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There’s been a battle brewing over the past year or so between Matter and Readwise Reader over which is the better brand-spanking-new read later service. Here at The Sweet Setup, we try to pick the best apps and services in every category we can, but the TSS crew is split on this one, so today Josh and Matt are going to make their case for why they prefer each of these apps.
There were a few apps that brought delight to your iPhone and iPad in the early days. The clicks and sounds of the original Tweetbot for iPhone come to mind. I also loved that old quick note-taking app Scratch — it had a great icon, super fast opening, and simple UI. And we probably all remember when Sparrow came to the iPhone to handle your email. That app was awesome!
Matter is one of the few apps that fall into this category these days. I get a tinge of excitement every time I tap the Matter icon. From the simple, reader-first UI to the excellent Apple Pencil support, I love capturing and reading in Matter.
Matter isn’t without its competitors though — Readwise is right on its heels with many advanced features for the heaviest power users. Where I think Readwise could well be the pick for the power read-later user, Matter is the best option for the rest of us readers who want a beautiful place to read and relax in the later evening with a glass of wine.
Here are the three reasons why I choose Matter as my read-later app.
Matter feels like it was made for iPad first (specifically in portrait mode) and everything else after. There are very few hiccups, quirks, or janks in the app — tapping on a saved Youtube video takes you into a simple, viewer-first view, while text articles open immediately into a newspaper-like format, perfect for in-depth reading.
Both the iPhone and iPad app benefit from iOS-specific share sheet extensions, ensuring you can save anything from anywhere on iOS. The extension works well, too — tapping the Matter icon in the share sheet brings up the extension UI which can be dismissed with two quick swipes down when it’s all finished. Better yet, you can even jump straight into the article or highlight text from outside, make a note about the article in the share sheet extension, add tags, and more. A hallmark feature of a read-later app has to be a powerful share sheet extension, and Matter has this in spades.
I find myself saving more on iPhone and reading more on iPad, but this is me. Matter has this great read-out-loud feature so you can listen to your saved articles as well. This feature is probably more tuned for the iPhone and a pair of AirPods and is sure to please podcast listeners. You can also forward in your favorite RSS feeds and newsletters right into Matter and follow popular writers right in the app.
Finally, Matter has a neat feature to share your favorite articles with your Matter friends. By tapping the share button inside Matter, you can send the article or video straight to your friend’s Matter queue. It’s ridiculously simple to use and unearths a range of great reading from your online community.
In my experience, the Matter app on iPhone and iPad was rock solid. It surpassed any experience I’ve had with any other read-later app for iPhone and iPad, including Readwise.
Where the backend of the Matter app feels rock solid and iOS-first, the actual user interface is one of the best app designs on the market right now. Matter was designed for reading — and I think designed for reading on the iPad specifically — and it shows from top to bottom.
The app opens to your Queue, which is a list of all your saved articles, videos, and threads from across the web. The list is wonderfully spaced, with a perfect amount of text, iconography, color, black and white text, etc. to suck you in. There’s nothing overwhelming about the Queue and nothing that leaves you wanting.
When you ultimately jump into an article, Matter’s design prowess jumps out at you. Matter has a total of 10 different fonts to choose from, including New York, Valkyrie, Lyon, and Literata. I’m a Valkyrie fan, for sure. In its early days, Matter used Bookerly from Amazon, which has to be the prettiest reading font out there today.
You have four different themes to choose from for both light and dark system themes. Paper gives Matter a newspaper feel, especially if you are into serif fonts for reading.
Matter nails highlights, both in visual design and utility design. Highlight colors aren’t magnified on the screen, instead opting for a slightly more neutral yellow to ensure you aren’t distracted as you read. The pop-up contextual menu when you tap on a highlight is really nice as well — you can take a note on a highlight and share the highlight with a nice “quote shot” image. When you’re done reading an article, you can tap the note button in the top right corner to view all your highlights and notes from the article. I use this button all the time to share my notes into Apple Notes for saving.
Matter has my favorite app design on the App Store today. It reminds me of Things 3, Mimestream on the Mac, and Unread — all apps with their own unique, airy feeling that instill delight every time you open the app.
The last killer feature for me is Matter’s Apple Pencil support. And the Pencil support is very, very simple — if you put your Pencil to text anywhere in an article, the Pencil is a highlighter. There’s no pause to see what you’re going to do with the Pencil. There’s no press-and-hold to invoke the highlighter. You can just immediately highlight the text you want to highlight.
You can, of course, navigate with the Apple Pencil so long as you don’t first tap on text. You can use the Pencil to tap on a highlight and take a note, which then uses iPadOS-wide Pencil support for handwriting text recognition.
There’s something very analog-y about this experience. Inside Matter, Pencil is used as a pencil is used — to take notes and highlights — and your finger is best used for navigating the app. It’s a lot like a book, really, which is what it appears Matter wants to be in the best way.
If you want to read, Matter is the best app for reading I’ve come across in a long, long time.
There’s no way I can argue on the feel of Matter, because it really is top notch, but I do think that Readwise Reader has some really excellent features that could push it over the top for some folks.
Readwise started as a service for saving highlights from a bunch of different sources, so it’s probably not surprising that it has a longer list of features when it comes to highlights. One big advantage Readwise has is that it can sync in highlights from things that aren’t web articles. You can save highlights from books (via Kindle, Goodreads, Libby, Apple Books, etc.) as well as Medium, Twitter, and even otherwise closed systems like Discord. Heck, if you get tired of Readwise Reader, you can link your Instapaper, Pocket, or Omnivore accounts to Readwise to keep syncing your highlights all to the same place.
The highlighting built into Readwise Reader is top notch, especially if you’re a power user who loves shortcuts. Without going on and on, here’s a few clever ways you can highlight in Readwise Reader that I really appreciate:
FreshRSS h on your keyboard to highlight the currently-focused paragraph.
And if you’re an Obsidian user like I am and have your highlights syncing there, I’ve found Readwise’s plugin to be far quicker than Matter’s. After getting past a few hundred highlights in Matter, I really noticed it took a few minutes to sync each time I opened Obsidian, and it was just getting worse the more highlights I added. Readwise’s plugin is much faster for me, even though I presently have about 500 highlights in my Readwise account. I also really like that Readwise lets me customize the formatting of my Obsidian notes on the Readwise website, while Matter effectively doesn’t have an option to customize its format unless you are comfortable updating its plugin code directly (which will also get undone when the plugin updates).
Finally, Readwise has an email feature I really like that sends me an email every week with a few semi-random highlights I’ve saved before. This won’t be for everyone, but I find it really useful in helping retain some information that I read once and might have forgotten otherwise.
