Notion for Journaling + Tracking

[@Kate__123]

I would LOVE to please see more about you how integrate the relation and rollup features, plus organizing databases for more advanced tracking (and cross-tracking). Some of us neurodivergent folks get really excited (vs. overwhelmed) by all of the advanced tracking that you're doing, and could benefit from the same level of resources :) Thanks so much for all that you do!

[@TheDUDEger]

This is great and people who give such negative comment as you described in the intro are ignorant. As a power user of Notion I would be able to reconstruct your complex setups without the detailed instructions, but I find the concepts implicit in your setups much more intriguing. I would love to see more content where you talk about the concepts such as e.g. activation, where you picked them up, how you use them in your day to day, how you adapted or changed them to your own workflows and in what scenarios you found them more or less helpful. This interest is in both project management concepts you use (e.g. win of the day) as well as psychological (e.g. flow). Thanks!

[@pheeeebzzzz]

As a fellow ADHD suffering from depression, I would love to hear more about the *energy database and how you use it*. Also super curious about how you use your *intentions database* : is it just a place to list what your intentions might be and thus is fully replaceable by a select property, or do you have other properties in your DB that you use for rewviewing / stats purposes ? TIA for any feedback :)

[@rishibradoo]

I was instinctively doing something similar, and relying on quick action buttons in different contextualised views for quick data entry. Picked up the trick when I was using daily notes on obsidian. For the longest time I actually would hesitate with new trackers, that I totally knew I needed, cause of the "too many properties" rule. So this was the video I needed to know it was ok (provided you're a power user that can map the deets ofc) Also took me a second but I loved the use of relational databases over dropdowns. It brought that sense of Obsidian's freedom that I loved. Eye-opening. Thanks a lot Marie :)

[@BenLewisAu]

I don't know how KZbin's algorithm figured out I needed to see this video - but this is EXACTLY the thing I was wanting to watch this week. I've just made a decision to Journal & Track in Notion, and also have ADHD so this is seeming perfect. I also appreciate that you took the time to explain to people why you don't give out a far too complex / advanced Notion Template. I had that happen to me; I tried to use other people's systems and learnt that it didn't work for me - and then that burnt Notion for me for 2 years. Now I appreciate it's best done ground up from your needs and you have to evolve it as you learn new tricks and features. If you haven't already, I'd love to see some f/u on the nutty gritty elements of what goes on in the back end for this system. +1 sub

[@dr.patnesbitt]

I like your interoception comment. I have lots of patients who are depressed, and I treat them and they get better, and then they forget how depressed they originally were, and want to stop the treatment. I get them to use phone apps to record their moods daily in a "mood log". But for myself, I think I might try adapting some of your databases.

[@legzz187]

Ooo..loving the new edgy look ☺️

[@TammyAT01]

I landed on one of your videos entirely by accident, and WOW! - I love what you are doing with your databases, your journal...all the tracking! ADHD here as well and over here hyperfocusing on how to build out my own Notion tools now. I never comment on KZbin videos but felt compelled to share just how much I'm enjoying your content and that you've inspired me to give Notion another try. Keep up the great work.

[@MariePoulin]

Rock on! thanks for taking the time to leave a comment :D

[@etgdesignstudio]

I just adore learning from someone just as curious as I am. Thanks for all you share!

[@LemonPodcasting]

That starter template is a great kick off to a Notion journal. Thanks!

[@rhaeadrstryder3364]

This is immense. I'm trying to get ideas to move my journal from Diarium to Anytype because I'd like to use data with my journal more and learn from it.

[@madeyelashes]

Marie deleting properties is a mood

[@MariePoulin]

this cracked me up, thank you

[@amandajoeze]

This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen

[@Empowered-AF]

I absolutely love this and would love to figure out how to track my cycle and reflect on how it affects my mood, creativity, etc. That has alot to do with how productive we are. **

[@Kamaaist]

Hey Marie! Great video! I have been using a similar system in Notion to journal and to track my habits. I was wondering can you show us some ways to analysis the data we're feeding into the system? For example, i can track my habit and goal progress over the week or a month but i'm always looking for new perspective for making meaning of the complete data by using filters or using counts.

[@laurahawes3595]

just wanted to say thank you for making this video! I’m a fellow ADHDer and I’ve just recently discovered notion and have been trying to develop a journaling/tracking practice- and this video walkthrough was so helpful and ADHD-brain-friendly! much appreciated! flow state / activation vs effectiveness - so helpful!

