Getting Things Done in Notion: Creating a Task Management in Notion

I. Introduction

• Introduce the video topic of Tasks & Projects Management in a Notion "Second Brain"
• Mention The Fundamentals of Getting Things Done by David Allen as a foundation for this system

II. Setting up Tasks & Projects in Notion

• Discuss the process of setting up tasks & projects in Notion, including the use of Project Pages and an automated weekly review

III. Part 1: Project Pages & My Automated Weekly Review

• Explain how the Project Pages function within the system, including the purpose and benefits
• Walk through the process of setting up an automated weekly review

IV. Part 2: Step by Step Guide to Tasks in My Notion System: Capture

• Explain the step-by-step process for capturing tasks in the Notion system
• Cover how to zero the task inbox
• Talk about tracking tasks: do dates, due dates & deadlines

V. Planning Your Day

• Discuss how to plan your day effectively using this Notion system

VI. Notion Recurring Tasks and the API

• Briefly cover how recurring tasks work in Notion and how the API can be used to automate the task process

VII. Step 4: Actioning Tasks Through the Day

• Explain how to effectively action tasks throughout the day

VIII. Time Management: Notion Synced Databases & Google Calendar

• Describe how Notion Synced databases and Google Calendar can be used in conjunction with this Notion system to manage time effectively.

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Hi everyone, it's Simon. Welcome or welcome back to better creating today. Have you ever made a to-do list and then felt more overwhelmed by it building up than it is actually helping you? Well, it's all good. You're not alone. I'm here to help us try and manage our tasks in a simpler and stress-free way using the power of a notion second brain.

A lot of you have been asking for this one. I will break down the workflow, the automated workflow behind the tasks and project section of my complete notion system. I'll show you how to program and use an automated a weekly review and most importantly, break down the step-by-step process I use each day for managing all of my to-do lists and recurring tasks too.

First, we have to hold this key concept that makes everything work. We build a system. It's what David Allen or Thiago Forte call a second brain. It's a place that can hold everything that was on your mind so that you don't have to hold it anymore. Most importantly, you make a system, a second brain, that you can trust to resurface the right information and tasks or things to you at the right time in the right place. So then you can just relax and focus on getting things done.

All this means that you have more time to be what athletes often call in the zone. If it works and it is easy to use, you will be able to just focus on doing the things or relaxing. So, to make this work, you need to develop a couple of simple habits, processes, and systems. So I do the following in notion: I input tasks and information into the system, I review and use that system and that information to get things done, and finally, I occasionally maintain the system so it continues to work for me.

So let's say you're starting completely fresh with building a system like this or you've just downloaded my template or you've started to build your own. I suggest that you take the time first off to list absolutely everything that's on your mind at the moment across your life. And then, from there, with all of those tasks and concerns that you have, you're able to divide those into areas. What Alan calls projects.

So setting up your tasks and projects effectively. My system works simply with a task database where I input tasks, a project database that is set up as a relation to that task database. Any individual tasks get checked off or they are allocated to a project from the inbox. I use an automated weekly review process for the projects so I can keep track of them. So if it was a bucket list, it might be every three months but if it's a regular project, you might want to check it every three days.

Keeping a habit of doing a weekly review and looking over the projects here is absolutely key to making a system like this work. So here's how the weekly review works really simply. First of all, I'm going to click into projects and let's just create ourselves a new project. So if I go into here, I would use the new project template and let's just call it example project. You'll see that it generates all of this within it and these are filtered views of the tasks within that project and the rest of my system so knowledge and notes, journal entries, all that you might be relating to the project. And the way that works is really simple. If we look at the filter, it's where the related project contains this page. This allows me to much more effectively manage tasks and all the things related to a project in one place.

A project I want to set the review frequency that I want to do in days so let's say I wanted to review this every seven days and then you set the last review date. I'm going to set my last review date as an example as a week ago on the 17th so it would be due today.