This is one I didn’t really expect, but I absolutely love. You can save YouTube videos to Readwise Reader and not only will this let you watch the video in your Readwise queue, it also imports the video’s captions, so all the text in the video is there to be highlighted and saved/synced like anything else you save to Readwise Reader.
The cherry on top here is that the app will highlight and scroll the text as the video plays so that you can easily follow along.
While I usually read articles on the screen, sometimes it’s nice to listen to them as if they’re a podcast. I have a dog who loves to walk, so I spend upwards of an hour each day walking that little guy, and it’s a great opportunity to listen to some articles along the way. Matter has text-to-speech as well, but I find Readwise’s voice to be more natural and easier to listen to for longer stretches of time.
I also really like the interface for listening to articles. If the app is on screen when you’re listening, you can follow along with real-time highlighting of each word as it reads to you. Matter is less precise here in my experience.
I also love that while the app scrolls the article as it reads to you, you can scroll backwards of forwards at will. Once you do, you can tap one button to zip back to where the voice is, or tap another button to have the voice skip to your scroll position.
Whenever you save something to Readwise Reader, the app will automatically generate a short summary of the article. It’s just 2-3 sentences, and is generated by GPT 3.5.
While these summaries are not at all replacements for reading articles written by humans, I do find them very helpful when my reading list has gotten too long (we’ve all been there, don’t pretend you haven’t!) and I need to trim it down to what I actually want to read.
Both Matter and Readwise have recurring subscription costs associated with them to use the full features. Readwise Reader currently costs $8/month (even if you pay for a year up front), while Matter is $8/month or $60/year, which means Matter can be a bit cheaper if you’re ready to commit for a year.
Ultimately, it probably comes down to what you value more: a smoother reading experience or easy and powerful highlighting features. Whichever works better for you, we’re all winners in a world where apps like these are competing to be the best they possibly can.
If your to-do list overfloweth and you have multiple areas of life to manage, it’s time to get a system that actually works.
Get complete access to all the frameworks, training, coaching, and tools you need to organize your daily tasks, overcome distractions, and stay focused on the things that count (starting today).
Step 1: Refresh → Audit and streamline your current tools and systems and get clear on what’s working for and against you.
Step 2: Upgrade → Build a productivity system that plays to your strengths (even if you find “systems” annoying).
Step 3: Nurture → Make your system stick. Create a flywheel that keeps you focused on what matters most day after day.
Get all this, and more, inside the Focus Accelerator membership.
Join 300 focused members who have access to $5,000 worth of our best courses and masterclasses, the Digital Planner, a Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
If you’ve been around here at all, it’s no surprise to you that I am excited about Notion’s newest update to the button feature. As soon as it came out, I was already trying to figure out how to create Notion buttons to help automate my workflow and the workflow of my teammates.
Previously, Notion’s button feature was, well, pretty lame. I didn’t even bother using them. They weren’t worth the effort. But now with their latest update, you can add new tasks to your task database, change properties on different pages, create an actually helpful quick capture feature and more with just the click of a button.
At first glance, the configuration for the new buttons can be a bit confusing and daunting. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll want to create Notion buttons for everything.
To create a button in Notion, just type /button and hit enter. You will see these options:
Start by giving the button a name and an icon. Then you have to decide what you actually want the button to do. Here’s a brief description of all the options:
Insert blocks: You can create a block (full of whatever you want) and have it be added to the page when you click it. All the formatting options are available in this block, i.e. toggles, headings, lists, etc.
Add page to: You can choose a database and add a new page to it. So you could hit the button and have a page added to your Task List Database.
Edit pages in: This allows you to edit properties in pages that already exist. So you can change the assignee or status on a specific page.
Show confirmation: This will add a confirmation step when you hit the button like “you sure you want to do this?”
Open page: Pretty self explanatory. You push this button and it opens any page you want.
The real gold about these new buttons? You can add multiple steps to each button. You can change the order of the steps. You can even duplicate different steps.
For example, you can create a Notion page, edit the page you just created, have a confirmation page, and have the newly created page open in a side-peek. Or you can add 20 tasks to your task list at once. Legitness.
Let’s look at some specific use cases.
I wrote about using buttons for quick capture a few weeks ago. One of my complaints about Notion has been its lack of quick capture options. If I ever want to just jot something down, it takes a few steps to actually get where I want to go. Buttons speed up this process.
I created a quick capture button on my personal dashboard (along with a few others).
With this button, I can easily add an idea or note to my personal Note’s Database. Here’s how I configured it:
I chose Add a page and selected my notes database. Then I added a step to open the newly created page in a side-peek so I can add my note or idea right then and there.
When I first found out about this new feature, I was most excited to figure out how to quickly add tasks. Once I figured it out, I added the button in a few different places, then created one for everyone on our team. Cause you know, why not.
For this button I selected Add a page and chose our master task database. But what help would that be if it’s not assigned to anyone? You can edit properties and assign it to a specific person (in this case, me) and change the status. Or whatever property you want to change.
I also added a step to open the task in a side-peek so I can add all the relevant information quickly.
I also created a synced block with four more buttons. A button adding a task for each member of our team and dropped the synced block into our meeting notes template. So every time we have a meeting and a task comes up, we can quickly assign it to someone.
Notion has a lot of things going for it. One of those things is templates. They have literally saved me hours of work. We use them in our editorial calendar, meeting notes, projects, and many other places.
But there was always a frustrating component. It was a bit of a headache to add any default tasks to any database template. This was a bummer for us. We have a lot of projects that we do multiple iterations of (like Focus Academy, Digital Planner, or Plan Your Year), and we already know some of the tasks required.
We had to either add them manually each time or create a to-do list of basic tasks and drag them into the task database once the project was created.
But not anymore. Muhahaha (maniacal laugh).
For our most common projects, we created a button in the project template so we can add a bunch of tasks (and update their properties) with the push of a button.
One of our recurring projects is Focus Academy. We also know most of the tasks required to pull it off, so we added them to a button in our Focus Academy project template.
Isaac (the Director of Focus Academy) and I added the main and already known tasks to the button. Oh, and you can create tasks using the parent-task and sub-task feature 😎
So now when we start working on Academy, we already know most of the tasks that need to be done to knock it out of the park.
Our articles and newsletter go through a lot of hands before they get published. Once an article has been finished, it gets passed to our editor. Once an email is ready to go out, it gets passed to Marcela to schedule it.
So why not automate this process?
I added a button on our Newsletter template that automatically changes the assignee to Marcela and changes the status to Review. All I had to do was choose Edit a page and choose This page. The This page setting is dynamic, so it changes whatever page the button is on.
