Agree. I don’t know how that works from a RUclips metric but I would imagine it’s just immature individuals doing thumbs down. They have a right to be dumb.
Timestamps Index 0:00 Intro 3:04 Action Zone Overview 5:32 Today in Action 19:13 Tomorrow & Upcoming Week 19:56 Waiting-On 23:39 Organizing What's to Come 28:13 Rolling Up to Clients Projects & Goals
**Video Summary** 0:00 Intro This video covers the daily action zone dashboard which is a particularly important part of the system. This is the dashboard August spends more time in than any other, opens most frequently, starts and ends his day with, etc. This is where the day-to-day, minute-to-minute actions are taken to move you towards your goals. The last 2 videos covered daily tracking, and prior to that was the master task database, and these all roll up into this dashboard. These are the most critical elements at the top of the page that drive the daily behaviors. To give context, ensure you have seen the video covering the birds-eye view of the system and the PPV structure. (a later video will cover this in more detail) The last 2 videos, this one, and the next few all fall under the 'pipelines' category. These are the action areas, where behaviors, tasks, and projects all move forward incrementally. Separate other parts of the Notion system are organized into pillars; these are the structures that hold your life and your aspirations up. Then there are the Vaults which are about storage and information management, resources that support the pipelines, and the pillars. After each section has been covered there will be an overview of the PPV system in more detail, with a deep dive into how Notion explicitly executes each category. Today we are bringing Tasks and Daily tracking into a dashboard and linking that to the structure above. The following videos will begin to cover projects and various other types of action pipelines. After that, we will move into pillars and various knowledge management vaults.
3:04 Action Zone Overview 3:13 [image] Everything at the top of the page is in collapsable toggles. A lot of thought was put into what goes at the top level without any scrolling down the page. These toggles organize what matters most day-to-day, minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour. Today - Action items is what's open most of the day Tomorrow and upcoming week have similar views Waiting on are tasks that are dependent on somebody else or other tasks. 5:00 [image] The Not-To-Do list is a quick but important list to define.
5:32 Today in Action 5:40 [image] Today - Action Items The top has an embedded view of the Action Items database Filtered to show anything on or before Today and Is Not done and Waiting on Is Not done and Owner is me. 6:15 [image]. Sorted by priority Every action item has a Do-Date or is dependent on another task. Addressing a task might mean rescheduling it, but generally the night before he will lay out what will be done the next day. Anything that doesn't fit into the day will be rescheduled to a different day. The intention is that this is an achievable priority list that let's you know what to do as you sit down. There is no slack time figuring it out. Multiple items never have the same priority unless they are being batched together. The database embed also has a 'completed today' view that enables review of what has been checked off. It's easy to feel like you got nothing done, but if you take a glance at this view it can feel quite good. There is a 'next in line' property to indicate whether a task is dependent or not, you can then open it, activate it with a do date and check off the current task as done. There is a 'Production pipeline' property that links tasks to their workspaces. If you want to see how each item links up with the pyramid above this level in terms of life pillars and goals, it's covered a little bit in the tasks database video and a lot more in the pillars-pipeline pyramid video. This lays everything out in a very actionable way.
13:55 The previous video covered the Daily tracking dashboard, now in Daily Action Zone, there is one small slice of the daily tracking database. Filtered by date is today. It starts only with habit tracking after all the initial data has been entered in the morning. Some habits which will be covered in a later video include (plan to do these sequentially): Meditation Bullet planner Mindset Visualization Workout Schedule Tomorrow This includes scrolling down to the calendar view to see all the tasks that need to be done. After scheduling there is a rating for diet over the day. Percentage on schedule. Percentage output relative to intended output. Improvements 19:13 Tomorrow & Upcoming Week 19:30 the other toggles for 'tomorrow' and 'upcoming week' are the same with slightly different Filters. 19:56 Waiting-On Items checked as waiting on are filtered into this view. These items are reviewed in the weekly review so nothing slips through the cracks. If somebody takes too long then a do date is assigned to follow up. There is also a view here for 'Dependent Actions'. This shows the action items that do not have Do-Dates assigned meaning they will kick in when the preceding tasks are completed. This was covered in depth 2 videos ago.
23:39 Organizing What's to Come The calendar view is very powerful to allow you to get a sense of what is coming up and how to begin organizing things loosely. This is much more valuable than the KanBan view you often see for 'Today', 'Tomorrow', 'Upcoming' etc. It's not as elegant The items on particular days are to be scheduled on those days, they are not to-do lists for those days. The problem with the Kanban view in Notion is that it can only sort items by single or multi-select. It means you can't have it sorted by date. It's critical that you don't let your tasks on any single day get out of control. There is only so much you can do in a day and you need to be realistic about what you can accomplish. In your weekly review, you will make sure that anything with a hard deadline will be prioritized in the near future. Don't let any day get huge.
28:13 Rolling Up to Clients Projects & Goals Less active, but still important are the 2 sections at the bottom of the dashboard Client Operations Active projects Goal Outcomes
This dashboard essentially takes everything we've covered in the previous videos and integrates them into a streamlined focus zone. It's pretty rare that each of those databases is accessed in full. The objective of this dashboard is to focus on what matters, eliminate everything else from the view. If you execute these things every day, you will discover the entire secret to generating results in your life. When you get into the rhythm of executing tasks every day for weeks or months, you will not be able to believe the number of things you will be able to get done. Next, we are going to look at how the daily action zone branches off into other areas and workspaces, up and down the pyramid.
August, great series so far, you definitely have the gift of teaching. This is by far one of your most powerful vids in the series. Great stuff, keep producing, you’re brilliant with this and highly competitive, perfect combo! Thanks for all the templates too, extremely valuable.
I have been able to unlock a new level of focus with this PPV system and I don't feel as anxious about things slipping through the crack as I used to. Outstanding and well-distilled Notion Course. Thanks August.
This has been my first video from you, but I can already tell it won't be the last! Already signed up for the newsletter and duplicated the template! Love it!
Thank you so much for what you have done and how you teach. I am new to Notion and watched many videos and things were not working at all. Layouts never looked like what the teacher made them look like. All of your have been so clear. I am progressing quickly into roll-ups now and am really excited about the potential and abilities of Notion because of you - kudos!!!
I'm both frustrated on how long it is taking me to go through your videos, but then also super satisfied because I am being patient with them. This is because I am trying to treat them as actionable vids. Each one I see, including all your interviews on other shows, I try to find some way to immediately incorporate the things I learned. I'm currently building a unique weekly schedule, that hopefully breaks down daily stuff better than what I have. Of course I could use yours, but I wanted to see what I could create first. :) I have been watching EVERY notion youtuber/video, and taking in ideas from all over. I am really excited to see what the results will be.
How it went? Its also so difficult for me also because english is not mi main language and i can only understand him from subtitles, but i think it value his cost x100!
Great video! I was checking daily waiting for your next video to come out haha. A few questions... 1. I often have dependent tasks that I want to complete all in one day (ideally - or are all at least top priorities). You say to not schedule dependent tasks when you haven't completed the previous one. However, this may lead to overscheduling in one day as I add more dependent tasks to today's list. How do you handle that? 2. How do you make sure you don't have to refer to projects to review if you need to add more action items for the week? Do you make sure to add all actions in your weekly review then you don't touch it anymore for that week? Sometimes I'm not sure what the next steps are in a project until I research it so I am adding more tasks throughout the week. This leads to overscheduling. 3. I am terrible at having too many active projects at once. How many active projects do you allow per week? Do you only fill out the actions and schedule them for only active projects?
Thanks Shelby! 1. If it's a repeating task that takes enough time that it can impact your day, than I agree with you that it's better to schedule it out for each instance at one time up front (for the year ahead or as far out as you know the repeating task will continue). I only bump it each time (changing the date instead of checking "done" ) if it's a little thing that doesn't have a big impact on that day's schedule. 2. In the weekly review I look at the projects underway and what actions are needed in the upcoming week. I mainly lay out the action items (tasks) based on that assessment. If a surprise occurs, or I realize a project requites more than I scheduled, I'll make the changes as needed -- it's always ok to adjust deliberately. If the research indicated more steps are needed for a project, the next questions is whether there's a hard Due Date deadline that requires them to be done now. At this point you have to juggle priorities -- what is more important this week between what you scheduled ans the new tasks popping up. The less important of the two should be pushed back in time. 3. Again it's all about priorities. What matters most to you? You may have too many things going on, learning to say "no" is an important part of this process. The number varies, but the key is how many waking, working hours do you have in a day? How can they be best spent? "What matters most" is always the question. It could be in service of a Project or a Life Pillar, but the vast majority of your time should be advancing one of those (or both). Then as we will see in future videos, you prioritize those over any given period of time to determine how much time for each. Do the best you can to make such prioritization, but do it deliberately with clear thought on them -- doesn't work if you don't think and plan ahead of time, then you will just do what feels best which is rarely the most important. We discussed some things relevant to this in my recent podcast with Nir Eyal here: ruclips.net/video/kFBEOZLV1Y0/видео.html
I so need this to organize my life! I have got to get my life in order- I'm drowning ! Thank you for this! Just signed up to your newsletter and duplicated your templets! Total newbie here! Any additional newbie Notion Vids- I would love! :)
Most of the knowledge management system videos are already posted, will be doing a few more to complete it soon! The 5 or so most recent are all Knowledge Management. Thanks JT!
