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Notion Software Totally Changed My Life! 3

Months Later, I Can State This 100% Sure
I’m being objective. I highly recommend you to take this life-changing step forward

Paco Cantero
Jan 5 · 12 min read

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

IMPORTANT ADVICE: there aren’t any affiliate

 marketing links, and I don’t receive anything at all
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from companies or people I mention in this article.

Testing and assuming risks is essential to evolve in life.
After doing so, you need to analyze and draw conclusions.

That’s what I will do along with this article.

On September 25th, 2020, I wrote this article: “Why I Do Think Notion Software Can
Change Your Life”.

Today, 3 months later, I can definitely affirm, fortunately, I was right.

Notion software and August Bradley’s PPV methodology were a life-changing

milestone for me in 2020. Period.

What do you think about all these words?

Security

Calm

Peace

Relaxation

Control

Clarity

Organization

Pragmatic

Results

Fulfillment

Happiness

You like them, don’t you?

Well, I have all of them by using PPV + Notion. As easy as that.

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I feel very comfortable with both:

PPV’s methodology, because I’ve been using for decades a very similar top-down
productivity system architecture.

Notion, because as a computer science engineer, Notion’s concept reminded me of

when I started programming in Dbase, during the early ‘90s.

I just spent a weekend creating my database model,

implementing it in Notion, and having my system
ready-to-go on Monday.
In this article, I will share the main components (I will call them “zones”) inside this
system because I polished August’s and adapted it to my own process flow.

The good point is, using Notion, you can do whatever you want to adapt the system to
your needs.

IMPORTANT POINT: Notion is not a note-

taking app. For me, it’s an amazing no-code
framework.
I emphasize the concept above because I had thought all my life that Notion was just
“another Evernote”. Because of that, I ignored Notion, as I’ve been (and keep being) an
Evernote heavy user for more than a decade.

Moving all my productivity architecture to Notion caused me to stop (or almost

stop) using these 4 apps:

Omnifocus.
 DayOne.
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Trello.

80% Evernote.

Centralizing the core of my productivity system in just one software is quite a

risky move, but:

1. Although Notion is not one of the hugest players, like Amazon, Google, or Apple, I
feel very confident about this company and its future.

2. The benefits I’ve accomplished by making this movement is worthwhile. No doubt

about it!

Without further ado, I will describe the main functionalities I’m using Notion for and
how I’ve implemented them.

I won’t go into too much detail to not turn this article into a “book”. Feel free to contact
me in case I could help you, or you get stuck.

I will be delighted to help anyone because this movement changed 180 degrees my life,
and I’m pretty sure it can change yours too.

Let’s dive in!

1. Action Zone
For me, this is my mainboard. It’s where I spent more time during my day.

I will describe the different sections I’ve created because this board has been the one I
personalized the most to my needs.

It perfectly fits my workflow, and I’m delighted.

Having just one screen to manage your whole day is a dream come true.
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Photo by Author

1.1 Highlight of the day

Every day I define what my great goal will be.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a “stupid” thing I can manage in a minute, or it’s something I
need a 12-hour day to have it done.

It’s THE thing that, whenever I go to bed, I will feel

proud because I accomplished it.
You want to make it, so you will dedicate enough time when your day begins to be
sure you will write something that:

1. You can achieve.

2. It’s important to you because it will move you a little bit closer to your goals.

This “highlight idea” is something I learned in Year Zero, August Bradley’s online
community, from I guy named “Anike” (he’s an awesome guy!).
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As I said above, you will never succeed because you did 1 great thing. You’ll succeed
because you do hundreds or thousands of small things.

1.2 Focus
As you can see, here I got 3 toggle sections:

Morning.

Afternoon.

Tomorrow.

Each of them is just a to-do list. I can’t show them because of privacy issues, but you
can get the idea.

I have one rule: I cannot have more than 3 items in

the two first ones (morning and afternoon).
If I see something’s important and urgent, I put it in the “tomorrow section”, just to
have it there, in the spotlight.

If something unexpected happens during the day (don’t lie to yourself. That’s always
going to happen), it’s effortless for me to see where I can fit it, moving items from the
“morning section” to the “afternoon section” if needed, or to the “tomorrow section” if
I see I won’t have enough time today.

Using a toggle is critical because whenever I have planned my day, I close all toggles
but the “morning section” one.

Focusing on just 3 items is, for me, one of the most

critical actions to be productive.
Whenever I decide what task I will do, I even close the “morning section” because I
don’t want any distractions surrounding me.
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It’s easy to move items up and down.

It’s easy to see the sequential process you need to be productive.