[@TeddioPoieam]

Thanks so much for sharing, this is so inspired for me :)

[@JacquelineLowery-w3t]

People don't understand that people with ADHD need structure. These types of systems make my brain feel calm and quiet and give me a sense of control over my life.

[@LaurenMilla]

I love your videos so much. I fell off the notion bandwagon when my work life imploded. But things are back on track so trying to get back to iterating on everything I've learned over the months. Your style is the one the resonates the most and I'm trying to fashion my resets on yours and this journaling looks great as well. Luckily I'm a database architect as my day job so your advanced editing doesn't intimidate me even though i still have to learn "notions" way 😅

[@mrsbekahjoy]

Thank you for sharing this Marie! I am in both camps - excited & overwhelmed by your tracker but mostly excited. It is so cool to see how you've tailored it to fit your needs. I've watched a few of your older videos over the years about tracking daily wins and such and so excited to see you make this video. I made my own notion tracker before the new year and have been relatively consistent with my entries and it's been great to see trends at a glance. I agree with some of the other comments that I'd love to see your remarks on: - how you stay consistent when traveling (do you have a certain time of day each day that you do this? when I'm traveling for work and not at my desk where I would normally do this, I have a hard time creating cues for me to fill this out) - how you view your trends and make correlations with your health, sleep, mood, effectiveness, etc. (I am able to see a few basic correlations with my own tracking but would love to see a more advanced way of correlating the data)

[@booksyarntea]

This was an awesome video and I learned quite a bit from it. Notion is definitely one of the more versatile apps and I love using it because it has the structure to get tasks done, but you get the freedom of making that structure work for you in your own way versus an app telling you how you should complete your work. One thing I noticed in the video that I would be interested in seeing in the future is how your Month and Week databases are structured or set-up and how it's incorporated with the journal.

[@simransingh-lr7qb]

Such an amazing video, thank you

[@dbrakowski]

Thanks for taking the time to make this video--I learned quite a bit.

[@JosephHwang09]

What an awesome template and guidance! Always appreciate your insights and expertise! Thank you!

[@cchurchlead]

Hey Marie! I was hoping to see how you connected your weeks, months, quarter, years databases to your journals database. I was curious if as a part of your routine that you do it manually or if you have them auto generate somehow or use an automation tool to help with that. For example, I thought you may have a Monday’s template recur in your database every Monday so that the page is automatically generated, I had also thought about now that database automations are more advanced. If you are able to auto relate your weeks, months, quarters, years database to a specific journal entry based on the week, month, quarter, year or if you have to do that manually or with an automation tool

[@megh_na]

14:33 Please share how can i make my own Cycles database. It will be really helpful. I can't really figure out how i can put necessary information in there.

[@greggdavison374]

Amazing. Thanks. Question: How do you get your Readiness/Sleep numbers showing without the % AND the ring staying accurate?

[@richardquay]

Thank you for giving a tour of your journal! So interesting to see how you are using relative databases. Have you thought about how to include Notion's AI to help provide insights?

[@manuemstudios]

I come from a long history of analog journaling and just recently started building and using a system that resembles that practice. And while I do appreciate the tools and features the digital world can provide, I often find myself lost in complexity and get unnecessary resistance at the time of reviewing the data. So I wanted to ask: How do you review all these variables and data that you register? How often? Do you work with different views for that purpose? Do you try to jump to conclusions or have a reviews database? I loved how intentional everything seemed in your practice and I felt this was a lacking front in the video. I feel data should serve a purpose, and while we may not see it now or operating in the future, there's a chance we might find it looking back. Thanks and regards from Spain!

[@MariePoulin]

I tend to review my data weekly as part of my weekly review, then again monthly and quarterly. Not sure if you've had a chance to look at the Weekly Review walkthrough that I did? It gives a high level overview of how I look at past data :D

[@CoultonShaw]

Hi Marie - For context I'm one of your ADHD recently diagnosed notion mastery students :-) 1500+ days is quite the impressive streak! I can only imagine the collection of insights and memories you've amassed over this time. 📚 I've been journalling since 1995 (notebooks) and digitalized them to Evernote about 10 years ago, and now I'm in the process of putting them all into Notion, along with my daily journaling. The way you've mentioned using journaling to become more mindful and notice patterns in your life is very similar to my experience. I see how far I've come yet and also how little I've moved forward with some of my goals and thought processes over time. I'm curious to know if you've encountered any particularly surprising revelations about yourself through this process? And how do you handle any difficult emotions or thoughts that come up while journaling? Speaking of your journal tour, have you ever faced any challenges maintaining your journaling habit while traveling or during hectic times? How do you overcome these obstacles?

