Project and task planning with Notion

Just having a straight up "Projects" database isn't always the most helpful way of seeing everything we have on our plate.
This video goes over how I approach project planning using a key ingredient: actions/tasks inherit the energy level of their connected Projects to improve prioritization.
There are lots more nuances to cover, so consider this an overview!
Let me know what you'd like to see me cover next!
[INTERMEDIATE]
Mentioned in this video:
PARA:
praxis.fortelabs.co/the-p-a-r...
Book: Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky
Book: Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy
⚡️Go deeper with my online course, Notion Mastery:
notionmastery.com/program/
💰Join Notion Mastery's affiliate program and earn 20% commission on every sale:
notionmastery.com/affiliates/
⚡️Check out my Notion templates:
notionmastery.com/templates
☕️ Love this content and want to buy me a coffee?
www.buymeacoffee.com/7r86dYO

[@hurdlefree]

Interesting! I started organizing my tasks by the state of mind required (🤔 Analytical, 🤯 Creative, 🧐 Focused, 😬 Grit, 😐 Mindless, 🥳 Social).

[@ntt410]

The weekly recurring items are on fire! Really looking forward to a video on how you set it up, Marie!

[@Gilly103221]

this will be a major achievement for all of us notion Users.

[@kroberts9285]

Yes, game changer for sure

[@MaschaVanDeWeer]

I was also really amazed by these. Such genius. I decided to stick to my current system though (for now 😇) where I just set a new date for each recurring task, because creating all these new tasks each week will also add a lot of items to my system each week. But I really love what I saw in the video 💖

[@trixiewixieo]

As always learning something new. Than you. 😀

[@CassieWinter]

As someone with a chronic illness and identifies as a spoonie, I absolutely love how you use energy level as a metric to categorize tasks.

[@MariePoulin]

It is the way! 😂

[@CassieWinter]

@@MariePoulin 🤣

[@RachelOber]

I really like that you have the estimated Pomodoro sessions on your tasks. This is something I did years ago when I wrote and planned my tasks on paper. I think it's time to integrate it into my Notion!!

[@FutileGrief]

Truly remarkable. Do you ever get worried that the master task list gets filled with so many things that the app goes berserk or won't load at all? Has anyone had this issue, or can comment if you worry about this too? I'm currently changing to just ONE Master and Project database to then sort out in individual pages, but I get freaked that it won't load correctly and then I will forget something important and then something terrible is going to happen and then I die xD

[@taylorb4917]

This is fantastic, I needed a new way to manage my projects/tasks. Thanks Marie! 🙏

ahhhhh always so satisfying peaking into your brain, thanks for leading the way with such generosity and brilliance!! we gotta love ya

[@linnealarsson2434]

task planning in calender!! that is exactly what I was missing, thank you! :)

[@KateMcDee]

LOVE your systems!!!! Thank you for sharing!!

[@raquelbaudrit]

Love this! I did something similar then visualized it in PowerBI matrix to help me manage a backlog of opportunities. I split it between four quadrants depending on their impact or effort score. So, for example, high impact, low effort went to my “quick wins” quadrant.

[@user-sw6yi3ql9r]

Your videos are useful! Thank you so much for the great job you have done!

[@roeytsemah]

Clever way of auto-sorting the two databases. Gonna try that! I used to do such granular todo lists but recently found it more practical to have 2-3 overarching week goals. Then I use work blocks to complete chunks of work. Anyhow, super happy I've found your channel!

[@AnantMr]

Just moved to notion! Blown away the attention to detail and how granular it is.! Amazing!!

[@LaughLikeLilach]

Such a genius system!

[@squidlife1719]

I just found your channel, and just want to stop by and say thanks for all the work you put into your videos! I really enjoy the content.

[@shawnaleigh5047]

I love it!!!! It is absolutely my way of thinking about my projects, tasks. I'm going to create this today! (If you had a template, I'd pay you for it!!!!) I love your videos. Thank you! ❤️

[@mariefranceartdesign]

This was a great video! Thank you. Do you happen to have a template of this?