Once I hit this button, it notifies Marcela. I also then leave a comment letting her know it’s ready to be scheduled. I do wish buttons could automatically post comments, because that would be amazing.
I created a similar button for our article template. When everything is done, we just smash the button and it gets assigned to our editor-extraordinaire Jeff, and changes the status to Review.
There are a lot of little things you can do with buttons. You can create a button to simply open another page. I do this for my Learning Dashboard. I click the button from my personal dashboard and it opens my Learning Dashboard. There are other ways to do this, but buttons are more fun.
You can add confirmation steps to your buttons. Although not always necessary, it’s helpful when you’re wanting to do something major.
I showed you how to add a page to a task database already, but you can add a page to any database. You could create a button called Bug Report that would add an entry to a software bug report database. The possibilities are endless.
The goal of buttons is to automate your workflow, and so far it’s doing just that for me.
Notion just announced some new Project Management features. Their new project home base template includes some updated features such as an improved timeline view, Sprint databases, and Wikis.
They are also coming out with more automations. It seems that this new button feature is just the beginning. The new automation update is rumored to be able to do if/then statements, which would take workflow automations to a whole other level. Pretty exciting!
Although the new automations update is still TBD, the new button feature is a huge step towards automated workflows. Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to create Notion buttons. There are countless ways to use them to streamline your workflow.
Your imagination is the limit. Well there are a few limitations. But you get my point.
If your to-do list overfloweth and you have multiple areas of life to manage, it’s time to get a system that actually works.
Get complete access to all the frameworks, training, coaching, and tools you need to organize your daily tasks, overcome distractions, and stay focused on the things that count (starting today).
Step 1: Refresh → Audit and streamline your current tools and systems and get clear on what’s working for and against you.
Step 2: Upgrade → Build a productivity system that plays to your strengths (even if you find “systems” annoying).
Step 3: Nurture → Make your system stick. Create a flywheel that keeps you focused on what matters most day after day.
Get all this, and more, inside the Focus Accelerator membership.
Join 300 focused members who have access to $5,000 worth of our best courses and masterclasses, the Digital Planner, a Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
A couple of months ago, we were in a Blanc Media staff meeting and we were talking about one of our resources, an e-book called Procrastinator’s Guide to Progress. And I asked, “Do we have a central place to easily find all of our resources with source files and links?” Well, the answer was…. “um, I don’t think so”. So then I had the idea to track down all of our resources, PDFs, slide decks etc. and drop them into one place. So our Master Resource Database in Notion was born.
Just for a little bit of context, The Sweet Setup and The Focus Course have been around for a minute. Shawn has created dozens of PDFs, courses, and e-books and hosted even more webinars and workshops. We have A LOT of content floating around in the ether. So I wanted to create a place where we could easily access and share it without digging around our site for 20 minutes.
For those who might be new to Notion or unfamiliar with relational databases, here is a brief intro (feel free to skip ahead if you’re already a pro). Using Notion’s databases are a great way to store important information that you want to find quickly.
A Database is essentially a dynamic spreadsheet. You can create different views of the same information. For example, you can see it as a simple spreadsheet (similar to what you might see in Google sheets), calendar view, Kanban view etc. The secret sauce of Notion’s databases is that they can talk to each other. I can easily reference information from several data sources in one place. If you want to learn more, check out this article we wrote on relational database.
We do all of our project management inside of Notion. It just made sense to build this master resource database inside Notion. Plus, it connects to all of our projects.
If this whole thing was going to work, it had to solve a few problems for us. We needed a place to store the links to PDFs, source files, Keynote slide decks. We also needed the link where the PDFs “lived” on our site. If it’s part of a course, where is the sales page in case asked about the resource?
We wanted this database to be helpful, but not so complex that it becomes rigid and unusable. Thanks to the versatility of databases and their properties, I think we figured it out.
First off, don’t be alarmed by the amount of properties we created. They all serve a purpose, and luckily we can hide the ones we don’t want always displayed.
Here’s a list of all the properties we have:
Name: This is pretty self explanatory. This is the name of the resource, like A QuickStart Guide for going Paperless or Margin Assessment.
Resource Type: This is for noting the file type, i.e. PDF, Slide Deck, Pages File… We used a select property for this one (a select property is basically a dropdown).
Content Type: Similar to resource type, we used a select property to distinguish what type of resource it is, i.e. Worksheet, Assessment, Guide, etc.
Content Category: Also a select property. We can add the category for each resource, like “Time Management”, “Margin”, “GoodNotes” etc. This is helpful in case we want to see all the resources that we have on a certain topic, like PKM.
PDF Version: Next we have a file property. Here is where we upload the actual file. So for our Focus Method Checklist, we can upload the PDF file and add the link to find it on our site.
Link to Access Resource: This is where we save the link where the resource lives on our site. So if someone asks us where they can find our Goal Setting worksheet, we can just send them the link to the resource (like when you click on a link and it opens the PDF in your browser or downloads it onto your computer).
Location on site: This is different than the link to access resource. Let’s say that someone wants the workbook for our Focus Like a Boss program. We can send them the actual PDF or we can send them to the page where they can download it themselves, like a course page. In a more common scenario, we have a few dozen of our most popular resources on a dashboard for our Accelerator members. So, we can easily point them to what we call “The Vault” where they can pick and choose what they want to download. So we may not always need the Location on site property, but it’s helpful in some cases.
Editable Source File: This is another file property. We only use this property for slide decks or the Pages version of our workbook. With these source files, we can make quick edits or only export certain sections, if needed.
Notes: Well, this is pretty self explanatory. An example of a note that we’ve written is “Also available in the All the Things Course,” which means that one of our resources is available in multiple places on the site, including the All The Things Course.
Sales Page: This, again, is pretty self-explanatory. In some instances, it’s helpful to know where we sell certain resources, like our Day One in Depth Guide. Sometimes people ask us where they can find certain resources and thanks to this property, we can quickly send them the right sales page to buy the resource.
Site: This is another select property where we can distinguish what site it lives on, The Focus Course or The Sweet Setup.
Related to another resource?: This is a relational property. You create a relational database by simply connecting two databases together using a property called relation. This tells one database to pull in information from another database. But in this case we are pulling in information from itself. I created this to connect resources to each other, if needed.
For example, “A QuickStart Guide for going Paperless”, “A Kick Butt Cheatsheet for Getting Your Email Inbox Calm”, and “Setting up a Distraction Free Mac & iPhone” are all part of a bundle called Workflow Essentials. It makes sense to connect them together, but what’s great about connecting them to each other is that once I connect one to another it shows up for each of them. Lost? Check out the screenshots below.
