 So if you watch videos on YouTube, then you probably have heard about Notion. Notion. Notion. Notion. Notion. And so today I'm gonna be talking about how I use Notion to help simplify and increase my productivity in my own life. All right guys, welcome back to the channel. My name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician and resident and training. In today's video, I'm really excited because I finally get to make my first Notion related video here on this channel. But as you guys saw from the intro, Notion has been all across YouTube with different creators talking about how they use it in their personal life. And so I definitely found myself through that YouTube black hole of Notion videos and it looked like a very great tool and it's super clean and attractive. But through the various videos, I also found it to be very overwhelming. It seemed like everyone's videos were just using fancy features to kind of connect different databases and make it perfect for their own life. But I really wanted to create a system where I could just get into Notion and simply get to work. So that's exactly what I'll be sharing with you guys in this video. Before we get to it, go ahead and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm and let's go jump into it. So first I wanna quickly touch on the different criterias I wanted out of my Notion system. Now the most important thing for me personally was just having a place to collect all my ideas regardless of how important they were. We all have those great momentary ideas as well as things that we wanna memorize, but I had no good system on how to kind of store those informations as well as come back to it. So I knew I wanted my Notion system to be able to collect all my ideas in one place. And then the second most important thing is I wanted to be able to collect all of my to-do list regardless again of significance and then use Notion to basically categorize what the most important thing was. And so when I got to my computer and opened it up, basically told me exactly what I had to work on that specific day. So let me now go ahead and take you into my Notion workplace. And so basically I call this my simplicity workplace because I wanted to be very simple. And I'd rather let's go ahead and start from the bottom and it'll work our way up. And so the first thing I really wanted is to be able to collect my thoughts. And so the beauty of Notion is that it nicely connects to my phone as well as my laptop. So I'm having any thoughts, whether it be an idea or something I wanna memorize for the future, but I don't wanna spend time right now kind of sorting where it goes or what I do with it. So I created this note section to essentially be able to kind of brain dump or brain vomit any of my ideas and things I wanna memorize. So if I'm on my phone, you know Notion nicely sticks to it. So if I wanted to have something to memorize it or if there was a task or a chore or like groceries that I needed to buy, I'd just kind of put them all into one place. Or if I wanted to remind you to go ahead and subscribe to the channel and hit that like button, I can also put that down below. Now the next time usually in the morning when I have a second I can just come into my note section and basically be able to categorize where things go. So does it go into my mental thoughts section? Is this something that I want to basically put into my personal kind of journal or thought bubbles? Or is this something that I wanna move up in my task which I'll talk about in a second. So I found the beauty of this system is when I actually have the idea, I don't really have to act upon that and just put it down. And then the next time when I actually have some time to actually think about how I wanna use it whether I want to make it a task or a project or just something that I want to memorize for the future I can then go ahead and categorize it as such. Now next up in my simplicity workplace I just kind of wanna have my goals for that month for that year in a nice place. So as you guys can see I'm about to start my marathon training for 2021. So I just wanna drop my weight a little bit so that way my speed improves as I does my stamina. So almost there to the goal and I can just have a very nice check mark and also split it up based off of personal academic and relationship goals. Next up in the workplace I really wanted to have a very clean area for all of my kind of common go-to. So example when I'm learning medical topics whether it be for residency or making videos for you guys I just kind of have a nice medical topic section. And this will basically have all the lectures that I've created a summary for my students as well as some things that I wanna memorize for myself. And so other things that I like to have are things like my study playlist. I tend to listen to like the same kind of hour to two long playlist on YouTube. And so I'll just go ahead and make that a link and then I can change it if I find a one that I like better in the future. I also use Notion in addition to my Chrome. So then if I find an article or something I wanna read I can just go ahead and click save and then it gets saved here for my four later sections. These are nice articles or apps or programs that I wanna check out. And finally, you know, as I'm reading books I wanna be able to collect all of the ones I've read as well as kind of the thought bubbles and the months that I've been reading them. So these are all the books I've either are currently working on for the month of January, going into February. So I'm 16 so far in 2021 so I'll call that a success. But it's a very nice way of again having all those books and if I'm thinking of a major kind of highlighter thought I can do it on my phone and I'll transfer over nicely here. So