notion has been my go-to productivity app for the past five years it's the glue that holds my entire life together I use it for everything from tracking my studies to managing my YouTube channel and running my business so I'm super excited to partner up with notion again as they release notion projects which has made it so much easier to create the perfect life management system I know starting from scratch can be difficult so as a bonus I'll be giving away my template for free because I love our rookies and I want you all to succeed all I ask is that you check out notion and watch the entire video but before you jump into notion I want to talk about the intention behind this workflow for me I view productivity in terms of projects projects have action items or tasks and non-actionable items notes and all of these are important to manage if we want to work with as little stress as possible there are two workflows at play that make this happen I call them top down and bottom up top down is planning we know we have a project like apply for law school so we brainstorm which tasks need to be done and what notes need to be researched and stored bottom up is adapting you know having been an entrepreneur now for a couple of years I can guarantee that nothing ever goes according to plan random Flyers need to be put out a brilliant idea spawns from thin air that steers the direction of the business Mike has an emotional breakdown so our management system needs to adapt with us most new tasks and ideas come we integrate them into our workflow to stay organized and the best part is with notion we can do them both and we can do them well so here's my management dashboard I wanted it to feel cozy and homey which is why Misty Crete sets when we come home kind of like a puppy across the top is the navigation bar with links to four different dashboards that are included in this template projects Sprints Tasks and notes projects and Sprints are top-down workflow Tasks and notes are bottom-up workflow then a section for daily tasks where all of our to-do's scheduled for today appear and yes this automatically updates every single day and we can change the status of the tasks as we complete them like I did this this morning thank God this one I'm still working on but uh we'll get there the active items section shows an overview of our projects our Sprints and our current tasks I'll swing back to these later scroll down and there's a toggle called do not delete I know how tempting it might be when someone says don't do something the only thing that goes to my mind is I want to do it so bad that this is where I put the instruction manual the documentation all the dashboards and the databases that run this template so if you delete this you're gonna break it you've been warned and then some Shameless self promo at the bottom join our Discord Community by studyquest yay okay moving on so starting with the top down workflow is the project dashboard there are two sections in this dashboard we have plan and active use the plan area to plan out upcoming projects I've categorized different projects by tags so if I have an upcoming school project like I don't know apply for medical school a lot of that here use the plus new or maybe I have to start an org or club for school I also have tags for my business which I called work and also Creator stuff on YouTube if you want to make more tags you can just click on the plus to the right of no tags here and I can add a new group I'll probably have one for personal and then let's move this over here like that personal projects might be file taxes you know summer bod 2023 level up my Riz game projects can be tagless it didn't really fit into any one of these categories like I'd probably move level up my Riz game to no tags because it's not strictly for me it's also for my crippling and security inside each project page we can continue to brainstorm from that top-down approach so hover your cursor over the project click on the pencil to edits I can add a lead who is in charge of this project maybe this will be me I can plan out an expected date for this project including an ending if I know it by hitting add dates let's say this is going to start today I'll hit on this toggle for end date to give a date range and let's say that applications open up on the 1st of June which I think they do um but I always like to keep myself a little bit of a buffer because let's be honest I'm probably going to procrastinate a little bit so I'll choose June 3rd and I'll X out and there you go we can see a date range for this project now let's open up the project page here into a full screen and I'll have an area where I can outline my project and I can describe my project here Maddie is going to apply for medical school again now I can also start adding action items or tasks to this project under the task projects area the three emojis here stand for not started yet in progress and then complete and this one over here stands for recycle or archive we don't really need to see so I'll start adding some tasks this is a super simple tracking system I can just click and drag items across as I complete them in progress and then finished we can even get more specific and add some properties to these tasks too so I click on the edit again and I'll open this and decide Pete this time like who's going to do this tasks probably has to be me I can choose a date for this task let's say that my MCAT is going to be in two days on Friday and I can choose priority for this task this is going to be a high priority task if I need to take any notes specific for this task I can also add notes Here let's close out of here whenever I need to take notes for this project for research or ideas or meetings or anything I can simply click on add notes and make a new note studies schedule for MCAT I'll click on plus new and it'll create a new note for me and it'll appear right here cool the great thing about this notion projects workflow is that everything in this template already comes pre-linked so all the tasks and all the notes that I make when I'm inside of this project page that are already pre-linked to the project so I don't have to mess around with these properties making relations and formulas and stuff it's super convenient so let's go back to the project dashboard I'll use the breadcrumb trail the top of the screen to go to my Cajun koi manager page and I'll go back to my projects here so as you can see there are a lot of projects that I have planned that I really want to do that'd be nice but that doesn't always mean it's