- This video is sponsored by Skillshare
and the entirety of my sponsorship fee
for this video is being donated
to the Black Lives Matter Organization.
More on that at the end,
for now enjoy the video.
It's no secret that Notion
is an incredibly powerful app
that can do that a lot of things,
but, can it work as a note taking app.
Well, you might think the answer
to that question is obvious
since it is an app
where you can input text
and create hierarchies of pages
and pseudo folders.
But personally, I have had a tough time
answering this question for myself,
even though I've been using Notion
for about two years at this point.
And that is because
before I discovered Notion,
I used a little tool called Evernote
for about 10 years.
And when you use a tool for that long,
you tend to get very used to the way
that it's set up
and changes to that setup
can be hard to deal with.
So over the past couple of weeks,
I've given myself the challenge
of building a system within Notion
that gives me a lot of
what I love from Evernote,
but also takes advantage
of many of Notions unique features.
So this is my note taking system here in Notion,
it looks pretty simple,
and that is actually on purpose
because not only does it need
to be very usable here,
but to properly replace Evernote
and to be something I can use at all times,
it needs to be usable
on my iPhone as well,
where I have a lot less
horizontal space to work with.
And this setup works perfectly there.
So the system consists of notebooks,
which are here on the left.
We also have an inbox which works
really well for quick capture,
just quickly getting ideas
out of my head
when I don't have time
to sort them correctly.
And then something called the Status Dashboard,
which is probably the coolest part of the system.
But we're gonna get
to that a little bit later.
First, let me just show you
what a notebook looks like.
So these notebooks are actually databases,
each of which contain many different notes.
And if we look here,
these notes have a status
and also a category.
The status is gonna be useful
for the status dashboard
and we can set them to open.
We can set them archived or urgent.
And this basically lets you sort notes
by the things that are relevant
to your life right now,
things that are even urgent
and things that you wanna keep for safekeeping,
but you don't really need any more.
And those be archived.
We also have categories
and what we can actually do
is sort into one
of these different custom views,
which just kind of filters based on its category.
So this is just production notes.
This is just song notes
and what this essentially gets you
is something just like what Evernote had.
With the notebook stacks
and the notebooks.
That afforded you two levels
of hierarchy for organization.
And this in turn gives you
two levels of hierarchy.
The first one being music,
which contains our second level,
which is our songs,
our gear, our learning, singing, et cetera.
And to create a new note,
we have a couple of different options.
Number one, we can just hit new
right within this notebook.
And it's gonna give us a new note
and we'll just call it Test Note
and this instance,
so that now exists within this database.
I can give it a category
which works really well.
Let's just call it songs.
I'm gonna have a great song called Test Note someday
and can set a reminder for it
if we want to,
we can attach files to it.
If we want to,
I'm just gonna leave it like this.
So that's one way to add notes
to the database
or we can go
and use that quick capture method
where we're adding things to the inbox.
Now, the inbox is pretty much identical
to these notebooks in terms of features.
It's also filtered like this.
It's also sorted by default,
by date updated,
which is my preference,
but of course you could change this however you want.
And if we create a new note,
which we'll just call Test Note 2,
then it's gonna be again,
defaulted to open status
and sitting here in the inbox.
What I can do then
is if I have like a review day on the weekend,
I can go into my inbox
and I can drag all of these notes
to the notebook in which they belong.
So test note,
we'll say that's another song we wanna write
creating the ultimate note taking system in Notion
that would probably go in content.
And finally we have the status dashboard.
So the status dashboard is a place
that shows you all of the open
and urgent notes across all of your notebooks.
And this is using Notions linked database feature,
which essentially lets you see a database.
Even if you are not on the page
that contains that database,
it's kind of like linking out
to a database that exists somewhere else
and showing you the contents.
The interesting thing about linked databases
is that if you edit the content,
so if I edit one of these rows here,
I will actually be editing
the row in that database.
If I delete one of these columns here,
I will be actually deleting
the column in that database.
But linked databases have their own views.
They have their own filters
and their own sorts.
So you can create custom views, custom sorts,
do whatever you want with linked databases.
And you're not going
to affect the parent database,
the real database.
And we can use that to our advantage.
So this status dashboard uses that
to show me all the notes
across my entire system
that are either open or urgent.
We are first sorting by urgent
and then we sort by date updated.
So if I'm on a review day, once again,
I can go through my system
and I can look through
and what's relevant to my life.
