Notion Solved my Moving Problems
Introducing my Personal Manager Notion Template
I enjoy using Notion as a product and have expanded my usage over time. Below is the story of how I ended up with my current usage and a walkthrough of my most used dashboard (available as a free template here with code SIMPLIHUMAN). For a product-oriented analysis, I wrote another article available here:
Moving homes and migrating tech
I've moved a lot in my life, and my experience moving is a lot like changing tech stacks - it's a pretty disruptive life event. I've had the opportunity to re-organize all my possessions and arrange my life in a new way more times than I can count and I can conclude that there is no best way. There is a lot of value in being flexible and changing how it all works periodically, that's a huge reason why I'm a Notion nerd and use it for everything.
Let me explain.
I've moved apartments, cities, states, and countries. Every time you move, you have to pack up everything you own, sell and buy furniture, change your mailing address on all your accounts, and when you find your new place, you have to unpack and organize all your things all over again in a new space and arrangement. In the same way, any time you change your operating system or software suite, you have to pack up all your files, organize and sort them, move them over, and re-arrange them in a way that makes sense for you and your new home, i.e., OS. I've migrated from Android to iOS, PC to Mac, MS Office to Google Suite, and even Xbox to Steam and back. In every instance of disruption and change, I was trying to answer the same problem: how do I set up my systems in a way that makes intuitive sense and helps me meet my goals? (Can you tell I work in product?) After my fourth or fifth major move, I realized it was likely to continue, so I promoted a new goal to the top of the list: resilience. I needed to have an organization method that would be resilient to change, meaning my way of organizing information and things had to be flexible and adaptable to changes in my needs over time.
Organizing my life to handle moving
When I moved from Brooklyn to Miami, I saw it as an opportunity for a major reset. I wanted to refresh my furniture, clothes, tchotchkes, and in some cases, devices, since my Lenovo laptop was on its last legs and I was considering finally leaning into the Apple ecosystem. Hooray for another chance to organize the life that I'd been collecting since middle school, right? Wrong. How would I know if I wanted to sell my acoustic guitar or keep it? How much should I sell it for? To keep track of the possessions I wanted to keep or sell, I needed a simple way to keep a log of what I owned and what I needed to do with it, but I had no idea where to set it up. Did it merit a spreadsheet or a document? Should I make it in Google Drive or MS Office? Should I store it in Google Drive, Dropbox, locally, or on iCloud Drive? Throughout this decision-making, a sense of anxiety began to take root and grow, that the time I invested in setting up one structure or another would be pointless since I would likely need to adapt and change it at a point in the future. Maybe in a week or a year, I would need to add more data and organize it differently. I almost abandoned the idea until I remembered the new cloud-based note-taking product I had been testing for the past year or so might be the answer. Enter Notion.
Notion's flexibility saves the day
In my experience, the more time you have with a system or activity, the more you can describe it. On the first draft of a financial model, there may only be two lines for growth assumptions, but after a few quarters of updating it, you'll probably have a dozen assumptions or more. When you set up a new CRM system, you may only be tracking contact touchpoints and opportunity measures, but after nurturing enough leads, you should have a lot more ways to track intent, loss reason, and interest drivers. It's the same for my database of personal possessions that lives in Notion. When I set it up, I just wanted to know what I owned, what I planned to keep, and what I planned to sell. It looked a lot like this, simple and effective.
But that was just the start. I created a new table in Notion, created my own drop down selections and got to categorizing. But how much could I sell my camera for? Could I offset the cost of moving? Let’s add more data to figure that out and to help inform the decision making.
Okay, clearly starting to get carried away with the categorization and tagging, but more data is still optional and can only be helpful for my future self to organize and categorize. And anyway, I could filter and hide those in views if I need to. Maybe I could add more qualifiers and view the data in another view to help make decisions on how much I enjoy the item, not just the monetary value. What happens if I bring some Marie Kondo into this?
Okay, now we're cooking.
To be clear, this is the same data set I started with in 2019 and that I continue to use today. I add new views, structures, data columns, and corrections all the time.
From tracking possessions to tracking everything
Using Notion as a database to track what I owned and intended went so well that I started to use it for more and more. What was I learning? Let's keep track in a Notion table for tracking education and skills. Who did I meet recently and what did we talk about? Hey oh, let's build my own custom CRM. What TV shows do I want to watch next or books are on my reading list? Throw it in as well as a Content database.
Well, now I have a lot of information stored, and I'm starting to notice that a lot of it is related. I heard about the new Martin guitar I'm interested in after speaking to a friend, and she also introduced me to Jack Johnson's album I was interested in learning to play as well. Is there some way I can link all of this together? Of course, this is Notion. Let's see how this can work: enter the 'Related' property type.
'Related' is a property type I use a lot since it lets me connect data I store in different tables, and can even allow me to create hierarchies to stack them. What that means is I can create relationships to help me navigate information and create interconnected webs of relational data at any point in time.
This is my favorite part about Notion: I can create new relationships and change existing relationships at any point, without affecting the underlying data. Let’s connect the music I’m learning to the guitar I play it on to the skill that makes it all work.
Beautiful.
Connecting it all for a unified view
The flexibility and adaptability of Notion have been key in helping me organize my life, from tracking possessions during moves to managing personal goals, learning, and schedules. Over time, I've created numerous tables to capture and connect data in meaningful ways. However, the true power of Notion lies in its ability to consolidate all this information into a unified dashboard. Inspired by the growing popularity of templates and dashboards, I decided to link everything together into a comprehensive personal management workspace. The result is my Personal Manager Dashboard, a tried-and-tested system that I use every day to effortlessly sort through information, plan my activities, and take action.
With this dashboard, I can set learning goals like mastering a new song on the guitar, log practice notes, plan future lessons, schedule meetings with my instructor, and even organize a trip to see my favorite band in concert - all from a single page. The best part? This dashboard is completely customizable to suit your unique needs. You can easily add new views, modify existing ones, and tailor the structure to fit your lifestyle and goals. It's the ultimate off-the-shelf solution for anyone seeking a powerful, flexible way to manage their life. I’m happy to share that you can access and use this Personal Manager Dashboard (available as a free template here with code SIMPLIHUMAN). Tested and refined over months of personal use, this Notion template will help you consolidate your schedule, goals, and tasks into one intuitive workspace. With the newly introduced syncing and calendar features, staying organized has never been easier. Don't miss out on this opportunity to streamline your life with a proven system, if you want you can start experiencing the benefits of a truly integrated approach to personal organization.
I mean hey, a lot of people jumped on Ben Lang’s marriage template, why not use your own.
Who or what wrote this?
Human Written
AI Reviewed