It’s easy to get swept away with all the pretty templates and decorative ideas we tend to see floating around social media each day.
For me, however, the aim of my productivity game has always been simplicity.
Put simply, my goal is never to create the most complete, comprehensive system ever.
It’s the opposite.
I aim to reduce my system to only the essential elements needed to actually get stuff done. If it doesn’t cater to the ultimate mission, it doesn’t deserve to take up space.
This means that over time, I’ve tried out many approaches, determined what’s useful and what’s not – and rapidly culled my space whenever things just didn’t work or weren’t useful enough to be occupying the mental energy it took to see it front and center each day.
Today, I manage my life and my business entirely from only 8 databases in my Notion workspace. These master databases do all the heavy lifting for me, and with Notion’s ability to create filtered views, I can create permanent and temporary dashboards to help me see exactly what needs to get done.
Here they are:
1. Areas
This is where I outline the different areas of focus in my life. While I could have many more, and some areas could be broken down further – I only keep the 6 that deserve special effort and attention to achieve my goals over the next 5 years. They are Home & Family, Business, Personal, Health & Fitness, Hobbies & Interests and Finances.
2. Projects
Anything that takes more than a day to complete gets classified as a project. These include both business and personal pursuits, and are all tied back to one of the areas above.
3. Actions (& Calendar)
This database keeps my all my tasks, events, activities and any other thing that might need my attention on a specific day. If an item is supposed to be done on a certain date, I’ll add it and it shows up in my Calendar view, otherwise it’s listed in tasks, which are filtered by priority.
4. Library
I use this to keep track of everything I’m watching, reading, listening to or general resources I want to reference in the future.
5. Content
This is where I plan and draft the content I put out, mainly through social media and my blog. For example, I’m drafting this post in it right now.
6. People
The most recent addition to my space. I didn’t think it was necessary before, but now that I’m meeting a lot of new, interesting people while networking online – and I think it’s important to maintain relationships with them – I find it a welcomed addition.
7. Notes
Some things have a dedicated database. For everything else, I have the Notes database. This is the receptable for anything I’m actively using right now (for example, a list of Zoom links and passwords for my different teams and clients) or want to keep long term (like my Boyfriend checklist, lol).
For over 6 months, this setup has served me well, and I hope it will keep working far into the future. If you like to have a minimalist setup like my own, you can check out my Gateway to Notion template on Gumroad. It can serve as a great foundation to create the perfect space for you.