Digital Spring Cleaning A Digital deep clean can be a way to find a slice of calm in a chaotic times. Hey Reader, Last week, just as I was getting ready to dive into a productive work session, I noticed my Mac’s spinning beach ball of death. My computer was lagging badly. Apps were misbehaving—my screenshot software wouldn’t open, Adobe suite was crashing, and I discovered my email hadn’t been syncing for days. Everything was either crawling along or completely frozen. I couldn’t access the...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
A cheeky gift In this newsletter: a Severance-themed Valentine's gift, two Notion videos, and a new podcast episode. Hey Reader, This week I'm sending you some cheeky Severance-inspired valentines! Feel free to share these with your work besties, your favorite “innies” and “outies,” or anyone who appreciates a good workplace dystopia reference. After all, nothing says “I value our professional relationship” quite like a Valentine’s Day card inspired by a show about corporate-mandated...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Fixing broken copy-and-pasted formulas If you're anything like me, you've been excited about the ability to write formulas in automations, but, as an educator—and just someone who loves sharing interesting solves—sharing these formulas is really, really broken challenging. This week I created a guide documenting the current state of sharing formulas in automations, along with a video documenting the workarounds I'm doing to make it easier to fix broken formulas. CHECK OUT THE GUIDE AND VIDEO...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Happy New Year What's giving you energy? Hey Reader, Happy New Year! I finally finished my yearly tradition of doing an annual review process. It's interesting to see how these have evolved over the years, as I've been doing them since 2013 or so. In my 20s I was hungry to hone my skills, develop new products, and figure out my unique advantages. My 30s were about refining my systems, streamlining my processes, and stabilizing revenue. My 40s are now focused more on sustainability, harmony,...
4 months ago • 2 min read
The Art of Helping Whenever folks ask for technical help (with Notion or any tech), I'm always delighted when they take the time to ask the whole question. What do I mean by that? It's the difference between "ugh, it's broken" and a well-defined problem statement, with tests, images, and reproduction steps. The former is very difficult for even the most export Notion practitioner to diagnose, while the latter means you're in a much better place to receive the help you're after. I wrote up a...
4 months ago • 2 min read
A Helpful Guide to Designing Neurofriendly Notion Workspaces This past week, Marie shipped a robust new guide based on both her experiences with ADHD as well as many of the principles in our Principles of Dashboarding Masterclass. Turns out designing for neurodiversity is great for all people, and a lot of the same principles we design around are also great for creating "Neurofriendly" experiences. CHECK OUT THE GUIDE New Features, New Videos This past week we finally got one of the...
5 months ago • 1 min read
Designing for Everyone When our digital spaces are cluttered, confusing, or contain too much information, it’s a recipe for overwhelm, anxiety, and burnout. Hey Reader, This week I put the finishing touches on a guide that I've been working on for a few months. It stemmed from a question that one of our students asked in the community, in a post titled Learning about neurodivergence for PKM and designing workspaces. The student has ADHD and wondered if there were any resources or literature...
5 months ago • 2 min read
Notion as a Curiosity Engine Hello, there, Notion fan. It's been a bit. Marie and I have had a busy autumn so far. We spoke at Tiago Forte's Second Brain Summit in Los Angeles and then we made another trip to San Francisco for Marie to speak at the Make with Notion conference at the end of October. If you've ever done a conference speaking gig before, you might be aware of how much time and energy it takes to prepare, so we've been in recovery mode this month. However, we're pretty happy with...
5 months ago • 2 min read
Perfectionism kills productivity. Digital permaculture offers us a way to reframe perfectionism and embrace learning. Hey Reader, AH, perfectionism. It's a topic I love to discuss. As someone who once identified with being a "perfectionist," it look many years of coaching and therapy to unpack and reframe my relationship with perfectionism. Perfectionism is your brain trying to protect you from harm. From coming up with an idea that is embarrassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer...
7 months ago • 3 min read