the right time to do them so pick the projects that are most important to you right now and prioritize them it's all about intention that's why it's always a good idea to add priorities to these projects so we know which ones are more important and once you're ready to begin a project all you have to do is click and drag that project down to the active area into the in progress area just like that and now my application for medical school is in motion I can see the priority for it I can see what category of my life it applies to this is school I can see who charge of this project especially useful if you're working on teams and I can also see how close to complete this project is and that relates to how many tasks I put into this project and so there are four tasks in this apply for medical school project as we can see and only one of them is in the done area and that's why this says 25 there are also a few other views in the active section if you prefer to see all of your projects in a table like this you can click on the active View and we can just see pretty much the same information but it's organized by in progress in tables like this timeline view is also really cool if you want to see all your projects in a timeline like this and you kind of just see how they stack against each other going over the all tab you'll see every single project that you have either planned completed or archived the last view mind will show you all of the projects that you are assigned to this is again especially useful if you're working on teams like I do alright so now let's move over to Sprint planning which is my favorite new feature with notion projects I've always loved to work in Sprints in medical school we get dedicated weeks to study for boards and for clinical exams this style of work leverages time pressure when we set clear progress goals and create a sense of urgency around completing that goal our brain focuses so much better this is why techniques like Pomodoro and task prioritization are so effective and honestly it's why Sprints have become so popular lately with the whole dopamine detoxing and monk mode craze and it's definitely a tool I've been using a lot to improve my focus so let's plan out a Sprint in the Sprint dashboard and I'll use that example again of getting my application ready for medical school so in the Sprints dashboard I'll first go to my all view to see all of my current or upcoming Sprints that are planned I'll begin by renaming this for Sprint to apply for medical school I'll choose a date range for this Sprint we already said that this is going to be up until the June 3rd next we'll start adding some tasks to our Sprint over in the Sprint planning view now I can see my current Sprint and a toggle and my next Sprint and another toggle I'm just going to collapse this because we're focused on this current Sprint and if I scroll down to this backlog area it's going to show all of the tasks in this template and what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to check the boxes for all of the items that I want to include in the Sprint now the really cool thing is I can include tasks from any project or no project at all into this Sprint so I definitely want to include all of these tasks that are related to apply for medical school but maybe in this upcoming Sprint I'm also going to need to get ready for this trip I have coming up I'm also going to want to add all these tasks related to this trip that I'm taking to New York next month with Mike maybe I'll throw this into the Sprint too because she can't wait forever right now I'm just going to click and drag all of these items into that current Sprint I can click on remove sorting because I don't really care about bats now all of these tasks regardless of which project they came from or if they had any project at all are part of the Sprint if I go back to my all view I can see all the total tasks in each Sprint I can see my completion rate which is how many those tasks have moved to the done area and then my favorite thing is to go back to the current Sprint View and I can see all of the tasks in this current Sprint that I'm in and I can just manage it directly from here I can just click drag things to move them along as I finish them like so and as I click and drag these tasks over in all of the different projects that I'm working on until I complete them all all of my tasks have been complete my progress bar is 100 filled up and I'll just click on complete Sprint a pop-up will come up I'll see a quick summary of my results if I completed all the tasks and then I can click this button to complete that Sprint and then begin my next one my current Sprint changes to the next Sprint that I had planned if I go back to the all Sprints view apply for medical school is now in the past that was when I completed that Sprint I really love this Sprint workflow because of how focused it is on action and it's not just organizing and planning things for the sake of organizing and planning things this has been really useful not only for school but in my business where Mike and I have dedicated Sprints to get projects done get YouTube videos done and stuff like that all right let's move on now to the bottom up workflow the bottom-up workflow utilizes our CCC framework which stands for collect clarifying calendar and it's Loosely based off of David Allen's GTD we first collect Tasks and notes into notion and then we clarify them to know which project they belong to and finally we put tasks into our calendar to stay focused I made an entire video about this framework so definitely check that out for a deeper dive but starting with collect we're constantly bombarded throughout the day with information from notifications reminders Revelations media obviously not all that stuff is important but for the stuff that is we collect them into notion so we don't have to rely on our brain to remember them because let's be honest it kind of sucks at that so action items go over to our task dashboard and non-actionable items go over to our notes dashboard and in each dashboard there's a link to a collection page my favorite super hack and notion is using multiple tabs at the top left next to the breadcrumb trail I can click on this to make a new tab it'll duplicate the current page that I'm in and now I can just use command 1 and 2 to switch between these two tabs like so and in the second tab I'll have this phone collect Page open so that's whenever I need to collect any information whether that's a new task I can use this new button right here to collect a new