Another Notion Article #4

Starting to Get Comfortable with the Program

It seems I am constantly turning over a new leaf, trying to be better than I was the day before. I’m using Notion to help me with this, but it is not going as planned. I have a series of Learning Notion articles going on. This, though, is just me getting comfortable with the program.

I still don’t have everything configured how I want it to be. Let’s just say it’s a work in progress. What I did this morning was to update my Bits of Inspiration section on my home page. This gets automatically transferred to other pages just to remind me of the “Thought of the Day” so that I can be inspired anew if I visit any of those pages. What is not automatic is I do a copy and paste it into another section I call The Nest, so I’ve got a record of all of them. The idea for doing this came from when my Notion instructor Ali at SkillShare put his favorite quote on his opening page.

Collecting these little bits of inspiration could eventually turn into a book. I’ve actually got one I wrote at LuLu.com with 365 days’ worth of channeled information. It’s called When Spirit Whispers, published in 2013.

I’m about three weeks into the program, and I haven’t been doing things on a daily basis. I’m actually thinking about getting rid of the chores section because I don’t do them. Why be disappointed every day?

What I was thinking about was what a dismal failure I am at doing any of the things I want to do on a daily basis. For me, on a daily basis is that I won’t forget to do the thing. If I do it every day, I just won’t forget. If I forget just one day, I’m already back there in bad-habit land. Basically, I forget better than I remember. I wonder if I’ve always been that way or if it is just old age creep? Note: try to be kinder to myself.

Here is another thing I thought about. I do not decorate, nor have I ever decorated any of the places we’ve lived all at once. What I am most comfortable with is to do decorating by degrees. Hammer a couple of nails in the wall and hang some pictures. Two months down the line, I’ll sort out the rugs. It’s a grassroots, organic sort of decorating. If anybody were to ask me what style my house is done in, I would say early yard sale special. It appears that is what I’ve been doing with my Notion pages, too.

So, here’s Tuesday’s Bit of Inspiration:

Tuesday, 10/3/23: Creating habits is hard. Doing them in little pieces might be easier. Instead of saying, “Spend one hour doing something,” say, “Spend whatever time you need to do the thing.” Keep track of what you are doing and how long it takes, and you can determine in a week or so when is the best placement for the thing to happen during the day and how long for it to go. It sounds simple, but it is not. Just do it.

I wrote another Bit of Inspiration for Today:

Thursday 10/5/23: It’s bad enough to slog through your life as a working person. Don’t make the mistake of slogging through your retirement.

In getting comfortable with my Bit of Inspiration section on Notion, I am not going to do it on a daily basis. I’m just going to do it when the spirit moves me.

I have found where I can get apps specially made for Notion. I found the clock, the calendar, and the timer (though I’m still looking for a better one) at a couple of different places: Apption.co and Widgetbox.app. I’m sure there are more places to find them. Apption.co was recommended by my SkillShare instructor and I found Widgetbox by Googling.

Okay, so my best time to do learning is before 2 pm. I’m a morning person. Right now, it is almost 11 am. I wrote an article about how I want to start giving psychic readings again. I was pleased to be able to do some channeling with Seth in it. I wanted to investigate a few things before I published it. But it took up some time. The other thing, of course, is this article.

My schedule is not at a certain time; I will do this, and exactly an hour later, I will do that. It is more in the moment and has a softer retired flow about it. It took me years to become accustomed to it, but I have to say, hands down it is a luxury to be able to do what I want when I want to.

Real life for me back when I was working at the last job I had before I retired was I worked as fast as I could when I first got to work at 7:30 am. The office wasn’t going to open for another hour, and I never got paid for that first hour I put in every day, but it was quiet, and I was on salary by then. As an aside? When somebody says they’re going to put you on salary, make sure that doesn’t mean your per-hour rate takes a nosedive. Just saying.

Generally, I worked as fast as I could with very few interruptions until about 9 or 10 am. Then, the “you know what” hit the fan, and I wasn’t usually able for the rest of the day to get anything or much done from my to-do list. By that time, I was hitting the pitches as they came in, fast and furious, for the next four or five hours.

Basically, retired life has kept a similar rhythm to it in that I find I am at the top of my game in the earlier hours.

Maybe what I need is a week in review to look at rather than a humongous to-do list. Learning to use Notion might just be a lesson in how to learn about myself.

I might just keep a pad of paper going each day where I list what I did. Like today, I actually ironed my husband’s shirts. He’s been going around for years with wrinkled shirts. The wifey just fixed that. I found my Chinese teapot so I can practice doing tea readings — article to follow eventually. I watched a terrific YouTube video about the NaNoWriMo coming up in November. I started work on three other articles. It’s 5:30 pm, and I’ve been going since 7:30 am. I’m tired, and that’s long enough.

The Links: Notion Notion SkillShare Class with Ali Abdaal Apption.co WidgetBox.app When Spirit Whispers by Pauline at LuLu.com YouTube NaNoWriMo Interview with Chris Baty and Grant Faulkner