recurring tasks inbox views subtasks
kanban views
project views i'm so so tired
[Music]
hey welcome to the thomas prank explains
video so today we are tackling what is
for many people
the white whale when it comes to notion
that is
task management it's been right on the
homepage ever since notion launched
replaces asana replaces trello but for a
lot of people they have found it kind of
difficult to set notion up in a way
that actually lets them manage their
tasks and ditch these other apps
so today i'm going to show you exactly
how to do that using a brand new
template that i just launched called
ultimate tasks you can find that over at
thomasjfrank.com
templates or the link to the exact
template is going to be down in the
description below you can just click it
and duplicate it and even follow along
with it while you watch this video
but i'm going to use this template to
essentially teach you how you can manage
your tasks both singular tasks
recurring tasks subtasks big projects
all kinds of different tasks work inside
of this template so let's just dive
right into it and show you what i got
going on
so this is the sort of main dashboard
here for ultimate tasks and
right away you're going to see links to
many of the views that you would often
see in another task management app such
as your inbox your today view your next
seven days view i've also got a priority
view here
which allows you to see things in a
kanban view and sort them by priority
and there's all tasks linked right here
which is the master database that runs
the entire system is essentially the
brain here every single task ends up
here
but this is probably not the view you're
going to want to use because it's sort
of just a dumping ground
for everything so let's go back to the
dashboard in addition to those links
we've also got
an area for projects and this was really
important to me i wanted a place where i
could manage my daily tasks my personal
tasks but also
manage big projects in sort of a kanban
view where i could have
all kinds of things going on at once in
fact i just recently redesigned my
personal website which was a pretty big
project
and i used this template to organize the
entire thing
and lastly in the dashboard we have
something called daily tasks if you
watched any of my old videos about my
productivity systems you know that i
like to plan out my day on a piece of
scrap paper or on a whiteboard
and essentially this replicates that
right inside of notion and this daily
tasks board is actually within
pretty much every view that you're gonna
see except for the project view so if i
go to inbox here
this is sort of you know the inbox view
that you expect in todoist or
microsoft to do or anything else or you
can just dump tasks before they're
sorted
and to the side just as with the today
view in the next seven days view
we have this daily tasks area so if you
want you could create
a scratch pad where you essentially plan
out your day or
just dump a few tasks that you know are
gonna get done really soon and that
don't need to be put into the actual
overall system
that's probably the simplest part of the
system so let's get into some of the
actual
views so here we have the inbox and
you're gonna see a few different
interesting columns on this table here
first we have a checkbox called inbox
any task here in the inbox that has this
box checked is going to remain in the
inbox until you uncheck it so if i go
ahead and uncheck a task right here it's
going to go away
as long as it also has a due date
essentially logic here is to allow you
to add new tasks to your inbox
then add their due date to add their
project add their priority
whatever it is you want to do but keep
them in the inbox while you're doing
that
until you want to get them out of the
inbox so let's just create a sample task
right here called
a shoot ultimate tasks video which i'm
doing right now so i'm going to get that
due date of today
and then if i wanted to i could give it
a recur interval and there's some new
logic in here that actually improves on
the recurring tasks template i made in a
previous video
if i give it a recurring interval it is
automatically going to be given the type
of recurring and we'll see that next due
date now the way that i handle recurring
tasks in notion is to set their due date
to the next due date so essentially this
next due column
is a guide of sorts so if we go ahead
and set that to november 2nd
then the next due date is going to
update accordingly whereas for one-time
tasks we actually just hit
the done button and they disappear this
is a bit of a workaround to deal with
some emotions limitations and if you're
curious about how it actually works i
have a whole video about recurring tasks
in notion i'll have that link in the
description down below
but next we have the state column here
which gives you some quick at a glance
information about a task if it's red
it's overdue if it's green it is due
today and if it is blue it is planned
for the future
you're also going to see these little
arrow markers here sometimes these
indicate that this task is indeed
a subtask of another task so if i go
into this task right here by clicking
open
the first property we see here is parent
task and i can
click on to this and go into it to
reveal that within this task we have our
own little subtasks table so one quick
thing i forgot to mention when i was
filming earlier is that you can create
subtasks within any task using a
template
so if we go to this shoot ultimate video
right here we can
spawn from a template called task with