task or I can use this button right here to collect a new note and then I can just use command 1 to get back to the page I was currently on so a new thought comes to mind command two flip over here I can click on plus new to add a new task now if you're wondering why it says phone it's because this page is also the one I use as a widget on my phone to collect stuff if I'm out and about and I'm not at my computer so if I'm waiting in line at in and out or something and I suddenly realize I need to subscribe to Keyshia Co Academy and like this video boom done or maybe I'm at the gym you know warming up with an easy 225 bench and I get an amazing idea for a YouTube video I can collect that too notion syncs everything across devices when I get home later it's already waiting for me I literally have no excuse now not to collect my thoughts step two is clarify we have to decide if the stuff we collected is worth keeping and where it belongs let's start off with tasks I'll use command 1 to go back to my task dashboard here and we'll see that there are two database views here actually the task inbox is at the top an inbox is basically just a place that we collect things and then underneath that we have our task calendar so to clarify these tasks all I'm going to do is fill in the properties here with notion projects this workflow is actually also great if you're working on a team or in a group like I would probably just assign all this stuff that I didn't want to do over to Mike here's another Pro tip if you click and drag on that circle at the bottom of a cell you can copy that cell uh vertically to as many tasks as you want and for all of these other tasks I would just delegate them to people on my team and that way I don't have to do any work and I can focus instead on building hovercrafts in terms of the Kingdom choose a priority for these tasks low medium or high do you want to get more compartmentalized you can even tag each of these tasks with something specific the defaults and notion projects are mobile website and Improvement these obviously are more relevant if you're working on like a product development team but as a student you can make your own tags make my own tag and click on create to make your own tag for them and if any of these tasks like study for exam here is related to a project I can click on the cell and I can find the project that it's related to like apply for medical school and I can that project there now by default I have some filters up here that you can see that if any project is assigned to these tasks or if a due date is assigned for these tasks a due date meaning I put it into my calendar then it's going to disappear from inbox after clarification moving on to step three is now to put them into my calendar so I know when I'm going to do them and to do that all I have to do is click and drag the tasks that I want to do from the Inbox and into the proper date in my calendar so if you want to do that one today I can move it there if I want to do any of these tasks or multiple of them on the same day just like before I'll use the check boxes and then I'll click and drag these into tomorrow like so I can also just rearrange tasks when I want to do them right here in the calendar by clicking on tasks and moving them around and we'll also be able to see the status of the task whether it's completed whether it's not started yet I can also see which projects it's related to I can see its priority and I can see who is going to do those a few more useful views in this database here if you want to see all your tasks by project click on it by project View and we'll be able to see all of the tasks that have no project at the top I can close this toggle I can see all of my tasks related to trip to New York I have planned I can see all of my tasks related to this YouTube video and then all of my other projects here completed tasks view pretty self-explanatory it just shows all the tasks that I've already completed something I like to do in here is a periodic Purge so I'll click on this check box up here to highlight all of my tasks and I will delete them from my knowledge base last view all tasks probably not that useful but it'll show you all the tasks in this template all right let's pop over to the notes dashboard to clarify our notes now I'll go back to the Cajun koi manager and click on notes the notes dashboard only has one database with two views so it's a lot simpler the first view is for recent notes which doubles as my notes inbox and all my recent notes because I have them sorted by last edited time to clarify this inbox click on the pencil icon next to these notes add tags to my notes this distinguishes like what type of note it is I can click on ADD tags this is an idea then I can also relate this note to a project if it exists in one so I can add a project here this is actually a new YouTube idea so I'm going to create a new project here probably jacked in 30 days and I'll create a new project for this note something that I really love about notion is the relational linking and what I mean is that any note can be a part of multiple projects so unlike in Mac finder where I'd have to make a copy of a file and then put it in two different folders in notion I can actually just link OneNote to multiple projects so let's say that I want this get jacked in 30 days YouTube video note that I have to be in multiple projects I can actually just link another project here like my one arm pull-up Challenge and now we'll see that this note lives in both of these projects I can open the project to show you that's right here that note lives in get Jack days and it also lives in my one-arm pull-up challenge I absolutely love this feature because it makes it so much less stressful to clarify notes and think where should I put this note because I can put it everywhere or I can put it nowhere so as you can imagine if you collect a lot of notes and ideas you're probably wondering how on Earth are you going to find any of your notes if they're all in this one database don't worry I got you that's what filters are for it's like online shopping you can filter it by different tags we can filter it by who created the note especially useful again if you're working on teams and if you're still unable to find that note there's a search feature right here this magnifying glass next to sort and I can search for the note in this database probably should have started off with that one the second view in notes is the project view again just like the task projects view this one just shows all of our notes by the