Wow this (and several of your videos I've watched before) feels like the missing piece(s) of the GTM method I've implemented in my life probably a year ago, that is just not fully working for me. It's missing a few tweaks, e.g. a DO date and focus to avoid these mile long lists that make me feel out of control and make me anxious, even after I've noted everything down. Thank you so much for your videos!
Thanks again, August. This is fantastic stuff. I'm chuckling at bit at how many times I'm reading in the comments: this is better than any other Notion YT channel - very true! I really appreciate the systematic approach you bring to Notion. I think it is key. I also appreciate how fast you reply to everyone. As I wrote before, I'm heavily influenced by GTD and agree with a lot of it's concepts. One, however, that I have always struggled with is: you build this cool system and still get nothing done and as a result your todo lists go on for miles. You focus on Do Dates helps with that. I wonder what your solution is for: 1) just making sure you capture everything - emptying your head, if you will. Do you schedule a Do Date for every item you capture even if you cannot get to it for two weeks, say? 2) What happens when you "schedule tomorrow", tomorrow comes and an hour into your day something happens and blows up your scheduled priorities for the day? Do you just reassign Do dates? Wouldn't you then have a cascading series of Do Dates to changes? i.e. What didn't get done today moves to tomorrow, so everything I planned for tomorrow has to move to the next day. Seems like a lot of manual maintenance. This is one of the reasons the GTD methodology is opposed to assign tasks to specific days Thanks, August. Peter
Thanks Peter! There are many elements of GTD in my system as well, definitely use what works for your from any system and combine to optimize. Burt GTD can lead to an endless pile-up of tasks that becomes an emotional burden. Assigning a specific Do Date forces you to ask if it's really important enough to have one of the limited slots on your calendar. I find I eliminate many "nice" but not essential wish list items when I get to them on my "to schedule" list, cutting down to what really matters. Prioritization matters a lot. We can't do everything, so we must focus on what matters most to what we want to achieve in life. 1) I am a big believer at getting thoughts and ideas down quickly. If the thought/idea is a task or something to do, then it goes into my task database right away (with a Do Date; if when I get to that date it's not important enough I delete it then or push it down the road -- push it too many times and that's a clue it should be deleted). If the quick-capture is information that's useful for a task, project, active pillar or anything I'm actively engaged with it goes into the relevant vault in my system in service of the task/project/pillar/etc... If it might be useful in the future but not to anything active right now, I put it into the bottomless pit of Evernote which has good search and decent machine learning recommendation engine (and good tagging). Yes, i put a Do Date on everything even if I can't get to it for a few weeks. If it's not important now and I'm busy, I would assign a Do Date a few weeks from now to make sure I assess its importance then and consider fitting it into the schedule. After that much time I might just delete it, realizing it's not that important after all. Or I might schedule it a new Do Date if it's still worth addressing. Assigning a Do Date ensures it won't be forgotten. There is a cost to adding too many tasks, and you get punished for it. Teaches you not to add lower-importance items and stay focused on what matters most. 2) If surprises come up and the day gets derailed (which certainly happens), then everything gets re-assigned as needed. Using the calendar view in my Action Zone makes this fast and easy, just slide the cards around in the calendar. I don't let tasks get out of control in the first place so they don't become too excessive to reschedule -- one key to this comes from the Project Database being managed properly. Many Projects are on "Hold" or "Paused", which would eliminate all its tasks until it is brought back to active status. More on this in the project Database video to come. Also just deciding some items don't belong on my task list, they are not important enough despite having some appeal.
@@augustbradley Thanks August. Great advice. I'm going to implement your Do Date strategy and see how it goes. It's the biggest weakness for me with GTD - even though I love the concept in general and has changed my life over the last 10 years - the fact that getting everything in your system just bogs your system down and fills it with stuff you will never do. I do see a lot of the GTD in your system but at the same time you've forced to rethink how I work a bit, which is great! Beautiful how we can share these things across thousands of miles. I listened to your talk with Nir Eyal who also challenged me in many ways when he discussed why he doesn't like to do list. Very fascinating conversation.
@@pvanharmelen: It's a process to get to the right system, but sounds like you're well on your way. In some ways it never ends, we just keep getting closer. Looking forward to continuing this discussion!
I just found your channel as I am researching a note app to journal and plan my life. I like how you call it a life operating system. Thank you for sharing your insight and your videos! I want to get to your level at one point. Currently I use OneNote mainly for journaling, but playing with Notion as it seems to have more capabilities. Thank you!
@@augustbradley Thank you so very much for responding! I am definitely playing around with Notion more, considering transferring my information from OneNote to Notion. What I like about you especially is that you are an MBA graduate, and I'm sure that puts your own innate spin to how you use Notion.
Really appreciate all the *value* you are providing here, August! I dove into your Notion series here, just the other day, to try to wrap my head around the whole thing better. Watching your talk on Systems Thinking really helped me see things in a bigger and better light! Excited to be making sense of things so I can make use of notion in a more practical manner. Thank you!
Working through your video series on Notion at the moment - some very inspiring stuff and very high quality value. Really appreciate the thought and passion behind the content - can see you just positively light up at 31:09 when you're talking how the consistency aggregates!
Would have been great to have an "auto-hide" feature for individual properties when they are checked off, especially as far as Habit Tracking is concerned. Just to declutter it and make it neater
August, in your AZ template, how does one replace the relational link that goes to your Action items db to, say, in my case -- link to my Master Task Db? Or... as I'm suspecting, are you embedding the master db several times and then filtering and sorting to get views like Today, Tomorrow, Upcoming etc? Wow. Just 10m in and this is more helpful that any other YT channel about Notion. I respect that you don't waste our time w/fluff and filler.
Hi Walter, I think we covered this in another thread but just to make sure... Yes, I'm embedding the master task db several times with different views/sorts/filters. Yo can't change a link from one linked db to another, you add one, duplicate the settings, then delete the original, And absolutely, I try to pack these densely with valuable info!
@@augustbradley THANK YOU! That comment there was THE solution I needed. For the curious ones, this comment here is what August is referring to -- ruclips.net/video/ZlmGbujysS0/видео.html
@@jfish5852 By having your Notion open and work alongside August in his video. Either have your section open that he's working in, or create a test section that you don't mind making mistakes in. That's what I did in the beginning. Initially, I couldn't grasp it by just watching and thinking about it -- I had to just jump in and DO it, even when I didn't understand exactly what I was doing. Soon tho, I grokked it WHILE I was doing it.
Hello August, again such a great video! Thank you, I learn so much from you! One question though: in the calendar view it shows a time in the upper right corner for your scheduled items (f.e. "2:00 pm"). Where/How can i set the time for my tasks? And do you integrate your Google Calendar into Notion somehow? Or do you use Gcal separately (or at all)?
hi... I've been watching your videos for a few days but I'm a little confused on how start. Im grateful for all your videos which are full of information.. but I feel overwhelmed and confused how and where to start.
Hi Diane, I know it can be a lot at first. Start wit the Action Zone template and initially just use it as a task manager. Than expand to Project management, expand from there into Daily Tracking and then eventually to the Goals section. Or you can look at the upcoming course for a smoother on-boarding: is.gd/notionppv
Hi August! I just stumbled across your videos and I'm so excited to implement a similar system. I had a question - how do you imbed the habit tracker into the action zone page? Thank you in advance!
Hey August. Amazing system and video! I can see myself being more productive when I adopt this system. However, are all the tasks in the Today action tab automatically archived each week? Or do you have to clean up those tabs each week, when you start a new week?
Big fan of your work, thank you for your amazing system. By the way did anyone ever tell you that you look like Neo from the matrix?! Looking forward to getting my system looking a little bit more like yours. You really have this down to an art!
Hi August - an amazingly useful set of videos, a series that is making a huge impact on how I view Notion and my own effectiveness. One quick question on this, how are you setting up the date filter on 'The Upcoming Week' view?
Hi August, Thanks for the the Notion serie! Quick question: in the Today's view, for a dependent tasks, is it a pain having to schedule the task "next in line" before checking the "done" check box? Because if you check it before, the task will disapear from the view (because you filtered out the done tasks). What do you think?
I have downloaded the template and the Waiting checkbox property is not there so I'm unable to figure out how to get action items into the Waiting On View 🤔
August, I'm excited to apply a life operating system to my life. Learning and growing a lot from your videos. Thanks for sharing your templates. Curious why the Action Zone template you shared doesn't include the waiting links listed in your video. Do the templates represent a change in your system design?
