- So one of the most common questions I get
when it comes to task and project management
inside of Notion is,
when I create a new project inside my Notion workspace,
can I have a default list of tasks inside of that project?
And when people ask me this question,
they're not asking can I have a regular checklist
inside of the project.
Instead, what they're asking for is a linked database
full of tasks that are in their task manager template.
So, let me show you an example of what I mean here.
So, here we have our copy of Creator's Companion,
which is our template that we use to plan all of our content
across all of our channels.
It's also a template that I sell.
Link below if you are a content creator
and you're interested.
And I've got a list of projects that I'm working on.
So, I'm gonna go into this How To Manage Your To-Do List:
The Ultimate Guide video that I'm working on,
and when I come into this project,
one of the things we can see is a project tasks area
where I have some tasks that need to be done
for the project.
And what I would love is for every project that I create
to automatically have these tasks here,
since every video we create has the same tasks in them.
So, the question is, can we generate this whole project page
from a template and have these tasks automatically populate?
Well, the answer to that is unfortunately, no,
but there is a pretty easy workaround
that I use every single day inside of Creator's Companion
and I wanna show you how to use it inside of this video.
And I'm also gonna explain why it's impossible,
at least without using some crazy API thing,
to have these tasks just automatically populate.
So, first, let me just give you the workaround
because it's quite easy and it might be all you want.
I'm gonna go ahead and delete all of these tasks
out of here, and these are all tasks
that are associated with this project,
with How To Manage Your To-Do List: The Ultimate Guide.
In fact, I can show you, if I click into add B roll,
we will be able to see that the of the content is
How to Manage Your To-Do List: The Ultimate Guide.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and delete all these tasks,
so they are deleted out of my task manager template,
and I'm also gonna delete everything
in this page just to show you what actually
happens when I generate the project page
from the template inside of this database.
So, I'm gonna let all that content populate in,
and we are going to see a completely emptied task database.
This is what we have to work with,
and the way we get those default tasks
in this little task manager window here is,
I open up this little toggle,
which exists in a synced block,
and I simply select all of these tasks
that exist as checkbox blocks.
I hold the alt key, which would be option on MacOS,
and I simply drag into my task window.
I don't remove the sorting,
and now I have all those tasks in this task window,
and if I open them up I'm going to see
that they are associated with this task.
Now, I can do some quick little assigning.
I can add the due dates.
I know that a lot of these ones are going to be assigned
to me, so I can go ahead and add the property,
the assignee and I can make it me and so on.
So, it's a little bit of extra work
compared to having them automatically pop in,
which would be very nice, but it doesn't take that long.
So, why can't we just have these tasks pop in
in the first place?
Why can't we go over to say our database itself,
open up the template right here, and simply add a bunch
of tasks to the template version of this linked database
which is linking to our external ultimate tasks database?
Well, let me show you what happens when I do that.
I'm gonna add just a single task in here.
We'll call it sample task,
and we can see this sample task is associated
with the YouTube video template.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and leave the template,
and I'm gonna go back to that
How to Manage Your To-Do List project that
we were working on, which is empty once again
because I've deleted all the content.
So, watch what happens when I generate
from the template that we just edited
and just put a default task into.
I'm gonna generate all of this content,
and what we're going to see is, once again,
a blank linked database,
and the reason for this is when we generate from a template
in a Notion database, that can't tell Notion,
hey, go create other rows in another database.
Now, if we use some crazy API work around in the future
that could be possible, but within Notion itself,
you can't do that.
So, for that reason we need to leave this
linked database blank, and we have to use this trick
of simply dragging some blocks in,
which will automatically associate them with the project due
to our filter here, where content contains
How to Manage Your To-Do List: The Ultimate Guide.
So, I'm gonna show you how to do this in a simpler database,
just as a sort of proof of concept exercise.
We have this little template here called Simple Tasks.
I showed this off when I made my video on Notions'
grouping function and down here,
we have a project database.
So, if I click into one of these projects,
I can see that I have a linked database
for the task manager, and I can see tasks
that are related to the project itself.
And if I go to here, this little blue arrow,
and look at our project template,
we can see that we have a completely blank version
of the linked database because we are filtering for
where project contains project,
which is the template itself.