project that they're related to and just like that all of the notes that needed to be clarified and stored into the right projects have been done and I can easily find them whenever I need to the that's how the CCC cycle is used for bottom-up management and notion the whole idea is to simplify the process of managing but keep it flexible so I always know what are the next steps to move my project so now I want to show you how I use the home page dashboard to maintain my entire life management system so in the active items area I can just get a quick overview of the ongoing projects I'm working on or the tasks or any Sprints these are just the same views that we've already seen from these dashboards but I also want to highlight a unique new feature that notion just dropped that's very very cool called AI autofill I'll give a few cool use cases for autofill here first as a student oftentimes I had to read research papers and articles and stuff mostly from online resources nowadays and if you're anything like me I like to take reference notes as I go through articles or I'll grab highlights directly into notion from read wise on my Kindle and stuff like that it's really easy for me to get notes into notion but something that I struggle with is when I come back to something that I read in the past I have to try and figure out what that chicken scratch was that I wrote but with autofill that problem is pretty much gone so switching over to task view here here is a paper I'm working on about how memory works and all of these different tasks are actually different articles that I've read and I'm going to have ai autofill summarize key bullet points for each of these articles so I don't have to go into them so let's go over and add a new property here with a plus icon I will choose submarine AI which is a new beta feature and what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to edit this property because I want to enter my own custom prompt in so I'll click on summary AI edit property and I'll change this summary type from here to a custom autofill and let's ask this to list the top three takeaways from these notes in bullet point format and explain it simply because I'm lazy I'll use this to try on this View and save changes and so sick AI is now summarizing everything that's inside of these pages right from the front and I'm going to wrap this column so we can see it better it's given me three bullet points and then summarize the article so I don't have to go back in I'll go down I wanted to summarize these ones as well let's update this so cool and let's do for this last article as well let's update it boom just like that and so if I'm compiling resources for paper I'm writing or a project I'm working on I can get quick summaries just from this overview page so next up as a Creator one of the most important parts of youtubing is coming up with catchy or viral titles for my ideas because what I found is that ideas are really only as good as their packaging so let's go back to the projects view here and in my planning area I'm going to look at some ideas that I've had for YouTube videos and I'm going to have ai generate some alternate titles for me so let's go over to the summary AI area again I'm going to edit property again I'm going to try a custom autofill and let's ask AI this time give me a bullet list of alternate viral or catchy titles or a YouTube and I will try it on this View save changes I'm going to turn on auto update as well so that's if I change this title it's going to give me different ideas again you can go ahead and wrap this up so we can see what it did 30 days of gains 30 days to a stronger body mastering the art of Riz Riz like a pro hmm some of these are actually kind of funny but anyways let's see what happens if I change this idea from 30 days checked video challenge let's see how AI auto updates this to be the summary just Auto updated because I changed the name of this project and finally as an entrepreneur I do unfortunately have to take a lot of meetings nowadays and during meetings I like to jot down all the deliverables and follow-ups that my team has to do or that Mike and I have to do but for some reason immediately after the meetings are over I forget everything that we just talked about and what I can do is just have ai summarize for me in bullets again actionable items from my meetings so here's an example one of our ongoing projects right now is to redesign the Cajun koi Academy website and it's something really epic we're going to have a profile picture generator we're gonna have skill trees we're gonna have a lot of really cool stuff and we've been working with a design team and so what I can do I will go over to my summer AI area once again let's edit this property I'm going to choose another custom prompt this time summarize in a bullet list the key takeaways and action items let's try it on this View save changes I'll X out again and now if I go down to my meetings over here I can click on this update button and it should update with that new prompt let's see what it gives me so it gives me some key takeaways what we talked about in our meeting and our action items I can do this for the next one as well takeaways and action items looking great and then one more time I'll update this last one here boom very very cool so having AI just do a summary for me super useful if I come back to this task even days or weeks in the future I'll not have to go through my notes again and I'll always see the ongoing action items for this task and that's a taste of my management system in notion it's been incredibly effective for me to manage not only my life but also to run my business with Mike check out notion projects I barely even scratched the service here with the new cool stuff they rolled out like more app Integrations task IDs and automations links to everything including this template will be in the description but I do want to mention that this template it's really just one small part of our overall management system because of students and creators we also need to manage our studies our mental health our side hustles along with our productivity so if you're interested in our ultimate notion workstation that also comes complete with a full guide for building a study system and then putting it all together you should definitely check out study quests this right here is a great introductory video into what it is we've just gone through a massive update and overhauled a study Quest so this video is a little outdated but it still has a lot of value so I'll see you there