subtasks or
we can go over here to new and click
task with subtasks
to get ourselves a task that has a
little database inside of it any
task created in this sub database is
going to be a subtask
of this parent task so this is
essentially the best way that i could
think of to achieve subtasks inside a
notion
and then from any view the little arrow
icon in the state column will let you
see at a glance that it is indeed a
subtask and i mean any view you've got
the inbox view here and we've got
several different
views that you can switch to so list
view is actually perfect
for mobile phones because the list view
actually is responsive
unlike the table view and here you can
see that state information you can see
the inbox check box the due date
and the done check box for when you're
done we've also got
a board view that goes with your typical
kanban states to do
doing done which means that not only do
you have typical table based task
management you also have trello style
kanban management here
which is going to be very useful for
projects later on
and also if you grab a task in the
kanban view and you drag it over to done
you are going to see it here in the
kanban view because some people want to
see which cards are done
but in any other view such as the table
view that is now going to be gone
because due to our filter criteria here
which essentially runs the entire system
the kanban state of done is treated
exactly like
the done checkbox in terms of what tasks
are hidden from what
views so that is a brief look at the
inbox view here if we go over to the
sidebar
this was really important to me i wanted
to design a system that allowed me to
get to my inbox
my today view my next week view my
priority view
all from the sidebar essentially
replicates the same functionality from
todoist which i used to use
and i've now switched over from so if we
go over to another view such as today
we get something that looks basically
like the inbox and if we switch over to
the table view
you're gonna see it looks pretty much
like it except the filter is changed so
now we only see tasks that are due
today or before today which means you're
only going to see
the red or the green circles and if you
add a task here
which we'll just call task due today
it's
automatically going to have a due date
of today of course we can also go
through and add other information such
as our project
a recurring of if we want to a parent
task anything you want
and like i said earlier from any view
today next seven days whatever it is
you have your daily tasks boxed so if
you wanted to create a new one for
10 26 20 which would be a good scratch
pad for today
then we could look at what we've got
going on today view and plan out our day
along with anything else that might come
up so today i know i had a call with the
movers i had to film this video i've got
some tweaks on my website i can easily
plan that out here in the today view
now to make sure these daily task notes
don't gunk up your entire system there
is an
archive checkbox which if clicked will
hide the note
from basically every view so i'm not
going to hide this one because this is
today
but i do want to go and hide yesterday's
which i'm done with so we'll just click
that
and then from any view here it is going
to be completely gone so from there
let's look at the next seven days view
this is identical to the today view
except the filter criteria is a little
bit different instead of
filtering for tasks on or before uh
today
they are now due on or before a week
from now which means you're not going to
see everything that was in the today
view but also in these blue
rows you're gonna see anything due after
today up to and including seven days
from now
so from there let's go into some more
interesting views
first we have this priority view which
looks a little bit different from all
the other ones i wanted to build kanban
that trello style card system
into this so people who like to use that
can use that and people who like to use
the table view can use table view
so here in priority view every task when
created is going to automatically get
the medium priority level
this is done through a filter trick that
i use all the time in my notion
workspace
essentially if you come in here to your
filters and you choose a property like
kanban view state or priority and you
filter the view by
is not empty then whenever you create a
new card and let's go ahead and do it
somewhere else because here we're doing
it inside this board so it would
automatically get medium anyway let's do
it over in the today view so if we
create another task
just call it another task due today
and then if we go into that task we're
going to see that it automatically has
the
medium priority set and it's because due
to the filter criteria notion is going
to force this row to take on
one of those priorities and the one
that's going to be chosen is
the top listed one so if you wanted
every new task to be listed as low
instead
you just drag low to the top i want
every task to come as medium
instead of low so that's the order i
want here and if we go back to our
priority view
notice that the order of the kanban
boards does not have to match the order
of the items in the select property i
can drag this around all i want it's not
going to affect things
everything is still going to come in as
a medium priority task which means we
can easily order it by high
medium and low so if you're a priority
person this is going to be the view for
you
so from there let's move into probably
the most complex part of the system but
