Pillars, five-day sprints, and a Notion knowledge vault

hey guys um this is something that i wanted to share with you that i've been working on recently so um like as i'm sure you've noticed there's been like a real lack of uh videos like coming out from me and as well if you're in some of my projects because i've got so many different projects going on i've been really focused on trying to get like organized and build out systems both through like automations but just general systems for my like life and productivity to um

i don't know to sort of like trim the fat i guess i would say to have like a very like lean life very like directed in terms of what i'm working on every day um and i stumbled across this guy called august bradley who had this system um that i've actually just like copied this off and then just adjusted it to my own use this isn't my my own idea i'll put a link to his channel in the description so he's definitely worth checking out if you're interested in like productivity and almost just like organizing not just business but like your entire life as well um

so this is a system that he calls like pillars pipelines and vaults um so i'll just give like quite a quick overview and how i've like customized it to fit my um requirements so it sort of works in like a pyramid structure where the pillars of your life are like the sort of things that um they're like your overall life aspirations like what you want to achieve so it can be both business related it can be personal in fact it's just about your life in in general so

maybe if your goal was to make a million dollars then a business would come in like a sub project of that right it's a means to making that money or if your goal was to get a six-pack then like a project would be to like go to the gym every day and to eat clean and drink four liters of water or yeah and so the pillars are like what type of person do you do you want to be and where do you want to um to take your your life through to so

you sort of work through to it in this um process um i i don't want to open all the marks there may be some i don't know confidential or like private information i can't actually remember what i put in there now um but like the guiding principle is sort of where what is like the overall purpose of your life what type of person do you want to be what are the real like goals long-term goals that you have review cycles how often do you want to review it and then i've got like milestones for my various companies this is just something nice i can open and like check off like when we hit a certain

goal in mrr it's nice to check off that that certain milestone and then the pillars are sort of taken from there and put into various different um categories so i can actually show you my pillars is um like youtube business personal finance home and household health and fitness mental well-being travel and and personal growth they're like the key categories of of my life that i'm interested in i'm like interested in investing my time and resources into basically um so and then if you come down to like goal outcomes so

i have my like my pillars there like what is it that i want to achieve from this what is like my my goal outcome so um as you can see you sort of start off with like a very broad thing of like this is what i want to achieve in life and it like pyramids down into smaller sections um so then i can write out like the steps to achieving this and then this is where it gets like really interesting so the projects are the list of projects i have going on currently and then action items is even is like the the bottom part of the pyramid they're like the daily actions i take in

order to complete my projects which are linked to my goal outcomes which link to my pillars and goals in in life basically in terms of the type of person that i want to become and so you're working from like sort of actionable small steps but it all links back up to your goal outcome sorry your like goals in in life um so this i found this like a really way to make sure that everything that you do is always very closely aligned with your goal outcome it means that you're not wasting any time so

i have like my this is like the overall command center that this is where where you spend like most of the time so these are all of my tasks today so i have like my projects here and originally i've actually changed this a little bit now so originally i had like projects so you have each of your businesses here but i've actually decided to change this so i'm customizing this to now work in sprint um so i will dedicate like five days to a particular sprint for example conversion rate optimization there's like a team of two people that i'll be working with on this that will dedicate just to conversion rate optimization that week and

then the week after we'll move on to to something new so that is then related to a um like one of my goals we'll be doing sprints on each different area so that applies to business and then in like my other spare time i can work on like my other um projects right and then every time i take off a task in my like daily zone it shows i'm it shows the percentage closer that i am to completing that particular project um this is like a action zone like you just spend all your day here ticking off um

so just clicking done on various different tasks so that is like a basic overview and like now you're probably just thinking that this is sort of a um i don't know something like trello or Sunsama or like todoist or anything like that but it's not this is where it gets like really interesting this information is hosted in a database is like called a relative database maybe a sorry a relational database maybe something that we we've um used before in air table so any information that is here is related to information that i have elsewhere so

the thing that i really like about this is not only so this section that keeps you completely aligned because if you can't match up a task to one of your outcome goals like if i open um a task here i i should be like aligning it to what everything that it's related to to to my project this is related to like top rocket which i know is related to business and it automatically goes up the pyramid right um if you can't align it to a task it's just telling you straight away that you're like wasting time so

if you can't align it directly to like a project or to a sprint it tells you that you're you're wasting time it's a really easy way to keep you aligned but let's so the really interesting thing about it though is or the thing that i really like anyway is the knowledge vault so if you're anything like me i have tons of information like i've spent you know how long have i been doing marketing now seven seven years i yeah i started when i was about 18 so

