down here and give a sort of result of what
that's about so i've also started this area called people um i would say i was quite happy about this
when i started using it but over time i would say it became a lot less useful i'm not sure why but
maybe that's um still sort of going but as you can see here got sort of key areas that
i'm connected pages with people and you can see the backlinks and what they're all connected to
um so for example with becca you've got all this stuff here and how they're connected up
another example here with otto as you can see these are some of the notes from my notebook
so all in all that's how i use my notion it's really basic um that's probably why i'm not
doing many videos anymore because it's not as exciting as many other people's but it really does
help i go i find a lot of value from using the um notion as more of a static bay for my information
and also planning which is super helpful um i've also got this which is the key productive area and
as you can see we plan videos articles you can see how we plan articles uh how we plan videos using
this lovely board and now that we are working with uh an editor which is amazing steve it's gonna be
fun to be able to sort that out i've also got uh we've also areas uh here for like affiliates and
sponsors and public pages but as you can see the sort of theme with my sort of notion accounts is
uh reduction in complexity um one of the things that i started out doing when i had a notion
account probably too much was creating too much complexity and some really stupidly attractive
areas and um i think that's naturally the culture but definitely seeming to move away from that now
um i think my time is much more limited than it was so i'm probably spending better time inside
of these applications so as you can imagine um i when i last did a tour i was actually using notion
as my week planner for work um i wanted to separate todoist with this but i've actually
come back full circle when i'm i i think boards has fixed that problem for me at making that uh
sort of base on inside of todoist again so uh as i said previously i was using the week planner maybe
used it for about two months solid as you can see i'm using it very basically i've got a backlog
a focus and learning um so these are sort of core aspects of the day the backlog is like what i need
to do or need to look at focus is uh what i'm doing now um as you see recording and also some
learning that i would like to do during the day i really want to try and make learning more of a
port part of my day so i've put it there to sort of force me to check it out and clear it every day
and the good thing as well if you notice there i am not even putting uh any due dates on them
and that's mainly so that they don't avoid or damage the today area which is full of my sort of
main plans for the day as you can see highest priority has been why why is so low priority
um but i think it's because the bins aren't due tomorrow and if i don't get them done then uh
you know that's that's gonna be bad so sometimes it is okay to move other applications but at the
same time i think i was already inside of notion i had to trial it in those three months i didn't
get on i i was doing well with it but didn't get on with it as much as i did with to do with sports
and i'm glad to be back with that applications and the way that i describe it is the way that
gabrielle brazil describes it who we've done a video here on the channel with she describes it as
her notion is her static uh planning area and uh todoist is sort of the virtual assistant and i
definitely think that's um the case in this uh situation as well anyway folks a big thank you
i hope you enjoyed today's video um if you want to check out the notion course you can check that out
below um but again i'm sorry if i'm not doing as many ocean videos but i'm excited to be exploring
other applications as we launch 2021 i do need a little bit of a break this year i think uh near
the end of the year uh just to sort of relax and just um take a breather so hopefully that will be
nice anyway folks i'm really excited this start of the end of the year we're going to be doing
um some exciting project that hopefully gets a few people involved from the community i want to
make this more community focused again i think i've lost a lot of sort of um uh the sort of
exciting community conversations uh that we miss with the facebook group so i'd like to
bring that back and hopefully we do that uh in uh uh future content and the plans that
we have with um the community anyway folks a big thank you and talk to you all very soon cheerio
you