Created by: Again, self-explanatory. This property automatically captures who created the new database entry. This is using a property called “Created by”.
Projects: This is another relational property. Except instead of relating to this page, it relates to our Projects database. If a resource is relevant to a particular project, we can easily connect them. This is helpful in the case of course workbooks. Like the “Focus on Time Workbook” connects to the Focus on Time project.
We don’t use every property for every resource. It’s just not necessary. But we still created all of them because it’s pretty handy for some resources.
The main view (the spreadsheet view) might seem a bit overwhelming at first glance. So we created a second gallery view. It only displays a few properties, such as site, content type, and resource type.
But if I ever want to see all the properties for a resource, I just have to click on it and it will open for me.
This might seem like a lot, but what actually took the longest was hunting down all the resources across our sites. Let me assure you, this has already come in handy, especially in our Accelerator membership. Our members get access to everything, and they ask about certain resources or recommendations. I can easily jump into this database and grab what I need without needlessly looking on our sites.
If your to-do list overfloweth and you have multiple areas of life to manage, it’s time to get a system that actually works.
Get complete access to all the frameworks, training, coaching, and tools you need to organize your daily tasks, overcome distractions, and stay focused on the things that count (starting today).
Step 1: Refresh → Audit and streamline your current tools and systems and get clear on what’s working for and against you.
Step 2: Upgrade → Build a productivity system that plays to your strengths (even if you find “systems” annoying).
Step 3: Nurture → Make your system stick. Create a flywheel that keeps you focused on what matters most day after day.
Get all this, and more, inside the Focus Accelerator membership.
Join 300 focused members who have access to $5,000 worth of our best courses and masterclasses, the Digital Planner, a Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
If you’ve been around here at all or are a fan of the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) world, you’re no stranger to the term “Quick-Capture”. Quick Capture is an essential component of a good PKM system. Since Notion is my go-to app for pretty much everything, I’ve worked out a few ways to create a good system for quick capture in Notion.
New to Notion? Check out our Beginners Guide to Notion here.
A few months ago, Mike Schmitz (our resident Obsidian and PKM expert) hosted a PKM workshop for our January cohort of the Focus Academy. He talked about the important components of a good PKM system and how no single app will be a complete PKM system. It is a collection of apps that allow you to disseminate ideas from note-taking to quick capture to creative output. You might collect and organize your ideas in Notion, write about them in Ulysses, and drop your projects back in Notion, but having ideas and making sure you capture them is a key first step.
In this article, we are going to focus mostly on how to quickly capture ideas and notes into Notion.
Quick-capture simply means that you can easily capture or record an idea or task for later so you don’t forget about it. Sometimes you are out and about and don’t have time to pull out your computer and write down three paragraphs about your latest epiphany, but you still want to record a simple idea for later.
The idea here is to reduce as much of the friction as possible so that you can record the idea when inspiration strikes.
Often when I am on the go, I have an idea that I want to make sure I remember. The easiest way for me to jot it down quickly is from my iPhone. I used to just write things down in the Apple Notes app, but it got messy. I would also drop an idea or two down in Ulysses, but that was an even worse idea for me since I only use Ulysses to actually write my articles — not brainstorm or store ideas.
So I created a widget on my main home screen that sends me straight to my Notion Personal Dashboard. I can quickly add an idea or a task to my databases using Notion’s fancy buttons that run automations (more on this in a minute).
Here is how you create and add a Notion widget to your home screen:
When you come across an interesting idea or article, there’s an easy way to quickly save it to Notion. Since I find the native “Reading list” for both Chrome and Safari a pain, Notion’s Web Clipper is much more my speed.
Just add it as an extension to your browser, and it will add the article as a new card in your database. It doesn’t just add the link to the card, it actually pastes the content of the article in the card.
I work mostly from my Mac. My Mac is pretty much my most prized possession. I do most of my work from it, and while I’m working I regularly have ideas about other projects or think of tasks that I need to do later. I want to jot those things down without having to get off track from what I’m doing.
I created a shortcut using Shortcuts and a custom keyboard shortcut using BetterTouchTool to open Notion with the command command + Shift + 6. There’s a lot of different ways to do this — most of the people here at The Sweet Setup use Alfred, but I use BetterTouchTool because it’s a part of SetApp (one of the best subscriptions I pay for).
When Notion opens or when I change workspaces, it automatically opens up on the top page in my sidebar, which is my top Favorited page — my personal dashboard.
Creating fancy shortcuts is definitely not my forte. There is probably a way to set up a shortcut or automation that always opens the page you want using a keyboard shortcut, but I didn’t want to spend hours going down a rabbit hole to figure it out. So this is what I came up with.
When I land on my personal dashboard, I have two buttons that I click that add a new task or new note / idea. Notion’s newest update to their buttons is pretty amazing. It runs simple automations, so I can create tasks and new pages faster than ever — elevating my Notion quick capture system significantly.
Once I land on my personal dashboard, either from my iPhone or my Mac, I have two buttons that I can use to quickly allow me to either add a new note / idea or a new task.
When I first saw a video talking about the updated buttons and the automations they can run, I probably could have cried. This makes it easy to add tasks from anywhere in Notion, add new ideas, and it takes templates to a whole other level. It’s fantastic. It also sparks major joy when there’s a Notion new feature I can “play” with.
They can only run simple automations at this point, but we’re looking forward to updates in the future that will allow them to run some more complicated automations.
But enough of me nerding out. The first button I created was to add a task for myself. I called the button Gotta do something?. This button creates a new task in our Master Task Database and assigns it to me, and opens it in a side peek so I can add more information.
The second button I created I named New Idea / Note. This automation creates a new page in my personal database called “Chloe’s Notes”. This database is full of tons of different notes, ideas, and personal SOPs (Standardized Operating Procedures) for myself. When it creates the new page, it also opens it in a side peek so I add the note right away.
The Task database and my Notes database also live on my dashboard so I can see all my tasks and notes, but this is a quick way to create new entries.
To create a button, type /button. Name the button and add an icon. Then, create the automation you want it to run. You have a few different options, such as inserting blocks, add a page, or edit a page.
To create a new task or add a note, you would select Add page to. Then you would select the database to which you want the page added. You can name the new page and change the properties (like the status property or who it would be assigned to). You can also add more steps, like a confirmation message or to open the newly created page in a side peek (highly recommend this so you can add more detail to your newly-created task or note).
There are lots of different use cases for buttons, but so far my favorite is quickly capturing tasks and notes.
