Do you relate to having your information and data all over the place?

• to-dos in multiple notebooks, sticky notes or that nth new note in your notes app
• appointments strewn over the different digital calendars and that calendar on your fridge
• recurring tasks you need to do basically hanging in the air, with no real place to live
• your collection of articles to read, recipes to make later, book and movie recommendations – everything scattered across multiple lists, apps, your desktop, bookmarks and what not
• And those checklists – those damn checklists, which are never handy when we need them. Well, because they have been buried knee deep into those physical or digital spaces which are clogged by now and never re-visited!

You have so many open tabs in your brain - about important tasks, urgent tasks, those utter boring tasks which sadly need to be done, things you would like to learn more about, things you would like to re-visit someday, things that you need to take care of regularly – the list is endless right?

Of course, it’s no wonder that in this age of “go-go-go” we can feel overwhelmed and depleted by managing all these things. So, how do we then manage this? How do we manage - not the frivolous things, but what is important to us?

Give the things that matter a system to live in

This is where having a good personal system kicks in. It gives a place to where the things that matter to us can live, instead of having to keep carrying all of them in our heads.

For me, that system happens to be Notion. Having used this tool for organising pretty much most things in my life for the past six years now (at the time of writing this post) - I just cannot imagine managing things without having a space and system like it.

Now whatever it is that one wants to call it – a personal productivity system, personal organization system, PKM, second brain or something else – I don’t think the label matters much. Heck, I am not here to tell you that Notion is the only way you need to go or is the best digital workspace to use out there!

I’m sure there are many more equally good or even better tools in the market for this. Also, each one of us operates differently and may have different preferences when coming to such tools. What matters less is the tool of choice. What matters more is the core idea, the intention and the systems behind using it.

I for one, absolutely love Notion and don’t see myself leaving it anytime soon. While I’ll be sharing below what I use this tool for, but the bigger purpose here is to give you a perspective of how tools like this can be used to manage things better for you in your everyday lives.

What can this system look like

So, what does this actually look like in practice? If you peeked into my Notion, you would find things like:

Things to do:

• my goals and tasks management system, both personal and professional – what I want to do this month, quarter, year etc. This includes
  • one-time tasks
  • recurring tasks
  • things I would perhaps like to do someday
• things to buy
• routines and habits

Things to keep/ store:

• quotes and sayings, little nuggets of wisdom, cool concepts I come across – basically reminders for me to revisit
• Links to favorite recipes
• A ‘Quick capture page’ to capture information quickly with least friction, especially on the go

Things to learn and revisit:

• Notes
• Research articles, knowledge resources to learn from
• Course notes
• how-to guides and steps

Things to review and reflect on:

• ‘yearly reviews’ where I sit down at the end of the year to think through accomplishments, challenges, roadblocks, wins – what went well, what did not, what to start, stop and continue and more – a place to basically reminisce the year gone by and get ready for the next
• Journal pad – a digital space that acts as my diary when I do not want to write in a physical note
• a place to just brain-dump
• My resets of all kind – weekly, monthly and seasonal resets and reflections

Lists and checklists…

• a travel checklist
• movies or series to watch next
• wish list of product recommendations I want to try next
• challenges I create for myself like things to do to embrace discomfort etc.
• books I have read, favourite movies and series of all time, bucket list things to do and more

Why it helps, where to start and why you don't need to build everything at once

Now, just to be clear – I am not suggesting that you need to build or have all of this. And before you look at the list and think “Well, now I have another system to maintain!” – that’s exactly what I do not want this to become.

I have slowly built a system that works for me over time – rather, over years to be precise. It helps hold the things that matter to me without having to carry it all in my head. And that doesn’t mean I use it perfectly or have figured out the best way to go about these things.

The reason I stick to these systems is because it’s something that I can fall back on whenever I lose focus or momentum and need to get back on track. I can’t remember how many times I have written in my journal reflections about how “thankful or grateful I am for the fact that I have these systems to fall back to”.

It’s important to remember that tools like Notion are there to help us get our actual work done, help us in the process – and shouldn’t give us more work to do. Less is more and simple is good. These are the principles I like to follow when using such systems.

I love the way Notion describes their product as ‘Legos for software’ – basically giving you building blocks to build your own system. That’s what makes Notion stand out from other systems like a Google drive or a traditional file/folder system. Tools like Notion make it so flexible to build your very own personal system to suit to your needs and requirements.

So, if this is the first time you’re using a tool like Notion to start capturing and organising your information, here’s where I’d start:

1. start with asking yourself
   • what are the one or few use cases that would actually be beneficial for me? – whether that is making a checklist for your recurring tasks or creating a page to store your favourite recipes or storing research work for your project
   • What is it that you can easily get done without having to spend more time tweaking the tool than doing the actual work?
2. Do not worry about chasing what others are doing or try to emulate them without assessing if it will bring value to you first
3. Also, do not worry about making it ‘too aesthetic’ or perfect looking. A simple but highly functional system is much better than a beautiful-looking system that is broken or difficult to use
4. You can build these systems yourself or get ready-made templates from others and then tweak it and use it to suit your needs

The good thing is that, as we start capturing and organising information into these systems, a lot of the cognitive load that we otherwise would have carried in our heads gets reduced. The time to retrieve information gets reduced, and the mental friction of deciding where to put or how to manage such information gets drastically reduced.

Tools like this also play a very useful role in taking advantage of the times when we are operating at our best. Imagine the times when you’re able to operate at your 100% - you plan your projects, you break down the tasks to be done to reach a goal, you draft that article, you collect ideas and more. Then, on the days, say, you are operating at 50% - you can still benefit from the work your 100% self did because the system has already captured and stored it for you at the right time.

Make the systems work for you without letting them become another thing to manage

And of course, using Notion doesn’t mean that I do not use other tools. I still absolutely love Word and Excel for specific use cases. When I’m writing something long like a blog post or article, Word is still my go-to, nothing really beats it for me!

For you, it may be Google workspace or Asana – it doesn’t matter what tool, what matters more is how we choose to use it.

So, pick and choose one or a few tools that when combined, can help you with capturing, organising and managing the data that matters for you.

And when going down this path, there are a few things I’d keep in mind:

• Beware of the shiny object syndrome – just because a new tool has been introduced doesn’t mean that we must use it. If you are satisfied with the ways of working with a tool, and it’s still helping you with all the right things – then there is no reason for you to switch to a new tool just because it’s there
• Also, all such tools or software we use will be coming up with new features from time to time – some may be useful, some may be irrelevant to what you do, and some just bells and whistles – but yes, just because your favorite product keeps introducing new features and updates, doesn’t mean you are missing out by not using them. Adapt such things only if they make sense to you and will be useful for you – you are the best judge for that
• And it is important to not get so lost into these tools that it starts to eat into our time rather than helping us to save time. There is no real need to keep on optimising or making it aesthetic just for the sake of it

Systems help, tools help - but it all lies in how we make them work for us. The goal isn’t to build the most elaborate or aesthetic system of it all. It is simply to have a system in place for things that matter to us, so that we don’t have to keep carrying it all in our heads.

Make it useful for what matters. Simple is good here.

Cheers!

PS – If you enjoyed this way of thinking about simple systems for everyday life, you might also like my email series on ‘7 days of Everyday Reset’. For one week, you’ll receive simple, practical reset ideas each day to help you pause, refresh and reflect. Sign up here for free.