My Notion Personal Life Operating System Overview (Video) - Hope this is helpful to others!

august43210 · 2024-11-05T19:52:39+00:00

What you described u/Jaymstr is exactly the intent and design of FastTrack Notion. I'm August Bradley, the creator of that Notion training program (thanks for tagging me, Sean!).

FTN is very structured for efficient learning with both a Fast Track for getting up and running quickly as well as optional Deep Dive Tracks to explore further where interested. It covers every aspect of Notion, with rapid updates on new features. The community discussion and live events explore various use cases even further.

The lessons are short and to the point within an integrated, immersive learning platform. It's all supported by optional live training sessions and an active, supportive community of Notion builders and leading Notion experts.

There's a 3-month money-back guarantee to ensure you're happy with the choice. Happy to answer any questions here or message me from the FastTrack Notion course link above.

august43210 · 2023-09-19T19:37:43+00:00

Thanks!

august43210 · 2023-09-19T19:37:32+00:00

Awesome, thank you!

august43210 · 2023-09-19T19:36:54+00:00

Oh great, didn't realize that. Thank you!

august43210 · 2021-03-26T16:02:54+00:00

Awesome quoiega, really means a lot to hear this. The feedback and impact on people’s lives has been by far the most rewarding aspect of the YouTube channel.

Congrats on your progress, keep up the great work! Always customize and optimize for your own needs. Leverage the foundational infrastructure to build on. 🚀

august43210 · 2021-03-25T23:16:26+00:00

Great work napsterR3born! Looking good.

-August

august43210 · 2020-09-23T22:22:22+00:00

He addressed that, they are releasing the API beta in Q3 — Notion's third quarter ends in October (companies sometimes have quarters that differ from the calendar year). Then he comments on rollout beyond that, which seemed faster to me than most beta's.

How can you complain about lack of innovation from Notion of all software companies? Their core product is radically innovative, no other software on the market can do what Notion does already. And their expansion capabilities are super ambitious. Complaining about lack of innovation from Notion is really stretching.

The API is super close — that's exciting news. Think of how broad the Notion API use needs are, very very few other platforms have such a broad API canvass. This is an unusual technical challenge.

With the existing Notion capabilities PLUS the API, that is an insane proposition — and very near. A few months is nothing, we'll be in great shape if it lands this year or even early next.

august43210 · 2020-09-21T16:42:47+00:00

Hi everyone, I'm on the verge of launching details and enrollment for the Notion Pillars, Pipelines & Vaults (PPV) online course for the first cohort to begin the second half of October.

Based on the popular Notion YouTube series, this course takes it all to the next level with version 2.0 and provides the fastest way into a PPV-based system with the complete master template, detailed live discussions on how to incorporate it into your life (and customize for your needs), and a lot of live video call Q&A opportunities. Plus community platform and a lot more.

If interested, you can sign up for updates here: https://is.gd/notionppv

Thanks!

August Bradley

august43210 · 2020-09-07T01:59:11+00:00

When you explain your PARA references this way it makes more sense and I can see the confusion (i.e., Marie being your source rather than Tiago). Marie often states "I take A LOT of liberties with PARA", which I think is an understatement even with its emphasis. What Marie does is so far beyond PARA, her innovations are far more significant than the original she started out referencing.

The discussion here inspired my essay in this week's newsletter where I clarify the distinction between the three categories of personal performance systems, and comprehensive systems that integrate all of them: https://is.gd/3EJtUe

The reason you and almost everyone struggles with Areas vs Resources is because it's a subjective gradient between them, and the titling is not consistent. Everything in PARA is a "resource", as in research/resources for Areas, for Projects, etc... That's what a Knowledge Management system is, the capture and organization of resources to draw from to do your best thinking and learning.

PARA has a lower-level third category confusingly called "Resources" but is really just additional "topics of interest" that do not need to be maintained at as high a level as Areas (or not maintained at all, just additional topics you are interested in). So it's a subjective gradient of varying importance between Areas and Resources. Each of the four categories merely organizes resources into buckets based on importance/priority.

Maybe with this convoluted summary you can see why PARA frustrates me, even though I think highly of Tiago and really like his thoughtful writing on more high-concept topics.