also i think
the most powerful if we go back to the
ultimate tasks dashboard we have
a separate database called projects so
this is its own database and if you
create it we've actually got a template
here
called a project template you're going
to get something that looks kind of like
this this is sort of a demo project i've
got in here so you can sort of look at
how things are going on
but this has a linked database in it and
of course we are linking to
you guessed it our all tasks database
where everything
lives and while we're here if you look
at this project column you're going to
see
some of these tasks have certain
projects associated with them
in this project column we achieve that
by what's called
a relation we relate one database to
another database in this case
all tasks is related to if i go back
with
command bracket our projects database
and so relating to this specific row
which is a project our website redesign
which means that any new task created in
this
board like debug home page
is going to automatically be associated
with this project
i can go ahead and give it a due date if
i want to and if you really wanted to
you could go ahead and give the filters
here
due date criteria so it would force
different due dates personally that
doesn't really work for my needs but of
course you can always add things or
subtract things
that's the beauty of notion and within
this
project view here we have our standard
table view which is pretty useful
but when i manage big projects i love to
use trello style kanban views so
we can switch to two different kanban
views one of which is our classic state
view which is our to do
doing and done lists but for really big
projects i kind of like to use kanban in
a different way
i've got another view called boardview
tag
and here i've got different tags for
different categories of work
so for a website redesign i've got
design tasks i've got copy that needs to
be written for different pages
i've got speed tasks i've got security
tasks so
for this project i would just create new
tasks under these tags
so i can sort of see the entire project
at a glance but
of course every single one here that has
a due date is also going to show up in
my today view so i've got
one place to plan my project and see it
all from bird's eye view
and other places to see what needs to
happen in a given day
in that task but also across my entire
system so let me just demonstrate really
quickly how you would create a new
project we come back to the ultimate
tasks dashboard here and look at the
projects database if we click
new we're going to add a new blank row
and if we click right
here we can generate a new template
based on the templates we have set up so
if i click this it's going to
auto fill with all the different stuff
we set up in the template so i will call
this
uh house move the whole project move
into a new house very very soon i'm
going to want to have everything related
to that
in one project so now if i create
another task here
like pack books and i make that do
today why not then it's going to be here
but it's also going to be
in my today view pack books and we can
see it's associated with the house move
now personally i don't want to have a
frog icon on all my projects so one
thing
i'm probably going to do to customize
this project is change it's icon
let's just go with a house boom and now
if we come back to today
it is visually distinct from our website
redesign project
so i know there's a lot going on in this
template if you have questions about it
feel free to ask them in the comments
down below and like i said earlier
you're gonna find this template number
one
linked in the description where you can
get to the landing page forwards or you
can find all my notion templates over at
thomasjfrank.com
templates and on the template landing
page there is a little email sign up if
you want to get on my notion tips email
list where you're going to get notified
about
new templates i create and new content
that i create teaching notion
uh you can sign up right there on any of
those pages or you can just click the no
thanks button and go
right to the template without signing up
for your email either one is cool with
me
again ask questions uh both about this
but really anything else this channel
right now
is kind of focused on notions so i wanna
hear your questions i wanna hear what
you wanna know about
and uh let me know what you think of
this template let me know if there's
anything you would do
to improve it and if you're curious last
but not least i am building a course for
people who want to use notion as their
all-in-one productivity system
specifically for creating content
running businesses
and running teams this will be useful
for both solepreneurs who have a lot
going on
but also people who have teams and
people working under them
and in that course you're gonna see an
even more advanced version of this
template that's also hooked into a
company wiki with standard operating
procedures that you can use to generate
checklists
and a whole content library and lots of
other cool stuff so i'll have a link to
sign up for the interest list for that
course
it's not ready yet but i am building it
as we speak and it's going to be ready
at least in a beta form
pretty soon so if you're interested you
can sign up for notifications on that
and that's all i got for you today so i
have a couple of other videos on the
screen that you can check out
make sure you're subscribed to this
channel if you aren't already and
as always thanks for watching i'll see
you in the next video
oh