Tag: Notion

How I use Notion and bullet journaling together

Recently my favorite Youtube planner person, Catlin, made a shocking announcement. She is not going to be using a bullet journal anymore. Instead, she’s switching over to virtual planning.

This prompted me to think about my planning habits. It’s 2022, everything is expensive and everything else is digital. Maybe the time has come to switch to a fully digital planning system.

Nope, not going to happen. I’m not saying it’s never going to happen, mind you. But right now I get much-needed serotonin from my bullet journal and I’m not giving it up. 

That being said, I do use Notion for roughly half of my planning. So I thought it might be interesting to break down what I use my bullet journal for, and what I use Notion for.

Bullet journal, micro, art, and memories

My bullet journal sits open next to me most of the time. That’s because my daily task list and schedule are listed there. Anything that I have planned for this month will be in the pages of my bullet journal. Here’s a quick rundown.

-Monthly goals

-Monthly budget

-Three-month business plan

-Projects and social media plans for the current month

-My current ‘to read’ list

-Monthly habit trackers

-Shopping list

These are things I check in with daily. Things I’d like to be able to check in with by flipping a page.

Another thing that will be found on my monthly pages is a memory tracker. Here I doodle and sketch pictures that memorialize the fun events that happened that month. If we went to see a good movie if a book came out if I got a new plant. If there was a holiday, of course.

This is part of my memory keeping. I want to be able to look back at my journals and remember how my month went. That’s harder when using an app. 

It’s also harder to get creative on an app. I take great joy in drawing out borders and decorations in my bullet journal. It’s something I look forward to, every time I make a new page. 

Honestly, I just finished setting up holiday pages in my bullet journal with stickers, and it was such a joyous activity. I know I can decorate with pictures on Notion, and I do. But it’s just not the same. 

My bullet journal is for short-term planning, memory keeping, and art therapy.

Notion, macro, fluctuating, and repetitive tasks

All that being said, there are some things that a paper planner is just not useful for. Like long-term planning.

Anything that’s going to outlast my bullet journal probably isn’t going in there. So my annual plan goes into Notion. As does my OCN board. If you don’t know what that is, you’ve got to take this course by Lisa Jacobs. It’s helped me get so much more shit done, I can’t even tell you. 

I also keep a project page for each of my books in Notion. Books take a long time to write, and much longer to edit. I don’t want to rewrite a ton of information each time I switch journals. 

Then there are the things that change too often to be worth the time to write down. Things like my blog schedule, which I switch up all the time. Or my plant watering schedule which gets updated every three days. Chore charts are another big one for Notion, as they need to be updated all the damn time.

Anything in Notion is, essentially, there for too long of a time or too short of a time for it to comfortably fit in my bullet journal. 

This system works well for me. Doing things this way I’m able to keep track of managing my family, day job, and writing career. I’m also able to catch memories of my life, so I can look back and cherish them. I can build for myself a wealth of learned wisdom. I can learn from my past while giving my future plenty of room to grow.

So what about you? Do you use just a bullet journal or just a virtual planner? Let us know in the comments. 

It’s not too late to start planning for Preptober! You can get my Preptober planner now on my ko-fi shop. 

1

My Review of Notion

So I’ve been using Notion for a couple of months now. I started using it after watching an Amanda Lee video on YouTube. She just made it seem so cool, I had to try it.

I have a bad habit of trying new software and apps, spending hours moving all my notes and info over to them, then dropping them like a hot coal a few days later. The reasons vary. It didn’t do what I thought it would. It’s redundant. It’s just one more bloody app to check in the morning. It’s not easy to use. Something new and shiny caught my eye. You get the idea.

But I’ve continued to use Notion for long enough now that I think I’m ready to share it with you. (Not a sponsored post.) 

So, if you don’t know what Notion is, it’s a note-taking app. Think of it as a virtual notebook. I tend to use it as a virtual bullet journal. You can keep to-do lists, pictures, documents. if you have a paid account, you can share access to all of those things.

I don’t work with a team, so I don’t have a paid account. And I have to say, I use it almost every day for both my personal and my writing life. 

Here’s what I use it for. 

Social media plans- Pretty self-explanatory. I keep a little chart of ideas for Tweets, pins, Instagram posts and the like. I hate sitting down to plan a day worth of social media and having no ideas. Why do I have all these pithy thoughts until I have my keyboard under my fingers?

Meal prep plans- Whatever makes my brain go blank when I’m trying to write social media does the same damned thing when I’m trying to figure out dinner. Even when I try to write a shopping list, I forget every meal I have ever made. So having a list of meals I make, or that I want to try, is a huge help.

Utility info- Another pretty self-explanatory thing. This is the information I need if I have to deal with any of my utilities.

Savings info- I know everyone suggests having separate savings accounts but I don’t have time for all that nonsense. So my savings account has just one chunk of money. Then I keep track of what money is for what on this Notions page.

Expense trackers- If you’re not tracking how much your bills usually are, you should be. 

Address book- Again, pretty simple. Nothing’s worse than fumbling for the vet’s number because Oliver swallowed something he ought to know not to.

Rolling to-do list- While my daily goals are in my bullet journal, I like to keep a rolling list of things I need to get to. This gets slowly moved to my bj as I can manage these tasks. Nothing gets forgotten, but I’m not looking at a list of things that no one could do in a day.

Contests- I have a bad habit of entering too many contests. I like to have a place to keep track of them. Due dates, word requirements, all the rules, links to pages. It’s super useful to have all of that in just one place.

Project pages- This is especially useful as I get into more forms of storytelling. As I work on AA and other podcasts, there’s just a huge amount of info to keep track of. And Notion is where it all goes. 

Blog post schedule- Finally, I keep track of all my blog posts for here and Haunted MTL. I keep notes, links, info, calendars. 

Now, you might be wondering if I still use a bullet journal. The answer is yes. I use Notion for long-term planning and things that need to stick around as I switch from book to book. My daily and weekly planning are more in the moment. Even my monthly goals to a degree. And of course, there’s also the memory capturing part of a bullet journal that I don’t want to convert to virtual just yet.

The big reason why I started using Notion is that I had things that either changed too often or not often enough. Things like my blog schedule, which might switch on a whim, are a pain to do then redo on paper all the time. Things like what recipes I like to make for dinner don’t change so often that they need refreshed every three to six months when I get a new BJ.

I do appreciate that I can pull Notion up on any device. My tablet has the app, of course. And I can pull up the website on any computer. I like that I can access all of my notes, for both home and writing life, no matter where I am. 

The fact that it’s cute doesn’t hurt. 

Have you tried Notion? Let us know in the comments below. 

You can support Paper Beats World on Ko-fi.

0

A WordPress.com Website.

Up ↑