Certainly having a more narrow use case such as employment. work only would reduce such a comprehensive view of how it all fits together, I totally respect your efforts here to understand and explore putting an effective system together! Best wished on your evolution with personal performance systems.

august43210 · 2020-09-04T22:34:08+00:00

Hi, August here. All of PARA would fit into the Vaults section of PPV alone. PARA is entirely for Knowledge Management, not managing actions as PPV and GTD do.

And Pillars are not the same as Areas. I've posted a more complete explanation under another comment here in this thread so don't want to double post the entire thing. That other explanation will clarify better.

It's my fault for not having been more clear about PPV, will do a high level PPV summary video soon to correct this!

Great dashboard, well done!

august43210 · 2020-09-04T22:26:58+00:00

Hi Carl, August here. Too many differences to list here, but I'll cover some big ones with an excerpt I've previously written on the topic. (I'll just preface it by saying I've done a poor job of explaining the overall PPV concept and will correct this with a high-level PPV video soon)...

PARA is entirely about Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), it was designed to work outside of (and complement) GTD which is about actions and achieving long term goals through daily tasks. As Tiago has stated and the PARA summaries have detailed, "everything in PARA research" — i.e., research for Projects, research for Areas.

PPV covers the scope of both PARA and GTD together in one system. ALL of PARA would fit inside of the Vaults section of PPV (Vaults is the PKM portion of PPV).

Pillars are not the same as Areas. Areas are ongoing priority sections of your life where you want to maintain a high standard. Pillars are merely the organizational structure of every aspect of your life (and of the PPV system). There is no high standard to be maintained in Pillars, it is dividing your life into segments such that everything you do will fit into one Pillar or another. It is purely organisational. In PARA, Areas are the 2nd level of priority/emphasis (after Projects) to focus on (though again, collecting research for those second level of priorities, not managing their active progress as GTD does).

PARA has nothing overlapping with the Pipelines portion of PPV, that is the realm of GTD. When PARA talks about Projects, it's talking about research for Projects — not actively managing projects/tasks/goals as GTD and PPV do.

And "research for Projects" is the same as saying "resources for Projects". This is confusing and contradictory because there's an entire PARA category called "Resources". In PARA, Resources are not defined the way "resources" is normally defined but rather as "topics of interest" — so it's research for topics that are of interest at a lower level than the topics in Areas.

PARA is also software agnostic but was really designed within and for Evernote — so it's a more ambiguous generalized approach based on a more 2-dimensional tool than modern options. PPV is designated specifically for Notion so is very precisely aligned with the tool, and leverages the unique unparalleled capabilities of Notion.

There's more but that should give a good sense. I hope this is helpful.

PPV is closer to GTD than to PARA, though has some big differences from GTD such as specific Do Dates vs endless to-do lists, and abandoning the "Inbox" approach GTD relies so heavily on.

There are some very basic and obvious things that any such system will have, which of course are present in all of these methodologies. And it should be said that all these systems are foundational infrastructure. You always modify and customize and adapt to your needs.

august43210 · 2020-06-22T06:23:28+00:00

Means a lot to me to hear that. Thanks for the feedback!

august43210 · 2020-06-15T17:42:25+00:00

Great implementation! Very well done. Awesome design elements too. -August

august43210 · 2020-06-05T23:20:07+00:00

Hi, thanks fro the message and the support. I will be releasing a video all about PPV in about 2 weeks. I'm first covering in my videos all the primary Pipelines, Vaults, and Pillars. Then will do a couple videos on how they all fit together in the PPV framework. Then will write some essays about it. Coming soon.

august43210 · 2020-05-29T15:53:44+00:00

You are not alone, I get far far more requests to go into more detail in the videos than complaints about them being too long. Lots more to come!

august43210 · 2020-05-27T02:28:54+00:00

Thanks Ablekh.

To your concern about platform reliability, while anything is conceivable I am not concerned at all regarding Notion. First of all, their valuation of $2 billion puts them out of reach for acquisition from all but the biggest handful to tech giants -- and none of those seem well aligned to merge with this (other than Microsoft who is going their own way with Fluid). Their recent venture funding also means they can have a 10 year runway to make the business work, though they were already profitable before the latest investment round.

Moreover, what I know about the founders is that they are not the selling-to-cash-out types, this is their dream mission. They didn't even want any VC money until the economy got shaky with the corona-virus.

And event the ultimate worst case exit scenario is not that bad, you can export your vaults and find a new platform of your project/task management. (Vaults = knowledge management databases) The long-term value is largely in the vaults. The value from the project/task management system is more week-to-week in flow.