We (at Blanc Media) have also incorporated buttons for quick capture on a few other pages in Notion. We added them to our weekly meeting notes. In our weekly staff meetings, we often need to assign tasks to ourselves or each other while we discuss our projects, etc.
So I created four different buttons — one for each team member that attends our staff meetings. I added them to a synced block and dropped the synced block inside of our meeting notes template. Now every time we jump into our meeting notes for that day and need to assign a task to someone, say Shawn, we just smash the button for assigning a task for Shawn.
Quick capture is one of the foundational stones for a successful PKM system. Capturing your ideas, notes, and tasks on the go is a critical component of creating. The more ideas you have, the more ideas you create.
As Mike Schmitz shared a couple of months ago, the perfect app is not the goal. The goal is to capture your ideas and make something out of them. I use Notion to help me capture my ideas so I can then create something out of them.
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We have been big fans of Notion for a while now, and relational databases are what makes Notion, well Notion. If you had a lot of organized spreadsheets next to each other that would be great, but in Notion your organized spreadsheets talk to each other. Relational databases connect everything together.
You can see which projects are connected to which clients and what contractors you hired for that project, or how much you need to bill a client for that project, and more — all in one place. It’s pretty great.
You create a relational database by simply connecting two databases together using a property called relation. This tells one database to pull in information from another database.
Let’s look at an example.
Say that you have a database called Exercise Log. If you want to know what meal you ate after a particular workout, you would connect your Food Log to your Exercise Log using a relation.
To create a relation between two databases, click + Add a property, then scroll through the property options until you find Relation. You can do this from the main database view or inside of a specific card.
Then, you will see all the different databases you can connect to. We are going to choose Food Log for this example.
Then, you adjust the settings for the relation. We want this relation to show up on both databases, so click Show on Food Log.
Once the database is all set up, you choose the entry from the other database that you want to connect, and voila, it’s connected!
And now when you head over to Food Log, you will notice that Cross Fit Workout appears in the entry for Protein Shake.
This is a pretty simple example, but it should give you a good idea of how they work. Now let’s look at some more complex use cases of Relational Databases.
Here at Blanc Media, we have a lot of important databases that we want to relate to each other. At any given moment, we are working on between 5-10 projects, in addition to our normal day-to-day stuff (like our newsletters, blog posts, etc.). So we want to make sure everything is organized and easily accessible.
From our project database, we can easily see all the emails associated with the project, all the tasks, files, messages (that’s what we call our notes), product information, and loads of other relevant information. Oh, and did we mention this all happens automatically because we set up a brilliant project template?
One of our largest projects, Accelerator, has a ton of important information that we want to keep track of. We’ve gotten pretty good at making sure we “file” everything in the right place when we add/create it in Notion so that when we use relational databases, they are actually useful.
As you can see in the red boxes, we have several connected databases.
We want our main databases talking to each other. We want the task database talking to the project database so that when a task gets assigned to a specific person they know what it’s for. We want our Files database connected to our projects database; otherwise, it would be the equivalent of having a bunch of loose papers all over your floor, and you’d have no idea what anything was for.
Another crucial connection we’ve made using relational databases is for our editorial calendar. Our editorial calendar is not for the faint of heart. We create a lot of content for a lot of different channels, and we need to know what each piece is for at a glance. Relational databases help keep things organized and talking to each other.
As a writer who is in our editorial calendar a lot, context is everything. We can jump into this email that Isaac wrote and quickly see that it is for the Accelerator project. And remember the Content relation from the Accelerator project? This email will show up there too.
Chloe has her own private dashboard that shows her all the things (emails, articles, tasks etc.) that are assigned to her. Relation databases let her know the context.
She can easily see the tasks that are assigned to her and the projects they are attached to. And yes, we are already working on the 2024 Digital Planner and Plan Your Year. ☺️
What if you have dozens or even hundreds of entries? There’s a handy search feature with relational databases. You can easily search for exactly the right entry you’re looking for.
We apologize in advance for some of the Canadian tax lingo below. Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the terms:
This should cover the basics.
Here is the very simple structure our office utilizes inside Notion to manage our relationships with our clients:
Each of these seven different databases houses various types of work we do for clients. Each database should have different items inside — a T2 and financial statement doesn’t have the same type of work as a T1 personal tax return, after all — but we could well do a T2, financial statement, set of T4s, and other work for a specific client. So we’ve built things out in such a way as to always have a property in every database item that relates back to an item in the “Clients” database to ensure better tracking and relationship management.
When searching for anything in Notion, it’s easy to jump into the Quick Search field in the top left corner. However, if this doesn’t immediately yield what we’re looking for, our relational database structure ensures we can start with “Clients” and then discover all connections to that client from across all 7 other databases. So long as we’ve properly filled in the relational database property in those other 7 databases, every client’s card in the “Clients” database should yield all the work we’ve ever done for that client.
In addition to all of the specific tax and financial reporting work we do for a client, we also have two separate miscellaneous-type databases to cover off miscellaneous-type work we might do for clients. If we mail out documents that need to be charged to a specific client, we can log the mail, log the type of document, log when it was sent, log the cost of postage, and relate it back to that specific client. If we ever need to do a quick check on mailing billings at a month-end or something, it’s as simple as applying a filter to all clients who have a populated “Mail Log” relation in their client card and get those onto an invoice.
Same goes for our “Work Log” database. This database houses any and all work we do for every client in the office. In many ways, it adds an extra layer of connection between our related databases. For instance, if we work on a specific client’s personal tax return for 3 hours on the morning of March 21st, we will create a work log entry stating we worked on that tax return for 3 hours. We can use linked database items to create a quick link to the item in the T1 – Personal Tax database, which itself is related back to the Clients database at the top. If we ever need to find how many hours it took to finish that tax return, we can begin by looking up the client in Clients, clicking on the related database property for the T1 – Personal Tax file, then clicking on the Work Log entry which shows as a back link in the T1 – Personal Tax card. In about 2 or 3 clicks, we have exactly how long it took to complete the work and have a better idea of what needs to be billed.
It’s these inter-database connections that ensure our office can better know what we’re doing for clients, how long it’s taking us to complete the work, and for whom we’re doing the work. Obviously this pays off when it comes time to bill, but it has an equally important impact on our relationship with each client — in only a few short clicks, I can refresh my memory on all the work we’ve done for someone and ensure our professional work is more informed and guided. This makes better use of our work time and provides better guidance for clients so we don’t retrace our steps on work we’ve already completed. So, sure, there’s a better bottom line for our office as a result, but we believe our relationship with each client has improved significantly due to our use of relational databases in Notion.