Thanks a lot for your series! I'm learning so much from your video and I hope to become a better person (more organized and without procrastionation). Just a newbie question: I'm from Italy and so we use the 24h time. How can I adjust the formulas? Thanks a lot!
I am not sure if he taught here how to schedule tasks that are monthly, like bills for example. I have some payments, like credit card, bills and others that are charged monthly, is there a way to assemble this kind of entry, so every # day of the month it reappears as a task again once i checked it ? In Todo-ist, i think its possible to assemble it that way. Thank you ! Im definitely binging this, watching every video, listening to podcasts, commenting and sharing ! As long as i watch everything here i will support him on his year zero thing
Hey August! These videos have been nothing short of invaluable, thank you very much! One question: Is there a reason you have 'Tomorrow, This Week' etc under independent toggles and not as separate views? Wouldn't this simplify things?
Good question George. Yes, there are four reasons. One is I always forget to look at the alternate views because they are out of sight. By having additional toggles, they are listed -- taking up very little space, but visible to remind me to use them. Also, I can open them with 1 click, instead of the two clicks to access the view drop menus. And third, this let's me open up two together, side-by-side (or above/below) which is useful for comparing and moving things around. And a forth, when working with teams makes it more clear to new users that these pre-set options exist -- they are even less like to be aware of the hidden views (or when creating setups for new team members from templates, easier for new people to see the options. New users often don't even know about the alternate views).
How do you manage recurring tasks that you want to do on a specific Day of the week or Month(Rent). Do you manually add entries for them? I was thinking to assign days of the week to a specific Pillar of my life. Like Every Monday I will play my favorite Sport. Tuesday: write my Blog. Wednesday: Edit Videos. . . Sunday: Do a weekly review
Either change the date to the next cycle after completing each time (instead of checking done), continually bumping it. Or if it seeing it on the calendar helps to plan future days just schedule out 6 months or the year at one time.
Hi August, wow, I am so impressed with this excellent system you have designed. It's like nothing I have ever seen before. I literally can't wait for you to release your program, I am going to seriously jump up and down from excitement the day that notification arrives in my inbox. Thank you for this! I have a question - I find that I have a lot of recurring tasks in my action zone daily, for example, every Monday I do my bookkeeping, once a month I download all my photos from our phones, every Monday I transfer our groceries money into my account, etc. etc. My action zone list for each day is so long that it makes me feel sick to my stomach each morning because I feel like I have so much to do that I can't focus. Do you have insight for me on this? If I don't have my daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly recurring tasks on my task list, I tend to forget. Do you have any thoughts to help me with this?
Great questions Candice and I have a good solution for you. But before the real solution, if there are a lot of small things does it it feel good to be checking them off quickly as you knock them out? If that's the case, just assign them all as "Quick" in status and fell powerful plowing through them. But if as you said you don't like them and they consistently happen on set days of the week (as you mentioned), Have your "Monday Processing" action item (task), inside that one task have a checklist with everything you do on Monday. To re-phrase, combine them all into one task and have a checklist in the workspace. Bump that one task's Do Date to the next week when you complete the current week.
@@augustbradley wow those are great solutions! I will first try adding them as quick tasks and if it becomes too cumbersome, then I will try the checklist within the task. You are too smart! Thanks again!
Hi August, Can you clarify the approach of keeping the Master Action Database under the Pillars as opposed to embedded in the Action Zone (Template) you make available? I'm not sure which approach I should be using for both the Action List and the Project List. Should they be listed under Pillars and referenced in the template or is this your new preferred approach. p.s. As a GTD and Todoist'er of many, many years I'm really appreciating the holistic approach and nuance of your approach. I've especially been looking for a more visually compelling system and Notion seems to provide that with the ability to add custom images to each project.
Hi Adam. It would be under Pipelines, not Pillars. I had to embed it in the template in order to make it duplicatable with the template page. It doesn't really matter until you get a lot of DBs, then it might be easier to have them all under the Pillars, Pipelines and Vaults folders. it's easy to move them over (drag/drop) then create a "linked database" to embed back in the dashbaord. Hope that helps!
@@augustbradley Thanks August that makes sense. Just to clarify in the template there are multiple databases for actions and projects that are associated with today, tomorrow, week, etc. Should I copy those databases individually into some hierarchy under Pillars or do I just need one database and create separate views / filters for today, tomorrow, week, etc?
The flow chart is coming this week. PPV is coming in parts this week and next, with the big summary overview of it wrapping that up afterward. Thanks for your feedback and support!
Hi, I am using your template now and working my way through your videos, The client operations on in this is the most relevant to me and I cannot see how/where to set this up or a video on it, could you please point me in the right direction? many thanks
This series really is amazing - I'm currently in the process of building and tweaking my weekly and monthly review templates...the one thing I can't figure out is the function to put the double
Hey August. Seeing that this is the execution section of your workflow, i'm curious what video you could suggest I watch to see what your dashboard and process is when adding new actions. Thanks
The completed tasks stay in the same database that the always were, But now you can make a linked database and filter that by done is ticked and you have a Completed db which you can put anywhere you wish
Added a datebetween formula to evaluate the distance between do and due date. Can be useful if your schedule is to a certain degree controlled by others:-)
Thank you, August, for all your effort. I enjoy watching. One remark/question: am I right in saying that the templates you offer for download and the templates you discuss in your videos are not exactly the same? And I do not mean only visually but conceptionally. Let me give you an example: in your templates for download you have a property called "status", where you include among others "waiting". In your videos "Waiting" is a checkbox property on its own. Why is that so? And don't you use the property "status" anymore?
Thanks Gerald! No, they are not different conceptually. When you're seeing changes that I've implemented since the time the video was recorded. The video is frozen in history but my system and the templates are evolving. When I update a new approach in my system I typically update the template too. That's the reason for the difference. Differences are for the sake of simplifying so they're more understandable, and so that it can be made into a stand-alone duplicatable template. Hope that helps!
Check out his video called ""Task Status" Enhancement to Notion Life OS for Better Project Management". He explains the reason for the modification in there.
Hi August, it doesn't look like you've done a training on projects yet, and I have one on projects. How to do I create relational projects (that's probably not the right phrase) in Notion? How to take the Actions in a Project and ensure they show up in the Master Task Db and vice versa? I want to be able to go into a project page (db?) where I have a list of actions and their dependencies. I also want to see those same actions + their dependents in my Master Task DB as well. Conversely, I want to also, if I'm already in my Master Task DB, to be able to enter the actions there, link them to their projects and have them automatically show up in each individual project as well. Since so many other things in Notion are relational, it would seem to be an easy thing to do -- but so far my test project page's actions are not showing up in my Master Task DB and vice versa. What do you think I'm doing wrong? Since this is only the start of my third week in Notion, there's still A LOT I don't know… yet. But I'm working on narrowing the gap!
Let me start with your content is incredible, and I am signed up for the news letter and subscribed to your channel. How would you recommend handling context? I don't mean the context that GTD refers to such as whether it's related to a call, home, etc., but rather is what you are working on work related or personal? Maybe I am over complicating things, but I imagine that those that are employed like me would want to focus exclusively on work while at work. Other areas of focus (not sure what else to call these) would open up once off the clock. What do you think? Also, I feel like there is friction when I am using the template while trying to rank priorities in order first through fifth. What influenced your thinking to rank them first through fifth instead of high, medium, and low priority?
Thanks Ryan! On context, simply add a single select that has an option for each of your contexts. Then create multiple views filtering each for context. Look at the view relevant to the context you're in at any given moment. I didn't use high, med, low because I sometimes need more than three. Numbering thmn gives more flexibility to set the quantity needed. How is the friction level any different between the two approaches you cited? I don't see any friction either way.
Im a little confused about the difference between '#OnScheduled' & '#Output'. The way I am understanding this is #OnScheduled = % of time spent on tasks with a 'do date' of Today. Basically, this is related to the amount of hours/Minutes/Seconds dedicated during the day to the tasks set out in action zone. #Output = % of tasks completed. So in this video 'Today's Action Items' contains 6 tasks. If August were to complete 3/6 tasks, would that equate to an #output=50%. Are my definitions correct? If my #Output definition is correct, couldn't I leverage the formula like the 'Progress' property in the Project Database to automatically populate the #output field as I set each task with [ 'Do Date' = TODAY AND 'Done' = TRUE] and have those Completed tasks divided by the number of open tasks where [ 'Do Date' = TODAY AND ('Done' = FALSE OR 'Done' = TRUE)]?
Hi August I really appreciate your videos but I feel like this kind of system would be overkill for most people. I'm looking for a simpler system, for your avg. professional. As a person with ADHD I *need* to be organized, but I also like to keep things simple, because otherwise I get overwhelmed and end up not doing anything at all.
Loving your videos, August. I'm learning a TON. Quick question. Is there a reason other than just personal preference that you create different relational tables for each view rather than just one table with multiple views? For example, one table with a view for due today and the same table with a view for due tomorrow? I have mine notionally setup like yours. I like the toggle which gives you the ability to hide the other tables but it still seems like a lot. Can you elaborate a bit on that? Thanks!