And if you know anything about self-referential filters
you will know that when we create an actual project
like sales page redesign, and we generate
from this template, this filter here is going to
update itself to say sales page redesign instead of project.
Very, very useful feature.
So, what I recommend doing is somewhere
in your Notion workspace, doesn't matter where,
create a page for yourself,
and let's call this page default tasks.
And within that default tasks page,
let's create a synced block.
Within there, I'm going to go ahead
and make some default tasks.
So, let's just say, write script, shoot A roll, edit B roll.
You can have whatever you want there.
From that point, all you need to do is copy
and sync your synced block
and put it in the database template.
Now, the reason that I'm creating this default tasks page
instead of housing the synced block directly
in the database template is this way
it's very easily accessible by you or by your team.
So, you can kind of have checklists kill two birds
with one stone because they can be
in your database templates,
and they can be used using the trick that I showed you,
but they could also be part of your central knowledge base,
or Wiki.
Going back to Creator's Companion over here.
Let's just show you ours.
We have underneath the projects that we're working on
a content knowledge base,
including a YouTube video tasks page that is easily
accessible and easily found by anybody on my team.
So, within that page we have our default video tasks
synced block, along with some other checklists
that are very useful and again, easy to find.
So, I'm gonna go back to our little default tasks page.
Once again, I wanna hit that copy and sync button
on the synced block,
and then I'm gonna come back down to my project area,
and I'm gonna find that project template.
If we edit that we can just go ahead
and paste our synced block,
and if we wanted to, we can go ahead
and add a default tasks toggle,
like we had in my Creator's Companion project template.
So, we'll just call that default tasks.
We can grab these and drop them inside the toggles,
so we can hide them by default,
and notice if I go back to the original space,
I see the changes I made.
That's how synced blocks work.
So, now our template is ready for primetime.
So, let's go back to our projects page,
and we'll go to sales page redesign and I can go ahead,
and just regenerate from our template, like so.
We are going to see some tasks already
because these were already associated
with sales page redesign.
I didn't delete the tasks themselves,
and they live in a different database.
Realize that they don't actually live on this page.
This is just a linked database view
showing us a filtered view of tasks
that live somewhere else,
and if I want to add in my default tasks, once again,
I can just go ahead and select them, hold alt,
or option if you're on a Mac, and drag 'em in like that.
So, that is how you do, quote unquote, default tasks inside
of a project database or project template inside of Notion,
and it's, as far as I know, the best way to do it
until Notion gives us the ability to
have those default tasks truly there.
And I'm not sure when
or if we're going to get that feature.
Hopefully, this helped.
I get this question a lot.
So, I really wanted to just make this video,
so I could link it to people when they ask me,
but hopefully it helped you as well
if you stumbled across it here on YouTube,
and if you are new to this channel, welcome.
This is Thomas Frank Explains, and here I explain Notion.
I've got tons of tutorials, explaining Notion
from the complete basics,
all the way to really advanced builds.
We just published a whole guide
on automated recurring tasks inside of Notion,
which is sort of the holy grail feature that
I've been wanting for a very long time,
and now that we have it Notion is truly
a top tier task manager, in my opinion.
And there are also tons of free templates
over on my website, thomasjfrank.com,
including ultimate tasks, which is a full fledged task
and project manager template for Notion that is free.
I've got a note taking template.
I've got lots of other cool free templates
you can check out.
And I mentioned it earlier,
but I will share it one more time,
if you're a content creator,
I've got a whole template called Creator's Companion,
which is an all in one template
for managing your entire production process
across the entire pipeline.
So, idea generation, project management,
throughout scripting and research,
and shooting and editing, and even archival.
If we come into my Thomas Frank channel here,
we can come down and we can see an archived list
of every video I've ever done,
along with the sponsor, the URL, and having this
kind of a library at your fingertips is very useful.
For one example, these little numbers right here
correspond to numbers on our server,
which means very easy to find old footage
if we ever need it.
So, you can find the whole template
over at thomasjfrank.com/cc.
Hopefully, enjoy it if you are a content creator.
If not, thank you for watching this video.
If you haven't subscribed yet, get subscribed.
Follow me on Twitter @tomfrankly.
It's actually the best place to ask me Notion questions.
I check Twitter more frequently than anything else,
but you can also put questions
in the comment section down below.
Thanks again for watching and I'll see ya in the next one.
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