[@fabricejoseph9214]

Great stuff!!! thank you

[@laurenceglazier]

Very comprehensive, thank you. Maybe the two calendar views (from the two dashboards) could be consolidated into one? Look forward to seeing how you add the timeline view to the mix!

[@movementhour]

Loving this informative video and planner. Do you perhaps have a video to guidee on how to build a similar template? :)

[@riese5142]

I would love to see that!

[@russfreelancer]

This is amazing

[@ecopsorn]

This video made me subscribe :) - would love to try it with a template because I’m just getting started setting up my Notion

[@colinpowda]

Can you make an update video on this please? How do you now manage your tasks?

[@MarianaM_ds]

Great video, thanks!

[@rosepehtels]

where do you find your icons for your databases?

[@LockeVincent]

Thanks again Marie for paving the way for the Notionites. This was super informative with regards to project management, which is a key spot in running my video production business with multiple projects. I love how you are always shifting and keeping your dashboards fluid and always finding different ways to keep productivity high. Glad to see that you have moved a little more to the calendar view as I think it is a bit underutilized [although I do share the sentiment of moving stuff to the next day]. One question wrt calendars and action databases - in previous setups you had a specific monthly calendar [database] attached to daily journals. Do you ever have a specific calendar DB for the month/year that you use, or are you putting every single thing in your master task list?

[@MariePoulin]

Hey, great question! I do have dbs for week, month, quarter and year, but I don’t actually use the calendars much on those. These days all date specific stuff is within my master task database! I don’t use a separate calendar anymore :)

[@barefacedquestions]

I like your way of thinking about project management. Since your project planning system in Notion has evolved, where do you put the old database (I guess in the Archive?), and where do you put this new Project Planner in relation to PARA?

[@abstraktprojekts7555]

Love this, for your reference you also mentioned Eat That Frog, great book by Brian Tracy.

[@MariePoulin]

Thanks, I’ll add that to the description too!

[@abstraktprojekts7555]

@@MariePoulin cool cool. I’m not sure if you answered already but if you have that template as well that would be great. Also, I reference you in a KZbin video that I’m going to release later this week. I’ll update shortly.

[@damilolaowolabi9148]

Hey Marie Is there a template for this? When will it be available?

[@dahianajimenez157]

Thanks for the video! *Question/Video Idea:* I was wondering ... do you have a way of organizing future purchases? More specifically: Is everything in one database or in separate databases (reoccurring--e.g. groceries--vs one-time purchases)? Is each purchase actually a task? How do you resurface them? etc. If you already discussed this before, I'm happy to search for any keywords to find the video.

[@aribaj8662]

This video was so good! Really like how you made your dashboards- the Project Planner Dashboard was exactly what I was missing. Was wondering if you can share your color coding?

[@riese5142]

Yes please!

[@patgallant9010]

This is really great. Time for another tweak/revamp to my setup...:). QQ: I see you have a Done checkbox for your actions. What other options in your "Status" field do you have besides "In Progress"? I find myself switching between a Done checkbox and a "Completed" or "Done" status. Sometime I use both and have a formula field used to report Done: or(prop("Status") == "Complete", prop("Done"))

[@Hannooi]

amazing work that will help me a lot. can we have this template with thanks

[@AMindInOverdrive]

I'm looking for a tool to manage one large project, rather than a bunch of smaller ones. It's a hospital build that we are doing a certain scope of the work. There is so much back and forth communication with the other teams, and also spreadhseets, emails, internal communications, etc. Also I'd like to be able to search everything, and find all info related to that search keyword(s) - I wonder if this tool will work for that?

