Notion is my second brain. I used to think that it was my calendar but I’ve learned that a calendar isn’t a great way to organize and group task and keep track of everything. My calendar is for appointments, time blocking, meetings. Everything else lives in Notion.
The first time I tried Notion I was totally overwhelmed. I hat no idea how it worked and I was trying to use it as a notes and to do list page but there was no organization. It didn’t track when things were due or scheduled and my notes were all over the place and not organized by topic. Fast forward a few years and I have a task database, I have a project data base, I have notes organized by topic, I have links when a task and note relate to the same topic! It’s a glorious thing!
But let’s back up:
I was the girl in high school that had all her homework written down in the planner they gave you at the start of school and I lived for checking it off when it was done. This continued into college and I added in to-do lists for more person things as life got bigger.
But then I graduated and didn’t know what to do with my planner anymore. I didn’t have homework and writing out a todo list and then re-writing it took forever as the days changes. But still loved lists and wanted to use them to organize my life. Enter excel, which for a while was my new bff as a list lover and an accountant. At least now I could copy and paste my lists. But I still hadn’t found a great way to organize my lists let alone have it help me focus on eating the frog or tracking due dates.
Around this time I got my first smart phone and I downloaded app after app trying to find the one that clicked for my brain as a to do list. But I could never settle on one because they couldn’t do it all. And things would get lost in the busyness. I spent so much time moving my to do list it’s not even funny.
I soon figured out it was going to take more than just a to do list app so I went looking for the calendar apps with to do lists…. But I still couldn’t make them fit my needs.
Looking back I was overcomplicating things and trying to do too much, but I was so worried about forgetting to do something important that I placed so much emphasis on the lists rather than on figuring out how to simply and clear out the years off clutter that I continued to move between apps.
One day I came across a notion template that just made things click. Yes what is on my list is important, but so it how that to do is going to help me work towards my goals. And how much time the to do is going to take and what frame of mind I need to be in.
Enter all my notion databases that allow me to link all these things together!
Mind like water- your brain is not the place to store things. So you need to trust your tools to place the right information in front of you at the right time. Until i figure out my notion databases I didn’t trust my tools to do that.