How to build a Notion Weekly Planner (WITH RECURRING TASKS)
Hi, everyone. I'm popping in during my prolonged break from YouTube with a quick Notion tutorial because the way I manage weekly tasks inside Notion is something that my Action Navigator students really love. And I just wanted to share it with all of you. It's a way you can look at your tasks for the week divided into unique tasks versus recurring tasks.
Watch the video below or read on for the full transcript.
And while, last year, Notion came out with a fancy new way to do recurring tasks automatically, I still haven't switched to it because I really like the solution I came up with. So I'm gonna be sharing the tutorial for how to build it out today. And then at the end, I'm gonna give a few updates for those of you who have been around for a while and wanna hear what I'm up to. So
let's get into the tutorial. (air whooshes) (mouse clicking) (bell dings) (air whooshes) I wanted to give some context for what we're actually gonna be building out today. So this is the template I have actually made and will link in the description box below. But I find it easier to understand what someone is doing if I know where they're trying to go. So we have a Kanban board view
of a database, and it is grouped first by day of the week up here at the top and second by unique versus recurring. And this is what we're gonna be building. So let's dive in. I'm gonna add a line break and an actual line down here, so you can tell where we're working. So the first thing I'm gonna do is add a blank database, and I'm gonna use
a slash command. So I'm gonna hit slash, and then start typing the word database. And you can see there's an option for a database inline versus database full page. Because I want you to be able to see what we're building out at the same time as the reference version up top, we're gonna be doing inline. But if you were gonna be doing this in your own Notion workspace,
I would recommend using the full page option. So as you can see, by choosing that option, it just spits out like a really simple table, and we're gonna be able to change that. First thing you'll notice is that the blinking cursor is right here, so I'm gonna go ahead and title this. And because it can be simpler to add properties in the Table view, we're gonna stay in
the Table view for a hot second. So I'm gonna click here on Name, and that's gonna bring up a dialog box so we can change the name of that property. So I'm gonna read name this task. And then it automatically pops up this Tags thing. We're gonna rename it to Status, and we're gonna change the type to Status, which is a new way of marking whether something is
Not Started, In Progress or Done, and you can customize it further. The next property we're gonna add is a do date, but not D-U-E date, like a deadline. You could obviously add that if a lot of your tasks have important external deadlines but we're gonna add a D-O date, so the date that you intend to actually do the task. So I clicked this plus button, and over here
we need to pick a date property. Alright, and I forgot to name it Do Date, so gonna change the name. Now the next thing we need is a day of the week property. Ultimately this is going to be a single-select property, but it's easier to build out single select or multi-select properties in the text type first. So we're gonna start by selecting text type, and we're gonna name
it today of the week. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna go over here, and we're going to type in all of our values separated by commas. So Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And then hit Enter. Now what we're gonna do is go back in here, and we're gonna change the type to a single select. And if we click in here again, you can
see they're all built out. And if you were to click these buttons over here, you could change the color. So let's just make Sunday and Saturday blue, and let's make the weekdays purple. (clicking mouse) All right, the next field we need is also a single select. And just for the sake of being thorough, I'll show you the kind of normal way to build out a single select. So
we're gonna select the Select Property type, and we're gonna title it Unique, and we're gonna title it Unique or Recurring. And this is where the magic happens, knowing if a task is a unique one-off task or if it's a recurring task that happens every week. Now I'm gonna hit Enter on my keyboard. And so see it's already a Select type. So I'm gonna click in here, and I'm
gonna first start by typing Unique, hit Enter. And then if I click back in here again and I start typing, it automatically replaces it. And now we have those two options. Now two other properties that might be really helpful for you to have, especially if you have a separate project database in your workspace is to do a relation to that project database so you know which tasks are
associated with which projects. And then furthermore, if you have projects subdivided into areas of your life, so for example, if you're a spoonie like me, all of the projects that fall under the medical administration area of your life, and you have a property in your project database that says Area, what you can do in your weekly task database is have a relation to the project database, so it
