5 MISTAKES You Make When Overhauling Your Notion Setup

So you want to overhaul your Notion set up. I want to show you five overhauling mistakes that can derail your productivity and what to do instead so your Notion workspace continues being a well-oiled machine.

Watch the video below or read on for the full transcript.

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Mistake #1

Mistake number one: the belief that you need to break or completely demolish your existing Notion system in order to overhaul it and make it into something that you want it to be.

I know how tempting it can be to just burn it all to the ground, but that's not helpful for a number of reasons. One of them being that for the time that your system is in shambles, you don't have a system to support you, and building an entire Notion system from scratch can take days, if not weeks, depending on how complex your life is. And especially if you're working on a team inside Notion that just adds so much more complexity.

So don't cut yourself off at the knees and demolish your system before building a new one.

The great thing about Notion is how malleable it is. It's really easy to move information around, reclassify information, and add complexity to it where you need more complexity, or to remove complexity from it where you need less friction.

So that's mistake number one: don't feel like you have to completely burn your existing Notion system to the ground in order to build one that you like, because that's not true. It's actually going to be easier for you to adjust, and add to, or take away from your existing system, than it is to start from scratch.

And by the way, there is a lot more to this first mistake that I'm actually going to talk about in mistakes four and five. So stay tuned for those.

Mistake #2

Mistake number two: using templates verbatim. There are so many Notion templates out there, both free and paid, some simple, others complex. For example, I recently signed up for Marie Poulin's Notion Mastery course.* It is an amazing course. Not only is there a robust amount of information on how to use Notion effectively and how to build a personalized system that works for you, but there is a slew of professional templates that she has built herself.

But that being said, just because you suddenly have access to some templates doesn't mean you just copy them into your workspace and start using them. That might work if you're starting from scratch in Notion for the first time - it can be helpful to have a set of templates to get you off the ground. But if you're like me and you had an existing robust system in Notion, and then you want to try to implement some templates from other people, I highly recommend not just copying and pasting. Because trying to integrate it into your system is just adding complexity where you don't need it.

So what I did instead was I critically analyzed all of the templates that I had access to inside Notion Mastery, and I picked the ones that I knew would have the biggest bang for their buck inside my Notion workspace.

Templates are an amazing springboard to give you ideas of how you can organize your own information and workflows inside Notion. Just copying templates verbatim is a way of ignoring how your brain works. Everyone is so unique in that respect, whether you're neurotypical, neurodivergent, or anywhere in between, our brains work differently. And it can be so helpful to tailor your Notion workspace to work for the way your brain works instead of somebody else's. And when you copy a template verbatim, you're trying to have your brain work the way their brain works, and that's not necessarily helpful.

So the next time you want to add a template into your workspace, really think about it critically and all of its elements, and just cherry pick the ones that work for you, modify the ones that need to be modified to work for you, and just get rid of the things that won't help you.

Mistake #3

This brings me to mistake number three, which I am so beautifully calling, "Adding Instead of Preening." This is specifically when it comes to databases. And... I was a person with many a database. There were too many. I was overwhelmed. Many of them were gathering digital dust. And The ones that I were using all the time were struggling to carry the weight of all of that work because they weren't set up as efficiently as they could be.

So that's mistake number three: trying to add database after database after database, in order to make your system more organized. That's actually going to make you just more overwhelmed and you're going to lose track of things.

Whereas if you make your existing databases more powerful, that will go so much farther in making your Notion workspace more organized and less friction in your workflows.

For example, I used to have multiple databases to keep track of all of my content, both free, like this channel, and paid, like in my coaching membership Accountability, Muse. And then on top of that, I had separate idea databases for both of those. Already that's four different databases. And to be honest, because this was so all over the place, there were a few more.

Now with the help of having taken the Notion Mastery course*, I see how much more powerful it is to have one content planning database and have properties to help me label things as either free or paid or YouTube or coaching calls, that kind of thing. So it's just one giant database, and then I can have views set for particular parts of that database.

So for example, if I only want to see all of my free YouTube videos in that database, I can do that. Similarly, I have simplified down my ideas database to be just one magical place of inspiration, where things are categorized differently. So that way I can look at all of my ideas for my YouTube channel. I can see ideas for my membership.