Good question Vickie! Four reasons. One is I often forget to look at the alternate views because they are out of sight. By having additional toggles, they are listed -- taking up very little space, but visible to remind me to use them. Also, I can open them with 1 click, instead of the two clicks to access the view drop menus. And third, this let's me open up two together, side-by-side (or above/below) which is useful for comparing and moving things around. And a forth, when working with teams makes it more clear to new users that these pre-set options exist -- they are even less like to be aware of the hidden views (or when creating setups for new team members from templates, easier for new people to see the options. New users often don't even know about the alternate views).
Thank you for all your amazing videos! One question I had for you, do you just estimate your daily output progress or how do you calculate it? I really like the idea of the weekly ranges and averages for output. Very insightful.
@@augustbradley Thank you for taking the time to answer! That's interesting, I might want to try both and compare. I am fairly certain that I will underestimate how much I get done each day by just estimating, but it might be interesting to compare....
@@simoneharri5937 You'll get better at it over time, and the relative measures will still be meaningful when comparing better vs worse days. Also to help this, I first do my end-of-day journal where I list my "Wins" for the day, then in my "Today" toggle I have a View set to show just my completed tasks today. Hope that helps.
Hello August! Thank you for these wonderful videos. I am currently trying to implement your setup and I am working on the action zone views. But I seem to be having trouble with the “This Week” view. I have it filtered for the Do Date is today or after and the Do Date is next week. But it only shows my the items seven days from now. It does not show the items for today or the rest of the week. Any ideas? Thanks so much!
Hi Jill, great work -- you'e on your way here. Looks like the second filter designation is off a little, it should be "And Do Date is on or before One Week from Now" . That should fix it.
Hello August, really great video and a very good Notion Setup you have. Looking forward for further videos I've one question: how did you manage when adding a new "page" automatically at the "Do Date" property the actual date (today) appears?
Thanks Bjorn! If you create the new page by clicking the blue "new" button from a view of the database that is filtered for "Today", it will automatically enter today's date. Whatever the db view is filtered for, those fields will be entered in the new page. it's a great trick!
I know Notion is what I've been looking for all this time, and the thought and detail in these videos is incredible. But it's just seem very complicated for something that, for me at least, must be as simple as possible so it doesn't actually get in the way. How is everyone else getting on? let me know if you have any tips
It takes time to set up and initially learn, but then in action using it day-to-day it's simple. It removes complexity in life and work once in action.
@@augustbradley Thank you, I appreciate the reply. I'm struggling with the idea of having one database for all projects. I feel each project needs its own db with its own specific properties and task categories. But then the problem is, how do I bring all of these seperate databases together into a neat system such as the one in this vid?
@@MikeHudsontek Try to consolidate into fewer databases, that gives you more capability and streamlining across the system. Certainly some groupings of projects can have similar properties ans be in the same database. An it's ok if you have properties that some types of projects use but others do not. However in reality, I really have three separate types of projects in three different databases. I only call one of them Projects. The others are called Clients and Content Production. So my Client and Content databases functions as separate project databases since each of the three groupings has very different needs, properties, and templates. They could be combined, but there is some organization and additional clarity to having these three very different sets separate. Hope that helps.
Though I should add, only the Project DB gets aligned in the Alignment Zone, so anything essential for my growth or the growth of the business need to be in that one. The other two (Clients and Content) are just for day-to-day operational execution, not long-term evolution.
Thank you for the videos. I'm watching all of them. How do you handle tasks that you plan on completing later in the day that are not related to your business day? For example, right now I have a task to fix something in my house, but I only plan on doing it after 5PM. If I add it as a 5th priority, then it is sitting there all day until I get off of work. Also, I plan on doing it at 5PM, whether or not I complete my other tasks or not.
If you plan on doing it at 5pm regardless, then I'd give it a "scheduled" priority setting and assign the specific time in the date/time field. There are some limitations in Notion if you have a lot of scheduled items, if that's the case I would plan /coordinate all my unscheduled tasks in Notion then the night before, after I set the priorities for the next day of my Notion tasks, I wold time-block everything the for the following day in Google Calendar which has all my appointments usually scheduled anyway through Zapier integrations. The Google Cal entry for the next day would include time blocks for the Notion priority tasks. Below is my standard take on Scheduling in Google Cal -- you might do the Google Cal approach for a different reason than me (to keep your work and home time distinct and in it's proper time zone): For me, if it's a complex day or crazy week, I find the functionality of Google Calendar to be worth the effort of laying things out there in detail then have the automated line (in week or day view) mark my point throughout the day. The evening before I will schedule out the entire day in Google Cal with appointments and block planned parts of the day for priorities from my Notion Action Zone. Plus I have automations from Calendly and other apps scheduling my appointments directly into Google Cal, can't do that with Notion. If the week is more about a sequential series of personal tasks/projects with just one or two shorter scheduled items, I'll stay in Notion and work through my priorities in order with the Scheduled item added so I don't forget (might set alarm on my phone too). It works either way, depending one how packed and diverse the day is. So I suppose in summary: all scheduled events are in my Google Cal, all tasks are in my Notion system -- whichever has fewer I update and add to the other system the evening before and use that as my primary map for the day. Hope that helps!
Hello August, Thank you for your helpful video. I would like to ask if I have a task that I do every MOnday and Wed. How can I add on DO Date calender? Thanks,
Hi August! When I drag the Daily Tracking DB I can't see the items for that date, nor the option to filter it. Do you know what may be happening? Thanks!
Thanks for this great series August! One question: why would you not include your workout in your main Today list? It forces you to look in two different places ("Daily Tracking" as well as "Today") to see what your day looks like. A regular person using a calendar app on Daily view would simply have all their tasks listed out allotted to time. How is your workout going to get done when you have 5 or 6 tasks for the day that aren't time-boxed? Big fan, but this is confusing to me.
4:20 “No RUclips binging”, but I have been binging your youtube-videos...
lol
i cant believe that this series have dislikes, this is purely god tier content. i think is the most valuable ( and free! ) content i have ever seen.
Agree. I don’t know how that works from a RUclips metric but I would imagine it’s just immature individuals doing thumbs down. They have a right to be dumb.
Timestamps Index
0:00 Intro
3:04 Action Zone Overview
5:32 Today in Action
19:13 Tomorrow & Upcoming Week
19:56 Waiting-On
23:39 Organizing What's to Come
28:13 Rolling Up to Clients Projects & Goals
Thank you
This is the best implementation of scheduling using a calendar I've seen.
The Do date is the absolute game changer here. Thanks so much. I am replicating the setup video by video
**Video Summary**
0:00 Intro
This video covers the daily action zone dashboard which is a particularly important part of the system.
This is the dashboard August spends more time in than any other, opens most frequently, starts and ends his day with, etc.
This is where the day-to-day, minute-to-minute actions are taken to move you towards your goals.
The last 2 videos covered daily tracking, and prior to that was the master task database, and these all roll up into this dashboard.
These are the most critical elements at the top of the page that drive the daily behaviors.
To give context, ensure you have seen the video covering the birds-eye view of the system and the PPV structure. (a later video will cover this in more detail)
The last 2 videos, this one, and the next few all fall under the 'pipelines' category. These are the action areas, where behaviors, tasks, and projects all move forward incrementally.
Separate other parts of the Notion system are organized into pillars; these are the structures that hold your life and your aspirations up.
Then there are the Vaults which are about storage and information management, resources that support the pipelines, and the pillars.
After each section has been covered there will be an overview of the PPV system in more detail, with a deep dive into how Notion explicitly executes each category.
Today we are bringing Tasks and Daily tracking into a dashboard and linking that to the structure above.
The following videos will begin to cover projects and various other types of action pipelines.
After that, we will move into pillars and various knowledge management vaults.
3:04 Action Zone Overview
3:13 [image]
Everything at the top of the page is in collapsable toggles.
A lot of thought was put into what goes at the top level without any scrolling down the page.
These toggles organize what matters most day-to-day, minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour.
Today - Action items is what's open most of the day
Tomorrow and upcoming week have similar views
Waiting on are tasks that are dependent on somebody else or other tasks.
5:00 [image] The Not-To-Do list is a quick but important list to define.
5:32 Today in Action
5:40 [image] Today - Action Items
The top has an embedded view of the Action Items database
Filtered to show anything on or before Today and Is Not done and Waiting on Is Not done and Owner is me. 6:15 [image].
Sorted by priority
Every action item has a Do-Date or is dependent on another task.
Addressing a task might mean rescheduling it, but generally the night before he will lay out what will be done the next day. Anything that doesn't fit into the day will be rescheduled to a different day.
The intention is that this is an achievable priority list that let's you know what to do as you sit down. There is no slack time figuring it out.
Multiple items never have the same priority unless they are being batched together.
The database embed also has a 'completed today' view that enables review of what has been checked off. It's easy to feel like you got nothing done, but if you take a glance at this view it can feel quite good.