[@dibeja]

Great ideas as always Marie! I use some of your tricks in my workspace and they are really helpful. BUT what I struggle the most with is reorganizing things when I change something in my system. I'll make an example: when i switched to the PARA method i had to move all the tasks from my previous Master Task database to the new and this was very time consuming and I had a lot of duplicates to manage (search shortcut was useless untill i deleted all the copies of tasks). Maybe this could be a good hint for a future video? ;)

[@DocteurChouchou]

How do you inherite energy from the projects?

[@howiel]

Is this available as a template? Thanks

[@MariePoulin]

Working on it, haha!

[@tigress1girl]

@@MariePoulin Is it available yet please? hopefully ♥

[@SimplyGimpy]

Thanks for all you're work and effort and talent and sharing them with us. My contsructive critique (given in good faith, I promise)... is that a video like this feels very low on practical use, and more like lifestyle than productivity content. It would be cool if this was a video that also explored, in very strict, compact fashion, how to accomplish the things it shows. Less touring, more teaching, you know? Not meant negatively, in any respect. Only that my time (and energy!) are very limited, and this video promised something I actually wanted, but I didn't get. -best wishes, SG

[@MariePoulin]

My focused teaching is done in my course, while my channel is more teaser and tour. I’ll take this into consideration, but I keep my best how to teachings as my course material :)

[@SimplyGimpy]

@@MariePoulin Enitrely reasonable, I understand completely. Again, hopefully not understood as wanton internet negativety. Only mismatch between user needs and creator's, it seems. Depending on how long the buzz lasts as I explore Notion, perhaps I'll check out the course in the near future. Until then, best of luck and godspeedsies.

[@kimcramer]

Thanks Marie! Great video ☺️ quick question ... Has anyone figured out a workaround yet to get emails to Notion?

[@derekhill7661]

I use Spark as my email client. I copy to URL link associated with the email into Notion. Works for me.

[@Tesla-Cannon]

How do you make your tasks related to your projects? Is there another video where you explain the set up, or is there a template?

[@MariePoulin]

Yes, check out my other videos on creating relational databases, and master task databases!

[@heathntopper3489]

This is great. Thank you for sharing. How are you getting two tables side by side in your dashboards? On your Actions Dashboard, it looked as though you had two instances of your Actions database side by side. How is that possible from a formatting perspective? I tried doing this and can seem to get two side by side. Thanks.

[@MariePoulin]

Make two empty columns first (drag any block that isnt a database beside another block), THEN drag the databases into the columns!

[@kerryhill7307]

@@MariePoulin How are the Action Items on the right filtered?

[@BenjaminFunklin]

great video, because you said you're collaborating with a team. Do you have a way to hid certain projects from certain team members ect. Or do they just have access to all actions and all projects? thanks in advance

[@MariePoulin]

You can restrict access to any project entries, so by default everyone in your workspace can see if you have shared the database with them, but then you can restrict permissions on projects so only certain people or groups can view!

[@BenjaminFunklin]

@@MariePoulin thanks for your reply. that makes sense I will try it!

[@michael_gaio]

Brilliant Can I get this template ?

[@cuncon231287]

Does anyone know how to create the pomodoro icons in the database in the video?

[@tuhinchakraborty2912]

Try adding emojis. If you are on a mac, ctrl + cmd + space and then search for "tomato"!

[@sauceydesigns]

How did you make the reoccuring template button just populate all your tasks below? I got it set up but it always opens the first tasks (page) instead of just adding the list of tasks. Not a huge deal but I love how yours just populates and then you just start dragging them where you need them. Also thanks for all these videos. Love learning from you

[@MariePoulin]

Add a blank block as the top block in the list!

[@sauceydesigns]

@@MariePoulin omg. That’s so easy... thanks Marie!

[@melissapope5149]

Thanks for asking! This was my question too 😊 excited that it’s working now!