yeah seven years and i when i first got into marketing as well i was just like a sponge of information just taking all i was doing is learning so i taught myself right i didn't go to school or university i was just absorbing information from everywhere that i could and then testing it on my on my businesses and this information is like spread all over the place um i've got like notebooks that i that i used to just take notes from when i was reading books or listening to youtube videos or reading like forums i've got bookmarks i i've got about a thousand two hundred bookmarks in my um

chrome thing um also i've got stuff in notion i've got stuff in trello i've got stuff in Sunsama various other different note-taking apps that i've used like over the years but there's just like a wealth of information that i've spent a lot of time and extracted like the key points of um of what i wanted to learn about the problem with that is it's all spread out everywhere like i said it's all in these notebooks which i i've got no idea where they are like i'm sure i could find them if i looked at them but i mean it's not accessible information right and your brain only has like a limited capacity unfortunately um

so what this does workspace vault and these are all subjects of information that i am interested to learn about or that i have knowledge in or that i'm yeah looking to explore and they're relevant to things that i'm working on now and i'm just trying to think of so like conversion rate optimization for example in this thing i have um a load of notes and information i'm in the process of migrating all my information over currently which is why there's not so much here it's going to take quite a while but once it's done it's going to be well worth it now i have this um

so to this anytime that i tag a task with conversion rate optimization in my action zone anything that i tag with conversion rate optimization is going to automatically link to that database this task and all of the information is visible when i open the task so if i have a task on anything and i link it into that task um like related to workspace and i tag it as like google ads for example or conversion rate optimization or facebook ads all of that information then gets is just one click away all of the knowledge and resources i've accumulated over the years through tests through spending i don't know tens of thousands of dollars on advertising

and hundreds of thousands even sorry i spent about half a million this year um it's brought into one central like resource that is then available for me to use or even not even just for me for if i like scale out the team it means all of the knowledge that i've accumulated is there for the whole team to have accessible so this is like i i in my opinion it's completely game changing stuff um and it just it completely changes the way that you work so

it's going to take a little bit of time for you to set up because you have to have various different relational databases um i'm not going to make any content on how to actually do this because this this guy august bradley has done it already i don't want to take any credit for for what he's doing this is completely like his system and he actually explains it a lot better than i do i've just taken the idea and i've adjusted it in a few places to really like fit my my workflow um

but the thing that is really interesting as well is i always struggle to um to like adopt um project management tools into my life for example trello like i i like it it serves a purpose but i i can't fit it into my workflow for whatever reason um it just doesn't it doesn't really work for me Sunsama i really like um like the ui is like fantastic and they have like a trello integration so you can put in all of your tasks and various different projects into one central system which is another thing that i do really like however i just i can't i'm not able to stick with it for whatever reason it doesn't

stick within my workflow whereas this because i've built it myself i i've taken someone else's idea but i've built this i have added together all of the different relations and customized it to completely fit my workflow there's a sense of ownership there which meant that if you own something you're far more invested in it right which means it has naturally just become a part of my day-to-day workflow very very easily there was no um i don't know friction at all because i've built this from for one sole purpose and another point i forgot to mention earlier is the thing that i've is being having a tool that can consolidate all of my different businesses together

when i'm working on various different things like trello okay you can have different trello boards but it's very disconnected really like let's be honest there's no connectivity between it um and it means that you constantly have to navigate around all of these different trello boards or if a different business is using a different project management tool you have to go and check there and it's just it's a real pain um whereas this has all of my projects together and all of the it's all in this centralized to-do list so

i have projects from i have tasks from various different projects all showing here based on on when they are due what what the due date is so there's a different like this is the due date and this is the due date dates this is the date that i have to to do things by right and i just spent all day just going through these tasks and just ticking them off one at a time um another like this isn't actually directly related to this but another tool that i quite like um

again but it's something that i talk about it it's difficult to get into my workflow so i do really like it i am more productive when i use it but i don't always use it it's just a little pomodoro timer the name is session if you have a subscription with Setapp um it's included in that if you haven't got a Setapp subscription i'd definitely recommend that you get one if like nine dollars per month for 130 mac apps so um but this is like it's a really simple tool and you just start a little timer and it keeps you very focused on on what you're doing you can also this took a while to set

up as well but you can um it's actually disappeared i built a little plug-in where you can keep this afloat at all times so it appears on top of all windows yeah it's just a little countdown timer yeah and so back to where i was and then if you come down here because notion is very like flexible i've got like my entire calendar here which is literally just another view of this database which shows me all of my upcoming tasks like um i think you'll all be very pleased to know today we're focusing purely on youtube videos um