A to-do list shows you the way: start for the first task and, when it’s done, go to the
next one.

To-do’s lists have something great too. You can

check them as done, seeing the task crossed out.
This is another “stupid” thing, but it motivates me a lot. It gives me the sensation of
dynamism, of moving forward towards my goals.

When you finish a day and see 6 crossed-out tasks, you feel like a hero:

You did it.

You left things behind.

You know tomorrow will be the same.

You know compounding efforts will take you further. It’s just a matter of time.

You sleep well every night because YOU HAVE DONE THINGS, and you have felt it.

You’re also sure you’ve done the things you should do because YOU thought about
them, YOU selected them, YOU prioritized them, and, finally, YOU did them.

1.3 Goals
There are 2 toggle sections.

I usually just have one, but I created a second one because I’m just in the middle of my
yearly review, and I want to quickly write it down any annual goal that comes to my
mind.

Inside the week’s goals section, I have a to-do list with the tasks I want to do every
week.
 They’re very specific, clear, and direct to the point.
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They are essential tasks that will drive me to

accomplish my goals.
I can see these tasks all week long because, as you can see, they’re on my main screen,
so that:

When I’m planning my daily tasks, I always look at my week’s goals.

When I prioritize any of my to-do’s lists, I look at my week’s goals.

That gives me the functionality of always be doing what I’m supposed to do on my way
to accomplish my goals.

1.4 Batch
On the screen’s right side, I have what I call “Batches”.

They are 4 different documents (Notion’s pages):

Daily Batch.

Weekly Batch.

Monthly Batch.

Dead Time Batch

Each of these documents above contains a to-do list, having all of them different
sections based on my life’s four areas. One area for each of my 3 companies and
another one for my personal issues.

Whenever I have something to do, my first question is always the same: when do
I need to do this thing?

As soon as possible? Then it’ll go to the Daily Batch document within its related
section.

This week? Then it’ll go to the Weekly Batch document within its related section.
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No deadline? Then it’ll go to the Dead Time Batch document within its related
section.

I check my daily batch document at the beginning of the day and select only 6 items (3
go to my “morning section”, and the other 3 go to my “afternoon section”).

If you want to go deeper and see how I manage my batches, check this article.

1.5 Daily Tracking

This toggle section contains a connection to my daily tracking database.

I use this database to track many things:

How long I slept last night.

Habits I want to mark as done.

Daily journaling to perform my morning and end-of-the-day daily journaling

routines.

I’d like to describe a little bit this last point.

As I said above, I stop using DayOne to do my journaling.

It was a little bit awkward at the beginning because my mind has a clear vision of a
journal. I identified it as the physical journal we’ve always had and, later on, with the
DayOne app.

Now, I thought out of the box.

I leveled up my thought, and I observed the functionality.

If you think about a journal, it’s just a place to:

Write down ideas.

Perform morning or end-of-the-day routines, such as day’s goals, gratitudes,

inspiration, reflections…
 When you practice this abstract thinking, you end
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up with the conclusion that you don’t need to use

just one software or database, that all that stuff can
be “all over the place” (but organized!).
My solution is that I combine my journaling feature into two different databases:

My daily tracking database.

My Notes & ideas database. I will explain it within this article.

The excellent point about Notion is that you can combine inside a page these 2
totally different items:

Database fields.

Formatted text as you can do in any note-taking app.

That combination produces amazing results because, inside a Notion’s page, you
can create 2 different sections:

At the top, you insert all the database fields you want to use/fill.

Below that, you can start a perfectly formatted and endless note section as if you
were using Evernote.

That’s the superpower of a Notion’s page!

1.6 Notes & Ideas

This toggle section contains a connection to my Notes & Ideas database.

It allows me to do quick data entry effortless.

1.7 Action Area

This is an area with 4 toggle sections, each of them connected to my tasks database.

Opening each toggle allows me to see:

Today tasks.
 Tomorrow
To make tasks.
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Upcoming week tasks.

Waiting-on tasks.

Below this section, I have a “Calendar view” with all my scheduled tasks.

This is the view I use the most because I can easily

drag and drop tasks from one day to another, and I
have a clear vision of all the things I have to do
during my week and the weeks after.
If I move down that “Calendar view”, I can see my high-level goals, low-level goals, and
active projects.

As I said before, this “Action Zone” is a dream come true. My whole life just scrolling a
little bit up and down…

2. Business Zone
Here I have these 3 databases:

Clients. All my client’s information and data.

Contacts. Both personal and professional contact data.

Content Production Machine. This database stores all my content. Today only has
posts, but in the future, it will have any kind of content format I might publish
(video, podcast…).

