Derek FeatherstoneEverything is a work in progress

Day 1 of Notion

Derek Featherstone / Published:

After much consideration (like… almost 20 or 30 minutes) I decided to give Notion a whirl. I’ve had an Evernote subscription in the past and I liked it, but it didn’t stick. I wasn’t excited about it, and things would go in there, never to be seen again. It felt like there wasn’t much structure — admittedly, I might have been able to put structure in there, but I didn’t put much time into it.

Now, I’m jumping in with Notion. I did some reading. I watched some videos.

I found (again) Marie Poulin.

I got inspired, and I got to work.

Here’s where I’m at after my first day:

  1. I have created a mess of things in the sidebar with very little cohesive overall organization. I expect this will get better as I figure out what Notion can do.
  2. I’ve got about 70 items in the trash, basically because of experimentation — I don’t know what I’m doing, so… I try things and then chuck them out as I learn. I suspect that’s a decent sign or metric of progress: how many things are in the trash because I tried something that didn’t work but helped me understand things better.

  3. I created a daily page template that kind of reflects the things I liked in the Best Self Journal:

    1. A place for gratitude, morning and evening.
    2. A reminder of my big picture goals and what I’m envisioning for me and my family.
    3. A place for all my daily tasks & schedule.
    4. A place to reflect on the day’s wins and opportunities for improvement.
    5. Some simple habit tracking

And… I did some of this using customized templates.

Things I learned to do:

  • Customize templates
  • Create different views
  • Create tags as part of a multi-select property
  • Use the Web Clipper (I think this will get HEAVY use)

Things I want to learn:

  • Be more databasey so that there are strong relationships in the structures I put together
  • Some decent organizational tactics
  • Keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts. Wow, do I hope this thing has good keyboard shortcuts. Using the trackpad slows me down a LOT when it comes to doing things.
  • If there’s a good way to automate some of the workflows with some default values etc. That’ll be useful based on what I see so far.

That’s it! Boring, I know. But I didn’t write this for you… I wrote it for me 🙂