which is yeah which is great and then this is that's calendar as well um and that needs editing so this is still like a working process but i showed this to my friend yesterday and he said i should get this up on youtube so i just thought i'd make a video and i can sort of update you with any changes that i make and because you have complete flexibility over this to do whatever you want um it's sort of infinitely possible where where you can go with it the only downside about this is that notion don't have an api currently but they're making one which is good um

and also just to explain where our information is all coming from two other things that i've built we have like the media vault so this is like a audio book called sprint that i'm listening to currently and it's tagged as productivity so if i just open this let's say i'm listening to the audio book whilst i'm working whenever i have a new like these are some of my notes from the audiobook but whenever i have something really interesting that i want to add into my like productivity workflow or anything like that i can just tap new note so

i just need to add in here like because it can be related to anything we could do this automatically actually um i can just add in productivity and any note that i leave here is going to be added into our productivity uh vault down below that contains all the information of all of the resources that we've ever read listened to or worked on or notes we have um so yeah it's now added automatically i can then just drag it out and turn it into i don't know text and all of the information and we can start to build up like a resource like a vault of information on this particular subject um

so all of this stuff is like these are only things on my bookshelf as well i've got a load of other resources that i want to read so we can have like different statuses similar that we do to um to an air table um and then any notes that i take on these these things i plan to read um will automatically be added into the correct workspace right um so if you want like if you are going to build out something like this a little thing that you can do is that i found there's a little plug in here let's say i wanted to document this page rather than having to copy and paste it

and every time i can also take a note an idea from anywhere but we'll just make a new media link status is on the bookshelf category is related to growth hacking type is blog post and that will now automatically add it into my media vault of things i want to read you see it here now so it's just a nice little workflow for collecting like resources and then when i have time like i can just go through and like read them like usually on the weekend i'll spend a bit of time on that learning and resources um

yeah and so like that can also take videos or pdf attachments like if it's an ebook or like whatever it may be um this is also my like resources vault that also gets added into whatever um thing is down there so if we have software or i don't know anything related to resources it will also get added into like the actual workspace vault um another thing that i built out this was actually like my own idea i've it's not actually finished yet but um what this will do is if the um

let's come back into our knowledge vault sorry so if we come down here if um the type here contains video it will automatically be added into a toggle list here like i'm really trying to reduce the amount of time that i spend watching netflix and youtube not so much because mostly i watch productive things on youtube but definitely netflix or just watching like films and um like now i don't know i almost find that netflix doesn't really have any like content that i want to watch and i'm almost searching through for something to force myself to watch it so

i know it's a bad habit that i have and i'm trying to break so instead what i'm going to do is download a load of resources um into like sorry videos related to subjects i'm interested in it can be documentaries it can be courses it can be youtube videos you don't even have to download them by the way you can just embed a link and have them split up into different categories so this will be pulled in dynamically from the knowledge vault anything that has the tag video will automatically come into our netflix for learning so

i'm going to try and make this like the default um i'm going to try and break my habit of watching netflix for instead for me to come into this page and watch content from here that is educational and is actually um useful for me so also i i haven't got the camera on now but you can like notion has their own um ios app and you can make like widgets so i can make one for netflix and make it like a big button and then delete netflix from my phones that would be quite an easy way to break that habit of when i feel like watching something instead just click on on that button and

play and and play the content through the notion app because it's all going to be uploaded there so that's the other cool thing about the system is obviously it is cloud-based so no matter where i am in the world or whatever device i'm on this information is always accessible to me um so i'm pretty sure the next question if i have explained this clearly i'm not quite sure that i have um but it's it's very interesting i definitely recommend checking out august bradley's channel and maybe he can explain it a lot better than i can and essentially all we have is a lot of different databases for our projects um

for our resources for our principles in life and they're all interconnected which tells us how how well we're doing towards a goal and keeps us online aligned with our overall life goals um yeah i'll link to the video below if you have any questions um feel free to yeah leave them down below and this has just been something that i've been building to like optimize my like productivity and workflows to make sure that i am able to get the tasks done that i need for all of my different projects without feeling stressed and overwhelmed this is really like systemizing everything into really clear outcome driven tasks for my projects that then aligned with my overall

life goals so yeah i will leave it there and like you can even see my to-do list today so i'm making a lot of videos on linkedin and growth hacking to help people out there so yeah thank you very much for watching as always any questions feel free to leave a comment and i will get back to you