Notion Calendar for Life System Design - Sync Your Life OS

A deep dive into Notion Calendar and how to integrate it with our Notion life system. This is Part 1 of a 2-part series on how to enhance our Notion Life Systems with next-level calendar apps.
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INDEX TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
3:47 Life OS + Cal App
5:51 Flow Chart Steps
7:32 Notion Calendar Overview
11:07 Notion Cal Database Integrations
22:00 Calendar Power Features
28:54 Closing Thoughts
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[@ThomasLWoolsey]

THIS is what I was really waiting for, since Notion Calendar dropped, this video right here, thanks so much!

[@augustbradley]

Right on, I'm glad it was helpful! The next one coming this week will really show a nice comparison with it and give you two great options to choose from.

[@BarryOGorman]

Thanks August - another excellent and well thought out presentation.

[@augustbradley]

Awesome, Barry. I'm really happy to hear it was helpful and of value. Thanks so much for the feedback - greatly appreciated!

[@Dirk80241]

I am using Notion with your Life System (Action Zone, Projects) (in South Africa, by the way) and it is very helpful. I got Notion Calendar, but now I am going to add it to my workflow, based on your explanation in this video. Thank you very much. You are doing an awesome job that should get more credit all over the world.

[@augustbradley]

That’s awesome! Congrats on your success so far. This is part one of the two part series, the second video is going to show another calendar app option that has some advantages over this one - so might check that one out before deciding. It’s great to have multiple good options keep up the great work!

[@MartinSchabbauer]

Thank you August for sharing and taking us with you on this Calendar journey. Your deep insights, communication skills and willingness to share and build a community are epic.

[@augustbradley]

Thanks, Martin. I’m really glad to hear this valuable. I love diving into the stuff. Thanks so much for your feedback!

[@DistractedSapien]

AB! Long time follower - thank you as always for your knowledge on life design. It's helped me achieve a lot. I actually like that I can't check off tasks from the calendar as it's nice having a visual of what I worked on that day. But yes it would be nice to have additional properties displayed, especially a priority field to see tasks labelled "reminder" or "quick". I'm experimenting with turning many databases ("vaults") into task databases for the purpose of having a dedicated time blocks on the calendar. At the moment they are tasks, projects, and a courses & skills db with each entry as a template for easy duplicating on the calendar. We'll see how it goes!

[@augustbradley]

What I have in mind is checking off the task as completed but not having it disappear from the calendar view. Just having it checked and probably faded or grayed out a little bit - but still visible on the calendar - more on this in the next video. I agree with you, it's nice to see the history of the work you've accomplished to remind us of what we've done because it's so easy to forget that and only focus on what's not done. Great point. Interesting idea connecting vaults. Great way to be creative and optimize for your own personal workflow. Keep up the great work!

[@juliasommer2364]

King of Nation - Thank you! Great content! Love your stuff! Glad you are back :- )

[@augustbradley]

Thank you, Julia! I really appreciate that. Super excited to be back. Just getting started and ramping up. Onward 🚀

[@prepos9376]

You are always the best. your videos are a turning point every time, never stop please! p.s. a super interesting video for me (which I would have also liked to see during the first famous series of videos) is to see in practice how you "elaborate" a topic in the topics vault. in the sense of how you do "research", you look at the sources (the connected media), the notes, how you take the best pieces from the media and insert them into the dedicated topic (or more topics if there are more). in short, the practical process. because I often find it a bit difficult to do so in practice.

[@augustbradley]

Thank you, it really means a lot to me to hear this. And definitely, no plans to stop. We're really just getting started! Great suggestion. Let me think about how to do that. The problem that comes to mind is that it's actually quite boring in terms of showing that slow, gradual research process in a video. But let me think of how we might shape that. Thanks!

[@enjoyette]

Always super helpful! Thank you!

[@augustbradley]

Awesome, I'm really happy you found it helpful! Thanks for the feedback.

