How To Reduce Stress and Get Things Done

There are a million so-called “Project Management Tools” out there. I’ve spent years playing with many of them.?

I’ve used Trello, ActiveCollab, 5pm Web, Zoho Projects, Teamwork, 17Hats, Asana, Evernote (I used to use this to manage tasks in the form of notes), Saclus (no longer exists), Smartsheet, The Brain, Workflowy, Dynalist, Wunderlist (bought and killed by Microsoft), Zenkit (designed to replace Wunderlist), and probably some others I am forgetting about.

When I used Evernote I had eventually stumbled onto a website called The Secret Weapon. I am not sure how up to date that site is, and I no longer use nor would I recommend Evernote. My discovery of this site was how I first learned about David Allen and Getting Things Done.

Over the years I’ve become obsessed with productivity apps as noted by Intuit’s tweet here:

As also noted by this tweet, I landed on Notion a couple of years ago, initially just for note taking. Then little by little and the more I learned about how to use Notion, I became convinced that this could be my app for managing all of my work.?

Clients, projects, tasks, meetings, ideas, thoughts, plans, pretty much everything that I needed to capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and then engage with started going into Notion.?

And if you’ve read David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) you’ll recognize that list. If you don’t recognize it, either throw your copy away or else go back and reread it.

A Mind Like Water

Following David Allen’s advice, the goal is to have a “mind like water.”

Imagine a pond where the water is perfectly calm.

Drop a rock in and there is a ripple effect for a short time.?

Then the water returns to a state of calm.

If you are stressed out because you are overwhelmed with everything you have to do and you’re not sure what to do first, then here is your solution.

If your brain pops up a reminder, or an email comes in to serve as a reminder about something that isn’t done yet, this is what you need in order to be able to react to the stimulus and then immediately return to calm.

You have to capture, clarify, and organize every one of those things in a system you can trust.

Now many of you are going to say, “well I have that, I’m using [fill in the appropriate app].”

But can you really trust it? You may think you can, but your mind knows better.

If you are not checking that system daily, to reflect and engage with everything in there, then your mind won’t trust it, even if you think you do.

And that is why you’re stressed out.

Capture and Clarify

The other day I was in the middle of my workout when my mind served up a reminder that I hadn’t logged my body composition numbers in a couple of weeks. At least this reminder was related to what I was doing at the time. And I had taken the time to record the numbers, but I still haven’t transferred it to a log that I keep in Notion so I can share the numbers with my fitness coach, and my nutritionist.?

Since I was in the middle of my workout, I could not really stop and take care of it at the moment. You see this is where our brains are not that ‘smart” about when they serve up these reminders. They are usually at the most inopportune times.

While I am working out I have my workout tracking system in Notion, and as I mentioned, this is also where I keep my Body Comp Stats and pretty much everything else.

But in the middle of my workout, I didn’t even want to go far to make the note about remembering to do it later.?

I didn’t have to.

Organize

I opened up my Daily Journal for the day and added the checkbox and wrote a quick note, “Log your body comp from the last 2 weeks.”

Every day, first thing in the morning, I start a new Daily Journal. This becomes the place I trust to immediately jot down every fleeting thought like this that pops in at those inopportune times.?

My mind trusts this system as I do because I have this note open all day every day.

Click the image for a closer look:

Oh and in case you happen to be wondering how I got that slick setup in my browser with my tabs in those gorgeous tab groups on the left? Bookmark this article (CTRL+Click to keep your place).

Then continue reading this one.

Now I’ve captured and clarified that thought and follow up item.

Later I’ll go back to organize it (i.e. move it to a more permanent location if I need to).

Then I’ll reflect and engage.?

Reflect and Engage

For something simple like this all of this after initial capture and clarification happens in an instant. Once I was at my desk later on, I went back to my Journal (to reflect), saw the item, knocked it out and checked it off.

If this represented something bigger that let’s say I had to handle for a client. Then when I went back to reflect, I would move it to that client’s area (also in Notion).

The task would also be assigned a status as follows:

If it is “scheduled” that means there is a “Do Date” which means on that day it is getting done, period. If it is not that critical, then it goes to “Next Action Items” and I have an area for that in the client’s set up, so that once a week (or more) I am there “reflecting” on which of those items I want to either pick off or schedule. Note in the screenshot below that these have no “Do Dates” because if they did, then their status would be scheduled.?

As I move the task from the Daily Journal, I would leave a reference in the Journal in its place linking to the page where that item now lives.

Why is this important?

This is what I refer to as “geometric linking” and this is more consistent with how our brains think. Most likely the app you’re using is very linear.

We think in two dimensions;

• Time
• Space

The Daily Journal keeps the timeline intact. The Client’s area in Notion is the “space.”

More often than not, especially while the items are recent, I am thinking in terms of “when.” In fact as I was writing this and the thought popped in to use this very example, the first thing I remembered was that this happened during my workout on Monday.?

Bam! My journal is already open, because it always is.

In 2 clicks I was looking at the very note I had made to do the thing.

If it had been converted to a link to a client task, it would have been one more click to get there.

When I am able to spin around in Notion and find what I need effortlessly because I’ve built a system I know (and my mind knows) I can trust, I experience a mind like water.?

I was just discussing with someone this morning (as I am writing this) that when I have a system like this, I don’t worry or stress about what I need to be doing, or what I should be doing.?

She told me she is dying to tinker around more in Notion because she sees the potential, but she has client work to do.

So I told her the following:

Make an appointment with yourself on your calendar called, “Tinker Time.” That appointment is every bit as non-negotiable as one with your most important client.?

Knowing you have this time scheduled will put your mind at ease so you can focus on that client work!

In the end it is just about that simple.

My Notion Templates

Most recently I started creating templates in Notion based on my work. This includes databases, and then I learned that within a database in a template, I could add templates within the templates and databases within the databases.?

Now that might sound confusing, but what it amounts to is that I can create some amazing things and package them up and make them available to people.

So I began to work on my Bulletproof Notion Project starting with the layout (Pages) and then building templates.?

When I recently sold off most of my accounting clients, I got even more focused. As of a couple of weeks ago I got into a real flow with this, and when I came up for air, I realized that I had accomplished something significant, even though I still have a long way to go. I drawing from the GTD method and many other influences where I’ve learned some of the best methods for getting and staying on top of everything.?

You can see some examples of this in the screenshots above.

When the project is finished there will be a course with many videos and a community where you can ask questions, request more templates and learn how to use Notion to manage all of your work, with my templates in place to make it really easy to get started.?

Meanwhile for anyone who is interested in getting in early and helping me get this started and developed, I am offering an opportunity for a limited number of people to get the templates for a lot less than what I will be charging when I am ready to officially launch this project.

Click here to learn more and let me know what you think and if you have any questions:

Nerd’s Bulletproof Notion Project Beta

As I said above I have played with many project management tools over many years and they are all really good.

But what they all lack in my opinion is the concept of the “blank page.” This is what Notion makes central to every piece of information you want to add to it.

This means that I am not forced into a structure like folders, lists, tasks, sub-tasks and so on.

I create a geometric structure that is more consistent with how my brain works, and I lay it out in whatever way makes sense to me.?