My Note-taking Workflow in Notion [with templates]

Everyone, welcome back to the channel.

You know, a few of my most popular and oft-commented-on videos the past 18 months are all about this type of smart, useful note-taking that's really different than what we did or what we were taught as kids. The type of notes I'm talking about are ways that you can reuse and repurpose blocks of content that you've created in the past to make use of in projects or content that you're making in the future. Now you might already be thinking, this is super useful because I've made a lot of things in the past, or I've written a lot of things in the past. How can I repurpose, reuse, and recycle those, build them into something new for a project that I have to do right now? The problem for many of you is that I've only shown you how to do this with Analog notes so far. And while it is super simple to get started with Analog, there's no learning curve and the battery life is great., it is a bit of a challenge to sort, search, filter, and group things together in common categories and topics. So in this video, I'm going to give you a full tutorial of showing you the complete lifecycle of a note and why I've decided to use Notion for every piece of this journey. What I'm going to show you is the simplest way that I have thought of for capturing, customizing, and communicating the different notes that you have in Notion so that you can repurpose them for future building blocks of content in your work and in your life. I'll be honest, what I'm about to show you is not the most powerful or most effective way of using Notion, but with that power comes some complexity. I might do another video about this if this video goes well, so if you like it, make sure you give it that thumbs up and comment below so I know you're a fan. Because what I want to help you do is be able to establish a workflow for developing ideas. I want you to build the habit of taking notes so that you can have these building blocks of content to use anytime you want in the future. What makes this so powerful is instead of feeling like your creativity or your publishing is this like singular moment of like, okay, it's time to make something, what you're effectively doing with this type of note-taking is you are distributing your creativity across many moments during the day, week, and month instead of just like at the time of publish. Okay, two quick things to let you know before we hit the main video. One is that if you want some more templates, if you want some more guidance, if you want some more coaching and training on Notion, go to notion101.com and you can sign up for a free training that I did, a training that I did with my friend K. He of Supercharge Your Productivity. You can also get some templates that I've put together that help make the learning curve of Notion way, way lower. So go to notion101.com to get that. The other thing to let you know is a disclaimer that I am an affiliate of Notion, and basically all that means is that I do get a monetary compensation if you sign up for a Notion paid plan. Their Notion free plan is awesome as well, but if you end up doing team plan or a personal pro plan, then I get a small cut of that at no additional cost to you.

But Disclaimer, letting you know it's the law.

Done. All right, now with all that out of the way, let's go ahead and jump into the tutorial. I'm going to show you how to do all of this in Notion from capture to communication.