[@MaschaVanDeWeer]

I love these project energy levels and immediately implemented them into my system. It makes it so easy to reprioritize my tasks. I also started to implement the pomodoro's and I have a question about that: what do you do with tasks that are less than 25 minutes? Do you give these 1 pomodoro? I'm thinking about giving them 1 pomodoro AND the number of minutes, so I could group these smaller tasks together for 1 pomodoro. So something like: 🍅5 or 🍅10

[@MariePoulin]

Everything gets at least 1 Pomodoro! Considering most people overestimate what they can do in a day it’s the safest way from a planning perspective. Most tasks that would take less than a pomodoro wouldn’t make it into my list. For me getting any more granular would feel like overkill, but you gotta make it work for you!

[@joaogomes7000]

How do you recreate a recurrent task?

[@hannorodger8072]

@mariepoulin How do you organize yourself, when it comes to counting your maximum pomodoro per day, if you have client-tasks and your own business-tasks?

[@MariePoulin]

The same principles apply - there are so many hours in the day, so I look at how many "client hours" are spoken for, and what do i want/need to get done? Then i design my ideal week/day to reflect those needs, and lean heavily into daily themes, so i have more client heavy days and more business focused days. Themes are essential for me to get things done!

[@hannorodger8072]

@@MariePoulin Thank you, that helps me a lot!

[@heathntopper3489]

How do you handle task's dates? Start Dates (a task that can't be completed or worked on until a specific date in the future), Due Dates (dates that something need to be completed by) and dates that you simply assign to work on things irrespective of when the need to be completed? Do you use multiple date fields in your Actions Database? Which one do you use for your Calendar views?

[@MariePoulin]

I only have one date property, and I can expand the item across multiple days if I need to by including an end date to the original task. You could use the “created time” property to represent when it gets assigned, but my business doesn’t need that level of granularity. For teams I would adjust my setup. For yours I would create a couple different views, one with calendar by assigned date, another with due dates. I would use the Idle property to represent the items that couldn’t be worked on until the future. Seems like you probably want multiple date fields for that level of tracking. For me the date I put in is the date I want to work on it. I wouldn’t add dates to anything that doesn’t have clarity around due date, so on my task planner dashboard those tasks on the left hand side, that would be your backlog of tasks that haven’t been “activated” yet.

[@heathntopper3489]

@@MariePoulin Thank you!

[@riese5142]

Hi! How do you get your dated tasks to show up in your calendar view?

[@MariePoulin]

I'm a bit confused by this question. If your tasks have a date assigned to them, they will show up in a calendar view (you must have a date to show up on the calendar). Make sure you set your "calendar by" to be the same date you set in the property settings.

[@riese5142]

@@MariePoulin Hm I'm having trouble with this. My tasks are dated but not showing up in my calendar view. To make the calendar did you duplicate the Actions table and then add the calendar view? Thank you so much for your help!

[@dh4817]

Give us the template pleaaaaase!

[@jaguarbrujo6164]

How do you do that when you push on weekly recurring items and then the list appears? Thanks!

[@MariePoulin]

See my most recent video on recurring tasks!

[@nickcohen4708]

As someone new to Notion, this looks like such a great workflow and excited to integrate some of these ideas. One question I do have is if you have any tips for handling projects that involve multiple working sessions with no clear milestones. An example would be organizing contacts in a database that could take 10+ hours, but it isn't something that's easily broken down into clear tasks. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but would love to see some ideas if you have any!

[@MariePoulin]

Make sure to create concrete milestones for yourself! For example, you can control how many contacts you reach out, or how many people you call. Milestones should be things you can measure and control. For example, you can’t control how many pounds you lose, but you can control things like “eat breakfast every day for 3 weeks” or “each 5 vegetables every day for x weeks”. Basically, make sure for each project you have some supportive habits, routines, and/or milestones. estimate the hours loosely, but focus more on “spend one hour every day adding contacts to database”. Does that help?

[@nickcohen4708]

@@MariePoulin Yes -- I think that helps. Thank you!