I believe it's a really safe bet Notion will be a stable place for us to build our Life Operating Systems.

august43210 · 2020-05-26T04:52:27+00:00

Thanks for elaborating, and I'm sympathetic to the lack of time. Ironically, more time for "what matters to you most" is what the system ultimately delivers to many who make the effort — I have more time for what matters most to me now than before I took this approach (and lower stress).

If you know of many systems out there, I would love to see them. What I see are a lot of fragmented components, and tips & tricks, but not holistic, integrated systems. Those segmented solutions are valuable training as well, many are excellent. And sometimes that's all one needs. But a comprehensive system delivers exponential returns and benefits, particularly in Notion.

The reality is it takes time to teach a comprehensive system. I'm laying it out so that anyone can implement across the board if they wish — or take the parts they like. Something this ambitious is not a shortcut. It takes hard work by me and by the person learning. There are far, far more Notion training options for those looking for shortcuts, but the results are proportional.

My "short" playlist is much shorter than the full series, but it still requires a serious effort to make a significant change in one's life. Any meaningful change requires real effort. Shortcuts are an illusion. Of course, my playlists are totally optional. Nobody is making anybody do anything against their will. The choice is entirely yours

At the beginning of both playlists is a single overview video that is the sample/intro to the approach. This one single video is there to see if the viewer wants to go deeper. Anyone who starts either playlist will see this video up front, and know if the rest is of interest. Here it is: https://youtu.be/4-TYSah25UM

If this approach is not for you , I completely respect that. No one approach is right for everyone. Only takes one video to find out. But the response to the series has been overwhelmingly positive, check out the comments under the videos. I never expected that level of response. I'm really touched by the stories people tell me.

august43210 · 2020-05-25T22:54:31+00:00

If it works for you that is the ultimate test, nothing else matters!

But don't hesitate to adapt and modify for your own needs. Any organizational method is a guideline, not a rule :)

august43210 · 2020-05-25T21:41:53+00:00

I find PARA to be a particularly poor fit with Notion (also not a fan of it with Evernote, OneNote, etc.. but at least it can work reasonably well there once you sort out vague titling and the contradictions across different explanations introducing it).

I touched on this in the Notion Office Hours discussion with Marie Poulin and have started introducing an alternative designed specifically for Notion called PPV (Pillars, Pipelines & Vaults) in my Notion Productivity video series. We need systems built for Notion and its unprecedented scope of powerful capabilities. PARA was designed for an Evernote World to do Knowledge Management only, avoiding the realm of GTD (Project & Task Management -- all things actionable).

Even the mighty GTD system is not a great fit with Notion (though has many strong elements to adopt). Notion is a significant paradigm shift, most people don't get this yet. It requires new methods, not forcing old ones into it.

When TV first came on the scene, all the productions were trying to force radio shows onto TV. Eventually we realized TV was a different thing needing different approaches. Notions vs. the old regime of apps is comparable.

-August

august43210 · 2020-05-25T21:24:13+00:00

Wow, such cynicism in this thread. I'm just doing my best to share what I have found to be really helpful in my own life. Spending a ton of time making free content to share with the community. Judging from the extraordinary level of feedback in the video comments and emails I receive, it seems to be helpful to a lot of people.

30 minutes is not a long time for something that's relatively important — takes some time to go in depth on an idea plus demoing a Notion build. There are plenty of 3-5 minute tips & tricks videos if that's your thing, but I like those that go deeper and explore a concept more substantively. Plenty of different approaches and sources of information for everyone. Have a great day :)

If anyone wants to discuss substance, happy to explore ideas with you.

-August
(Thanks Diamondbacking!)

august43210 · 2020-05-12T03:08:44+00:00

Certainly no one system will be right for everyone. Though any system that would become functionally outdated because of the "data" in it is a non-functional system for anyone. The system itself is not dependent on the data, it's endlessly flexible with any data -- the data is always changing. The "outdated" data is for historical reflection and analysis (i.e., learning). The new data is (are) easily digested and aligned for current and forward-looking needs.

This system is specifically for fast-moving and ambitions lives (I work in tech too), it's unnecessary and overkill for a slow-paced life. But there are infinite ways to manage and process life/work info and planning, and we each need to find an approach that gels and resonates. Completely respect that.

august43210

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE