Hey all! Hope you enjoy this one - I've received quite a few requests for a tutorial showing the full build process for adding PARA to Notion. If you'd like to use or study the finished template, you can get it here: thomasjfrank.com/templates/para-method-template-for-notion/ You'll also find this PARA structure in Ultimate Brain, which is a complete second brain for Notion: thomasjfrank.com/brain/ What new tutorials do you want to see in the future?

Loved this. Took me twice the time to create than to watch, but that's a fraction of the time it took you to learn/develop this out. Deeply thankful. Truly. You deserve so much damn praise for what you are doing.

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 📚 The PARA method (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive) is a powerful way to organize your digital life and tasks. 02:25 📂 Creating a PARA dashboard in Notion helps you manage projects, areas, resources, tasks, and notes effectively. 03:49 🗂️ Notion's flexibility allows you to consolidate tasks, notes, and reference material for each project in one place, enhancing organization. 05:12 📝 Differentiate between projects (actionable), areas (life buckets), resources (interests), and archive (inactive items) in your PARA setup. 08:51 🗃️ Setting up various databases (tasks, notes, projects, areas/resources) with properties (status, type, archive) creates an organized structure. 14:59 📚 Implementing relations between databases (tasks to projects, notes to projects/areas/resources) links different elements for efficient workflow. 18:35 📄 Utilizing reciprocal properties allows bidirectional relations, enhancing the interconnectivity of your PARA system. 19:29 🛠️ Setting up projects in Notion using the PARA method. 19:56 🧩 Creating a relation within the same database for areas and resources. 20:25 📑 Setting page limits for resource properties to maintain organization. 20:51 📊 Using roll-up properties to find the root area of notes within resources. 22:12 🔗 Explaining roll-up properties' ability to reach through relations and gather information. 23:08 🏁 Creating templates for projects, areas, and resources in Notion. 24:33 📚 Organizing templates with quick links and toggle blocks for improved navigation. 26:23 📋 Utilizing the color setting and handles for multi-column layouts in Notion. 27:22 📆 Configuring properties and filters for effective task and note management. 29:39 📊 Grouping and sorting tasks by status for better project overview. 31:00 🧰 Setting default templates and using advanced filters for project and note organization. 31:55 🔗 Creating area and resource templates while planning for relational database views. 35:07 📚 Building area templates with board views for projects, gallery views for resources, and list views for notes. 37:52 🗃️ Grouping and filtering notes using roll-up properties and archive settings. 39:45 🛠️ ParaDash board: Grouping by base URL in Notion database for organization. 40:12 📊 Creating a dashboard structure in Notion using headings for tasks, notes, projects, and areas/resources. 41:40 🔄 Rearranging dashboard sections in Notion using horizontal lines for stacking tasks, notes, projects, and areas/resources. 42:08 📋 Implementing linked databases in Notion for tasks and notes, utilizing filters and customizing views. 44:27 🗃️ Setting up Inbox views in Notion with filters for tasks and notes, including Next Seven Days and Completed views. 45:51 📦 Creating an Archive page in Notion for completed tasks and archived notes, utilizing filters and linked databases. 48:15 🏢 Configuring a dashboard view for Projects in Notion, using groupings, card previews, and customization. 49:35 🌐 Creating linked databases for Areas and Resources in Notion, differentiating between areas and resources with filters. 53:41 🎨 Aesthetic tweaks to the Notion dashboard, customizing shown properties and optimizing the layout. 57:00 🔗 Conclusion and additional resources for enhancing Notion productivity and skills. Made with HARPA AI

This was great. Literally took me like 6 sessions over a couple of weeks including procrastination to complete. I might eventually buy the ultimate brain now that I know what's going on with all the moving pieces. Thanks for all the free stuff you've hooked me up with over the years that actually has helped me be more productive without having to "medicate" my "adhd". You should really be satisfied with the knowledge that you are tangibly changing lives for the better.

Huge THANK YOU for this resource - I’ve just managed to build this as a complete newbie to Notion, by playing you at 75% speed and pausing/rewinding every 5 secs. 😄 I feel like I’ve now got a basic understanding of how Notion works, and am tempted to buy your ultimate template. Thank you again - very watchable (without the constant jump-cuts that make most YT videos unwatchable for me) and great presenting/teaching style. You’re a gem, Thomas!

Wow a full hour! This’ll be the Bible of how to organise your life in Notion 👏🏻

Brilliant. I'm getting your Ultimate Brain for sure, but I really want to learn Notion properly, so I'll rewatch this and copy all you do. You're an amazing teacher. I love that you go fast, yet always with perfect clarity. It shows trust in our intelligence, and we can always rewind and/or slow down the video when needed.

Immensely clarifying for using Notion in general AND for adapting the PARA system to work with Notion. Thank you! I would be very interested to see you demo how to actually use it. How do you plan your day, your week, capture thoughts and web clippings, generate new ideas and insights from going through your dashboard, choose next actions and decide which projects and tasks to work on. That would be awesome. By the way, how you described Notion in one of your videos with Tiago (“it lets you program without having to code”) made it click for me.

Would be great to see HOW you’re actually working with the template, what information you put where and the strategy behind it 👍🏻

Thomas, this is incredible. The fact that you provided the template is absolutely outstanding. Thank you so much.

Wow, I could not have discovered your guide at a better time! I have been working on my PARA dashboard for the past few months and am just starting to run into some scaling issues. This guide has saved me weeks of research, trial and error. Thank you soo much for all the thought and work you put into this!!

Elite master class, thank you. I use this every single day and the iterations and customizations coming from this initial template have been mind boggling.

Thanks for explaning everything !! It made it possible for a complete notion noob like me to not only use your PARA template but also tweek it to my convenience, like adding a "to-do" section within the areas using the roll up method you explained for the notes, to be able to see the tasks within projects. I can't thank you enough, you're such a great teacher !

Wow. This is the most articulate comment section I've seen on KZfaq. So many great comments, I liked them all lol. I guess that's why we're nerding out here on Notion & creating structure. Forreal, Thomas - this is fantastic. I just found you as I'm looking to take Notion to the next level and this is awesome. Subbed. Thanks for so many insights 🧠

Thanks so much for this tutorial Thomas! I am excited to use the template I created and happy to have learned so much about Notion functionality along the way. You are an excellent teacher providing concise and easy to follow steps at a decent pace. Just subscribed to your channel to expand on my Notion learning. Blessings!

Everything sounds so complicated to newbies but you made it really comprehensive. thank you and also thank you for the free template!

Thank you! It took a minute...but your generous, thorough, smart tutorials have guided me to create a functional, organization system within the Notions ecosystem. I will now be more focused and intentional my both business and personal life.

So glad I found this tutorial and template! You broke down the dashboards and categories into ways that makes so much more sense than a lot of other templates out there, it really feels like I can look at my brain and life on a simple automated sheet! Many thanks again

Wow... wow... just WOW! Amazing how I could finally get to understand a little more of the complexity of Notion and start building my second brain thanks to this concise tutorial.. Thank you so much for such a valuable contribution 🙏 You rock!

Thanks Thomas very usefull video but personally I think it would be very beneficial have a video center around the functionality of the template. After following your video on how to build the Second Brain I still find myself confused on how and where to add things. The video itself is already very compact with information about the inner workings of notion itself that individually picking apart the user functionality becomes somewhat cumbersome. I think a video showing you using it like adding, removing things from the resources, areas, and projects would be very useful.

First time that I can complete a tutorial on KZfaq. Amazing and super-detailed!

Thank you so much for sharing this. It was so helpful to follow along and see how you organize each area of the system and the logic behind it. Very helpful.

Hey Thomas, just wanted to say THANK YOU for this. I was so excited that you had done a PARA Dashboard. I've been working in Notion for awhile now and sat and spent one session building this out with you after reading Taigo's book. This gave me a better idea of how relations & rollups relate to each other from different databases. I like that you build out databases separately and do referenced databases on your dashboards. Going to start implementing that in my workflow as well. I also like the advanced filter options. Learned a lot, much appreciated!

Build complete! Thank you very much Thomas. I'm sure I'll be even more thankful once I start migrating my notes from various platforms into this system!!

The best part pf the tutoril, in my case, is to be able to see all relations, understanding why, and all the explaining. Thank you very much for everything.

You are a hero thank you so much for this Template!

Thank you for the detailed explanation and the free template!

Thanks Thomas for this really in-depth guide. I followed your video to build the template and I'm shocked at what I've managed to build. Amazing!

Wow. I don't know how to thank you enough. You are the absolute best in Notion tips (I wonder if the Notion guys themselves are so good at teaching like you). Best tutorial I have ever seen. Thank you so much

The best Notion teacher ever! 🙏🏻

This is very good! especially when you bought Thomas's template and realise it has so many function which you have not idea how to utilize them. by buiilding a basic one you know more how those works!

Thank you Thomas, perfect timing with Tiago’s new book next week. You are the Notion Oracle ❤

Thank you so much for this tutorial Thomas. It helped me to make my own 2nd Brain on Notion. Apart from PARA, I also added a section for Daily Journaling, and a few widgets like Pomodoro, Countdown, etc.