And there's a formula here which essentially adds a date which is based on the review frequency by the last review date in days. And there you see it, it's turned up seven days later. That's all you do when you set a project up, you set the review frequency and you set the day you want that to start from.

Also, within my project view, I have this favorites button which means that it will turn up on the home screen if you want to see it. So we'll leave that checked. If we then go back to my dashboard, you'll now see that my project is there, so it can be looked at and I have these reports saying how many live tasks there are for the project. Pretty cool, but down here is the weekly review. There is the example project. This is simply filtered by one rule where the review overdue tick box which is part of the formula is checked.

If you want to know how to build all of this, it's all in an older video, I'll link it in the description below of building this entire system yourself. If you want more details on the formulas to do a weekly review, I would keep an eye on this tab. In fact, let's open this up within my kind of mobile view just so I can look at it. Keeps it nice and clean. It's the same thing all within a sync block.

I would just click on the project, open it up, I would review everything, move any tasks around, or add any tasks that I want to add as I did it. And when it's complete, I just click the last review date to the day that we're on and you'll see that it disappears from the list. If I do the same with this one, you could just do it here. So, click on this, click today's date, and we know we're up to date. That is how an automated weekly review works. I gotta tell you, it's amazing.

So let's look at a typical daily workflow using this system. Step one is capture. You can input all the tasks that are on your mind into the inbox using this filtered capture button. It's filtered where name is empty, so essentially as soon as you write something in, the view is kept clear as a button. So really simply through the day I would click on this, put it in, let's say it's a film video demo, click off it, and it's gone. Nice and clean and I just keep putting things in like that. You can do this on a daily basis as tasks and ideas come up through the day.

The key is to keep it simple, and we'll worry about processing them later on. It's all about minimizing the time and friction it takes to just get something off your brain and into that second brain. Now I might want on the day just to say, oh I need to remember to do that tomorrow, and update it like that.

When we go to the task inbox, you'll see they're both in there. They can all be then found later on in a second filtered view of the task database as an inbox. It's filtered where done is not checked and where it is not added to a project.

For example, I could click "done" and it disappears if I just want to tick it off. Another way to get rid of it is to relate it to a project. I would just go into here, search for what it was, let's say that one is YouTube. I find my YouTube project and click it, and it has disappeared. Look at that. I use the same method for ideas, knowledge journaling, creative notes, contacts, and all those other dashboards and databases that are part of my wider notion template.

Work with essentially the same concept in the evening. I get to inbox zero by filling in the columns within my task inbox for all of the tasks that I've collected over the day. Now, I use David Allen's principles of either doing it, delegating it, or deferring it. So, if it will take you one or two minutes, just do it because that's probably going to take the same time as it would to do the other two things. If it's more than that, you could either delegate it to someone else or you might defer it and deferring it is simply setting a date or setting a project is linked to so that you know you'll find it again within the system.

I've got a set of different columns in my task database that have functions to help me organize how I look after things. The first one is this context pp or t that basically means a tag that gives it a context of a person, a place or a thing. It allows me to batch task tasks together more efficiently when I come to do them. So it could be that I need to get it done on my computer. I've also got for example for me, a lighting and sound setup tag, meaning that I'm going to need that when I do the filming of the video demo. You get the idea. It might be a person, I also have a low energy and high energy tag. I've really loved using these for quite a long time because low energy, you just mean you know you can search by that just get things done when you just need to tick things off. High energy will mean that I can block my time better. It's really good for batch tasking this kind of setup because it means that I can plan a focused period of time to get that work done.

Due dates, no due date, due dates, deadlines, weekly reviews, there are so many ways to track tasks. So I've started using this, the due date. This is essentially, if I give this a date, it will filter it into the system, uh, into the action section down here so that we see it on the daily to-do list when it needs to get done. A due date suggests that it's just the day you intend to do it rather than when it's absolutely due because let's face it, we never get everything done, and there always are going to be things that you move down the line. This I think just allows for that natural process. It's going to happen.

