Charlene Izere on How to Plan Your Month with Notion

Feeling like a hot mess month after month? Then keep reading, this is for you.

Raise your hand if you chronically buy planners and never use them. Give us a “that’s me” if you find yourself rummaging through sticky notes for your to-do list.

We’re 99% positive you’ve wondered “surely there is an easier way to getting organized AND staying organized?!”

Damn straight there is.

In this blog post we will walk you through how to plan your month, week, and day using notion. You can download our template here.

 

 

What is Notion?

If you are a productivity lover, chances are you’ve heard of Notion. Notion is a project management and note-taking software. It uses databases and notebooks to bring you an all-in-one workspace. This “Lego-style” software allows folks to build anything from a content management system to a productivity system and everything in between. If you are a freak in the spreadsheets and/or a notebook lover – you’ll obsess over Notion.

Notion uses “blocks” to build out the pages that make up your notebook. It’s allows you to embed videos, create databases of information, visualize information in various formats, and collaborate in your workspace.

If you’ve never used notion, there is a bit of a learning curve, but the more you use it, the easier it becomes, especially if you utilize the various templates at your disposal. To begin, open up a blank page to familiarize yourself with Notion’s block capabilities. You’ll use the “/” commands to create a to-do list, format headings, embed a page and/or database, create comments etc.

Now that we have the basics covered, lets do the damn thing.

 

What to do BEFORE you start planning out your month:

The template we are using can be found here.

To know where we are going, we need to know where we have been. Think of this as an equilibrium check or an alignment audit. Take 10 minutes to reflect on your previous month and record your responses in our Monthly Planning Template.

We’ve organized the reflection section into two parts:

• Wins from last month
• Lessons from last month

 

Below are a few prompts to get you started:

• What went well?
• What surprised me?
• Where did I struggle?
• What have I been neglecting/avoiding?

 

Once you’ve reflected on your previous month, outline your goals for the upcoming month. Ask yourself:

• What do I want to stop doing next month?
• What do I want more of?
• What is attainable given my resources and circumstances. – this one is important. We’re here for the lofty and ambitious goals, however do not beat yourself up if you don’t hit them. Goals aren’t always meant to be reached. Instead, goals give you direction.

Take that in for a minute.

Once you embody that notion (lol) you’ll view planning and productivity in a whole new light.

Now this is the fun part: let’s set up your planning template.

 

 

Set Up Your Monthly Notion Planning Template

First, do a brain dump of your recurring & one- off tasks, projects, and events for the month. Your brain dump is used solely for brainstorming; scheduling will take place later.

To keep your brain dump organized use the toggle block to group “like” tasks.

 

 

After 10 minutes of unloading your stream of consciousness, add your calendar worthy events to the “Events at a Glance” section. Here we are simply adding events, NOT tasks.

Events are blocked off times while tasks are items on your to-do list. For example your Course Launch would be an event and a task would be “Create Content for my Course Launch”

More event examples include:

• birthdays
• podcast interviews
• travel plans
• project deadlines

In the Events at a Glance section we are using a notion database to keep track of all of our events. We’ve included two views: table view and a calendar view. Feel free to use one or both. We’ve found that both views are useful when visualizing events and creating tasks around said events.

Use the table view to add events, and use the calendar view to attach dates to your events.

Next, let’s create your to-do list.

Reference the Brain Dump & Events at A Glance section to create your tasks.

Similar to the Events at a Glance Section, your Rolling To-Do List is a database. This master task list includes the following properties (fields):

• “Done” – checkbox to mark tasks complete as you work through your list.
• “Task” – pro tip: use a verb when naming your task – this will help eliminate confusion amongst collaborators. For example, “launch plan” doesn’t give any context to the task at hand. Are you updating the launch plan? Reviewing the Launch Plan, Testing the Launch plan? Be specific.
• “Priority” – Use priorities to determine the order in which you should complete your tasks.
• “Energy” – this will help you stay in alignment with the your energetic ebbs and flows.
• “Category” – use this property to include another layer of categorization like “personal/business”. For example, if you have multiple streams of income use those categories.
• “Do Date” – not to be confused with “due” date, this is the date in which you are actually going to do the task
• “Deadline” – this is the date in which your task is due aka “due date”.
• “Status” – have you started this task? is there a bottleneck? Examples: In progress, Not Yet Started, Bottleneck, On Hold.

Take 10-20 minutes to fill out all of your tasks and feel free to add/remove properties as you see fit.

 

Set Up your Weekly Planner

Now that we have listed out all of our events and tasks for the month, let’s make this digestible and break it down by week.

In your weekly planner you’ll find the goals you outlined in the Monthly Planner – the content in this block is synced between the two pages. Meaning, what you change on this page will be reflected in the monthly planner page.

 

 

Reference your monthly goals and create smaller goals for the week.

Remember the Events at a Glance Database and Rolling to do list database we used in the monthly template? In the day to day breakdown we are utilizing views to only see the events and tasks for that specific day. Feel free to play around with views and use whatever makes sense to you and your brain.

In the Monday section we used a gallery view to visualize our to do list, but in the Tuesday section we utilized the table view to view our task list. Your views are 90% preference – think about how you process information – do you prefer to see gallery cards with text or images, or is a list easier to visualize your to-dos. pro-tip, we’ve found that list view works the best on mobile.

And there you have it – A monthly and weekly plan in alignment with your goals.

Each month duplicate the template and update the following:

• Your reflections
• Brain Dump
• Events at a Glance
• Rolling To Do list
• Weekly & Daily Breakdown (making sure to update the filters to match the date)

We’ve learned that self-motivation is not going to cut it, especially when you are dealing with external factors such as family and mental health. Instead, design a system that creates a sustainable environment for productivity. It’s your turn, go crush it. If you need support in setting up and customizing your Notion Planner, send us an email hello@soulfulsystems.co

 

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