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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.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
Years ago, Shawn embarked on his journey to go “paperless” in his personal and work life. Inspired by David Sparks’ Paperless Field Guide, he incorporated three important components:
In this Quick Tip, we are mostly going to focus on Hazel, but the scanners are worth a brief mention. Office scanners are great if you have a decent amount of stuff to scan and you want good-quality scans. iPhone scanning apps are ideal for scanning things quickly on the go. As digital as the world has become, we still have to scan stuff (receipts, medical bills, important documents — no matter how many times you “opt-in for paperless post”).
But the main star of the show is Hazel. Scanning stuff into your computer is a good first step, but then you have to put it in the right spot. Otherwise, your desktop and downloads folder becomes the Wild West — vast and chaotic.
Enter Hazel. You set up some rules once and it does crazy cool stuff for you. Set it and forget it. Amiright?
Let’s look at a few examples. One of the reasons Shawn got into his journey for going paperless was to organize his monthly bills. In Hazel, you can set up rules (that all run in the background) that rename, move, and organize your files (and much more).
Every time Shawn’s utility bill hits his download folder, it gets added to his Utility Bills folder.
This rule states that any document that lands in Shawn’s downloads file that contains the words “Gas” and the numbers “555555” Hazel then renames to “Gas Utility Bill – DATE ADDED” and moves it to his “Utility Bills” folder. Cool right?
You could use this same logic to file your tax documents, expense receipts, PDFs, screenshots etc. The list is pretty much endless.
There are about a million use cases for Hazel (MacSparky has a whole field guide on Hazel), but one that I have that helps me write articles for The Sweet Setup is organizing my screenshots I take. Currently, whenever I take a screenshot using CleanShotX (is there even any other way?), it gets dropped on my desktop. In the past, I’ve tried to name and save all the screenshots to the right folder as I go, but sometimes I lose track or just want to move quickly and rename and move them around later. Also, I tend to take an absurd amount of screenshots and only use half of what I take, so I usually don’t want to take the time to edit, name, and save things I might not use. But then, Hazel.
I set up a rule to take all screenshots that land on my desktop that contain the word “article” in them and that are a PNG image and drop them in a “Pending Screenshot” sub-folder inside of my Articles folder. So when I am ready, I can easily find and pick the screenshots I need and upload them straight to WordPress instead of rummaging through my (embarrassingly) cluttered Desktop. It basically holds all my screenshots in a “holding area” until I am ready for them.
Once you set up your rules in Hazel, it runs in the background and you don’t have to think about it anymore. It’s the missing piece to paperless organization and helps put your mind at ease knowing that everything is being put in its rightful place.
We have more helpful tips right here.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
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.
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