There is a 'next in line' property to indicate whether a task is dependent or not, you can then open it, activate it with a do date and check off the current task as done.
There is a 'Production pipeline' property that links tasks to their workspaces.
If you want to see how each item links up with the pyramid above this level in terms of life pillars and goals, it's covered a little bit in the tasks database video and a lot more in the pillars-pipeline pyramid video.
This lays everything out in a very actionable way.
13:55 The previous video covered the Daily tracking dashboard, now in Daily Action Zone, there is one small slice of the daily tracking database. Filtered by date is today.
It starts only with habit tracking after all the initial data has been entered in the morning.
Some habits which will be covered in a later video include (plan to do these sequentially):
Meditation
Bullet planner
Mindset
Visualization
Workout
Schedule Tomorrow
This includes scrolling down to the calendar view to see all the tasks that need to be done.
After scheduling there is a rating for diet over the day.
Percentage on schedule.
Percentage output relative to intended output.
Improvements
19:13 Tomorrow & Upcoming Week
19:30 the other toggles for 'tomorrow' and 'upcoming week' are the same with slightly different Filters.
19:56 Waiting-On
Items checked as waiting on are filtered into this view.
These items are reviewed in the weekly review so nothing slips through the cracks.
If somebody takes too long then a do date is assigned to follow up.
There is also a view here for 'Dependent Actions'. This shows the action items that do not have Do-Dates assigned meaning they will kick in when the preceding tasks are completed. This was covered in depth 2 videos ago.
23:39 Organizing What's to Come
The calendar view is very powerful to allow you to get a sense of what is coming up and how to begin organizing things loosely.
This is much more valuable than the KanBan view you often see for 'Today', 'Tomorrow', 'Upcoming' etc. It's not as elegant
The items on particular days are to be scheduled on those days, they are not to-do lists for those days.
The problem with the Kanban view in Notion is that it can only sort items by single or multi-select. It means you can't have it sorted by date.
It's critical that you don't let your tasks on any single day get out of control. There is only so much you can do in a day and you need to be realistic about what you can accomplish.
In your weekly review, you will make sure that anything with a hard deadline will be prioritized in the near future. Don't let any day get huge.
28:13 Rolling Up to Clients Projects & Goals
Less active, but still important are the 2 sections at the bottom of the dashboard
Client Operations
Active projects
Goal Outcomes
This dashboard essentially takes everything we've covered in the previous videos and integrates them into a streamlined focus zone.
It's pretty rare that each of those databases is accessed in full.
The objective of this dashboard is to focus on what matters, eliminate everything else from the view.
If you execute these things every day, you will discover the entire secret to generating results in your life.
When you get into the rhythm of executing tasks every day for weeks or months, you will not be able to believe the number of things you will be able to get done.
Next, we are going to look at how the daily action zone branches off into other areas and workspaces, up and down the pyramid.
Great summary, tnx Marc!
Really learning more from your videos than any other channels. Thank you for your information.
Thank you! I really appreciate the feedback, helps to know that these videos are of value to people. More to come!
August, great series so far, you definitely have the gift of teaching. This is by far one of your most powerful vids in the series. Great stuff, keep producing, you’re brilliant with this and highly competitive, perfect combo! Thanks for all the templates too, extremely valuable.
Thanks Rob! Means a lot to me to hear this. Very happy that it's been valuiable to you. Lots more to come!
I agree. I think this video is the start of the real work when creating his notion system. Great vid.
I have been able to unlock a new level of focus with this PPV system and I don't feel as anxious about things slipping through the crack as I used to.
Outstanding and well-distilled Notion Course.
Thanks August.
Awesome Daniel! Congrats on your progress, keep up the great work.
thank you soo much, ive never been more organised in my life!!
I so want that rhythm and consistency, thank you for all your hard work.
Excellent Anthony! Thanks for the feedback.
This has been my first video from you, but I can already tell it won't be the last! Already signed up for the newsletter and duplicated the template! Love it!
Thank you Ana, welcome aboard!
Thank you so much for what you have done and how you teach. I am new to Notion and watched many videos and things were not working at all. Layouts never looked like what the teacher made them look like. All of your have been so clear. I am progressing quickly into roll-ups now and am really excited about the potential and abilities of Notion because of you - kudos!!!
Awesome Darren! Means a lo tot me to hear this is working so well for you. Much more to come. Onward! 🚀
I love how you're able to channel the passion, purpose and inspirational message through each video.
I'm both frustrated on how long it is taking me to go through your videos, but then also super satisfied because I am being patient with them. This is because I am trying to treat them as actionable vids. Each one I see, including all your interviews on other shows, I try to find some way to immediately incorporate the things I learned. I'm currently building a unique weekly schedule, that hopefully breaks down daily stuff better than what I have. Of course I could use yours, but I wanted to see what I could create first. :)
I have been watching EVERY notion youtuber/video, and taking in ideas from all over. I am really excited to see what the results will be.
How it went? Its also so difficult for me also because english is not mi main language and i can only understand him from subtitles, but i think it value his cost x100!
Great video! I was checking daily waiting for your next video to come out haha. A few questions...
1. I often have dependent tasks that I want to complete all in one day (ideally - or are all at least top priorities). You say to not schedule dependent tasks when you haven't completed the previous one. However, this may lead to overscheduling in one day as I add more dependent tasks to today's list. How do you handle that?
2. How do you make sure you don't have to refer to projects to review if you need to add more action items for the week? Do you make sure to add all actions in your weekly review then you don't touch it anymore for that week? Sometimes I'm not sure what the next steps are in a project until I research it so I am adding more tasks throughout the week. This leads to overscheduling.
3. I am terrible at having too many active projects at once. How many active projects do you allow per week? Do you only fill out the actions and schedule them for only active projects?
Thanks Shelby!
1. If it's a repeating task that takes enough time that it can impact your day, than I agree with you that it's better to schedule it out for each instance at one time up front (for the year ahead or as far out as you know the repeating task will continue). I only bump it each time (changing the date instead of checking "done" ) if it's a little thing that doesn't have a big impact on that day's schedule.
2. In the weekly review I look at the projects underway and what actions are needed in the upcoming week. I mainly lay out the action items (tasks) based on that assessment. If a surprise occurs, or I realize a project requites more than I scheduled, I'll make the changes as needed -- it's always ok to adjust deliberately. If the research indicated more steps are needed for a project, the next questions is whether there's a hard Due Date deadline that requires them to be done now. At this point you have to juggle priorities -- what is more important this week between what you scheduled ans the new tasks popping up. The less important of the two should be pushed back in time.
3. Again it's all about priorities. What matters most to you? You may have too many things going on, learning to say "no" is an important part of this process. The number varies, but the key is how many waking, working hours do you have in a day? How can they be best spent? "What matters most" is always the question. It could be in service of a Project or a Life Pillar, but the vast majority of your time should be advancing one of those (or both).
Then as we will see in future videos, you prioritize those over any given period of time to determine how much time for each. Do the best you can to make such prioritization, but do it deliberately with clear thought on them -- doesn't work if you don't think and plan ahead of time, then you will just do what feels best which is rarely the most important. We discussed some things relevant to this in my recent podcast with Nir Eyal here: ruclips.net/video/kFBEOZLV1Y0/видео.html
No question, just letting this all soak in and building up my system as you go. Best Notion setup, well done, and thanks!
And I've added a kanban view to my Tomorrow toggle to quickly shift around priorities.
That’s great Amy, really glad it’s proving to be helpful for you. Thanks a lot for the feedback. Lots more to come!
Wow! Extremely useful. Laser-beam focus. Love it. Thank you! Subscribed and liked
Awesome Shohaib! Great to have you hear, glad you found us. Much more to come!
I so need this to organize my life! I have got to get my life in order- I'm drowning ! Thank you for this! Just signed up to your newsletter and duplicated your templets! Total newbie here! Any additional newbie Notion Vids- I would love! :)
Thanks August! Excited for the knowledge management system to support this action dashboard.
Most of the knowledge management system videos are already posted, will be doing a few more to complete it soon! The 5 or so most recent are all Knowledge Management. Thanks JT!
I'm really grateful that you shared these valuable lessons
Great information, thanks!
Wow this (and several of your videos I've watched before) feels like the missing piece(s) of the GTM method I've implemented in my life probably a year ago, that is just not fully working for me. It's missing a few tweaks, e.g. a DO date and focus to avoid these mile long lists that make me feel out of control and make me anxious, even after I've noted everything down. Thank you so much for your videos!
Thanks again, August. This is fantastic stuff. I'm chuckling at bit at how many times I'm reading in the comments: this is better than any other Notion YT channel - very true! I really appreciate the systematic approach you bring to Notion. I think it is key. I also appreciate how fast you reply to everyone.
As I wrote before, I'm heavily influenced by GTD and agree with a lot of it's concepts. One, however, that I have always struggled with is: you build this cool system and still get nothing done and as a result your todo lists go on for miles. You focus on Do Dates helps with that.