tells you what project, and then have a roll-up that, based on which project the task is associated with, it will tell you what area of your life that project is associated with, based on the information in the projects database. If that made zero sense to you, then just forget it. It is not important for what we're talking about today, and I wanna keep things simple. If you do
want more information about that kind of stuff, I highly recommend Marie Poulin. In fact, I'm an affiliate for her absolutely incredible Notion mastery course. And I'll drop my affiliate link in the description box below if you wanna check that out, 'cause that's where you go to learn everything about Notion. All right, now we have everything we need in order to turn this database into something that looks like
this. So what we're gonna do is go over here to these three dots next to the New button, and we're gonna click here in Layout, 'cause right now it's set as a table. We are going to set it as a board. So click Board, and you can see how it automatically grouped by the day of the week. But if, for some reason, it did not, you need it
to. So down here it says group by day of the week, you would click here, and you would then click here, and you could select day of the week from here. Now, I will say this is where the one thing that Notion doesn't do, and it gets kind of tedious to fix every week, but personally I find it worth it for the simplicity of this task list, so
I don't mind it, (chuckles) is it doesn't keep the days of the week in the order in which you have them in that property. So you could see it just rearranged them all. There are two ways to rearrange them yourself. From in here, you would click and drag these three dots around. So if we wanted Sunday to be at the beginning, click and drag there. I'm gonna move
all but one of them. (chuckles) Here we go. The other way to do it is out here. You can click and drag these. So if I were to click and drag here, I can move Tuesday before Wednesday, and I can move Thursday before Friday. Ooh, the other thing I'm gonna change real quick is also, under Layout, and it's gonna be card size, 'cause right up here you can
see they're kind of small, but these are wider. So I like having the card size set to small for this so that way I can see every day of the week on one screen. All right, so we have our vertical columns, but now we need to set our horizontal columns. So we're gonna go back here into these three dots. And this is another place where you can change
the vertical group, and see how it says day of the week? We're now gonna set the subgroup, so I'm gonna click that, and we're going to set it to Unique or Recurring. And personally, I like having Recurring on the bottom, and then we leave No Unique or Recurring at the very bottom. So that way if we have tasks that we forgot to assign Unique or Recurring to, they
show up there, and they don't get lost. The next thing we are going to do is set a set of filters. So, because, as is, everything would be showing up right now, but we really only want to see the things that haven't been started or are in progress and the things that are happening this week, not all weeks for all time. So we're going to build out this
filter right here. The first one is going to be about Status and Date. And then the second one is going to be about Recurring. So let's build out this first one right here. So, if you hover over this bar, we hit Filter, and we're gonna click Add Advanced Filter. And the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna turn it into a group so that way it's separated
into a box and we can add a different group afterwards. So this first filter is we really only wanna be seeing things that aren't done. We're going to make this filter based on the status, and where the status is, to do, or In Progress and Not Complete. And then we're gonna add another filter rule. And we're gonna first set it to and, 'cause we want both of these
conditions to be true for something to show up in the view. And we're gonna change it to Do Date. Oh, it's already set as what I wanted, but basically in this dropdown menu, you want it relative to today and then this and then week. And you can see how much granularity you can have there. So this is showing all the tasks that have a D-O date of sometime
this week and are not completed. But now, we wanna also tackle the recurring ones. And I'm gonna refresh my memory on what this rule looks like. All right, and I'll show you how to build it. So we go back in here. And if, for any reason, this thing isn't showing, you have to basically toggle the filter on and off to be able to see it. So now we're
gonna add another filter group. So you can see now we have two groups. And this is gonna be an or situation, and that's very important 'cause if it's and, that means every single thing that has an and next to it needs to also be true in order for something to show up. But this we want to be an or situation because we're thinking about the recurring tasks. So
where unique or recurring is recurring. And then we're gonna add a filter rule. And this is an and now. And Status is ta-da. If you end up making the Status field more complicated, so here, if we go into this one and Status and Edit Property. So first of all you can have it shown as a checkbox inside or a Select property. You can add infinite granularity here. So