[@frozentwiddlelump]

How are you getting the multiple tomatoes images to appear? i.e. if a task has three tomatoes of time effort, how do you have the image with three tomatoes show up in the table that references those images? I've created three image files; one with 1 tomato, another with 2 and another with 3. If I add the images as the icon, it just crops to a square. If I add it as the cover or as an attached image, neither of those show up in the cell in a table row that references that related database; it only shows the "name" attribute and the icon that's associated with that item.

[@MariePoulin]

those are emojis, not images. On a mac i use option + space bar to pull up the emojis and just select the tomato, then copy paste. (not sure the equivalent PC shortcut)

[@frozentwiddlelump]

@@MariePoulin Oh, perfect, thank you! (On Windows, it's "Windows Key + . (period)" to bring up the emojis characters.)

[@tigress1girl]

Can you explain again like what's the difference between effort and energy? how do I estimate it? I could a little bit confused. (adhd. sorry)

[@MariePoulin]

Effort is simply “focus” (for me) - how much brain power I’ll need to use to do the task. Mail for example is a very low effort task, whereas anything involving writing will be high effort. When taking about Project energy, that is a combination of: priority, time, energy, focus, attention. How important is the project and how much of all those things does it deserve overall?

[@tigress1girl]

@@MariePoulin Thank you! This is so fasinating and I think I'm starting to understand this, so complex yet simplify a lot ♥

[@zapy422]

Is it a good idea to make task inherit energy from projects. Aren’t projects energy supposed to be total energy from task? Then looking at the ration impact/energy will give the quick wins.

[@MariePoulin]

I think you might be misunderstanding - Every task pulls in the "Project Energy", but also has it's own Mental Effort required to complete, so this way you prioritize *first* by the project energy (which is essentially the same as priority/importance), then second by task energy required. You could totally rename Project Energy to Project Impact (or priority) if that is more helpful for how you think about it!

[@kkings0]

@@MariePoulin How do you inherit properties from the projects? Is it formula?

[@kkings0]

ah I got it..rollup)

[@suzannajames3084]

Hi Marie! Soooo glad I found someone on the internet to help with Notion! I've just lost a really important page from one of my note lists as I dragged it into my main sidebar, the irony, it was so important I wanted to get it to easily and now it's gone!!! Do you know if you can get it back or why this happens?!? Thanks!!!!

[@MariePoulin]

I’m guessing you dragged an original database, and not a linked database. You can roll back pages in the page history in the top right hand side in your page settings. I’d need a bit more detail about what you did or what you tried to do. Hit me on Twitter with a loom video :)

[@suzannajames3084]

@@MariePoulin Omg thank you so much! Sending a video now xx

[@ksmith1964]

Does the course offer step by step instructions for beginners? This has become so overwhelming. I tried setting up my own task database, then linked it to a dashboard. It worked for about a week. One day when I was just back spacing to change a note in my Notes column, the entire database disappeared. It wasn't in deleted, I couldn't find it anywhere. I'm about to quit this whole thing. I was just 💔. All that work for nothing. 😢 Just feeling completely lost and overwhelmed.

[@MariePoulin]

You can rollback the status of any page using the page history, and you can also always hit Command/control Z to undo an action. This video is definitely for more intermediate/advanced users. Yes we walk through step by step for beginners. Reach out via Twitter and send me a DM, I can send you some resources!

[@samanderson1283]

Have you ever felt like all these things are utterly overwhelming and counter-productive at some point? Maybe over-granularizing everything at an extreme level? I've been watching Notion advocacy videos out of curiosity. Even after watching many of them, including this one, I can't help thinking the vast majority of Notion.so users might be spending more time building and tinkering with Notion pages than doing the actual work. I have dozens of projects myself, and I do just fine with a simple outline text list and a calendar for tracking tasks. Just being honest. Whatever works, I guess...