I wonder what your solution is for:
1) just making sure you capture everything - emptying your head, if you will. Do you schedule a Do Date for every item you capture even if you cannot get to it for two weeks, say?
2) What happens when you "schedule tomorrow", tomorrow comes and an hour into your day something happens and blows up your scheduled priorities for the day? Do you just reassign Do dates? Wouldn't you then have a cascading series of Do Dates to changes? i.e. What didn't get done today moves to tomorrow, so everything I planned for tomorrow has to move to the next day. Seems like a lot of manual maintenance. This is one of the reasons the GTD methodology is opposed to assign tasks to specific days
Thanks, August.
Peter
Thanks Peter!
There are many elements of GTD in my system as well, definitely use what works for your from any system and combine to optimize. Burt GTD can lead to an endless pile-up of tasks that becomes an emotional burden. Assigning a specific Do Date forces you to ask if it's really important enough to have one of the limited slots on your calendar. I find I eliminate many "nice" but not essential wish list items when I get to them on my "to schedule" list, cutting down to what really matters. Prioritization matters a lot. We can't do everything, so we must focus on what matters most to what we want to achieve in life.
1) I am a big believer at getting thoughts and ideas down quickly. If the thought/idea is a task or something to do, then it goes into my task database right away (with a Do Date; if when I get to that date it's not important enough I delete it then or push it down the road -- push it too many times and that's a clue it should be deleted). If the quick-capture is information that's useful for a task, project, active pillar or anything I'm actively engaged with it goes into the relevant vault in my system in service of the task/project/pillar/etc... If it might be useful in the future but not to anything active right now, I put it into the bottomless pit of Evernote which has good search and decent machine learning recommendation engine (and good tagging).
Yes, i put a Do Date on everything even if I can't get to it for a few weeks. If it's not important now and I'm busy, I would assign a Do Date a few weeks from now to make sure I assess its importance then and consider fitting it into the schedule. After that much time I might just delete it, realizing it's not that important after all. Or I might schedule it a new Do Date if it's still worth addressing. Assigning a Do Date ensures it won't be forgotten. There is a cost to adding too many tasks, and you get punished for it. Teaches you not to add lower-importance items and stay focused on what matters most.
2) If surprises come up and the day gets derailed (which certainly happens), then everything gets re-assigned as needed. Using the calendar view in my Action Zone makes this fast and easy, just slide the cards around in the calendar. I don't let tasks get out of control in the first place so they don't become too excessive to reschedule -- one key to this comes from the Project Database being managed properly. Many Projects are on "Hold" or "Paused", which would eliminate all its tasks until it is brought back to active status. More on this in the project Database video to come. Also just deciding some items don't belong on my task list, they are not important enough despite having some appeal.
@@augustbradley Thanks August. Great advice. I'm going to implement your Do Date strategy and see how it goes. It's the biggest weakness for me with GTD - even though I love the concept in general and has changed my life over the last 10 years - the fact that getting everything in your system just bogs your system down and fills it with stuff you will never do.
I do see a lot of the GTD in your system but at the same time you've forced to rethink how I work a bit, which is great! Beautiful how we can share these things across thousands of miles. I listened to your talk with Nir Eyal who also challenged me in many ways when he discussed why he doesn't like to do list. Very fascinating conversation.
@@pvanharmelen: It's a process to get to the right system, but sounds like you're well on your way. In some ways it never ends, we just keep getting closer. Looking forward to continuing this discussion!
how do you manage quick-capture in your system?
@@paoloap. Like this: ruclips.net/video/1Sk1TzHL2dw/видео.html
I just found your channel as I am researching a note app to journal and plan my life. I like how you call it a life operating system. Thank you for sharing your insight and your videos! I want to get to your level at one point. Currently I use OneNote mainly for journaling, but playing with Notion as it seems to have more capabilities. Thank you!
Thanks Anthony! I think you will find Notion can take you much further than OneNote, I loved OneNote, but Notion is just on another level.
@@augustbradley Thank you so very much for responding! I am definitely playing around with Notion more, considering transferring my information from OneNote to Notion. What I like about you especially is that you are an MBA graduate, and I'm sure that puts your own innate spin to how you use Notion.
Really appreciate all the *value* you are providing here, August! I dove into your Notion series here, just the other day, to try to wrap my head around the whole thing better. Watching your talk on Systems Thinking really helped me see things in a bigger and better light! Excited to be making sense of things so I can make use of notion in a more practical manner. Thank you!
Great to hear Tim! Yes, that foundational framework reveals its power over and over again throughout the system. Onward!
This is excellent content, thanks for providing it freely.
Great video! I am daily checking and waiting for your next video to come out
Thanks Ansari! Sorry for the delay, working on a new set now.
Great video. I am already spreading the word.
Awesome to hear you like it Martin, and thanks so much for spreading the word!
LOL! "No youtube binging." Thank you for this video.
Working through your video series on Notion at the moment - some very inspiring stuff and very high quality value.
Really appreciate the thought and passion behind the content - can see you just positively light up at 31:09 when you're talking how the consistency aggregates!
WOW thanks 10 mins in and I'm hooked! 5th-dimensional knowledge.
Thanks for the video, just commenting to contribute with the algorithm
your ability to make things that look complex simple is awesome
Would have been great to have an "auto-hide" feature for individual properties when they are checked off, especially as far as Habit Tracking is concerned.
Just to declutter it and make it neater
Your system is truly awesome! So inspiring to learn from your videos
August, in your AZ template, how does one replace the relational link that goes to your Action items db to, say, in my case -- link to my Master Task Db? Or... as I'm suspecting, are you embedding the master db several times and then filtering and sorting to get views like Today, Tomorrow, Upcoming etc? Wow. Just 10m in and this is more helpful that any other YT channel about Notion. I respect that you don't waste our time w/fluff and filler.
Hi Walter, I think we covered this in another thread but just to make sure... Yes, I'm embedding the master task db several times with different views/sorts/filters. Yo can't change a link from one linked db to another, you add one, duplicate the settings, then delete the original, And absolutely, I try to pack these densely with valuable info!
@@augustbradley THANK YOU! That comment there was THE solution I needed. For the curious ones, this comment here is what August is referring to -- ruclips.net/video/ZlmGbujysS0/видео.html
@@walterterry9970 How do you duplicate the settings?
@@jfish5852 By having your Notion open and work alongside August in his video. Either have your section open that he's working in, or create a test section that you don't mind making mistakes in. That's what I did in the beginning. Initially, I couldn't grasp it by just watching and thinking about it -- I had to just jump in and DO it, even when I didn't understand exactly what I was doing. Soon tho, I grokked it WHILE I was doing it.
Hello August, again such a great video! Thank you, I learn so much from you!
One question though: in the calendar view it shows a time in the upper right corner for your scheduled items (f.e. "2:00 pm"). Where/How can i set the time for my tasks?
And do you integrate your Google Calendar into Notion somehow? Or do you use Gcal separately (or at all)?
Just watched through this twice it was so helpful!
This was really overwhelming
I will be following this channel closely, August!
That is great to know Nathan! Really happy you've joined us. Lots more to come.
Great contribution. Greetings from Mexico
if i could hit the like button more than once, i would
hi... I've been watching your videos for a few days but I'm a little confused on how start. Im grateful for all your videos which are full of information.. but I feel overwhelmed and confused how and where to start.
Hi Diane, I know it can be a lot at first. Start wit the Action Zone template and initially just use it as a task manager. Than expand to Project management, expand from there into Daily Tracking and then eventually to the Goals section. Or you can look at the upcoming course for a smoother on-boarding: is.gd/notionppv
Hi August! I just stumbled across your videos and I'm so excited to implement a similar system. I had a question - how do you imbed the habit tracker into the action zone page? Thank you in advance!
You are a legend sir. Thank You !!!
Awesome, thank you Sylvain!
Daddy Bradley!
It's really useful
Thank you so much for this, its going to enrich my life a lot!
Great Filipe, this is powerful stuff for sure!
Awesome work!
This is great. Thanks so much for sharing!
I love these videos!!!
Awesome to hear this, thanks!
WOW!!! thank you very much!
Glad it helped!
Hey August. Amazing system and video! I can see myself being more productive when I adopt this system. However, are all the tasks in the Today action tab automatically archived each week? Or do you have to clean up those tabs each week, when you start a new week?
Big fan of your work, thank you for your amazing system. By the way did anyone ever tell you that you look like Neo from the matrix?! Looking forward to getting my system looking a little bit more like yours. You really have this down to an art!
Hi August - an amazingly useful set of videos, a series that is making a huge impact on how I view Notion and my own effectiveness. One quick question on this, how are you setting up the date filter on 'The Upcoming Week' view?
Hi August,
Thanks for the the Notion serie!
Quick question:
in the Today's view, for a dependent tasks, is it a pain having to schedule the task "next in line" before checking the "done" check box? Because if you check it before, the task will disapear from the view (because you filtered out the done tasks).