if you foresee yourself adding even more complexity to this, it might be helpful for you, in your filters, to say instead of Is Not Started or In Progress for either of these, you could say Is Not, and then uncheck these and done (chuckles), so Is Not Done. And that will essentially create the exact same filter, but it is accounting for you maybe adding more status types that are
not done (chuckles) so that way you don't have to constantly change the filter. All right and then this is a fun thing that I'll just hit on really quick. Whenever you're changing filters or sorts in a database, if you have other people who are sharing your Notion workspace, you now have the ability to create filters that only affect your view of a database versus everyone. So, and you
can also save something as a new view automatically. So I'm just gonna click Save for Everyone so this little thing goes away, 'cause it's orange and it's taking my attention. But if you just have your own Notion workspace, it doesn't really matter, don't worry about it. You can just be like me and click Save for Everyone so the little prompt will go away. All right, the last thing
we're gonna do is go here to Properties and make sure all the things we want visible are visible. So we don't need day of the week visible because it's a given based on the sorting, same with Unique or Recurring. But Do Date and Status are probably nice things to have available in the cards so we can look at it all at once. And this is it. This is
my weekly task list. But let's show some examples of how to use it. So let's have a laundry recurring thing. So we've got laundry. We can add one over here, pay bills. And as you can see when I hit New over here, under Thursday and under Recurring, if I were to open this up, it says Thursday and Recurring and it's really easy. And now here's the really exciting
thing. Let's say I wanted to move this, let's say we'll do it Tuesday. I can just click and drag it to Tuesday, and now it says Tuesday. It's magical. And then if you want to change the status, all you have to do is click the status in the card and switch it to In Progress. Oops, or, and here, if we switch it to Done, it'll disappear. It'll be
done and it'll be out of our face. We don't need to see it anymore. And if you, for any reason, wanted to go back and look at things you have finished, all you would have to do is create another view of this database that shows past ones. And in the template of this database, in the description box below, there is a secondary view that's just a table that
shows everything. But here's the magical thing, laundry is something, it tends to happen every, every, every week, right, right? Or in theory, that is the hope, but it disappeared. How can I make it recurring if it's disappeared? So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go here to Rules. And we are going to change this to Is, and they're back. And then you can click and drag over
all of them, right click, Edit Property, Status to Not Started, and they disappear again because the filter is set to Is Done. And now we just change this Is back to Is Not, and they're back! Ta-da. So I have one to two recurring tasks that I do every day of the week in my personal view of this. And it just makes it so easy during my weekly reset
to just go and reset all of them to Not Started and then reset my view to hide things when I do accomplish them. Like, that way I only have 10 to 20 recurring tasks that exist in my task database, and they're not getting duplicated with the current, like, automatic recurring thing that Notion came out with last year. And so that way when I go look at my history
of my tasks, there isn't, like, infinite laundry tasks, infinite pay bills tasks. I like it 'cause it doesn't feel overly cluttered, and it also gives me the granularity. There are some of my recurring tasks that happen every other week, and I don't bring them back into my system until it's a relevant week. Just makes it really easy. Anyways, this is my weekly task list. I hope that was
helpful. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to drop them in the comments below. I hope I was clear and granular enough. And if you were just here for the tutorial, thanks, awesome. I hope it was helpful. Next, I'm gonna give you some updates on what's been going on with me, for those of you who are interested in that. All right, back to full screen me. As you
can tell, I didn't do makeup. My hair is chaos. But this is, once again, me leaning into the vibe that I had in January of showing up messy on social media for me. Those of you who've been around a while know how much the concept of showing up messy is important, not only to me, but I find transformational for everyone that I have the honor of helping. And
as I proceed to have my own journey, the more I'm letting myself lean into that. And the other way that's showing up is just me randomly making a video when I said I wouldn't be back until May (chuckles) or June. I wanted to just let y'all know I'm still here. I'm starting to come out of my, like, month and a half of hibernation 'cause, as most of you
