Well, isn’t that the million-dollar question?

For an organization like ClickUp it is approximately a $535 million dollar question!

For Notion, $353 Million. 

That’s weird. Same numbers, different order 🤔.

For Asana, $453 million as of this writing. 

These numbers are based on a quick Google search, so take it for what that’s worth or look it up yourself!

What’s the point Seth?!!

The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines!..

Wait! Sorry, wrong article. 

A few people will get that reference!

The point is that companies have raised and spent MANY 100’s of millions of dollars trying to help you find the answer to that question. 

And they will perhaps be disappointed to read this when I say that not a dollar of that money spent will necessarily help you.

Not because they are bad apps!

They are GREAT apps (except maybe for Asana, but that’s another story for another day).

In fact in this article I am going to share with you why I fell in love with Notion, and I fell hard!

The problem is that going straight to any of these apps leaves out a critical part of the equation that no app can solve for you.

This is where you get confused. 

You hear about these apps from seemingly everyone, and they will swear that THIS is THE app that solves the problem of how to get things done!

Which app?

All of them?

The big mistake is that you think the app IS the system, but it is not. 

So, you try one, and use it until it hits a critical mass in volume of data. Then it stops working well. Then you try the next app and at first all is well and then you hit critical mass with that one. 

Along the way you waste innumerable hours setting up each app only to circle back to the same problem, and never understanding what you are missing!

If you study, not just read, but STUDY David Allen’s Getting Things Done you will come to understand why the app itself will never work. 

You need a system which has nothing to do with the app. The app is just a tool. Your system prescribes how you use that app. Without that system it’s like trying to stuff more cars into a traffic jam in hopes that you can clear things up. And then moving to a different intersection to try and solve the same problem, the same way. 

It doesn’t work. 

You need a system that prescribes the following:

You have to be able to capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage with everything you need to do in a system you can trust. 

If you have read Getting Things Done and you don’t recognize that last paragraph, then you have missed the cornerstone of the entire foundation of his system.

And this very likely explains why you’re struggling to get things done. 

Capture

As soon as we talk about “Capture” you can start thinking about the apps. Whichever app you choose will become the place where you capture everything. 

But before you think about any apps, consider what your system would look like using a good old fashioned notebook and a paper bin on your desk. 

Clarify

Most of you suck at writing tasks!

You write something like, “Get that thing done.”

But you fail to clarify what needs to be done next in order to move that thing forward. 

Then when you come back to that task you are stuck because you don’t remember what was in your mind a week ago, because you failed to clarify it properly. 

You need to clarify what needs to be done to move it forward, when it needs to be worked on and when it needs to be done by. These are two distinct dates. If I wait until the due date to work on something I will likely miss a lot of deadlines unless everything I do somehow magically can get done in a single day alongside all of the other things that are due that day. 

You need a DO date and a DUE date!

Maybe most importantly you need to clarify what this means to you. This will often help you prioritize which tasks need to be done first. 

Maybe the client you are doing this for is really important to you?

Maybe getting this thing done will move you much closer to achieving your big picture goals. 

This part of the clarification will help you prioritize everything you need to do on any given day.

To summarize these are the questions you need to answer for every task you write. The simpler the task the quicker the answers will be:

• What do I need to do to complete this?
• What do I need to do next?
• When do I need to work on this?
• How important is this? What does completing this mean to me?

Do you see how this has NOTHING to do with the app you use? You can do this in ANY of them. 

Organize

Once your task is clarified and often at the same time, you will organize it. As in, where does this go? Is it related to a client? Does it go in a project? Or is it just a one off internal task that stands on its own and just needs to get done?

Reflect 

This is a daily process wherein you reflect on your tasks and to do’s and you take the time to decide. Does this need to get done today? Or can it wait?

You have a few statuses you can use for everything. If you overcomplicate this with too many options you stifle yourself. This is really all you should need:

• Inbox
• Idea
• Someday / Maybe
• Waiting
• Scheduled
• Next Action Items
• Projects (planning and in progress)
• Reference
• Done
• Archive (or Trash)

That’s it. 

This allows you to quickly capture and clarify something in your inbox. Then you organize it, and when you reflect on it you decide which of the above items in the list is appropriate for this task right now. 

The fact that you engage in the reflection process daily (sometimes more than once) is how this becomes a system you can trust!

When you look at your list of Next Action Items each day, you are deciding if the time has come to schedule any of them. 

Once something is scheduled it means it is getting done or worked on that day. Then the next day to work on it will be updated until it can be marked complete. 

And when you clarify something, the first thing you describe is what “done” looks like as in, “What do I need to do to complete this?”

This is how this system comes together in a way that your brain (not you) can trust.

This is what will eliminate those endless loops your brain has going on where it reminds you of things you need to do often at the most inopportune times. 

That is when you will realize how much less stressed you are now. So much so that you may admit that you hadn’t realized just how stressed you were!

Engage

With all of the above in place, this part is easy. You engage with everything you need to do in order to get it done.

Why Notion?

All of these project management apps seem to inherently ignore the fact that much of what we do has nothing to do with a project. You need an entire Work Management System which includes the “Knowledge Management” part. And this is where Notion is a super power!

Notion is a weapon of mass construction! See what I did there?

With Notion everything is a page and each page can be something as simple as a task and as complex as an entire dashboard with many levels as well as links and references such that it becomes a neural network of everything you need to engage with on any day. 

This means that there is more than some assembly required, but the good news is that there are people like me out there who have done the assembly for you.

Notion makes this possible because of the ability to create templates. 

So I just launched my Bulletproof Notion Work Management System which includes the following:

• The Templates (essentially the done for you app built in Notion)
• The Educational Resource (a very robust course with over 20 hours of video instruction and textbook style writeups)
• And the Support Community (Slack Workspace)

This is how I ensure that anybody using this system will have everything they need to succeed. You can read some comments from people who are in the program here .

So there you have it…

The way to get things done is to capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage with everything you need to do in a system that you can trust. 

Simple right?

Of course it isn’t. It’s a lot of work to get this set up right. 

Then it gets real simple as long as you maintain it well (which is accomplished in the “reflect” part).

Here is the first video in a playlist of videos that will help you see what this looks like with Notion: