🌶️ November Notion Rant: Productivity sucks?

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Nov 21, 2024

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If you’re new here, I’m Frances, a Certified Notion Consultant - over the past 5 years I’ve helped over 150+ clients embrace cultures of intention & freedom through intentional & bespoke Notion setups + training, including The Big Notion Energy Academy.

This month’s rant:

Burnout is real and “hyper-productivity” is dead.

I work in the “productivity” industry, but ironically, I make a living because I think most of the “productivity” industry sucks.

I basically build things you’ll actually use & add value to your life, instead of things you think you’ll use or will overwhelm you.

In my own personal practice, this means refusing to get an Apple/Smart Watch and staying loyal to my Casio. It’s got a timer that can push me through a “10 minute commit” and that’s all I need. I do not need to be connected to my phone more than I am.

Unless whatever you’re coming to me with is legitimately moving the needle for you, there is literally no reason to meticulously track every single piece of data in your life. This is completely the opposite of what the industry preaches - you apparently need a tracker for everything and need a 3 hour morning routine to be “successful” (whatever that means).

Only track what you care about. I am famously/infamously ruthless with my clients who typically come to me after downloading a steroid-pumped Notion template filled with things they don’t care about. They tried to do “all the things” and realised they simply don’t have the time, or things weren’t talking to each other properly. Now they’re burned out (surprise, surprise) and we need to radically simplify & streamline their system.

If there’s a tag that you’ll probably never use - we’re getting rid of it.
If it’s actually more complicated to do what you want to do in Notion, we won’t do it.
If there’s a framework/fad on the internet that, if we’re being honest, doesn’t align with your lifestyle, values or goals - I don’t care how many views that YouTube video got - we’re not building it, period.

Why? We’re over-optimistic about the things we think we have time for - it’s often about 40% less (I used to be a project manager 💅🏽).

Instead, I opt for a more “personalised productivity” method:

Figure out what you care about right now (Discovery)
What is the simplest and most efficient way you can get there + can you make things talk to each other to avoid useless admin? (Databases, maybe)
What’s useful to know? (Database views)
Are there repeatable steps? (Templates + automations, maybe)
Where do you need to see information & how does this fit in with your routine? (Dashboards)
Has anything changed (Refinement)

Through this method, you end up with systems you (and your team) actually want to log into (woo, productivity boost!) and won’t burn out with.

This is my rinse & repeat process that has served me over the past 5 years and led to some amazing testimonials. I’ve even packaged up my tried-and-true “5 Day Workspace” method.

If you’re curious about getting ruthless and more intentional with your systems, I’d love to find out more about your journey here

But also…

Something I’ve noticed is how much time people are wasting at their jobs trying to figure out Notion, instead of actually using it. Additionally, not everyone can afford 1-to-1 consulting.

So I gave birth to The Big Notion Energy Academy - a place to unravel Notion’s new release, answer your burning questions and learn from from each other.

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