know, December and January was a lot of work for me. And my plan was to be a potato on purpose for a while after that to recover. It's been interesting because being a potato on purpose to recover, like, I know how important that was, but it's hard to do, especially when you have a history of severe depression, and that kind of deep prolonged rest tends to start making
you feel like you're in a deep depression again. It's kind of similar to the concept that if you physically smile, it will tell your nervous system to feel happy, right? It's kind of the same mechanism. So I've been having to continually check in with myself and remind myself that the rest is important, the rest is crucial. I am allowed to enjoy it, and I am allowed to be
as much of a potato as I need to recover. And then that being said, being a potato 24/7, while necessary for me for the last month and a half, is also very boring after a while. So I have also been working hard to pace myself really gently and make sure that the ways I am spending my time isn't adding to my burnout. And that's an imperfect process. It
is definitely easier said than done. But with all the tools that I have learned and all the tools that I've mastered for myself and for teaching, they have helped me get through this time. And now I am turtle biting my way back to working again. And probably starting next week, I am going to start working on the update to my program, The Action Navigator. And I'm really excited
about it. And also, my plan is to document that process. I will probably be showing some of it here on YouTube, either while it's happening or more likely in a curated fashion after the whole thing is done. But here's the potentially exciting thing for all of you. I am planning on starting a Patreon, because I've come to understand that some of y'all like me, and it is not,
and that sounds so weird, but I've always had a cognitive dissonance to think that people only like what I can do for them. I know that's a trauma response, but 1,000% a trauma response. So as I have come to learn recently that so many of you just genuinely like and care for me and maybe wanna know me better and have a different way of supporting me that isn't
joining my big program, I thought it would be great to start a Patreon. So basically, my program, The Action Navigator, that's the way you get coached by me. And then I'm seeing the Patreon as a way to extend the parasocial relationship between us. And there's no reason why people can't join both. That's how I'm dividing it in my head right now. And also starting a Patreon will hopefully
help me have more consistent income from month to month because, while I do offer a sliding scale for my program, The Action Navigator to the extent that, if all you have is 20 US dollars to give to me, and I know the program will help you and we're both a good fit for each other, I'll take the 20, you're in the program, because most people who would benefit
from my program do kind of fall under that part of the sliding scale. My income from month to month is bong, like, it varies widely. And as I bet a lot of you can understand and relate to, that's stressful. So I'm hoping that a Patreon will help create a little bit more consistency for me. And I plan on doing the same thing with my Patreon that I do
with my program and that it's a sighting scale. So every patron will get the exact same content from me. You just pay what is financially accessible to you, anywhere from like, my current thoughts are like $3, $5, $10, $15, something like that. So what you feel comfortable offering me on a monthly basis, but you get the same content. So those who can only offer $3 a month, you
get everything that the $15 a month people get. So that's what's been going on behind the scenes recently. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the Patreon idea. And if, for some reason, this is your first video of mine that you're watching, hi, it's so nice to meet you. I'm Cassie Winter. I'm a productivity expert and life coach for Neurospicy Spoonies, so anyone that is neurodivergent and chronically
ill, basically. And my signature program, The Action Navigator, is everything I know about how to help you spend your precious time and energy the way you want to and to be less at the mercy of your disabilities, essentially, how to truly accommodate and care for yourself in a profound way. Adulting for Neurospicy Spoonies, if you will. (chuckles) And if the program feels like too much, I also have
the workshop that I taught at the end of January. If you sign up for my mailing list, you get that recording. So definitely go check that out. All the links are in the description box below. And yeah, thank you for letting me show up messy today. It's nice to be back at least in a small, small way. I don't know when the next YouTube two video will be.
We're playing it by ear over here, but right now, my main focus for the next few months is going to be doing the great, big version two of The Action Navigator. And it's going to be a structural update so that way it's easier to learn and hopefully more fun to learn that. That's one of my goals. So thank you for watching to this point. If you're still here,
I adore you all. Definitely subscribe if you're not subscribed. Like this video. And yeah, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.