Let's get started. I want to give you a clear walkthrough for what I see as the lifecycle of a note all the way from capture to communication. There are 6 C's that I can align with this process, and you can see them on the screen here in front of you. So right above my head. They are capture, critique, customize, context, curate, and communicate. So I'm going to walk you through this to show you how you can use Notion and a couple other tools to take something that is an initial fast capture of a note, in this case, a highlight from an article that I'm reading about habits and motivation, all the way through to customizing it, still referencing to it, and communicating it to the broader audience, in this case, lesson in my Productivity Power-Up course. Step number 1 is to capture. This is something we're very familiar with, often we're very good at, is capturing that spark of an idea or a highlight from something that we're reading, watching, or listening to. So in this case, I am reading an article about motivation and habits from James Clear. It's about Twyla Tharp, who's a dancer, choreographer, writer, brilliant person. But the first thing I'm actually doing is capturing this entire article to an app called Instapaper. On Instapaper, I can read in a distraction-free setting, and as I scroll through, I can just select text and click here to highlight it. So I have a few highlights already in this article, but the one that really stood out to me that I did a fast capture of is this section on the power of ritual because I found it really interesting that Tharp didn't necessarily think of the habit as going to the gym. What she really concentrated on was getting ready, having that routine, and then just going out to the curb and hailing a cab. That was her on-ramp ritual to the workout habit. What we're at right now is that I've captured a highlight in the James Clear article about Twyla Tharp. Now, whether it is immediately after reading or sometime soon after, let me gather my thoughts, let it sit a little bit. Does this still resonate with me? This is where I'm critiquing the highlight that I made because not every capture of an initial thought, idea, spark, highlight, not everything is going to keep resonating and not everything needs to become a more expanded version of the note, but this did. So this is a necessary but relatively short part of the process because I do need to look at the ideas and notes that I've captured and critique them to see, is this something that I need to develop further or is it just something that happened in the moment? Don't need to really worry about it anymore. The other thing that's happening here that's really important is that I'm using a tool called Readwise to basically transport my highlights in Instapaper. It also takes care of many other apps, including Kindle Highlights, which is the other big thing that I use this for. What Readwise is doing is that it is syncing my Instapaper highlights, same with Kindle highlights, through and exporting them into Notion. So this article that was on James Clear's site that I captured to Instapaper, that then I captured a highlight in Instapaper, is now being exported into Notion. And this is where I can really start to work with it and go on to this third C. Which is to customize it in my own words. Now, obviously, because I've captured this on an article by James Clear and it's referencing a book by Twyla Tharp, I still want to give that reference back to the original creators. But that is the same thing that you would do when you're writing a research paper. You cite your sources and you give credit where credit is due. You're still doing that, but one of the key parts of this quick note, or as Zonka Ahrens calls it, SmartNotes, or in its original format, the Zettelkasten from Niklas Luhmann, is that you are still writing the idea in your own words. You're customizing it to your own perspective. So you're making it unique. That doesn't mean that you're plagiarizing. You're still going to cite your sources and original material, but you can still say it in your own way so that it is unique to the perspective that you have and the people that you're sharing it with. So here in my Readwise database on Notion, you can see that right here, I have all of my highlights from this article, including one that I highlighted right here. So this whole section has now been exported into Notion, and I can see the highlight right here. I could even click on it to take me directly back to it, but that's neither here nor there for what we're doing. It's just there. Now what I'm doing is, since I've captured it and I've critiqued it, now I'm going to customize it for how I want to share it from my perspective and with my audience. So you can see this right here. I have my note captured right below the highlight. I still have this quote from Tharp, but then everything here and here are my own words. It's my unique perspective on it. Now, a little thing that I've done with Notion that is unique and fun, something that I like doing because these notes are best when they can be endlessly replicated and reused. And so something that I've done with this note is I've created what you call in Notion a synced block. So I selected all of these and now this is something that I can copy and sync anywhere else in Notion. So you can see that example right here. So in this Matt's note, you can see with the red around it, that means it's a synced block. So even if I changed a word or something, it will show in both places. That way I know the original source of my material stays unchanged and I can keep reusing this literally like a Lego block that can become the foundation, the starting point of future content. The Fourth C in this is actually something that I'm going to do on the original highlight or the original book entry into Notion. And that is the context. I do want to be able to define what are the topics, what are the other notes that this might be associated with. And this is something that you have to do manually. It's nothing that Readwise will do for you, but I just added a multi-select property and basically treated that as the tags for this note. And so what I'm doing here is I'm just adding in things like goals, habits, courses. That way, if I go back to the original Readwise library, I can start to, uh, group or sort or anything like that based on the topics that I'm looking for. So if I'm searching for something that has to do with habits or goals, I can see all the notes that I've developed over time that are related to those topics. This context piece is really important. You can also think of it like categories or clusters. How does this note, or how did these collections of notes relate to other notes or categories that you're working on? Because what Luhmann and Ahrens are both very adamant about, and I think it's very important, is that a note is only as useful as it can be in context to other notes. So you want to see how they start to work together, how they overlap, and you can start to see those clusters or categories of notes that you're working the most in. It also allows you in Notion to be able to filter and sort based on the different topics that you're interested in or something that you might want to create a manual for. You may want to create an ebook. You might want to write whatever, whatever it is you're doing, whatever it is you're communicating to others, you can start to filter through those topics so that you never have to start from scratch again. You already have a lot of notes that can act as the building blocks of the content that you're getting ready to create. This leads very nicely into the fifth C of the lifecycle of a note, which is to curate. When we're curating our notes, we are looking through those topics. We are looking through what have I worked on lately? What highlights or ideas have I developed so that they have become building blocks of notes? When I go through and I'm seeing those, now I'm starting to curate this based on the type of content that I want to create. Now this could be something that's very open-ended like a weekly newsletter or a podcast or a YouTube video that you're creating. It could also be something that's very specific. Like for example, the reason that I have this highlight is because I was searching through habit notes and articles and books and goal setting for content on the Productivity Power-Up. So this was exactly what I was putting together for this, a lesson on habits and note-taking. And so I'm adding in connected stories and notes that I've taken about the book Tiny Habits. And also here's another one that's linked that I'll show you in a sec. About The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. I also start to see this note that I took on habits and routines from Twyla Tharp also fits well with this note that I took on the first track mindset from The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. So here's everything I have for Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. It's the same thing. Here's a highlight that I made, and here is a note on the first track mindset. So let me show you real quick actually how you would create that synced block, just select everything and then you want to come in here and turn it into a synced block. So now I could copy and sync this. I can come back in if I want to and just drop it in there.

