Notion: A Life Management System
I rarely take advise from other creators or influencers; not because I have anything personal against it, just on principle. I selectively take in suggestions and use my own discernment to judge if something is correct, or even useful for me. Trends mean very little to me. Occasionally, things align where I feel inspired to try something off the cuff. The management systems create by Notion was one of them that has stuck.
I was introduced to Notion as a software and concept by a YouTuber, Kaelyn Grace Apple (aka the Redhead Academic) nearly two years ago now. She had probably mentioned it once or twice prior, but at that time, I wasn’t overwhelmed by life and grappling for a way to feel stable again. The pandemic was in full swing shortly before this, so nothing was really going on. The stress then stemmed from people in my life and the global lockdown, not from life suddenly pressing the accelerator to maximum capacity again.
In Comes Notion
When I finally got around to taking self management systems seriously (outside of analog planners) Notion had been around for a bit already. It was largely used by MacBook and iPad people. Before the pandemic, I owned and had mostly relied on Windows PCs, as they are generally more widely available (and let’s face it: more affordable). The MacBook I switched to two years ago was actually a gift — and one I had the most heartfelt gratitude to have received. When things aligned to bring Notion front and center as a viable tool, I took the leap.
First, I went to the web version over on https://www.notion.so to get a taste for the system in something I was already familiar with — the internet. I wanted to see if it was mostly user-friendly. In other words, was there a significant learning curve? As someone who was shifting to full time university study as a non-traditional student, I didn’t have the bandwidth to have to learn a complicated system at the same time. The layout felt pretty intuitive to me having had some minor experience with coding and tech exposure through internships and other influences. Of course, I also had Kaelyn’s Notion life dashboard template initially to help set me up. She was also generous enough to create a YouTube video for those who bought the template to guide them through it; a sort of beginner manual. Seeing her use locate, explain, and use everything in real time was the crash course I needed. I think the video had only been a 10 -15 minute length, but that was all I needed to get started.
The rest I’ve learned as I went, simply Googling for an explainer article or a quick YouTube tutorial for any troubleshooting here and there. Or to learn a new way of create pages and other parts of Notion.
How I Use Notion
Notion has truly become my main life management system (and a physical planner for back up just in case I can’t access the internet or my devices for whatever reason).
I used it to keep assignments and projects manageable and coursework (relatively) sustainable — granted even with that I’ve still spent much of the last few weeks recovering from academic burn out — but that isn’t Notion’s fault. That’s the fault of the University and how university culture has shifted away from intellectual pursuit of knowledge toward corporatization and “job market readiness”, the exact opposite of its original intent as an institution of higher learning. But that’s a long discussion for another day.
So, I have a comprehensive and well-organized dashboard (a kind of landing page) where everything was structured in drop-down menus, checklists for daily priorities, a big calendar with every input synced to another part of Notion, project management tables, aesthetic galleries of individual boards leading to integrated, dedicated pages and permalinks so everything was reachable from one main source. I have life themes clustered together within the main navigation at the top split into five priorities, or categories that everything else would fall under.
Personal life. Academic life. Professional life. Health & Wellness. Hobbies.
In that exact order. I even created a mini digital vision board near the top navigation so I didn’t have to scroll far each day to see the visual representation of what I was working towards with every action step, checked list point, and quarterly goal focus slowly moving in the direction I’ve set for myself. There is even a Vision drop-down list highlighting the top visions/missions I have, and listing the “big why” and actionable steps I’m taking towards each. My main visions (and also the stars of my vision board) are becoming a successful writer and content creator, folklorist & heritage manager, and a community facilitator (with a secondary goal there). Of course, there is a long-term goal of permanently living abroad as well. I may have one more, private goal that I’ll keep close to my chest for now, but that is also nestled into my dashboard.
Each major life area has a drop-down menu below it, and within that are links to those dedicated boards I mentioned — each dealing with a sub-category. For example - my yearly planner, the current quarterly focus, personal finance, and a few other things like routines and weekly resets under the Personal life section. Same goes for the rest, such as graduate applications and in-depth information on the institutions I’m interested in for graduate study under the Academic section, or all the stuff related to Fable & Lore or Mist & Moss under the Professional section. Health & Wellness has meal planning, favourite recipes, fitness tracking stuff, etc.
Just about every aspect of my life is somewhere in that Notion dashboard.
Outside of that, I have other dashboards. Like for the two very different genre novels I am slowly working on in the background. They are so information heavy they needed their own dashboards, pages, lists, etc. I mean… novels are encapsulated worlds so.. that makes sense to me. A single board on my life dash would never be enough!
Two Years Later
I’ve been using Kaelyn’s Life Dashboard template for nearly two years, the anniversary around December. She’s since created an elevated version that I didn’t switch over to when she released it around December of last year. I wanted to try my hand at creating custom dashboards and pages from scratch now. I slowly reverse engineered Kaelyn’s template to see how she did it, and what her thought processes were in the making of it.
I asked pointed questions:
“What were the areas of my life that I needed to manage most?”
“What I wanted to focus on the most, and where the majority of my time and energy was spent?”
“Do I need to shift focus to any specific area in the coming months, or for the next year?”
I also considered the aesthetic I tend to gravitate towards (dark academia, dark cottage core, a little witchy) and how I could achieve that visually while being mindful of the function, not just the form.
That’s how I’ve created a commonplace notebook on Notion basics and sketched out mock-ups to start crafting my own design with integrated pages, boards, galleries, lists, trackers, etc. There is nothing wrong with using Kaelyn’s dashboard. I just want to spread my own wings now, with no guard rails or training wheels. I likely will continue to use the old dashboard for a few more months as I take my time crafting my custom life dashboard and beta testing it before transitioning to the new design.
What’s Next?
Three things in particular:
That new design for my own custom life dashboard. I’m putting it together layer by layer, section by section, and I’m aiming to have in completed and in beta testing by the end of July.
As I work on that personal project, I will focus on mastering Notion. I would like to become a power user and flesh out that solid commonplace notebook or compendium to reference.
Why would I need that?
Well, my next project is to develop themed aesthetic life management dashboard templates for others to download and get started with Notion. I plan to open a web shop here on my website to share the completed and beta tested dashboards and stand alone pages (eventually) to integrate into the pre-existing dashboards or to use in their own systems. My mission with this project is to help others the way Kaelyn helped me — giving them a fun and aesthetic way to manage their lives and have a sense of meaning, purpose, and maybe some level of control in all the chaos.
My goal is to have the first collection (yes, I’m working on four main designs for one collection and two for another) finished, beta tested, and ready for the store launch by September. Right in time for the start of school and university fall semesters. I’ll try to give a sneak peak as I’m close to launching everything. The rest (I have two other collections in mind beyond these) I would like to launch for October and another collection around the holidays — so keep an eye out for all that in the coming months!
I’m curious, though. Do you know about Notion and do you use it to manage your life?