I build a perfect Notion setup just to throw it right after
Being a Product Manager, I had to deal with a stack of tasks, data, and docs that are meant to be managed. I must stay organized, focused, and relevant — losing track once and everything would fall into disarray. Task management tools are like smart assistance that keeps me away from the madness.
I tried many, personally or the one I was using from the company that I worked with — JIRA, Trello, Asana, Evernote, Todoist, each has strong points towards the others. To manage my tasks personally, I like to keep it simple and fast, thus my faves are Evernote (for work) and Todoist (for personal matters) so far. Lately, I had to manage projects simultaneously while Evernote and Todoist could not keep up with that. I aim to switch to more comprehensive task management — one that stuck in my head is Notion, which I was in a love-and-hate relationship with for decades. The reason? Well, it cost me more on the designing part rather than actually functioning it. But again, I decided to give it another shot.
So here is my perfect Notion setup for project and task management, and why I just discard it right away.
Automate Google Calendar and Notion Syncup
If you plan to embed your google calendar right into Notion, don’t. You do want not to ruin the aesthetic of your Notion dashboard with this ugly look.
Using notion-automations, I was able to sync my meeting schedules from google calendar to Notion, and, keep it pretty by keeping all the information in the Notion calendar view. Next, I present it as a daily and weekly view to keep me aware of my upcoming schedule.
Build a Tasks Database
The tasks database is an essential part of Notion, it’s my brain dump and is connected to all the necessary parts. To keep it organised and tidy, here’s what my tasks database setup looks like.
- Tasks Details, on each task, I put some details such as status, priority, do date, due date, tags, and assignees
- Filters and views, I turn the database into some views on my dashboard such as Inbox, Today Task, Overdue Task, and Upcoming Task
- Integrate tasks, connect tasks to all related sections, such as project cards or meeting notes
Although I prefer to keep my list as simple as possible for the sake of efficiency and agility, I would like to recommend a more extensive reference to master your to-do-list setup — which I found super cool btw.
Kanban Board for Project Management
Since I had to maintain a lot of projects at work, I need a space to be messy and scratch around, put my follow-up reminders here and there, and collect all project information in one place but in my company workspace. I put those lists into my Notion dashboard as a Kanban board, it is the best visual representation you can use to manage project workflow and track progress.
- Project card visualization, as the project cycle might be a little longer than other ad-hoc tasks, I’m being a little bit extra for my project card like putting some visuals banner which represents the project the most.
- Fill in all information related to the project on each card details — such as reference links to docs (project proposal, RAB, BRD, PRD, etc), meeting notes, and tasks. This literally keeps me stay on track with the progress and access information in a seamless way.
- Timeline View, I think it is the most convenient way to see the progress over time, it gives a quick glance at project duration and dependencies on significant other — allows me to plan more expeditiously from a broader perspective.
Knowledge Banks
My knowledge banks section is basically the note and clip-taking database, full of links to the project docs, references, meeting notes, weekly reports, and many others. I keep them organized by putting them into categories and tags, besides linking them to related sections like project cards or meeting schedules.
For faster entry, I create a pre-added template for each section, esp meeting notes and reports. You can always find many available templates in Notion marketplace according to which suit your necessities the most.
After finishing the very impeccable Notion setup and using it for like, 5 days — I noticed that I was just being ludicrous. Invest all those efforts only to re-create what I basically already used all the time at my current company, ClickUp. Long story short, I decided to discard all my Notion pages, and create another ClickUp account for my personal tasks management. This might be just in my case, but here are the reasons why I choose ClickUp over Notion
- It has all the setups that I build on Notion: integration to google calendar, task management with filter and view, kanban board and timeline view, integration between all sections within, and a customised dashboard.
- It does the work faster, or at least that’s how I feel
- It can also do the automation, in case you’re willing to pay
- It has a more convenient mobile view
- It didn’t tempt you to waste your time, contend to create the most aesthetic dashboard in town every biweekly — so you can just focus on actually managing your tasks
The only lack part of ClickUp is that it suits less in managing personal matters. Like, if you want to create a space for your daily journal, recipes and meal plan, books or movies tracking, etc — I think Notion might still be the best platform to do so due to its strong personification.