Same thing.

The synced blocks are great in Notion because it allows you to keep a single source of the original note. Now, of course, you can copy it and adjust it without syncing, but it makes it really useful for having a starting point and knowing that you have an original source for the note that you've created. So once you've done that, you've curated the notes and you've used that as the starting point for the content that you're going to create. And it doesn't just have to be creative content. You could use this for standard operating procedures. You can use this for client proposals. You can use it to help onboard new employees. There are all kinds of things you can do with this type of note-taking. And that leads to the 6th C of the life cycle of a note, and that is to communicate. So when you're communicating with others, that's when you are saying, here's the manual we're going to follow. Here is the YouTube video that I've made. Or in this example, here is the lesson that I've put together for the course, the Productivity Power-Up. And you can see right here in this lesson, Tiny Habits On-Ramps and First Tracks. Scroll down here and basically here's the note that I just made on Ramp Routine. Let's come back in. Let's look at this. In her book Creative Habit, dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp. In her book The Creative Habit, dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp. So I've done this same thing. First tracks. Remember the first track mindset. Let's scroll down here. We're going to look at this. Lion trackers start by finding the first track. Lion trackers start by finding the first track. So this process that I've gone through let's just backtrack it now, of this article that I thought was interesting from James Clear. That first capture into Instapaper, but that just makes it easier for me to read, but really capturing this highlight in Instapaper, using Readwise to shoot it into Notion. In Notion, I can one, still see that highlight, but also expand on it by writing it in my own perspective. Using that content to create a section of a lesson that I'm putting together. So we're going all the way through, we're capturing the highlight from the James Clear article, we're critiquing the section just to make sure, like, does this still resonate with me? I'm customizing it, putting it in my own words, and then I'm putting it in context with other notes. So this can be through Sync Blocks. It can also be through adding tags in a multi-select property in Notion, just so I can filter and sort based on those topics when I'm ready to make something. Which leads me into the curation of the content itself, of the notes, to say how many notes and which notes do I want to gather to use as the building blocks of information for this new thing that I'm going to communicate, the final C in the 6 C's, into a course lesson, into a YouTube video, into a standard operating procedure, into a client proposal. So all these building blocks of content, all these notes that I can go from initial capture and interest all the way through to communication with an audience or with a company. And I can use Notion for all of this. It's an amazing tool. I really like it. I think you'll love it too. So go ahead and check it out. Use the link in the description below and you'll be able to have everything that you need in order to get started with this.