everything thus far that I've shown you in the workplace is really for the goal of I just wanna be able to collect everything in one place without pressure. You know, everything in my brain is just meant to, you know, think and process versus actually try to memorize. But next I really wanna show you how I used Notion to actually improve my productivity. Now sometimes we all run into the pressure of having a long laundry list of things we need to do within a month or the year, but not exactly sure what to work on next. And so I wanted to create a system through Notion on how I did task based off of how impactful important they were for me. So for example, as you guys can see I can create the various topics that I want to work on and then I basically grade each project or task based off its importance of 10 being the most important as well as its impact on me. So there's obviously gonna be things that are important, things that I just have to do but are not really impactful for me. And then on the flip side things that aren't as important but I have a lot of value for them. And then finally I try to give them a due date because basically the way it is succinct is that if I create a new task here then I can just go ahead and categorize it based off of importance. So let's just say it's something I really have to do a deadline for like administrative thing in residency. And it's not that important to me but it is due sooner than later. So right now I'm kind of at the very end or start of February. So if I click the six, let's just make it a little bit earlier. I'll just imagine I was there a week earlier. It's gonna jump up to the top of my task list. So I can just go ahead and click on these and it's going to basically be able to sort them. So next time I kind of come into my notion of workplace I can say these are the tasks I'm gonna work on first before I work on anything down here. Now the beauty of the system is that as I find that a task is important then I can move it into kind of my weekly task list and then finally I can move it into my daily task list. So for example here are some of the tasks that I have for the day and let's just say I finished my videos as I'm doing right now. I can just then go ahead and add it into my complete task folder and then it just goes away and it's basically a nice progression of everything I need to do in a long term, everything I need to do in a seven day window and everything I need to do in a daily window. Now I could have stopped right here and really have a system that was working very nicely. Again, I could collect my thoughts, I could remember my goals and just have all the nice links as well as tasks that I need to work on. But I really just wanted to have a place where I can say, you know what? When it's time to work, I just wanna get to work. So when I start the day I usually can be able to see the task I need to move into my day. But then when I can get into it I just want everything to be clean and no kind of stress or friction. So I have something called my focus workflow and basically what this is is I can essentially move those tasks into a simple kind of notion page and that's all I focus on. So the various tasks that I consider to be important for that day will then be linked down below and then finally I'll go ahead and actually add a time of when I want it to be completed by. And so now I can just work on those respective tasks throughout the day and then click off of them as I go. And then as I'm done I can just go ahead and move it into that same complete a task folder and it's gone. Now I really didn't want the space to be busy. So again, I have that same study playlist that I have down below as well as a Pomodoro timer and when I'm on this page it's time to work. There's no distractions, no other links open except the ones I need for that respective task. So this guys is basically my breakdown of how I use Notion to again keep my thoughts and my tasks simplified. So every day I come in I can then just categorize all my ideas in one place and then look at my task and just move from a very important to a weekly to a daily standpoint and doesn't really have any extra bells or whistles just essentially all that I need. But I am curious, let me know in the comments section down below do you guys even use Notion? If so, what features and tools and layouts do you guys use? I'd love to kind of have some ideas for my own structures and maybe other people will also be able to benefit. Now I'm sure this is going to change over time and I'm sure my utility of Notion is also going to change over time. So if you do want me to make a full tutorial on the various things you can use in Notion go ahead and comment down below as well as hit that subscribe button to be aware of that video once it goes out. But that's going to conclude it for this video. If you guys did enjoy it go ahead and hit and smash that like button. Again, it supports this video, it supports the channel and also tells me you should make more videos like this. Please do so. Here's a like. And in case you're brand new to the channel or if you haven't already go ahead and hit that subscribe button and notification bell to be notified when we put out two videos just like this for you every single week. And if you guys did enjoy this video then I'm sure you also enjoyed this video and how you can improve your grades using just one tip as well as this video right here on a full walkthrough of Anki as well as all my advanced strategies. If you are on your medical journey and you want more step-by-step help those links will be also down below. But with that being said guys thank you so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I've been a little helped to you on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.