Thank you so much for this tutorial! Helped a lot👏. I successful constructed my second brain! Thanks a lot man 🤝

Perfect timing! was just done with understanding the P.A.R.A method from Tiago's Second Brain Quickstart guide. Going to spend the weekend building this! Thanks Thomas!

Very very things I watch on youtube are life changing. This is!!

Tremdously helpful to watch (and listen to your throught process of) the build while also being able to look under the hood of the built template and play around. Thank you! I'm heading over to watch your databases video.

Love this and all the stuff you make. Followed along and very satisfied with what I've been able to build. Thanks!

My man FLEW THROUGH this. WHEW. I'm on my 20th time watching in 5 months trying to get this right. LOL. I almost paid for the one on your site. I see your trick sir! LOOOOL. Can't wait to use this!!!!

I hope u have more subscribers, your channel is really helpful and detailed, i love it so much

Thanks a lot for the tutorial I did miss something in archiving Area/Resource Part and I realized that when I built the dashboard 🙃so at the end I got the template from the link just to make sure everything will work fine.

I love this tutorial I have had Notion for ages but never really used it because I didn't know how many options I actually had. I would say I am an absolute beginner and yet I understood most of it very well and was able to build my own database. But Notion has made an update and some things are different now. We have more options, which is good, but some of the things in the video, such as some of the codes, can only be implemented if you really get your head around them. But I have managed to do that. Many thanks for the video and for any tips. :)

Thank you for the excellent content... I think in the main diagram of the PARA method, we need to consider a relation between Tasks and Areas. For instance, you work out for your health, and this concurrent task is directly related to the Health or Personal area of your life.

Thank you so much. I'm really grateful for these videos and guidance. As it was coming together I couldn't believe you made this so I could actually create something like this! 🥰 Would you be open to adding and showing us how to incorporate the Eisenhower Matrix into the dashboard? For someone who receives a Lot of incoming tasks throughout the day and has to determine very quickly which bucket it needs to go into, this might be super beneficial because it'd be so visual. Thank you for everything! 🌅💕

Quite a marathon tutorial there. Thanks for all the effort. Looking forward to giving this a fair shake. I've been using Craft for a year or so and I'm feeling the Notion pull lately.

This tutorial has been essential in taking the concepts of Forte's book and developing my second brain. Thank you so much!

Thank You Thomas, your tutorial is amazing, didn't even realize till 30 mins.

Your channel is sooo underrated. Keep up your great work!

Thank you very much for such a detailed video. Learned a lot from you. Thanks again!

Damn! Such a good crash course to Notion. Thanks a lot!

This is an amazing tutorial. Building PARA system in Notion helps me understand how the Ultimate Brain template works. I feel more confident making changes to UB!

Thanks for making this video! Really helped me understand Notion, and now I have a system I can tweak to my liking!

Your teaching is excellent! Thank you for this content Shot out from Brazil

6:37 Goals 19:02 relations 23:42 Quick links & Mobile, Templates 25:50 Optik 27:00 Self-Referencing Filters Templates & Tasks in Projects

Wow! Thank you so much this is amazing!

It's amazing tutorial. It opened my mind for a bunch of ways to use Notion for any other areas

Amazing that you even dive into Regex. I'm thoroughly surprised. Thank you!

Never clicked faster to any KZfaq video than this time 🤩

i wish i could like this twice. so good!

This is a GREAT video because it helps me understand PARA just a little bit more. Thanks!

First of all, thank you so much for the WAY you teach. I'm very particular with how I learn and you my friend have a sincere knack for education! In fact, I've bounced back and forth between your channel, RedGregory's and BetterCreating's and it's yours that I consistently return to. Also, thank you SOOOO much for introducing us to Whimsical! I just signed up for a student account which gives me free access beyond the typical free account. Lastly, I thought you might find this "Whimsical"... see what I did there? :) When explaining the PARA acronym, I explain "Archive" as the place where completed STUFF (keeping it family friendly now) goes to die. :-)

Do appreciate your sharing

Thank you! I just found out about the idea of a second brain and I’m thinking of doing it. As a really organized person I find this helpful to sort all my notes and ideas in one place. I’m having a hard time to sort them lately because I was using separate apps which also made it hard for me to find them when I need them. It’s overwhelming lately that it made me uninstall them and stick to Notion instead.

Why so many PARA implementation in Notion treat Areas as a categorization for Projects. But Projects and Areas serve different roles. Areas, unlike Projects, is a section for non-time-sensitive, or long-term, or life-long goals, activities, etc. For example, Travel Bucketlists (non time sensitive), Finance Tracker (lifelong routines), etc. If you want to add a categorization, just make a different database independent from Areas or you can use Archive instead so you can search files in Archive section per category, like Study, Personal, Business, etc.