What do you think?
Yeah I'm stuck on that same question. have you figured it out?
*Very Informative series* _Thanks alot August_
Thanks! Awesome to hear this was helpful.
Serious Dr. Evil vibes in this one, August 😁
I have downloaded the template and the Waiting checkbox property is not there so I'm unable to figure out how to get action items into the Waiting On View 🤔
Thank you king
August, I'm excited to apply a life operating system to my life. Learning and growing a lot from your videos. Thanks for sharing your templates. Curious why the Action Zone template you shared doesn't include the waiting links listed in your video. Do the templates represent a change in your system design?
so professional, you can only get this type of content by buying a course. Amazing work, well done!
Hi August, where could I get more info on creating a Mindset & Identity Sculpting routine? Also, what is your Visualization Routine?
I'll being doing videos on all of those! it's all planned on the schedule. Thanks Johnny!
Notion experts out there, any shortcuts for mass-selecting/deselecting checkboxes in a table/database?
Thanks a lot for your series! I'm learning so much from your video and I hope to become a better person (more organized and without procrastionation). Just a newbie question: I'm from Italy and so we use the 24h time. How can I adjust the formulas? Thanks a lot!
I am not sure if he taught here how to schedule tasks that are monthly, like bills for example. I have some payments, like credit card, bills and others that are charged monthly, is there a way to assemble this kind of entry, so every # day of the month it reappears as a task again once i checked it ? In Todo-ist, i think its possible to assemble it that way. Thank you ! Im definitely binging this, watching every video, listening to podcasts, commenting and sharing ! As long as i watch everything here i will support him on his year zero thing
Hey August! These videos have been nothing short of invaluable, thank you very much!
One question: Is there a reason you have 'Tomorrow, This Week' etc under independent toggles and not as separate views? Wouldn't this simplify things?
Good question George. Yes, there are four reasons. One is I always forget to look at the alternate views because they are out of sight. By having additional toggles, they are listed -- taking up very little space, but visible to remind me to use them. Also, I can open them with 1 click, instead of the two clicks to access the view drop menus. And third, this let's me open up two together, side-by-side (or above/below) which is useful for comparing and moving things around. And a forth, when working with teams makes it more clear to new users that these pre-set options exist -- they are even less like to be aware of the hidden views (or when creating setups for new team members from templates, easier for new people to see the options. New users often don't even know about the alternate views).
so much notion user experience distilled here!
@@paoloap. Thanks!
@@augustbradley Came here to ask the same question (after manually "fixing" everything into a view rather than as seperate line toggles, haha)
How do you manage recurring tasks that you want to do on a specific Day of the week or Month(Rent). Do you manually add entries for them?
I was thinking to assign days of the week to a specific Pillar of my life.
Like
Every Monday I will play my favorite Sport.
Tuesday: write my Blog.
Wednesday: Edit Videos.
.
.
Sunday: Do a weekly review
Either change the date to the next cycle after completing each time (instead of checking done), continually bumping it. Or if it seeing it on the calendar helps to plan future days just schedule out 6 months or the year at one time.
Hi August, wow, I am so impressed with this excellent system you have designed. It's like nothing I have ever seen before. I literally can't wait for you to release your program, I am going to seriously jump up and down from excitement the day that notification arrives in my inbox. Thank you for this! I have a question - I find that I have a lot of recurring tasks in my action zone daily, for example, every Monday I do my bookkeeping, once a month I download all my photos from our phones, every Monday I transfer our groceries money into my account, etc. etc. My action zone list for each day is so long that it makes me feel sick to my stomach each morning because I feel like I have so much to do that I can't focus. Do you have insight for me on this? If I don't have my daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly recurring tasks on my task list, I tend to forget. Do you have any thoughts to help me with this?
Great questions Candice and I have a good solution for you. But before the real solution, if there are a lot of small things does it it feel good to be checking them off quickly as you knock them out? If that's the case, just assign them all as "Quick" in status and fell powerful plowing through them. But if as you said you don't like them and they consistently happen on set days of the week (as you mentioned), Have your "Monday Processing" action item (task), inside that one task have a checklist with everything you do on Monday. To re-phrase, combine them all into one task and have a checklist in the workspace. Bump that one task's Do Date to the next week when you complete the current week.
@@augustbradley wow those are great solutions! I will first try adding them as quick tasks and if it becomes too cumbersome, then I will try the checklist within the task. You are too smart! Thanks again!
@@danash968 Great plan!
👏👏👏👏👏👏. Very goood. Thanks you.
Hi August, Can you clarify the approach of keeping the Master Action Database under the Pillars as opposed to embedded in the Action Zone (Template) you make available? I'm not sure which approach I should be using for both the Action List and the Project List. Should they be listed under Pillars and referenced in the template or is this your new preferred approach. p.s. As a GTD and Todoist'er of many, many years I'm really appreciating the holistic approach and nuance of your approach. I've especially been looking for a more visually compelling system and Notion seems to provide that with the ability to add custom images to each project.
Hi Adam. It would be under Pipelines, not Pillars. I had to embed it in the template in order to make it duplicatable with the template page. It doesn't really matter until you get a lot of DBs, then it might be easier to have them all under the Pillars, Pipelines and Vaults folders. it's easy to move them over (drag/drop) then create a "linked database" to embed back in the dashbaord. Hope that helps!
@@augustbradley Thanks August that makes sense. Just to clarify in the template there are multiple databases for actions and projects that are associated with today, tomorrow, week, etc. Should I copy those databases individually into some hierarchy under Pillars or do I just need one database and create separate views / filters for today, tomorrow, week, etc?
Waiting to see your flowchart and PPV in detail.
The flow chart is coming this week. PPV is coming in parts this week and next, with the big summary overview of it wrapping that up afterward. Thanks for your feedback and support!
Hi, I am using your template now and working my way through your videos, The client operations on in this is the most relevant to me and I cannot see how/where to set this up or a video on it, could you please point me in the right direction? many thanks
This series really is amazing - I'm currently in the process of building and tweaking my weekly and monthly review templates...the one thing I can't figure out is the function to put the double
Hey August. Seeing that this is the execution section of your workflow, i'm curious what video you could suggest I watch to see what your dashboard and process is when adding new actions. Thanks
Hi Thabang. I add new actions in this AZ dashboard, often in the Today toggle or the Calendar view. Hope that helps!
August these videos have been excellent! I do have one question though; where do you put the completed tasks after you’ve checked the done checkbox?
The completed tasks stay in the same database that the always were, But now you can make a linked database and filter that by done is ticked and you have a Completed db which you can put anywhere you wish
Added a datebetween formula to evaluate the distance between do and due date. Can be useful if your schedule is to a certain degree controlled by others:-)
Thank you, August, for all your effort. I enjoy watching. One remark/question: am I right in saying that the templates you offer for download and the templates you discuss in your videos are not exactly the same? And I do not mean only visually but conceptionally. Let me give you an example: in your templates for download you have a property called "status", where you include among others "waiting". In your videos "Waiting" is a checkbox property on its own. Why is that so? And don't you use the property "status" anymore?
Thanks Gerald! No, they are not different conceptually. When you're seeing changes that I've implemented since the time the video was recorded. The video is frozen in history but my system and the templates are evolving. When I update a new approach in my system I typically update the template too. That's the reason for the difference. Differences are for the sake of simplifying so they're more understandable, and so that it can be made into a stand-alone duplicatable template. Hope that helps!
Check out his video called ""Task Status" Enhancement to Notion Life OS for Better Project Management". He explains the reason for the modification in there.
@@lacsativ1 Thank you Gabriel! I realized it moving forward. My question was raised to early... :-)
Hi August, it doesn't look like you've done a training on projects yet, and I have one on projects.
How to do I create relational projects (that's probably not the right phrase) in Notion? How to take the Actions in a Project and ensure they show up in the Master Task Db and vice versa?
I want to be able to go into a project page (db?) where I have a list of actions and their dependencies. I also want to see those same actions + their dependents in my Master Task DB as well.
Conversely, I want to also, if I'm already in my Master Task DB, to be able to enter the actions there, link them to their projects and have them automatically show up in each individual project as well.
Since so many other things in Notion are relational, it would seem to be an easy thing to do -- but so far my test project page's actions are not showing up in my Master Task DB and vice versa.
What do you think I'm doing wrong? Since this is only the start of my third week in Notion, there's still A LOT I don't know… yet. But I'm working on narrowing the gap!
Projects coming very soon!
Let me start with your content is incredible, and I am signed up for the news letter and subscribed to your channel.
How would you recommend handling context? I don't mean the context that GTD refers to such as whether it's related to a call, home, etc., but rather is what you are working on work related or personal? Maybe I am over complicating things, but I imagine that those that are employed like me would want to focus exclusively on work while at work. Other areas of focus (not sure what else to call these) would open up once off the clock. What do you think?
Also, I feel like there is friction when I am using the template while trying to rank priorities in order first through fifth. What influenced your thinking to rank them first through fifth instead of high, medium, and low priority?