[@ryanball.foodphotographer]

Thanks for the video very informative. My main gripe with Notion Calendar is the iOS app. It’s unusable in its current state as there is no weekly or monthly view. It only allows a three day view, which for me is a real problem when scheduling in work. Hopefully they address this, but it’s been some time now and no update so far. 😢 Looking forward to seeing your next video.

[@augustbradley]

Yes, I completely agree with you. The mobile app does not have the views we need. I talk about this specifically with some screen shares toward the end of the next video that I'm releasing. You're definitely right on.

[@borisrezaire]

Hey august, great content like also! Do you advice to do the time blocking during the weekly review, or during a daily realignment routine the morning (or the night before)? Thanks

[@augustbradley]

Great question! During the weekly review, it's nice to loosely sketch out your week and, to the extent you can, map out "DO dates" for each of the days in the upcoming week. Then, the night before each day, you do a much more firm final lineup of the next day - both in terms of what's included and the prioritization in the sequence for the next day's lineup. Of course, that plan can always change if surprises come up. However, having a specific plan allows you to compare the surprise against it and make a better-informed decision as to which should take precedence. Hope that helps!

[@JonathanBrowninator]

Good stuff as usual!

[@augustbradley]

Awesome Jonathan, thanks!

[@tomkregenbild]

Thanks for the great content and review. I think that the fact that there is no Android app for the calendar is the deal breaker for me

[@augustbradley]

I didn't even realize there was no Android app. Wow, that's a big miss. I don't understand how you can come out with a calendar app without both an iOS and Android app on day one. That seems like table stakes - a minimum viable requirement. Hopefully it's coming soon. It certainly must be on the roadmap.

[@gajanandubey3053]

Thanks for this video, but it doesn't support Android so I can't continue with this. I'm waiting eagerly for the part 2 video.

[@augustbradley]

I'm sorry for the delay, but I just posted part two. This one should be great for Android users. And it's actually my preferred choice, even with iPhone: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pKDcoWd5jrJ_pa8

[@breno9496]

I spent weeks learning the basics of notion, figuring out and building the structure of my system. It’s time someone created an actual (standalone) Life OS. Notion is good but not great, as a “does it all” tool, I don’t think it does best in this case.

[@augustbradley]

That's no easy task. But I agree, that would be the ultimate implementation. Maybe one day.

[@morne.bester]

Did you ditch dinner with Jim and Karen to record this video?😂

[@augustbradley]

Ha! I totally did. I hope they'll forgive me.

[@Mickaelovitch]

Thanks for all. When the new PPV courses?

[@augustbradley]

The new enhanced PPV training (Notion Life Design) will be coming out in a few months. We're working very hard on it, and it's going to be the biggest enhancement since its initial launch. I'm incredibly excited about it. Thanks for your interest, I can't wait to share more details as we get closer.

[@rowandish2870]

Thanks August for these videos, I find them very useful. I have difficulty creating tasks or time blocking for things that I have to do for a long time, for example taking a 40 hour online course. It is certainly not an "action zone" task as I will never be able to do it all in one day and therefore it will not have a "do date" but how can I divide it into several days and do time blocking in the calendar?

[@DistractedSapien]

Hi! What I did was create a "Courses & Skills" db with each entry as a template. When I want to schedule time for a course or skill I just select its template, enter the "do" date, and time block it accordingly. The C&S db has a relational link to my "Knowledge Topics" db where I can see each course/skill session from the Reference section of each topic. So for example my "Coding" knowledge topic has 6 pages under the Courses & Skills reference section; I'll then aggregate notes and highlights from a beginners Python course I took all month into the master knowledge topic for Coding. Edit: cleaned up a bit 😖

[@HippieP629]

This is one of the main reasons why I moved from Notion to motion for using tasks. In motion you can break up tasks into bite-size chunks, which is really helpful. You can’t do that in Notion. I do my weekly and monthly reviews in Notion and even though I had motion connected to Notion, it just turned out to be a headache, connecting the API‘s together, so I’m going back to Notion. But your question raises a important point, seeing as how you can’t do certain things with Notion that you can in other platforms.