[@MariePoulin]

Love this question - will think on it and probably do a video reply :D

[@nicholasng1596]

Hey Marie, would you be kind enough to share a formula that enables the “On This Day” checkbox in the journal template you shared?

[@MariePoulin]

You got it!: and(formatDate(prop("Date"), "DD") == formatDate(now(), "DD"), formatDate(prop("Date"), "MM") == formatDate(now(), "MM"))

[@pheeeebzzzz]

@@MariePoulin Thank you both for the "on this day" idea and the formula !

[@MrModaff]

I would love to know how you've connected your journal databases to create separate views for Today, Week, Month, Etc. I see you're using a database for each but how are you having Projects, Task Manager, Library showing up on those specific days. I've seen a similar build from August Bradley but I've yet to see how its accomplished.

[@MariePoulin]

Projects, Tasks, and Library aren't filtered by date, but since they need to be accessed often, they are always included at the different timescales. Optionally, you could filter them by date falls within the [time], but i think that's overkill. I use linked databases to include them across all timescales.

[@haleyeidem]

Thank you so much for this video, Marie!!! I've been wanting to learn more about your journaling process for a while :) I have a follow-up question: can you expand on why you would choose a database over a multi-select for things like mood and energy? What does a database allow you to do/analyze/visualize that a multi-select doesn't and how do you enable this in your own journal? Thanks again!!!

[@MariePoulin]

Great Q - i'll probably address this and additional questions in some smaller follow up videos :D

[@Evanescence4ever100]

Hi Marie! Great video and thanks for the template. I was wondering, each day, do you create a new row or you have a whole database with each day of the year etc.?

[@gsquared33]

Hi Marie, great video as always! I've been a follower since a long time ago and realised in your daily journaling videos, you would track your happiness levels with the dropdown function to choose a number from 1 to 10. But now, I realised you've picked a different field where you directly key in the number to be divided by 10. My question is will you be losing your past data since you've changed the field? Thank you..

[@MariePoulin]

Before i make a change like that, i group the database by the old property, then select all properties in each group to batch update to the new property. (So i'd select all with Select property "Happiness 10" and update to have them all have a Number happiness property of 10. Takes less than a minute or two to change up that data, and its not something I do super often!

[@TheGotStampedChannel]

I'm guessing this is part of that "Power User" persona - I'd love to see how you were able to show the date and time beside your "Win the Day" action you chose from your Actions Database. Do you have a video for that?

[@MariePoulin]

Click on the + to add a new relation, then click on the three dots on the top right of the relation picker window, show/hide the properties you want :D

[@stephaniechrystal]

Hi Marie! Great video!! Loved how many ideas I got from this. Curious, does Ben or your team also use the Daily Themes database or was this something created and customized for your personal use/journal? Also, are the core databases (e.g. Actions, Energy, Daily Themes) stored on one page as individual pages and then pull them into where ever you need them? This is what I've been doing and just wondering if it's not ideal. Also loved "That might be a little TMI for you so let's skip over that" 😂

[@MariePoulin]

So glad you enjoyed it! So yes other team members can use it, and we just each make our own "monday" "tuesday" entries but make them private! And yes we have a few pages were source databases live and we always just pull them into where we need them. We always use linked databases, and rarely visit the originals!

[@stephaniechrystal]

@@MariePoulin Thank you for responding! I agree much prefer using linked databases however trying to figure out the best practice for keeping those source databases organized. 😅Would love a video on that one day!

[@trina2100]

This was a super helpful video. Not sure why so few likes. Thanks so much!

[@MariePoulin]

Many thanks, so glad you enjoyed! :)

[@feelosopher777]

dream came true :)

[@Maggie-theworkisplay]

This look is giving me Laura Prepon 🔥

[@MariePoulin]

WOW, i'll take it, lol

[@Maggie-theworkisplay]

I have a question! Why have a Practices database, as well as the check marks? Why have them separate/why have some as a database and others as checkbox properties directly within the journal?

[@human-torch]

I do the same sometimes so you can get stats like the percentage of completion, or the count of how many times you checked that box.

[@Lenastar23]

Can someone explain the On This Day formula?

[@mirthevanhoorn]

Great video! I'm very glad to not be the only nutjob with 30+ property's in their journal. And also 69 niiice.

[@rafaelnunez9970]

I really love your new haircut.

[@kirtwedel9275]

I know super cute.

[@faranjaved4001]

I am loving the template so far, excited about using it.