Thanks Ryan! On context, simply add a single select that has an option for each of your contexts. Then create multiple views filtering each for context. Look at the view relevant to the context you're in at any given moment.
I didn't use high, med, low because I sometimes need more than three. Numbering thmn gives more flexibility to set the quantity needed. How is the friction level any different between the two approaches you cited? I don't see any friction either way.
Im a little confused about the difference between '#OnScheduled' & '#Output'. The way I am understanding this is #OnScheduled = % of time spent on tasks with a 'do date' of Today. Basically, this is related to the amount of hours/Minutes/Seconds dedicated during the day to the tasks set out in action zone. #Output = % of tasks completed. So in this video 'Today's Action Items' contains 6 tasks. If August were to complete 3/6 tasks, would that equate to an #output=50%.
Are my definitions correct?
If my #Output definition is correct, couldn't I leverage the formula like the 'Progress' property in the Project Database to automatically populate the #output field as I set each task with [ 'Do Date' = TODAY AND 'Done' = TRUE] and have those Completed tasks divided by the number of open tasks where [ 'Do Date' = TODAY AND ('Done' = FALSE OR 'Done' = TRUE)]?
How do you plan household tasks like cleaning, laundry and stuff like that? I feel bad assigning those tasks because there's no project
Waiting column has been removed from template Fyi
Hi August I really appreciate your videos but I feel like this kind of system would be overkill for most people. I'm looking for a simpler system, for your avg. professional. As a person with ADHD I *need* to be organized, but I also like to keep things simple, because otherwise I get overwhelmed and end up not doing anything at all.
Loving your videos, August. I'm learning a TON. Quick question. Is there a reason other than just personal preference that you create different relational tables for each view rather than just one table with multiple views? For example, one table with a view for due today and the same table with a view for due tomorrow?
I have mine notionally setup like yours. I like the toggle which gives you the ability to hide the other tables but it still seems like a lot. Can you elaborate a bit on that? Thanks!
Good question Vickie! Four reasons. One is I often forget to look at the alternate views because they are out of sight. By having additional toggles, they are listed -- taking up very little space, but visible to remind me to use them. Also, I can open them with 1 click, instead of the two clicks to access the view drop menus. And third, this let's me open up two together, side-by-side (or above/below) which is useful for comparing and moving things around. And a forth, when working with teams makes it more clear to new users that these pre-set options exist -- they are even less like to be aware of the hidden views (or when creating setups for new team members from templates, easier for new people to see the options. New users often don't even know about the alternate views).
Thank you for all your amazing videos! One question I had for you, do you just estimate your daily output progress or how do you calculate it? I really like the idea of the weekly ranges and averages for output. Very insightful.
Thanks Simone! I estimate it, a subjective assessment is fine -- it's faster and more accurate than any automation you could apply for most work.
@@augustbradley Thank you for taking the time to answer! That's interesting, I might want to try both and compare. I am fairly certain that I will underestimate how much I get done each day by just estimating, but it might be interesting to compare....
@@simoneharri5937 You'll get better at it over time, and the relative measures will still be meaningful when comparing better vs worse days. Also to help this, I first do my end-of-day journal where I list my "Wins" for the day, then in my "Today" toggle I have a View set to show just my completed tasks today. Hope that helps.
Thank U
Hello August! Thank you for these wonderful videos. I am currently trying to implement your setup and I am working on the action zone views. But I seem to be having trouble with the “This Week” view. I have it filtered for the Do Date is today or after and the Do Date is next week. But it only shows my the items seven days from now. It does not show the items for today or the rest of the week. Any ideas? Thanks so much!
Hi Jill, great work -- you'e on your way here. Looks like the second filter designation is off a little, it should be "And Do Date is on or before One Week from Now" . That should fix it.
August Bradley : Notion Productivity thank you so much! That fixed it. I appreciate the quick response and am looking forward
to your next videos!
Waiting for - how do you get tasks to move based on a check box please?
Hello August, really great video and a very good Notion Setup you have. Looking forward for further videos
I've one question: how did you manage when adding a new "page" automatically at the "Do Date" property the actual date (today) appears?
Thanks Bjorn! If you create the new page by clicking the blue "new" button from a view of the database that is filtered for "Today", it will automatically enter today's date. Whatever the db view is filtered for, those fields will be entered in the new page. it's a great trick!
@@augustbradley oh yes you're right, that's a great trick. Thanks a lot for your help and I wish you all the best
@@augustbradley So happy you pointed this out its a great Tip
I know Notion is what I've been looking for all this time, and the thought and detail in these videos is incredible. But it's just seem very complicated for something that, for me at least, must be as simple as possible so it doesn't actually get in the way. How is everyone else getting on? let me know if you have any tips
It takes time to set up and initially learn, but then in action using it day-to-day it's simple. It removes complexity in life and work once in action.
@@augustbradley Thank you, I appreciate the reply. I'm struggling with the idea of having one database for all projects. I feel each project needs its own db with its own specific properties and task categories. But then the problem is, how do I bring all of these seperate databases together into a neat system such as the one in this vid?
@@MikeHudsontek Try to consolidate into fewer databases, that gives you more capability and streamlining across the system. Certainly some groupings of projects can have similar properties ans be in the same database. An it's ok if you have properties that some types of projects use but others do not. However in reality, I really have three separate types of projects in three different databases. I only call one of them Projects. The others are called Clients and Content Production. So my Client and Content databases functions as separate project databases since each of the three groupings has very different needs, properties, and templates. They could be combined, but there is some organization and additional clarity to having these three very different sets separate. Hope that helps.
Though I should add, only the Project DB gets aligned in the Alignment Zone, so anything essential for my growth or the growth of the business need to be in that one. The other two (Clients and Content) are just for day-to-day operational execution, not long-term evolution.
Thank you for the videos. I'm watching all of them. How do you handle tasks that you plan on completing later in the day that are not related to your business day? For example, right now I have a task to fix something in my house, but I only plan on doing it after 5PM. If I add it as a 5th priority, then it is sitting there all day until I get off of work. Also, I plan on doing it at 5PM, whether or not I complete my other tasks or not.
If you plan on doing it at 5pm regardless, then I'd give it a "scheduled" priority setting and assign the specific time in the date/time field. There are some limitations in Notion if you have a lot of scheduled items, if that's the case I would plan /coordinate all my unscheduled tasks in Notion then the night before, after I set the priorities for the next day of my Notion tasks, I wold time-block everything the for the following day in Google Calendar which has all my appointments usually scheduled anyway through Zapier integrations. The Google Cal entry for the next day would include time blocks for the Notion priority tasks. Below is my standard take on Scheduling in Google Cal -- you might do the Google Cal approach for a different reason than me (to keep your work and home time distinct and in it's proper time zone):
For me, if it's a complex day or crazy week, I find the functionality of Google Calendar to be worth the effort of laying things out there in detail then have the automated line (in week or day view) mark my point throughout the day. The evening before I will schedule out the entire day in Google Cal with appointments and block planned parts of the day for priorities from my Notion Action Zone. Plus I have automations from Calendly and other apps scheduling my appointments directly into Google Cal, can't do that with Notion. If the week is more about a sequential series of personal tasks/projects with just one or two shorter scheduled items, I'll stay in Notion and work through my priorities in order with the Scheduled item added so I don't forget (might set alarm on my phone too). It works either way, depending one how packed and diverse the day is.
So I suppose in summary: all scheduled events are in my Google Cal, all tasks are in my Notion system -- whichever has fewer I update and add to the other system the evening before and use that as my primary map for the day. Hope that helps!
@@augustbradley Thank you! This is very helpful and I appreciate the response.
@@zekefreeman3694 I have found using Priority 4 and 5 for later in the day works for me
Hi August, congrats for those well earned 7000 subscribers.
Would you please paste me the link for Mindset & Identity Sculpting? Thanks!
Thank Jaswati! That video episode has not come out yet, but it is planned on the schedule. It’s coming after we do the Vaults videos.
Why wouldn't my database show up to be selected in the drop down when linking databases?
Does anyone know what brand of shirt he's wearing?
Hello August, Thank you for your helpful video. I would like to ask if I have a task that I do every MOnday and Wed. How can I add on DO Date calender? Thanks,
Hi August! When I drag the Daily Tracking DB I can't see the items for that date, nor the option to filter it. Do you know what may be happening? Thanks!
Thanks for this great series August! One question: why would you not include your workout in your main Today list? It forces you to look in two different places ("Daily Tracking" as well as "Today") to see what your day looks like. A regular person using a calendar app on Daily view would simply have all their tasks listed out allotted to time. How is your workout going to get done when you have 5 or 6 tasks for the day that aren't time-boxed? Big fan, but this is confusing to me.
check his timeblocking video
Hi. What is the filter for the completed today view you showed? Great video.
Thanks! Two settings in the filter: (1) Do Date is Today and (2) Done is checked.
August Bradley : Notion Productivity yes! Thanks so much, amazing.