Now some of you knowledgeable notion folk or might recognize that this is something that August Bradley has been doing and using for a long time and I literally just found this out in the last couple of months and realized wow there are so many overlaps in how we both organize our systems and it just goes to show that solid systems thinking is reasonably universal. We're clearly both influenced by similar practices people like Thiago Forte, people like David Allen, things like the power system hey due dates apparently loads of people use them now.

Separate to my due date, I also have a hard deadline column. If I set a deadline for it, it will turn up in the deadline and priorities section over here which is filtered simply by two rules: when again it's not done but also the deadline is within the next month. So, it means that I can look at anything that's coming up for the month.

Thanks to this amazing new database function that Nation recently released, I can also have tabs for the database views to easily access different versions of that view. It's pretty cool and I've also got a really simple checkbox for just those few things that you want to bring up to the top of your list and keep on your page for a few days as a priority. I can relate it to my content list if I want to. So, anything that I'm working on in the content creation dashboard.

Finally, the projects column, this view is filtered to show only tasks that aren't related to a project. So, by relating them to a project, I clear them from my inbox and that's it. After I've zeroed my inbox, I'll organize the next day. I can use this table view that is grouped by due date which is really good for looking at the day and putting priorities in this board view of the week if I want to move things around or this calendar view of the month. Each is a different field of view of exactly the same database.

I also set a daily priority tag. This is used to sort tasks for that specific day's to-do list and it just puts everything in order. My favorite one in there is the one thing tag, that is the one thing I want to get done in the day. If nothing else happens, I know I've achieved a meaningful output. I might also choose to move tasks I didn't complete and reorganize the week using this board view. I'll be releasing a full video on how to build this weekly board view for tasks in Notion, so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it.

Okay, so what about recurring tasks? Well, there are many ways to do this in Notion. I've made a couple of videos about it but with all the new API possibilities, we will see even better solutions I think in the coming months. I'm really excited to try this new API workflow on Pipedream that can automatically uncheck a done box, update the due date to the next week or month based on a select function tag, so for example whether it's weekly, monthly etc. That sounds amazing. So, thanks Daniel who follows the channel for sharing that suggestion with me. I'll link it in the description if you want to check it out and I may make a video very soon.

Currently, in my template I'm using this template button. You simply create the tasks in the database in the task database, then drop them into the template button field, meaning that they will retain all of the right formatting from the database. Then each month, I can just click the button generate all the tasks, drop them into the calendar at the right place and it's been a really great work around. But as I say, I have a feeling the API is going to change this space forever. So, watch this space.

So step four is to work through the day. I use this action section and I just tick things off. It should be pretty simple. I can tick off tasks and I do them and they disappear based on a filter that says only show tasks where they are unchecked. It doesn't mean that they are deleted forever however, they're just hidden.

I have created a task bin in Notion which is filtered by checked tasks. In this task bin, I am able to view all the deleted tasks and properly delete them from Notion, if I want to. I manage my calendar and the kind of time blocking element of running my day using Google Calendar still. I view it using this Indify widget which just means it's all in one workspace, but I edit it in Google Calendar just using a link. I think it's the best approach at the moment.

Now, I am not using automation to send my calendar elements into Notion although I have shared videos on how to do this. I think it's too complicated at the moment and the reason I am not doing it yet is that Notion has just announced a simple full Google Calendar sync integration at their Block by Block conference this year. It's coming later in the year, we think it'll be absolutely amazing and they're calling it synced databases, so watch this space for news.

A productivity system is not a one size fits all thing. You've got to embrace the quirks and approaches that work for you. And that is why I love Notion for its endless customization options and that you can take other people's templates and make them your own. So, you should watch this video next for more Notion productivity solutions from me or try this for some great ways to simplify and streamline your workspace.

Let me know in the comments below what you make of it.

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