You might not have a robust editorial calendar or a tax company, but relational databases are still part of the magic of Notion. A couple of months ago we were doing a consulting job for a marketing and brand strategy company. Chloe spent some time creating a decked out Notion workspace for them.
They had a lot of moving parts. Dozens of clients, hundreds of past, current, and potential projects, tons of contractors they worked with on different projects… You get the picture. Lots of information.
Chloe was tasked with finding a way to get all of their information to talk to each other and show everything they needed to know quickly. It was fun.
She created a Master Client Database, Master Project Database, Master Contractor Database, Master Contractor Agreement Database (so they could easily find their contractor contracts for specific projects without digging), and a few others for meeting notes, etc.
She made it so that they could easily jump into an existing project or create a new one and add the client it’s for, the contractors that are jumping onto the project, attach their agreements to the project, and any meeting notes that they take over the course of the project.
When you’re working on large projects for clients, the last thing you want to do is spend time tracking down information. It should all be in one place, easily accessible.
Relational databases create a one-stop shop for relevant information — no more digging through countless files folders or through your email looking for that one document. You can see it all in one place. Notion’s hallmark feature is a game changer.
You can take it to the next level and create an advanced tagging system similar to Obsidian using relational databases. I’ve created something like this, thanks to Marie Poulin’s Notion Mastery course, for my Notion Library.
Notion’s Rollup feature takes everything to the next level, allowing you to pull in even more information. But we can save that for another time.
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RSS has been an important part of information workflows for many years, but read-it-later apps (and the RSS services many of them are based on) desperately need some inspiration and innovation.
Enter Readwise Reader, an app that attempts to combine your RSS, newsletters, web highlights, and more into a single location.
I’ve been using this Reader service for the last couple of months, and it’s completely revitalized my read-it-later reading workflow.
Readwise has been around as a service to help you get the most out of what you read for a long time. It allows you to sync your highlights from your Kindle device or services like Instapaper or Pocket and then review them periodically. You can even share your highlights, and you’ve probably seen images of Readwise quotes circulating social media before without maybe realizing where they came from:
Recently, Readwise has opened up a public beta of a new app named Reader that aims to handle all of your read-it-later needs. You can subscribe to feeds of your favorite websites via RSS, collect your favorite newsletters, save highlights from web articles, and more. Reader pulls it all into one place so you don’t need to juggle a dozen other reading apps.
All of the standard features you’d expect in your RSS aggregator of choice are here: you can collect and organize feeds, take notes on the articles and posts you’ve read, and archive things that you’ve looked at already. But Reader aims to bring your reading material from multiple places under one roof, so you can also use it to collect things like Tweets, web articles, ePubs, PDFs, and more.
Reader even gives you a special email address you can use to forward things to. Over the past several years of using Feedbin, I’ve used this feature to collect all of the email newsletters that I want to read regularly into my RSS app (a great feature if you’re trying to spend less time in your email as it helps separate the good stuff from the rest of the random junk that tends to show up in your email inbox). But the ability to highlight things in these newsletters and have that automatically get stored in Readwise means I can collect quotes and text snippets from more than just ebooks and web articles.
On iOS, Reader not only gives you a clean user interface for both your Library (which includes an inbox, later, and archive) and your Feed (a list of things that are either seen or unseen), but also makes it easy to add things to either using the iOS Share extension.
There’s also a bunch of new stuff in here that IMHO makes Reader better than just about every other RSS or read-it-later service out there.
For example, you can also save YouTube videos to Reader. But in addition to simply viewing the videos that you’ve saved at your convenience, Reader also gives you a live transcription that appears below the currently playing video and highlights the text as the video plays:
This makes following along with the video even easier and allows you to highlight text from the video to save for later.
On mobile, you can also listen to articles and have Readwise read the entire text to you. Just tap the Listen button in the upper-right, and a play bar opens at the bottom of the article that allows you to control the speed of the playback and even select from a couple of different text-to-speech voices.
Reader also has a Ghostreader feature, which is an AI-based tool that you can use to help create notes from the things that you read. You can choose a prompt from categories like Summarize the document or Ask the document a question and the output gets added to the article as a note.
You can also enable a public link to anything in your Reader library which makes it easy to share things with others. A public link not only allows anyone to view the article in Readwise, but they can also see your highlights, notes, and tags as well.
The Readwise service and the Reader app go together like peanut butter and jelly. Either one is fine on their own, but they are much better together. It’s hard to overstate how cool it is to have all of your highlights synced to Readwise automatically. I have a few paid newsletters I’ve subscribed to, and I love being able to see my highlights from those newsletters show up in my Readwise summaries and reviews alongside notes from books, YouTube videos, and more.
The Reader app itself feels like the breath of fresh air that RSS desperately needs. It’s also very reasonably priced, as when the beta is over the app is to be included with the current Readwise service at no additional cost. Historically, the full Readwise service has been $7.99 USD per month. While that hasn’t been enough for me to justify paying for the service previously, the addition of Reader makes the decision to switch a no-brainer for me.
For context, I’ve been paying $5 USD per month for FeedBin for a very long time. And while I’ve been happy with the service, Reader gives me everything FeedBin does and adds a bunch of new features on top of it. Plus I get access to the traditional Readwise service, for a couple of bucks more a month.
If you rely on RSS for any part of your read-it-later workflow, you should definitely check out Readwise Reader.
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Notion is constantly coming out with new features, which as an avid user, I greatly appreciate. One of the most notable new features is sub-tasks and dependencies. This is a fantastic new feature for those who work on a team in Notion, making it an even stronger contender with Asana.
The dependency feature lets you know what tasks need to be completed before another one, a great feature for teams who work using the Scrum and Agile project management method.
To start using Sub Tasks in Notion, you actually have to enable it in your workspace. Start by either heading to your current task database or creating a new one and clicking on the three dots next to the blue New button. Click on Sub-items and then click Create.
This is essentially creating a relational database between your tasks. You can keep the names Sub-item and Parent Item or you can rename them. I renamed mine to Sub-task and Parent Task.
Let’s look at a real example and see how it works. I created a task called “Write Notion Article on Sub-Tasks”. I could leave it at that, but there are a lot of steps involved in writing an article. I could create a separate task for each step, but that would take the fun out of sub-tasks.
To add a sub-task, click on the arrow next to the parent task and then click on + New sub-item. It’s like magic.
When you add the sub-items a few notable things happen:
The relational database between the parent task and sub-task database blows up.
