Today, I want to share with you how I use Notion every day to run
my freelance business and how it's been helping me make a living as a creator.
I haven't really talked about Notion that much just because there are lots
of other creators that specifically talk about it and love building templates and
stuff in Notion. But I'm not like that. I just have a minimalistic setup that does
the job. It's simple, but I literally cannot operate my business without it.
So, when Notion reached out to me for sponsoring a video, I thought it would
be a great opportunity to share with you guys how I actually use it every day.
I have a bunch of pages in my Notion, but I wanted to talk about
the ones that are the most important to me. I have a main page called "Dashboard" that
gives me an overview of my entire operation. At the top, I've written kind of my vision
and mission statements to remind myself why I'm doing what I'm doing. So, my passions
lie in tech and Tokyo. I love new things and Tokyo is where I was born and grew up. So,
I focus on goals related to these areas. They're more like things I truly love rather than a
mission statement or anything serious. I know they are super simple, but I realised that it's really
easy to forget your long-term goals as you do your daily work. So seeing this every day reminds
me what I'm working towards and think about what to do next. It might sound silly, but it works.
If you have your own goals, make sure to put it somewhere you can see it every day. But of course,
it's hard to know what exactly your passions are and things you want to do in life. So I think
it's completely okay to change it time to time. I think of it as something you refine over time.
Underneath, I use a kanban board to track my life goals, yearly goals, quarterly goals,
monthly goals, and weekly goals. I find having the mission statement or vision isn't enough.
They are too vague to be actionable. So I break them down into smaller chunks that I
can work on each week. So the way it works is that first of all you write your life goals on
the furthest right column. Some of them are a bit random and just things I kind of want to do
someday in life. And then you break it down into 5-year goals, yearly, monthly and weekly. For me,
this is so much more effective than just having unclear goals. This setup helps me
be more accountable and work towards my long-term objectives. And each week or month, I just delete
the items I finished and create new ones. Another crucial way I use Notion is to
manage my content calendar. When I first started my channel, things were simple,
but now that it has grown, I need a proper tool to stay organised. Notion is perfect for that. I
have a dedicated Notion page where I store all of my future content plans. The table view shows me
what's coming up and everything I need, including sponsorships, content types, and contracts.
Each row is a video idea. Most of it is TBC because I don't plan out my videos so ahead
of time. The status column shows if the video is being planned or filmed. Every video goes from
just an idea, then writing, filming, editing, in approval if it's sponsored, published and finally
repurposed, which means repurpose the video into a blog post and so on. Once that's done,
the video is archived automatically. Then I have a column for sponsor. Thankfully,
all of my sponsor slots are all booked up for the next 3 or 4 months. This is
very important because sponsorship is my main source of income. Without it, I cannot survive.
And then I need to know the confirmation status to see if the deal is being negotiated or already
confirmed. Also the type of content can be either a dedicated video or a 1-minute segment.
The rest is simple. I have the draft deadline for the sponsor to check,
the publication date, the working time which tells me when to start working on the content.
Referral link I need to use, contract and payment status. Essentially, I just want
one place where I can see everything at a glance. But also I spend lots of my time on the timeline
view too, which gives me a clear overview of my schedule and deadlines. This lets me know when I
need to start working on a video. I usually spend one week on one video. But if it's a big one,
it can take more time. I set reminders for each starting time so I don't forget.
I also use the calendar view to visualize my schedule. It's particularly helpful when
planning sponsorship slots, as I can see when I'm next available. So whenever I get a sponsorship
request, I just create a new page called TBC. Then put the name of the sponsor and set the
status to In Negotiation. Once they confirm the sponsorship, I can change the status to Confirmed.
Notion is also handy for brainstorming content ideas. I often check my YouTube
analytics to see which videos are doing well. But recently I use this tool called MorningFame
to do some keyword research and analyse what types of content are popular. Then,
I write down those potential ideas in Notion. Also I use Twitter to find what's trending. If
I see something that I think is a good idea, I can just add it to my page. I categorise these
ideas into apps and gadgets because these are the only things I cover on my channel.
To expand on those ideas, I use Notion AI for help in idea generation. I sometimes use the
AI brainstorm feature and let it generate a few potential youtube video ideas. Not all of them
are great, but some are pretty good. If there are ones I like, I can turn it into a page.
Then when I'm picking a topic for my video, I can just change TBC to one of those ideas.
So, that's my workflow for the content creation process.
Notion also helps me track my personal and business finances using a simple table. I used to
use Google Sheets for this but I wanted to see if I could do it on Notion. Essentially it shows me
how much I'm spending in different categories such as food, rent, and gas. Also my subscriptions too.
It started getting crazy how many subscriptions I had, and now, it totals around $400, which sounds
insane but most of them are kind of important for doing my job. I also record my income from various
sources, including YouTube and sponsorships. It's all fine, I'm sure there are much better
ways to do this. If you know a good way, please let me know. I just found this cool template
by Mr Notion Template which was on the Notion Template Library, so I'm going to give it a try.
Before we go, let me share a few tips and tricks that I use with Notion.
If you use Mac, Notion works really well with Arc Browser. You can pin Notion to the sidebar.
And if you hover your cursor over the icon, it shows you the list of pages you use often and
you can click on them for an instant access to those pages. You can even make a new page
directly by clicking on this plus button. Another Mac app that works super well with
Notion is Raycast. It has an extension that you can install for free. It lets you search
for content inside your Notion from anywhere on your Mac. You can open Raycast with a keyboard
shortcut and then just type for what you're looking for. Also you can create a new page too.
What's awesome is that it allows you to specify which database you want to add the page to as
well as the properties too. For example, when I come up with a possible Youtube video idea,
I can use this to add the idea to my Youtube database. This way, I don't have to switch app
or tab to open Notion which saves lots of time. But if you don't use Mac, you can do something
similar with a browser extension. I use this tool called Bardeen which is an automation tool. It's
another tool that works great with Notion. It has so many pre-made automations available,
and you can easily create one on your own. I made one that lets you create a new page in
Notion from any website. You just have to open the extension and write the title of the page.
But there are lots of other automations too, not just with this tool, but with others like
Zapier and IFTTT. So I recommend checking them out. It probably helps you save tons of time.
I am not a Notion wizard, but this tool literally helped me become a proper creator
and make a living as one. I know there are lots of other things you can do with it,
so I'm excited to learn more. So if you have any tips or tricks that you use with Notion
or your favourite templates you cannot live without, please let me know in the comments.
And if you haven't used Notion yet, you should give it a try. It might look complicated at first,
but you get the hang of it pretty quick. It's such a versatile app that you can customise it
or build something to suit your needs. Check it out from the link in the description.
Alright, thank you so much for watching till the end. If you liked it,
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