Do I need to set something to archived?
Do I need to set it to urgent?
And I've also sorted it
so that it shows any note
that doesn't have a category.
That way I can go through in the dashboard
and categorize things.
So site speed upgrades is right here,
I'm going to put that on projects.
All right, So that being said
here is how you would add
a new notebook to your system.
First off, there's an add new notebook block here,
and this is just a template block
that contains a template database.
So I can click it to generate it
And why don't we just call this Notebook DIY.
I think that's a good parent notebook
that could contain lots of different sub-notebooks.
And because this is built off of a template,
a lot of the work is already done for me.
I've already got my filters.
I've already got my sort criteria
and I've already got
a few different views here.
Most of these don't really need
any kind of editing before I start working.
But I am gonna wanna edit
this category view right here
and I wanna make more based on my categories.
So first let's assign a category
to this test note here
and we've got Test One here.
I'm just gonna go ahead
and rename it to Woodworking.
So this will be my Woodworking notebook
and I'm gonna come into category one.
I'm gonna rename that
to Woodworking as well.
So this will be my Woodworking notebook
and I'm just going to add a filter
based on the category
and it will be Woodworking.
So any note tagged with Woodworking
is now going to be
in this Woodworking notebook.
And once you've done that,
all you need to do
to create additional category based notebooks
is to duplicate this view
and then rename it to whatever you want.
So maybe this one is gonna be Metalworking.
I would love to get into welding
in my spare time.
And all we gotta do is,
well, first add a category for Metalworking
and change our filter criteria.
So as your notebooks expand
and you add additional sub-notebooks within the parents,
you can go through
this process of adding the category
and then adding the filter.
I know this is a little bit
of work to set up.
And I thought really hard
about how to make it easier.
And I couldn't really figure out a way
that didn't compromise
some of the other features,
including the ability to have quick capture,
the ability to easily sort,
the ability to show the status dashboard.
So it's a little bit of work
to set up each notebook,
but once you have those notebooks set up,
you don't have any additional maintenance work.
And at least personally,
after I've got my first maybe 15 notebooks
that kind of encompass my whole life built,
then there aren't really any new notebooks
being created on a regular basis.
So personally I'm okay with a little bit
of initial setup work
and speaking of initial setup,
one last thing we do need to do for this,
other than setting, a cool emoji.
Let's let's give it a hammer
is to add this to a status dashboard.
So here's one thing
where I would love Notion
to add a feature.
I would love the ability
to duplicate a linked database
and then change the database.
It's looking at change
the original database.
That's not a feature right now,
which kinda stinks
because it means I can't duplicate
this pre-setup linked database
that has all the filters
and the sorts.
That'd be awesome,
but that doesn't exist.
So we're gonna hit the slash command
and go to create linked database.
And then all we need to do
is search for the particular database
we just created.
And here we are.
So again, the views we create here,
the filters, the sorts,
and any shuffling around of columns
is going to be unique
to the linked database.
It's not gonna affect your notebook,
but if we change anything
about the content that is actually
going to affect what's in the real notebook.
So what we need to do here first
is number one,
get rid of some properties
that we don't care about,
such as date created and files.
I really don't care about those things.
I just want these four.
Next, we need to create a view.
So we're just gonna call this table view
and I'm gonna give it a capital V
because it's going to default
to creating two of them.
Now, basically we need to do this
so we can easily duplicate the filters and sorts
we're gonna be creating here.
If we don't make another view first,
it's gonna be a kind of a pain to do it.
Going here, we're gonna create filters.
And this is where Notions
new filter groups option comes really in handy.
So I'm gonna go here
and I'm gonna make a filter
where I'm filtering for status
and I'm gonna filter for either open or urgent.
And lastly, I want one more filtering
for anything where the category is empty.
This shouldn't happen with the way
that I've set this system up,
but just in case it does,
I wanna have this filter criteria in here
so I can use this as an easy place
to set categories for anything
that doesn't get it initially.
Finally, the last thing we've gotta do
is set up a sort first based on status
and I want urgent to be first.
So we're gonna go descending order
and then I want it to be sorted
by date updated also descending.
And lastly, with this table view,
I'm gonna go ahead
and duplicate it.
And I'm gonna call this Duplicate List View.
So this is gonna be that nice
little list style database
that is easily viewable on mobile,
hit that up.
And then I'm gonna delete
this original table view with lowercase fee.