When you just look at the parent task “Write Notion Article on Sub-Tasks”, you can see all the sub-tasks attached to it:
For each sub-task, you can see the parent task it’s attached to as well:
This is just relating the sub-task to the parent task. The same way that you would use any other relational database, except this does all the leg work for you. At a glance, you can see all the sub-tasks attached to the parent task. And any time you’re working on a sub-task you can see what parent task it’s related to.
If you open up the task, this is what it looks like:
(If you look closely, you’ll notice that you can even create a sub-task for this sub-task. Rabbit hole for another day)
You can also hide all the sub-tasks by clicking on the arrow under the parent task. You can also hide the parent task/sub-task properties if they become distracting in your view.
What’s cool about this feature is that you can assign each sub-task an individual due date and assignee. So if you are working on updating a page on a website that involves a few people, you can break down the task and assign each sub-task to different people.
You might be asking, why is this better than just creating an individual task for each item? Why do the whole sub-task thing? Is it a bit much?
Well, this next feature is why.
Seeing sub-tasks is pretty cool. But not a deal-breaking-change-my-life feature. But for certain teams, this task dependencies feature is pretty nifty (yes I just used the word “nifty”).
In the timeline view, you can now see how certain tasks are blocking other tasks.
This feature, like the sub-items feature, needs to be turned on. First, create a timeline view of your task database and then click on the three dots next to the blue New button and click on Dependencies.
Click + Create New Relation. Their pre-named properties worked for me (Blocking and Blocked by), but feel free to rename them.
This will effectively show what tasks have to be completed before other tasks can be completed. To create a dependency, you just need to drag the arrow next to one task and connect it to the task it is blocking.
It’s also helpful to view a few more properties on this view, such as status and assignee.
You can easily jump into the timeline view and see what tasks are holding up others. And even more helpful, see which person (people) are holding everyone else up 🤷🏼♀️.
This new feature might not be life-changing for everyone (especially if you work solo). But for those who work closely on teams, this might be a game changer. If you’ve been on the fence about checking out Notion because of its limitations for team collaboration on tasks, now might be the time to jump in.
Enabling the parent/sub-items and dependency features does add about a million new properties to your database, but like everything else in Notion, you can hide it if it’s not helpful in a particular view.
We use Notion every day over here at Blanc Media, and I’m excited to see how this will help us in our project management.
“Habits are the compound interest of self improvement” – James Clear
This time of year, everyone is talking about goals. And New Year Resolutions. And Progress. And taking over the world.
Over here at The Sweet Setup, we’ve been talking about habits a lot lately. Without habits, your New Years Resolutions, Goals, and plans to take over the world will most likely fall pretty flat.
In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits he talks about the importance of how habits help you not only to play the game, but to actually win the game. But how do you know if you’re winning the game unless you’re tracking your progress?
Enter Habit Trackers.
There are a lot of different ways to track your habits. The classic bullet journal approach, the Streaks App, the new Sunsama app…
The basic goal is simple… Choose a few habits you want to track (such as waking up on time, exercising three times a week, writing every day) and track their progress over a certain period of time. We are hardwired to love rewards, and seeing all those checkboxes checked for a whole week straight is a reward in and of itself. And it doesn’t help if there is a cupcake at the end of the rainbow, let’s be honest. Unless of course your habit is to eat healthy, then picture dried seaweed or a small handful of unsalted cashews at the end of the rainbow.
If you’ve been around here before, it will come as no surprise that I’ve chosen to track my habits in Notion. I am all-in on Notion. I’ve spent over a year and a half going deep inside of Notion learning all the ins and outs, and I am loving all these new updates they have come out with recently. Since I use Notion everyday for all Blanc Media / The Sweet Setup / The Focus Course related projects (and my own side projects), it made sense that I would use it to track my habits.
Notion is completely customizable — which is great — but can also be a bit intimidating if you are new to Notion.
A while back, I wrote about how I was tracking habits in Notion, but the app has changed a lot since then along with my process. So now I’m introducing the new and much-improved (and heck-of-a-lot easier) way to track your habits in Notion.
Note: I turned this Habit Tracker into a Notion template. There is a download link at the bottom of the article
Before embarking on this journey of creating the Ultimate Notion Habit Tracker, I did some research. There have been some great updates to Notion recently (such as repeating tasks and templates and fancy new icons) and I wanted to take full advantage of them. I also looked around the internet to see what was out there and saw lots of great templates, including Notion’s own Habit Tracking template.
But I thought I could make something with a bit more pizazz.
I also love my Notion workspace to be visually pleasing. I love to choose a color pallet and find inspiring photos from Unsplash (thanks to the amazing Notion + Unsplash integration) and let my workspaces bring me joy and inspiration.
Let’s dive into what I came up with.
This Habit Tracker has four views. The Weekly View (in a table), The Calendar view, The Visual view (my personal favorite), and the All Habits view.
It also features one of Notion’s newest updates: Repeating Templates. So now you don’t have to create a new card for each day of the week, it does it automatically. Can we just take a moment and appreciate how great that is?
I tried to get my dad into Notion last year and his biggest complaint was, “Why do I have to create a new card for each day of the week? Shouldn’t Notion just do it for me?” And I couldn’t agree more.
Well, now, it does! You just have to tell it exactly what to do. And test it. (Lucky for you, I already did that for you — you can download the template at the bottom of the article).
And thanks to Marie Poulin’s Notion Mastery’s private online forum, I was able to find a hack so that each repeating template automatically adds the date to the card when it is created so that the entire thing runs on autopilot. All you have to do is check off the habits you accomplished that day.
Let’s take a deeper look.
There are four main views (but you are free to add more or delete ones that you don’t find helpful!)
This view is set up to show you all the cards (in a table view) for the current week.
You can see all the habits you are tracking, the date, and a progress ring, and a special motivational message (we’ll get into that in a bit). This view is Grouped by Date and then by Week and sorted by Newest first.
You can jump into this view each day and check off the habit you’ve completed easily.
This view is pretty self explanatory. You can see all the cards for a specific month. You can also check off habits from this page, but only certain properties are shown from this page. You can adjust which habits are shown by going to the three dots next to the blue New button on the left, then clicking Properties, and then choosing which ones you want to show on the calendar.
This is my favorite view. As I mentioned before, I love beautiful inspiring images, so in this view I added lots of cool images (mostly in the grey scale).
This view is in the Gallery layout and the card preview is the page cover, that way you can see the cover images. In each template I set a different cover image for each day of the week. They are sorted the same way as the Weekly View, so I can see all the cards for each week, with the newest at the top.
I don’t have many properties shown on these — just the progress ring, the motivational message, and the daily highlight — but you can change them to show whichever properties you want.