3. Personal Zone
Here I just store my Notebooks database.

It’s a database in which I’ve created a field to differentiate among all the different
notebooks I may have: personal, business, and so forth.

Each data entry is like any note-taking app’s note.

4. Pillars Zone
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If my pillars are ok, I’m ok, as easy as that.

To better explain it, I will give you some examples: mindset, writing, home, family,
health, and fitness…

Inside this zone, I have these different pages or databases:

Alignment zone (page). It defines my top-down methodology (and PPV’s), going

from the top, my guiding principles (the ones that define my life), to the bottom
(high-level goals, low-level goals, projects, and tasks).

Mindset (page). It’s a page in which I write any concept that comes to my mind,
quotes, ideas I see and watch anywhere. Anything that catches my attention. It can
be any type of subject: motivation, inspiration, performance, humor… Every day, I
take 5 minutes of my time, inside my morning routine, just to read some of this
huge document.

Habit and routines (database). Here I record all the habits I want to perform
regularly.

5. Pipelines Zone
As a goal achiever, my procedure is always the same (very simple, as you can see):

1. Defining strategy.

2. Defining high-level goals.

3. Defining low-level goals.

4. Defining tasks (if a lot of them are inside a similar or higher-level concept, I group
them using a project).

5. Prioritizing.

6. Doing.

This zone allows me to perfectly see that hierarchy

structure I’ve created.
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to low-level

This zone is a fantastic place to perfectly see how I connect the dots between my high-
level goals and my daily tasks, going from abstract concepts (high-level goals) to the
most concrete elements (tasks).

6. Vaults
Here I have my second brain, the digital one. The one that makes me feel safe, secure,
and confident.

Anything that’s just data I want to store and keep safe goes to any of these
databases:

Notes and ideas. Here’s where I mix my journaling and any other kind of ideas,
inspirations, etc. My journal classical concept disappeared, thinking about a place
divided by days where I write things down. Now, everything’s here and on my daily
tracking database. It may be sound chaotic, but when you get used to it, it’s much
more flexible because that’s how our brain works, connecting thoughts in an
anarchic way.

Media. Tweets, books, videos, articles, podcasts… Any media I’m interested in is
registered here.

Training. All my courses, lessons, classes… go in here.

Software, skills, and services. Any software or professional service that seems
essential gets recorded in this database.

Knowledge vault. This is what I call my “personal Wikipedia”. Anything, and when
I say it, I mean it, I enter to my system has a knowledge vault field. That makes it
possible to connect, for instance, an idea, a book, or a training course, with the
knowledge areas I’ve created. Some examples of knowledge areas I have inside this
Knowledge vault database are: creativity, finances, growth, marketing, mindset,
motivation, productivity… You can name them “tags” to better understand the
concept.

These vaults give me the possibility to find any kind of information I’m interested in.
It’s a source of knowledge and inspiration.
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It gives me flexibility because I can access it anywhere and from any device I’m using.

7. Reviews Zone
Reviews completely changed my life.

At the beginning, we all think the same thing:

It’s something boring,

something that will take you a lot of time,

something useless.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Here, I explain why they are so crucial to anyone’s life. I highly recommend you give it
a try. Nothing to lose. A lot to win.

Inside this zone, I have a database for each of my review’s types:

Yearly review.

Quarterly review.

Monthly review.

Weekly review.

Takeaways
It may seem overwhelming at the beginning, but it is not.

As soon as you understand the concepts, this top-down philosophy, and you begin
creating Notion’s pages and databases, everything starts to fit, to make sense, to
improve your productivity at levels you never imagined.

Having all my systems centralized have been life-changing.

 That sensation of security, control, easy-access to
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my whole life has increased exponentially.

The more I work with the system, the more I make it fit my needs, the more
comfortable I feel with it.

Here I summarize some of the key points a system like this can give you:

Defining what is really important to accomplish your goals.

Be focused on the most important things.

Be doing those most important things.

Create a fantastic productivity loop based on doing what you should at any
moment mechanically, without even thinking.

Create a system that is prepared to overcome unexpected events.

Create a system that motivates you every day.

Create a system to avoid procrastination because it is based on little/tiny/simple

tasks.

Create an anti-stress system because it’s simple to use. Believe me. It’s true…

Being productive shouldn’t be tough.

Life is simple, as our systems should be.

Simplicity is the most productive tool in life.

After more than 30 years working on productivity, I’ve never had this unique
combination of complexity and simplicity at the same time.

A complex world out there, a simple world in here, in my life.

Go for it!

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