[@MariePoulin]

not sure your experience level with Notion, but I can understand how it may seem this way from the outside. You’re also seeing a very slowed down “how it works” breakdown. Day to day, I’m moving through my system very quickly, and most of these properties are added in a single click, so I can add 5-10 properties with 1 click which help me organize many projects at one time. I can only speak to my own effectiveness... I’ve used nearly every single other “to do” list app and project management system and they always fell short. For me, this is the only thing that has worked and has easily 2x’d my output. Also, if you only think of Notion as a task manager, you’re missing so much. Notion helps me resurface important data, set goals, track progress, ideate, wrangle content, etc etc. my system doesn’t overwhelm me, but that’s because it’s 💯 tailor made to my workflow. Yours would look different, as it should, and that’s the beauty of Notion. for example, I never used to track project energy, or give dates time or tasks. Once I started overbooking myself, I added those properties, and they’ve helped with planning and decision making. The system gets tweaked over time based on what works, and any points of friction get designed out.

[@samanderson1283]

​@@MariePoulin Yeah, but I don't want to have to "design out" my tools merely to make it work well for me. It's a huge problem when you need to spend hundreds of dollars and many hours of effort to get the most out of a tool. Notion has to become such an essential and exciting aspect of your workflow so much that one has to join a "community," watch many courses, and even purchase a paid online training program worth hundreds of dollars to make it work for you. I don't see how that's rational. The opportunity cost seems too great to justify. And, quite honestly, I don't want my tools to be such a big deal. I want them to help me and get out of my way. I want them to be so useful and simple that I don't even think about them most of the time. So far, all I see is that Notion is exciting, it is uber-cool, and it's a rabbit hole for productivity porn addicts. Besides that, I suspect there is a physical limit to how effective you can be per day. So far, nothing has helped me double my output except to cut out busywork, spend most of my time doing the actual work, and do just enough minimal viable thing to track some details. Another concern is that shiny and cutting edge tools come and go all the time. How do you know Notion won't be the next Evernote? As I watch these Notion advocacy videos, I can't help thinking about how Evernote was once the most hyped and advocated productivity tool. People raved about Evernote so much to the point of reaching the cult status, and they built products and services around Evernote. The current outlook of Notion and some similar tools look and feel just like that. And look at how Evernote has been struggling for the past few years. Interestingly, I've been coming across more than a few forum posts and articles reporting significant Notion performance issues as I continue to explore. I'm sure a pack of pro-Notioners will counter-testify that all day long, but then again, pro-Evernote users have already been like that for years as well. I suspect that Notion is heading in that direction.

[@markuskaeding]

Marie! great work. Just one think i cant imagine, how you are doing it. If you collaborate with a client and both, you and the client, have to see some tasks for the project. How do you work with that? Because i assume you are not sharing your whole "actions database". This is tricky for me. How can i work with multiple clients and still have an overview about all the tasks like you do? just love, and keep going with your great work.

[@MariePoulin]

Every client has their own client portal with their own task database. Then you can create a dashboard that has all of your clients task databases embedded inside it so you have them all visible and don’t lose track!

[@markuskaeding]

@@MariePoulin thank you! so there is no other workaround to put them together. would be awesome to have them all in one calendar view.

[@skaterdude14b]

8:15 “No more that 2 high energy events per day, no more than 12 pomodoros per day”

[@brandingmitzuni]

Are all Hi Impact Projects, Hi Energy Projects?

[@MariePoulin]

good question! Based on the book I referenced (making ideas happen), it’s not about the energy it takes, it’s about the energy it deserves (which is a biproduct of impact: I give more energy to high impact projects), but if course this system is open to interpretation and adjustments to language that makes sense for you!

[@abstraktprojekts7555]

Thanks Marie, I've just created a video that referenced some of the tactics I've learned from you."How to generate breakthrough innovation on demand" kzbin.info/www/bejne/f2KsaK2DpsipqJo Feel free to check it out and offer thoughts/comments.