Organizing My Life in Notion | 2023 Planner
It’s been a little over a year since I started using Notion. And let me tell you I’ve learned a lot. If you’ve never used Notion before, it is one of the best productivity tools if you’re looking for a way to organize your life and all of your notebooks, to-do lists, planners, and journals, all in one. The best part is, it’s all digital which means you can have it with you any time you need it. And if you’re like me you’ll have it on your computer, tablet, and phone because you can’t get through your day without it.
And no this is not sponsored, I just really love this tool.
Notion has completely transformed the way I work. If you’re a student, a freelancer, or just someone who wants to stay on top of things, I highly recommend that you try it. Did I forget to mention that it’s free?
In the past year I’ve probably watched 100 videos on Notion setups and tips to get pages to look how I want. And I‘ve spent numerous hours customizing my workspace to be exactly what I need. I combined my love of aesthetically pleasing setups and minimal setups to design the perfect 2023 Notion life planner. And because I love it so much I’ve even created templates that you can use to perfect your setup too.
With that being said, here’s to another successful year of systems and habits. If you’re curious to how my first year went you can check that out in my 2022 Notion tour.
Organizing My Life in Notion | 2023 Planner
Life Hub
If I had a digital home this would be it. This is the page that I use to access all of my other Notion pages. My goal is to update this page every year just to keep it fresh and to motivate me to be productive. This year I went for a Studio Ghibli theme and it just gives me good vibes every time I see it.
To go along with the theme I added a Studio Ghibli playlist. That way I can have easy access to some chill inspiring music. And of course it’s not complete without adding some iconic characters from the films.
I also track my daily habits here just to make sure I’m staying on top of the things that I want to be consistent with. It took a little bit of time to get the database on this one just right but now that it’s done I really love it. I used to not care about going back to look through the habits. Now I think it’s helpful to see what I’ve been dedicating my time to.
My favorite thing about the daily habits is that it’s recurring. Which means that every morning when I open Notion it has a new row set up for the day for me to check off any habits that I complete. And if I ever want to go back and look at how consistent I’ve been I can go back through old dates.
Lastly in the life hub, I have some new quotes for the new year, what I’m currently reading and watching, and a bar graph that shows how much time is left in the week, month, and year.
Journal
This journal has been amazing for the past year. I’ve basically created my own digital version of the 5 minute journal and it’s the first time I’ve kept up with a journal for more than a year! I feel so proud.
At one point I did try using GoodNotes as my journal. But as fun as it was to be able to physically write my journal entries, I had 2 problems with it. One is that it required too much upkeep. It was like having a bullet journal on my iPad. I had to set up trackers each month rather than setting up once like I’m so used to doing with Notion.
The other problem was that GoodNotes is only optimized for the iPad. Even though it’s available on the iPhone, you can’t really write in GoodNotes on the iPhone because the pages are so small. Whereas I can easily add content and make updates to Notion from my phone. In fact I often use it to journal on the go.
So at this point I’m sticking to Notion for all of my journaling needs.
Yearly Planning
This a new page for me this year. It’s where I keep all of my big projects. I keep them separate from my weekly planning because these projects don’t necessarily have a deadline. These are projects that I want to complete within a certain quarter but aren’t tied down by a specific date.
But once I start working on projects and breaking down tasks that I need to do to reach my end goal, that’s when I put those tasks on my weekly planner. I break down the big ideas into smaller ideas with deadlines so that they are more achievable and less overwhelming.
Weekly Planning
This is my end all be all to-do list / planner, and I’m as obsessed with it as I was last year. It works so well that I really haven’t changed a thing about it. In the past, I’ve always hated any type of planner mainly because I’m more of a to do list type of person. But when I started using the getting things done method, created by Thomas Frank, being able to easily organize my to do list like a planner and vis versa was life changing for me.
All of my tasks are split up into different sections based on: all incoming tasks that haven’t been assigned a date yet, top priority tasks aka tasks I need to do today, tasks that have to be done within the next week, and upcoming or future tasks, and of course completed tasks.
This system has made it so much easier and so much more rewarding to keep track of all the things I have to schedule and do. And when I say all I really mean all.
Content Map
So I can’t take credit for this page, this one was also created by Thomas Frank, and then I adjusted it to fit my own needs since I don’t only do video content. But it has been so helpful for someone like me who’s so used to just thinking of a video or blog post one day and then immediately trying to work on it because I have no other ideas.
This is what I use to plan out all my blog posts and Youtube videos. To make sure I never run out of ideas on what to create, I plan a full quarter of blog posts and videos in advanced. That means 3 months of blog post and video ideas ready to go. And for each video or post idea that I have, there’s an entire checklist to follow to make sure I’ve done everything I needed before going live with any new content.
Library
I created this page back in 2022 to become more consistent in my reading. And you know what? It worked. Which is why not only is “read” is still one of my daily habits, but it’s also the reason why I’ve read more books last year than I have in the past 5 years combined. Being able to keep track of the books that I’ve read and the books that I plan on read have also helped me a lot with giving recommendations.
It’s been fun to take a look back and see all the books that’s I’ve read in the past year. I even had a couple of. Oops that I didn’t finish with notes as to why. And even though I still haven’t read as many books as I’d like, the progress I’ve made and the joy I get from reading is still a win.
Recipes
I’ll be honest, the recipe book that I made last year doesn’t get much love. I want to change that this year. I wasn’t cooking much last year and I’m sure that is the contributing factor to why I haven’t updated that page in months. But it’s never too late for a fresh start. Maybe I should make it a goal to try one completely new recipe a month?
Do you use Notion? If so, what do you think of my 2023 setup?