There's one really great idea that I do not yet have the means to do, but I am quite excited about. I'll just leave that there…

Long story short that's mistake number three, don't just add databases to your Notion workspace in the hopes of making it more organized and reducing friction. Ultimately, that's just going to increase your disorganization and add friction, and just make you overwhelmed. Bad idea. So instead, even though it requires more brain power to figure out in the moment, how can you streamline and add ability to your existing databases so that way they're more powerful?

By the way, which one of your Notion databases helps you the most right now and why? Let me know down in the comments.

Mistake #4

Now onto mistake number four, which is a bit of a call back to mistake number one. But in this one, you're just trying to do your overhaul all at once. It's just a bad idea.

For however long your Notion workspace overhaul takes you, it's definitely probably going to take you more than a day. And if you're someone like me who has deadlines for things, you can't afford to spend an entire day, let alone an entire week or two overhauling your Notion space. Things will just pile up.

It can actually be a lot more helpful, especially now that you understand that completely overhauling your space - like burning it to the ground and building from scratch - is a bad idea to begin with. So what you can do instead of doing it all at once is just go piece by piece. Adjust your workspace, starting with the things that would have the most benefit right now.

So for example, as I am integrating everything that I've learned in Notion Mastery, one of those things is switching over to a master task database. I have the thing. I'm kind of sort of using the thing. But 100% switching over to it at this point in time would derail my whole system.

If you're interested in how I'm planning inside Notion right now, you can check out this video where I go into how I do bullet journaling inside Notion.

My end goal is to incorporate the master task database into my daily journal pages, but that's going to be a lot of work and I don't have the time to do that right now. Whereas updating my content planning and idea management databases? That was something I could do that wouldn't throw off my whole system, but would make my life so much easier right now to plan these videos in particular, that that made it worth working on. And what's really great about that is now that I'm more efficient at content planning, I'm going to have more time shortly in order to update my task management system.

Whereas if I had tried to do it all at once, I would have derailed everything else going on in my life. So that's mistake number four: trying to do it all at once instead of spreading it out and still getting your own work done while you're slowly adjusting your Notion workspace.

Mistake #5

And this brings me to mistake number five. This one's such a doozy I'm actually going to be doing an entire dedicated video to it in the future. So if you're not already subscribed, hit that button.

Mistake number five: if you have the urge to burn it all down and start from scratch, and do it all at once, it's less likely that you actually need a better system, and more likely that something in your life is stressing you out so much that you feel like you don't have control over the situation, and you want to do something that makes you feel like you have control.

And you know what one of the best things for that is? Setting up a new task management, time management, and organizational system.

So if you're the kind of person who jumps from planner to planner, from app to app, and you never actually really use one all the way and stay consistent with it, you might have a habit of turning to planning systems as a coping mechanism for feeling stressed and out of control in your life.

So that was a doozy. Like I said, I'm going to be doing it and entire video dedicated to that one topic later. But for now that's mistake number five. If you are simply trying to overhaul your Notion workspace as a coping mechanism for stress and overwhelm and feeling out of control...

I'm not saying that's bad. Coping strategies are important, but it can be really helpful to understand that that's a coping strategy you're engaging in, and not actually a genuine attempt to get more organized. It's you avoiding something. So... The solution for that one is, you know, get a therapist, reach out to a friend, talk to your boss about it. Basically be vulnerable and ask for help to actually deal with your stress and overwhelm and lack of control, instead of avoiding the problem and pretending you have control by playing in Notion.

And there you have it, five mistakes that can derail you when overhauling your Notion set up, and what to do instead to stay organized and productive.

If you happen to struggle with procrastination and resistance too, I highly recommend checking out my free Masterclass, where I teach you three mindset shifts and one simple three-step system to help you kick procrastination to the curb. All you have to do to get access is go to this link and sign up.

If you liked this video, hit that like button and subscribe and be sure to share it with your friends. And if you want to my other videos about Notion, you can check them out over there. I'll be back next week with another video. See you then. Bye.

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