Skip to content

How I use Notion as a Resonance Calendar

2019-10-19 · Tech review, setup or bag tour · Ali · recording, 13:29 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech (also: YouTube, writing online and creators, Books and reading) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: His own products discussed

Ali shows his resonance calendar, a Notion database into which he drops anything he reads, watches or listens to that resonates with him, with notes on how to apply it; he fills it with the Notion web clipper, the phone share sheet and Drafts on his Apple Watch, links it to an ideas database he runs as a "refinery" for his newsletter and videos, and shares it as a free template.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Consuming too much without reflecting, and the resonance calendar as the fix

  • ★★ Before his resonance calendar, Ali says, he spent ages on podcasts, books and videos about business, entrepreneurship, productivity and self-improvement, consuming too much without acting or reflecting on any of it. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — What the resonance calendar looks like: a podcast episode and an article with his notes

  • ★★★ Ali's resonance calendar in Notion takes anything he reads, watches or listens to that resonates with him, which is his bar, and he takes some notes on each item. — 00:00:29 · Notion

    “anything that resonates with me, I will drop it into the resonance calendar”

  • ★ Ali's resonance calendar holds an episode of the Farnam Street podcast, The Great Game, that he listened to late on 3 June 2019, with notes at the timestamps that resonated. — 00:00:29

  • ★★ Sharing an article into Notion, as Ali did with Tiago Forte's article on the PARA method, copies in the whole article, so he can come back to it without going back to the website. — 00:01:27 · Notion, second brain, Tiago Forte

00:01:50 — Three ways in: the Notion web clipper, the share sheet on his phone, and Drafts on the Apple Watch

  • ★★ Where he used to read an article, find it cool and do nothing about it, Ali now writes down his thoughts and ideas and what he plans to do with the information. — 00:01:50
  • ★ Ali wrote about using Notion as a resonance calendar in his weekly email newsletter in March 2019. — 00:01:50 · Notion
  • ★★ For articles read in Chrome, Ali uses the Notion web clipper: it copies the entire article into his resonance calendar with his notes written above it. — 00:02:46 · Notion
  • ★ Castro is Ali's podcast app of choice. — 00:03:15
  • ★ The Alternative CV podcast is run by one of Ali's friends; its first episode, on how to overcome fear, put yourself out there and get started, is a two-part interview with him. — 00:03:15
  • ★★ From a podcast app on his phone Ali uses the share button to send an episode straight into Notion, where it lands in his resonance calendar with its show notes filled in automatically. — 00:03:15 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali notes the timestamps when he takes notes on podcasts, so that months later, making a YouTube video that references the podcast, he knows where to get the clip. — 00:04:09
  • ★★★ Listening to podcasts at double speed in the car, Ali records notes with the Drafts app on his Apple Watch: two taps, so he can do it while driving, and it transcribes the speech into text reasonably well. — 00:05:08 · Drafts, Apple Watch
  • ★★ Moving notes from Drafts into Notion takes some manual labour, and Ali is sure Notion will at some point open its API so that Drafts can add items to Notion automatically. — 00:05:50 · Notion, Drafts
  • ★★ For now Ali finds copying notes from Drafts into Notion a very reasonable method, because it lets him quick capture his ideas while driving without stopping the car. — 00:05:50 · Drafts, Notion

00:06:20 — Filtering by tags and searching to recommend podcasts and to write about productivity

  • ★★ Because Ali tags items in his resonance calendar as he adds them, a Notion filter on the podcast tag answers a friend who asks which podcast he would recommend. — 00:06:20 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali's resonance calendar starts on 23 March 2019, when he first discovered Notion and the resonance calendar. — 00:06:20 · Notion
  • ★★ Searching his resonance calendar for a word such as productivity finds everything on it that resonated with Ali, which makes it much easier for him to create content on that subject. — 00:06:52 · Notion

00:07:21 — Database views, the ideas database, resonance links and the refinery Kanban

  • ★ Notion is built on databases, so Ali's resonance calendar can be shown in different views: a list, a calendar (how he started it) and a table. — 00:07:21 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali keeps a second Notion database of ideas for blog posts, newsletters, articles and video scripts; most of them come from what he reads, listens to and watches, so he links each to its original source. — 00:08:24 · Notion
  • ★★ A property Ali calls resonance link ties items in his resonance calendar to items in his ideas database, so each idea shows its source and each source shows the ideas it gave him. — 00:08:24 · Notion
  • ★ Ali's idea "decision-making: windows versus doors" came from the Ariana Simpson (as heard) episode of The Hustle's My First Million podcast, which gave him five ideas in all. — 00:08:24
  • ★★ When Ali picks the three or four things he enjoyed that week for his weekly email newsletter, a source linked to many ideas in his resonance calendar goes high up the list. — 00:08:56

  • ★★★ Ali runs his ideas database as a Kanban "refinery": ideas, his own or from what he consumes, move from no status to idea, draft, email and published, ending as a blog post; he supposes he will add a further stage for ideas turned into a video. — 00:10:01 · Notion

    “I like to think of this as the refinery”

00:10:33 — Writing the weekly newsletter from the refinery instead of a blank slate

  • ★★★ Ali fully recommends a resonance calendar with an ideas refinery to anyone who creates any kind of content. — 00:10:33
  • ★★★ Ali used to start each Sunday's newsletter from a blank slate, taking an hour or two; drawing on his resonance calendar, the latest issue took about 20 minutes. — 00:10:57

00:11:27 — What the resonance calendar has done for him: reflection, his own lens, tweeting the sources

  • ★★★ Since March 2019 the resonance calendar has made Ali more reflective about what he consumes and makes him think how to apply it to his life and change his behaviour. — 00:11:27
  • ★★ Ali says he uses Notion for many other things and will make videos about them over time. — 00:11:27 · Notion
  • ★★ As a content creator, Ali uses the resonance calendar to apply his own lens to ideas from other sources and release them as his own creations, always linking back to the original sources. — 00:11:56
  • ★★ When an article or video of his features the blog or podcast of someone else, Ali tweets them about it, so that people he admires and wants to connect with see that he is giving them free publicity. — 00:11:56

00:12:26 — The free public template, Notion's other templates, sign-off

  • ★★ Ali has made his resonance calendar a public Notion template, linked in the description, which anyone can duplicate into their own Notion account for free and modify. — 00:12:26 · Notion
  • ★ Among the templates on Notion's website Ali likes a personal wiki used by Ben of Notion's marketing team, which he means to experiment with a lot. — 00:12:49 · Notion

In the description and comments

  • ★ Asked in October 2020 why he is not concerned that Notion is not encrypted, Ali replies that he keeps nothing on it that he particularly cares to have encrypted. — creator comment · Notion

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Drafts · Notion · refinery · resonance calendar

Also: People: Ariana Simpson · James Clear · Tiago Forte

Works: Alternative CV · Atomic Habits · My First Million

Organizations: Farnam Street · The Hustle

Concepts: quick capture · second brain

Products: Apple Watch · Castro · Google Chrome · Notion Web Clipper

Also centred on refinery: My Creative Workflow with Notion

Replied to by

← Previous: Do students need an iPad or a MacBook? · Next → Study with Me + How I take Notes