Notion starter kit: Make it easy to maintain
The value of a system grows with consistent cultivation.
This week, I paid $260 to live 260,000 minutes longer. And I didn’t even have to make another deal with you-know-who downstairs!
See, I realized something: to live longer, extending our lifespan isn’t our only option.
I spend at least 20 minutes a day washing dishes, plus 30 minutes a week dusting. And, let’s say, about another 40 minutes separating and folding laundry. That’s not even taking into consideration meal prep planning, grocery shopping, and cooking.
If I sleep 8 hours a day, then I will have slept through one third of my life. And if I live till 100, that’s 33 years just sleeping. Which means that I’ll actually be “Living”, with a capital L, 67 years.
Looking at vacuuming alone, I spend 40 minutes doing that every week, which shaves off another 180 days.
But this week I got myself a new friend. A robot who now takes care of vacuuming for me. And thanks to that little upfront investment, I bought those 180 days back.
To be fair, my little pal’s lifespan is probably shorter than mine, so I’ll likely have to shell out a few more bucks when he retires. And since I’m not currently 0 years old, I’m not actually saving that full 180 years. But that’s beside the point, because I’m feeling very time-rich right now, and I don’t know about you, but I find coming up with these life-saving life hacks to be super invigorating!
And that is the topic of today’s 7th instalment of my Notion Starter Kit series: lessons I’ve picked up on how we can maintain our space with less effort and time.
Mindsets
Let’s start off with a few quick mindset shifts which I’ve found helpful over the years.
Systems don’t need to last forever
Distinguish between tracking for insights vs logging for memory.
Personally, I have a hard time breaking tracking habits. I’ll start tracking what I eat each day so that I can better understand my daily nutrient profile. But somewhere along the way, I’ll convince myself that in 7 years I’m going to want to remember what I ate last Tuesday. What once began as a mission which could’ve been accomplished in a month, mutates into a lifelong system until I’m able to come to my senses again.
When starting a tracking project, deciding on a timespan prevents our systems from becoming a maintenance nightmare.
Systems don’t need to be complete to be useful
Being thorough is renowned as a virtue, but I find it can also bite us in the butt if we’re not conscious about when we apply it. The more detailed our systems become, the more maintenance they require.
For example, the purpose of my retrospective calendar (essentially my daily tracker / journal) is to maintain a working memory of my days. So I’ve been tempted to record as much detail about my daily goings-on as possible. But because I’m also often a creature of habit, there would be a lot of repetition around my routines if I was to record those every day.
Sometimes it’s best to simplify to the most impactful data to avoid adding unnecessary upkeep friction.
Don’t let data collect dust
It helps to ask ourselves when and how we’re going to revisit our pages.
Creating pages or systems without a plan for them to be resurfaced or revisited is digital maximalism at its finest. The accumulation of info that clutters our spaces.
If recording a memory, then have it surface itself a year from now. If adding a resource, test that it’s actually discoverable from the search bar.
Create to consume, not to clutter.
Tools
Notion inherently offers some useful tools for helping us maintain our spaces with ease. Here are a few notable mentions:
Edit in one place using synced blocks
Synced blocks are a Notion feature that allows us to convert any section of content into a reusable block that can be placed on multiple pages, where editing one instance automatically updates all linked copies across our workspace. Just type /synced to create one.
Making use of database templates
Page templates in databases are pre-designed page layouts that we can create once and reuse whenever we add new entries to a database, automatically applying a consistent structure and format to save time on setup.
Talk instead of type
I’ve found that when using a dictation tool like Wispr Flow, I add a lot more helpful context to my pages than I would’ve if I’d just typed. When we’re working in a system that requires more frequent interaction, speaking is easier so there’s a lot less friction.
(Feel free to use my promo link for a free month.)
Delegate maintenance to Notion agents
Notion agents can be used to help us maintain our spaces. For those of us with an AI-enabled account, all we have to do is schedule an agent to audit our spaces, say on a weekly basis, and have them do any polishing or summarizing, or organizing that we would have done ourselves.
Strategies
Audit systems for value and visitation
I believe that the best data evokes emotion, insight, or action. If it exists but it’s not put to use, then it only exists to cloud our vision to what could be important. When reviewing my spaces, I find it helpful to list of all of the systems and projects I have going on, so that I can get a quick overview of which ones are the highest value and most frequented. It’s happened many times when I realized that I’d been maintaining at least one system I didn’t actually find useful anymore.
Schedule in time
This one is a bit obvious, but my list would feel naked without it: it helps to maintain a regular cadence when updating our systems. Building a daily, weekly, or monthly habit of working on and updating our pages is going to make maintenance a lot smoother.
Momentum begets momentum.
Add what you can in the moment
Sometimes I don’t have the time or energy to add as many details as I would like in my pages. So I often find it helpful to add memory anchors instead. Simple point form notes or a couple words that’ll help me remember later, when I’m more prepared to add in those missing details.
We’re getting close to the end of this series with only three more posts to go! The next one will be about how to make it as easy as possible to get started with Notion as a newbie, so stay tuned and see you then 👋😁