This is where some of the real habit tracking magic happens. In this view, you can see your progress for each habit. Not just over a specific week, but over the entire time you’ve been tracking it.
You could also add a date filter if you wanted to see your habit’s progress in a certain time period. This is a great way to see and celebrate your progress.
You might be looking at this Habit Tracker and thinking, “Wow that’s a lot of habits to track”. And you would be correct — it is a lot.
I added a lot of habits to this tracker to give you ideas of what to track. Ideally, you would be tracking 2-3 habits, not 7. If that seems like a lot, start with just one. Choose one habit to change your life.
Let’s take a look at the ones I’ve added to the Habit Tracker:
Writing Habit: this is a great habit to track if you want to start writing more. Say your goal is to write a book by the end of the year. Your habit could be to write 500 words a day. If you aren’t planning on writing a book any time soon, you could change the name of the property to “Journal.” All you have to do is journal a page a day.
Exercise: If your goal is to get healthier this year, that most likely includes exercise. Keeping track of your workouts is a great way to celebrate your progress.
Reading: Creating a habit of reading 15 minutes before bed is a fantastic way to disconnect from technology, relax, and learn something new. And you know the old saying: a reader is a leader.
Photo: I love this habit. Take a photo a day, then you can upload it to your Notion card (or create a fun album in your camera roll). A photo a day doesn’t mean an accidental screenshot, but a fun, inspirational, or beautiful photo of something you see or experience during your day. It’s a good way to find joy every day.
Meditate: This habit looks different for many people. Having some quiet time to yourself, reading through a devotional book, taking a walk in the middle of the day… It’s a good way to clear your head and take care of your mental health.
Startup/shutdown routine: In the Focus Academy, David Sparks hosted a workshop on Startup and Shutdown Routines (replay now available in Accelerator). It was one of the most popular workshops. He shared about how important it is to have a startup/shutdown routine in your work week. It helps you to start your day on the right foot and turn off your work brain at the end of the day.
Water intake: It turns out drinking water is important. And I like progress bars. There’s science (and math) involved in how much water you’re supposed to drink each day. Something along the lines of your weight in ounces divided in half. Since that seemed like a lot of guessing on my part for a template, I just put 10 cups of water as the average (🤷♀️).
For this property, you can just input the number of cups of water you’ve drunk that day and it shows you how close you are to your goal. If you choose to track this habit, feel free to adjust it to the correct amount by adjusting the Divide by number to your goal of how much water you need to drink.
None of these habits feel quite right? Feel free to change them! This habit tracker is meant to empower you to make progress and lasting change.
You can now change the icon for properties. Which is pretty cool, at least to me. That is why I have specific icons for each habit. You can easily change them by clicking the name of the property, then on the icon you want to change. Then just pick the new icon you want!
In addition to adding the cool images, this is how I added some pizzazz to the Notion Habit Tracker. I am going to be honest, this took a lot of tinkering and testing. Notion has an advanced formula feature that is not for the faint of heart, but thanks to Marie Poulin’s Notion Mastery class, I was able to include a very special formula to spit out (somewhat) motivational messages when you complete your habits 😏.
In short, the Progress Bar and Motivational Messages properties use a formula to tally how many habits you’ve completed that day and show you your progress (using a progress ring) and display a motivational message.
Right now, the formula for the motivational messages and progress are based on the number of habits you are tracking. If you delete some of the habit properties, the formula will say that you are never completing all your habits, even when you are.
To adjust the formula for the progress bar, edit the property and change the “Divide by” number to the number of habits you are tracking. So if you want to track 4 habits, you would change the “Divide by” number to 4. Easy.
Now let’s look at the beast, the Motivational Messages.
The theory behind this is easy to understand. The formula calculates how many habits you’ve completed and it displays a message. If you decide you want to track all 7 habits and you are fine with the messages it displays, then you don’t have to touch it! But say that you want to track less than 7 habits and you find the messages to be a bit much — this section is for you.
Note: The Messages property uses the Progress property to calculate the number of habits completed, so if you delete the progress property, the Messages property will not work.
To adjust the formula for the Messages property, edit the property, and then click edit the formula.
Here is the cheat sheet for the formula:
if(prop("Progress") >= #HOW MANY HABITS YOU COMPLETED, "MESSAGE"
So if you are only tracking 4 habits, delete the formula string (the one above) for every extra habit that you’re not tracking any more and change the number (colored in maroon) in the remaining strings to reflect how many habits you are going to track.
Let’s look at an example. Currently, the string for the message if you complete 7 of your habits is this:
if(prop("Progress") >= #7, "#killingit"
Say you want to only track 4 habits and want to change the message, here’s what you would need to change:
if(prop("Progress") >= 4, "You did it!”
(Note: this is collecting data from the “Progress” property, which is why it says Progress inside of the parentheses.)
The formula input box will tell you if something is wrong, and what character is broken. Know that every string needs to be closed with parentheses at the end, and in the current formula all the closing parentheses are at the very end of the formula (it looks like )))))))) ) For every string you remove, you will have to remove one of the ) from the end of the string.
Don’t edit the concat(format(prop("Progress")), " — ", string at the beginning of the formula. Just the if(prop("Progress") >= #HOW MANY HABITS YOU COMPLETED, "MESSAGE" strings!
If you don’t find the motivational messages, well motivating, you can delete the property! Don’t worry, I won’t be offended.
Notion has been rolling out a lot of new features. My second personal favorite (my first has to be tabs) is repeating templates. I set up new repeating templates for each day of the week that duplicates at midnight each day. I could have created a single template that repeated every day, but I wanted to differentiate each day’s template for two reasons.
First, I wanted each day to have a different cover photo. This is mainly for the Visual View, which we already talked about. The second reason is that I added different journal prompts inside of each card.
Inside of each card there are two journal prompts. One of the prompts is the same every day, and one of them is different depending on the day of the week. The question that is the same every day is one of Shawn’s favorite journal prompts: Today was a good day because…
As I mentioned before, this template also automatically adds the date on the day it was created, so it adds itself to the right date on the calendar. It fully runs on autopilot. It’s pretty great.
Who knows. Maybe I can finally get my dad to use Notion.
A big component of tracking your habits is being able to easily check things off. For those of us in the iPhone world, we can do this pretty easily using a Notion widget that shoots you straight to the Habit Tracking page.
Here is how you create it:
This Habit Tracker could be taken to the next level (as if it’s not already a bit next level). You could embed your task list in each card to show everything due that day, or bring in your project database and show what you’re working on to make it a bit more all-encompassing. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
This Habit Tracker is meant to help you make progress on your habits and focus on being consistent over a long period of time. That is where results and lasting change come from.