Great tutorial! Learned a ton about Notion and about the Para system.

Wow wtf this is soooo good!!! Thank you so much ❤❤

Thank you so so much for this video! I’m currently reading the book and this is exactly what I needed

My English is far away from perfect but your videos are cristal clear… Thanks a lot

Thank you for creating the turoial, not enough people doing the step-by-step stuff imo. I need to make it myself for it to work for me. :) 👍

I really tried to learn it - (the notion, not the PARA - I loved Tiago's book) and forced myself to watch tons of video tutorials (including this one) for two days. All in all, it's just a note-taking app that is supposed to help you to get organized. Instead, it's overwhelming - far from being intuitive, if it were an intuitive app then YT wouldn't be filled with tutorials. Anyways, if I am forcing myself to do it then I know I am going to give up using it at some point so - I'll just stick to my Moleskine journal and Apple notes. Thanks for the video!

thank you so much for this amazing video

I kind of already use para by making folders of projects,resource,etc. Looks like great minds think alike

Thanks!! Really awesome tutorial!! I just created one of this and enjoyed the process. I will try to put a Habit Tracker and a Recurrence Review Study Tasks :D

This was great! Thanks Thomas!

Super useful guide, thank you! :)

Thanks for the video. Very helpful!

Fantastic tutorial! I learnt so much apart from setting this specific use case, thank you!

This was amazing, thanks a lot!!

Thank you Thomas

Can I point out one important point missed since you adopted this version(Though I have to say this system is too awesome!!)... Its the fact that why Tiago wanted to keep Projects and Areas seperate. Areas is kind of always there and keep on improving stuffs, but Projects are those stuff with clear start and end. So when its possible for a project to become Area, keeping a project always mapped to Area defeats the purpose- That we want in area to focus on things for long term.

What a fantastic tutorial! Thank you so much :-)

This was very informative. I only wish it were taught in bright mode. Sometimes it is hard to see when learning. I would have liked the toggle to black/night mode throughout to get the overall feel and maybe a final finish in the black/night mode, since that is your overall look.

I noticed a lot of criticism in the comments, but it did help me a lot.

i really liked your video, it’s really nice how you fluently use the software while explaining the important concepts… i still don’t see any utility in joining the areas and resources databases, but i’ll try to adapt it and implement it in my language… saludos desde chile!

Perfect content to finsih off the week with

I absolutely loved it

Another great tutorial Thomas 👏

Heyyo! Followed this from scratch and loved it! (even made my personal site in notion because of this video) Two questions in this system: A: When I'm assigning tasks to projects, I have some old archived projects that show up, do you ever move projects to another database when they're truly archived so that they don't show up in the search results? R: What's the proper way to use resources? Should that be a link I want to read/view later? Or is it something that I can use in the future? Is a resource ever 'done'? Overall struggling with the RA 🤣 Thomas, you truly rock, thank you, Bry

This is very helpful. Thanks.

Love it when a creator chooses to sectionize videos like this and is transparent at the beginning-- earned a sub!

Thank you, I appreciate it

Too complex. I have one main page under which there are 6 subpages. I have created a table using Table View from the database, and now I want to use the same table for the rest of the 5 pages. However, when I select the source, it changes the value across all tables, which is a headache. Now I need to create the same table again and again manually for each page. Could you let me know if anybody has a simple solution to this? I have tried the import/export thing, the problem is, it imports a database table into a simple table format. So it is of no use.

Perfect content for the weekend 🥰

First of all: thanks for the tutorial! For me, a begginer, it's mind blowing. Question: after I write a task at the Task Inbox, how do I classify it to a certain project?

Amazing content !

10:52 I honestly always thought that I was the only one who's mind had strictly assigned colours to things, but i guess that's the beauty of colour coding. Since grade 9 (2015 or 2016) I have been using a yellow highlighter for definitions (the word) and blue for the explications. And they have to be a specific shade, and otherwise I'll opt to use pencil until I get the right shade highlighter again😂💔

The class is very good, but can be a bit frustrating. For instance at 24:35 the arrow key is used to create a toggle block but no verbal description of what key stroke is used to do that. If I add an arrow all I get is an arrow, no toggle block. You can hear some other key being pressed but since the keystrokes are not described I'm left wondering how to do it. After creating the quick links everything after that is in the quick links object. Can't see how to split it or add something underneath the quick links box. Very frustrating.

This video is truly a gem. Learned so much from this. I do have one question though, would you recommend moving all files from a cloud storage solution like Google Drive to Notion, or just link them? Would really love your opinion on this.

THANK YOU!!

Hey Thomas! We want a video on PARA + The Ultimate Task Manager!