Better Project Management with Task Status in Notion

I. Introduction

• Explanation of purpose of this tutorial
• Mention of previous tutorial on task database and daily action zone

II. Modification to task database

• Addition of status field
• Explanation of different statuses (active, waiting, paused, next up, future)

III. Using status field in daily action zone

• How the status field impacts interactions with task database and daily action zone
• Examples of using the status field in daily action zone

IV. Using status field in project database

• Setting tasks in project database as next up or future, even if they are not active yet
• Referencing tasks from project database in daily action zone

V. Filtering tasks in daily action zone using status field

• How to use the status field to filter tasks in daily action zone

VI. Conclusion

• Recap of modifications to task database and how to use the status field
• Mention of future tutorials in this series.

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Hi everyone, welcome back to our ongoing series on how to build a life operating system in Notion. Today is going to be a little bit different. It's going to be an update where I'm going to share with you a modification to my task database that I've made. I wanted to get this video established in the series here now, because when we move on to the project database, this change will have an important ramification. So, I've made this modification to help manage projects from the project database view.

Previously, we did a video on the tasks database and also the daily action zone, where I primarily interact with the task database. Today, I'm going to introduce the change I've made that will have a minor tweak in terms of how I interact with the task database directly and the daily action zone, but it will have a more significant impact when looking at projects from the project database point of view.

So, diving in, this is just a quick modification to the system going forward. This will be how the system works fundamentally. What we're adding here is a status field to tasks in the tasks database. Ok, so this is the command center dashboard that starts everything. We'll dive into the action zone, which is where we look at daily activities and what we're doing. Our tower, previously we did an entire video on this, so if you're coming into the series, I recommend you jump back to that video prior to this one. And we open up the today view and we see what we saw before. However, there's a new field, the status field.

Then, jumping even further, just clicking through the calendar, we see the actual action items database. We looked at this in a whole video previously, so again, if you're new to this, go back to that video to start. This is a follow up to that video. We have a new field called status here. What the status does is let us choose whether we want that task to be active, waiting, meaning waiting on someone else to complete something before we can move forward on it, so that waiting tag is replacing the waiting checkbox I used to have. We could have the checkbox instead of this, but this lets us consolidate into one field instead of having two fields.

So, waiting designates that the ball is in someone else's court on a particular task that we can't move forward until they complete their part, and we're just waiting for their completion. And then we'll pick it back up and move back to active once they've finished their part. Paused means we've started it, but for whatever reason we need to pause it. It might just be that you got too much going on, you had some extra things pile up that you didn't expect, so you need to pause something that you had previously already started. Next up means we haven't started it and it's the next thing in the queue to get into. And future is the queue beyond next up. So, really, next up and future are both in the queue, in the future. This designation between the two just lets us sort a little bit and identify the ones that are closest among all the future items to coming online. But if we started it and then stopped it, then it's paused. So, that's a little bit different than never having started it. The vast majority of things in here are active.

Now, we have a few things I'm waiting on other people or waiting to hear back from someone, so they're in waiting mode. And I'll show you how that shows up in the daily action zone in a moment.

I'm working with the project view in the project database. I want to set up some tasks, but I don't want them to be fully fledged and active yet. These tasks also don't necessarily follow one another in a sequential order, so they aren't dependent tasks. When I set up a project, I like to think about all the tasks that the project might involve and list everything I can think of at the outset. I can then designate them as next up or future, even though they aren't active yet. This helps reduce the number of tasks that I have to manage with due dates.

I use due dates for the day that I plan to do the item. This minimizes an overabundance of due date management and only has tasks with due dates for the next week or two. I'm actively engaged in prioritizing tasks on a day to day basis, so this gives us a little more flexibility to add more tasks without flooding the system.

This view is filtered by a private check box that is not checked, so I have a lot more items in the database. The database has active and various status items, but since some of them are private, I'm only showing the ones that are not private during these public demonstrations.

In the action zone, where I primarily interact with the tasks database, I've got a new status field. Everything that I'm interacting with is set to active, so the filter is only showing items with a status of active. This means that items with a status of waiting, pause, next up, or future are not shown.

When I look at tasks for tomorrow, the filter only shows items with a status of active. The same is true for when I look at the upcoming week. If everything is filtered for only active tasks, why do I even display inactive tasks in the list? This is so I can change the active status if needed. If I need to hand a task off to someone else, I can switch the status to waiting and it will disappear from this view and show up in the waiting on view.

The waiting on view is filtered by the status setting of waiting, rather than a checkbox. It works the same way as the other views. The dependent tasks view is filtered entirely by whether there is anything in the following fields. If a task is set up as a dependent task and is following another task, it will show up in this view regardless of its status.

I consider a dependent task to be active if it is set up as a dependent task and is following another task. Once the other task is completed, this task moves into the online position and is active. It is then queued up and ready to go and follows the normal protocol of our system. It doesn't need to be put on any special designation. If you want to bring clarity to the fact that it is a dependent task, you can have another tag called dependent and designate it as such.

Various activities and tasks to fulfill that project, and you'll be prioritizing, sorting, and bringing online as active tasks from that view. But also from your weekly review, you'll consider this just to make sure nothing falls through the cracks, which is one of the reasons the weekly review is so important.

In this non active review, we are filtering that the status is not active, so it's the reverse of all the other views. And that the status is not waiting because if it's waiting, we've got a separate view to keep an eye on and that's also checked during the weekly review. So everything but active and waiting are shown here and importantly, they are sorted first by status and second by project. In most cases, when it's queued up to come in later, it's because it's part of a project and you have other tasks from that project that are active. These aren't really going to come online until later in the project in most cases. In my usage, there is a project assigned when it has a non active status, but that doesn't have to be the case. But I sort them by what's coming up next: pause, this, first, next up is next, and then further down the line future is neck is after that. And I just have them nice and organized here and they're associated with these various projects. If you want to go through and look at them in the project view, it's very easy. Just open that project view. This is the demo project. We're going to do a whole video on this very soon. And in here, we can see all the action items in that project. Let's open it up. All the action items in that project sorted and prioritized by status. And those that are active have due dates. Those that are not active don't have due dates. There's no need, they're not active. Once they come online as an action item, then they get a due date. Everything that's active either has a due date or is dependent on another active item with a due date. So going back, that's pretty much all there is to it and there you have it. That's the new field in the tasks database. I've been doing this for a long time with clients for business implementations. So this has been a standard part of my company's protocol for a while. I hope this helps clarify how the status field works in this system.

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