That's what Notion defaults to calling it.
And I don't need it
'cause it doesn't have any
of those cool filters
and sorts on it.
Boom, there, we're done.
Again a little bit of setup work,
but once you've got it set up
for each parent notebook,
you don't have to do anything
except for go through here
and sort your notes.
And look, I have created
the ultimate note taking system in Notion
with nothing on there.
We're gonna call that YouTube
'cause this here is on YouTube.
So this notes database,
as you might've expected is a template
and it is in the Notion template gallery now.
So I will have that linked
in the description below.
And one additional tip
that I wanna give you here for using this
is to drag both the notes area itself,
and also the inbox specifically
up to your favorites bar.
That's gonna give you really quick access
to basically every part of your notebook.
If you open the toggle here,
you have access to all
of your parent notebooks.
And because we built custom views
for the subcategories,
you can even drill into those subcategories
from the sidebar.
This was really important to me,
which is another reason
why I built it this way.
And then last but not least,
you have your inbox at the top,
which means that when you're on your phone,
when you're on the go
and you don't have a whole lot of time,
you could easily open up Notion,
get to the inbox,
just a couple of quick taps
and add something to it
and then have it in a place
where you're gonna easily
be able to sort it
and organize it later on.
So again, use this favorites area
to your advantage
and use it for things
that you access beyond
just your notes database.
I've got my inbox here.
I've got my notes sitting right here,
but I have a lot of other things
that I need really quick access to
in a really frequent basis,
including my YouTube video tracker,
which basically helps me run my channel
and helps me make videos
a lot more efficiently.
And speaking of making videos.
If you are a content creator yourself,
if you make videos here
or even if you're aspiring
to get into it in the future,
then I wanna take a second
to recommend Chrystopher Rhodes
budget filmmaking class over on Skillshare.
Chrystopher Rhodes is somebody
I've been following for a long time.
He has a channel here called YCimaging
and his work is absolutely fantastic.
In fact, if you've been following my channel
for a few months
and you've noticed the production quality
increasing over time,
that is due in part to a lot of the tips
that I've picked up from Chrystopher
and his Skillshare class really
gets into the details
of how to make the most modest gear
or a small budget when you're making video.
And in particular,
I really enjoy his lesson about Location Scouting,
which is about taking one location
and using it really creatively
to get lots of different shot angles
or even different sets
out of that one small space.
And because Chrystopher's class is on Skillshare,
you're also gonna have access
to thousands of other classes
across topics ranging
from digital illustration to animation,
to personal finance,
to even productivity.
And within that productivity category,
you'll even find two classes taught by me,
which cover the basics
of setting up a productivity system
and then how to build strong habits
and actually stick to them in the longterm.
Membership on Skillshare is also really affordable
with plans starting at less
than 10 bucks a month.
And if you're one of the first 1000 people
to use the link in the description down below to sign up,
you're also gonna get your two month free trial
with unlimited use of the platform.
So you can try it out before you buy.
Like I said at the beginning of this video,
I am donating the entirety of my sponsorship fee
for this video to the Black Lives Matter Organization.
Honestly, with everything that's been
going on over the past few weeks,
I don't know what the perfect thing
to say that would be helpful would be.
But I do know that saying
and doing nothing would be
the wrong thing to do.
This channel is about self-improvement
for the most part.
But I think that we should be using
the gains we make through self-improvement
to be improving the lives
of other people as well,
and to be calling out
and fighting against injustice when we see it.
And it's clear to me
that black people in my country
and around the world deal with systemic racism
and injustice on a daily basis.
In addition to many voices
that are trying to say
that injustice doesn't exist,
it absolutely does.
And I want to make some small effort
to use my platform to both amplify black voices
and to help,
which is why I'm making this donation.
And which is why instead of calling out
all the subscribed stuff
that I usually have on the screen here,
I just wanna point you
to a video by Emmanuel Acho
that I watched last week
called Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man.
This was an eyeopening look for me
at some of the different types of racism
that people have to deal with
on a daily basis.
And I highly recommend you go watch it
and also subscribe to his channel.
He's turned this into a series
and the other videos are just as good.
Beyond that, hopefully you enjoyed this video.
Hopefully you found it helpful in some way.
Again, I'm gonna have the template link
for this note taking system
in the description down below,
which should hopefully
save you a lot of effort
if you want to implement it for yourself.
And as always,
I will see you in my next video,
which is coming up in just a few days.