[@augustbradley]

Good question! What you're describing is not a task, but a project-or part of a larger project. For example, to learn something in particular could be a project (and the course could be part of that project or all of that project). What you want to do is consistently block off time to make progress on it. So, the task would be to work on the course for an hour or work on the course for two hours. Or the task or could be to do lesson number three. And then another task would be to do lesson number four, if the lessons are broken into good-sized chunks. But as @DistractedSapien said in another comment in this thread, add it to the Courses & Training database and link that to your Knowledge Vault. Then everything will be connected, and you can just schedule tasks to make progress-where the task is either defined by a certain amount of time or a specific lesson. Hope that helps!

[@rowandish2870]

​@@augustbradley Thanks August for the reply, I'm finding these videos of yours extremely interesting and I'm improving my lifeOS every day. It could be an idea for future videos on how to structure the PPV for specific examples like this, for example all the steps to follow a course or to learn a skill (so the various databases, how to link them, best practices and so on).

[@augustbradley]

@@rowandish2870 That's awesome that you're finding it valuable. I love hearing that. These kinds of special use cases are things we delve into more deeply in the Notion Life Design program. There, we can address individual use cases more easily, whereas KZbin needs to cater to a broader audience and a broader range of more typical setups - given the breadth of the audience and the limited ability for interaction. I'll definitely keep that in mind as I consider future KZbin video possibilities for the roadmap. If you want to explore specialty cases, you should think about joining Notion Life Design when it relaunches in a few months. Thanks!

[@GlobalEltorro]

Love how notion is integrating calendar features. However, it needs an Outlook integration as so many workplaces are dependent on it. Can you get on the notion developers for this? 😤

[@augustbradley]

You're absolutely right. I can't believe they launched it without Outlook integration - they have kept repeating that it's coming. A ton of people have been reminding them constantly about it, so it's definitely on their radar. Hopefully soon!

[@youssefmo]

Is your icon pack available somewhere?

[@augustbradley]

I'm using the icon pack that's built into Notion!

[@fahimrahman4235]

I hate that the Notion Calendar doesn't integrate with Outlook. What is the other calendar app for the next video? Is it Morgen?

[@augustbradley]

Yes, I agree. I can't believe it doesn't integrate with Outlook. Part 2 will definitely address the Outlook issue.

[@ryan_di870]

@@augustbradley when are you dropping part two? its been two weeks!

[@augustbradley]

@@ryan_di870 It's very close, coming this week! Sorry for the delay.

[@fahimrahman4235]

@@augustbradley we are patiently waiting for it!

[@augustbradley]

​@@fahimrahman4235 Sorry for the delay. I'm finishing it up today!

[@user-mp6fs7yn]

I don't know why they lunch a different app as calendar the best calendar is google's one just copy it as it is and add it as new view to notion database and that's it don't reinvents the wheel

[@augustbradley]

Both this new Notion Calendar app and the one I'm looking at in the next video surpass the basic Google Calendar browser functionality. They offer much more than just the basic features of Google Calendar - although you’re still using Google Calendar on the backend for cloud syncing.

[@user-mp6fs7yn]

@@augustbradley But it is included in a separate app. Most people only use the basics, or this is what I do. Why would I switch to the Notion calendar? If in both cases I will have to leave my Notion workspace, then it will not make any difference if it is for the browser or for an app

[@user-mp6fs7yn]

@@augustbradley Simply having a new view that contains calendar functions is the best solution, and if you want to see all your databases in one place, you can build this. Guess what, this is Notion's original idea. Build the system that suits you.

[@user-mp6fs7yn]

@@augustbradley I don't want to be understood as being hostile or hateful towards the new calendar. By the way, I downloaded it on the first day, but I don't use it. I only use the feature to display upcoming events on the top bar of the desktop.

[@augustbradley]

@@user-mp6fs7yn That's all good. It's worth trying new things, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Use what fits your workflow. Optimize for your own preferences - just as you are!