Summary

This article explains how to create a "rollup" of a rollup in Notion, a personal life management system, by demonstrating the process of rolling up a point value from a Daily Log Book page into a weekly page.

Abstract

The article begins by introducing Notion, a personal life management system, and acknowledging that it may not have all the features one might want. The author then explains the concept of a rollup in Notion, which is a feature that allows users to look up a value from a linked database and perform operations on that value, similar to a lookup between two databases in Excel. The author explains that sometimes users may want to roll up a value from one database into another, and provides a workaround for achieving this by creating a "rollup" of a rollup. The author outlines four steps for creating a rollup of a rollup: creating a relation between two original databases, creating a rollup from the source database, creating a formula in the first database that restates the property that was rolled up from the source database, and creating a relationship to the first database in the second database and rolling up the formula created in the first step. The author notes that this process works with a variety of numerical properties and text values, and provides a demonstration video. The author also mentions that this process was inspired by Marie Poulin's "Domestic Awesomeness" database, and provides links to Marie's original tweets about the concept. Finally, the author encourages readers to join Marie's Notion Mastery course and community.

Bullet points

Notion is a personal life management system that may not have all the features one might want.
A rollup in Notion allows users to look up a value from a linked database and perform operations on that value.
Sometimes users may want to roll up a value from one database into another, and this article provides a workaround for achieving this.
The workaround involves creating a "rollup" of a rollup by following four steps.
This process works with a variety of numerical properties and text values.
The author provides a demonstration video of the process.
The process was inspired by Marie Poulin's "Domestic Awesomeness" database.
The author encourages readers to join Marie's Notion Mastery course and community.

Create a “Rollup” of Rollup in Notion

Notion is an awesome tool for creating your personal life management system. But, like all software, Notion doesn’t have every single feature you might want and so sometimes you have to find work arounds to achieve your goals. One of those, for me, is the Rollup of a Rollup.

What’s a Rollup?

Does anyone else have a hankering for the 80s icon fruit rollup when you use this feature? Only me?

A rollup in Notion is a special type of field that allows you to look up a value from a database you’ve linked to and repeat the value or perform various operations on that value (average, sum, etc.) and record that new value in your current database. If you’re proficient in Excel, a Rollup is like a Lookup between two databases.

Why would you “Rollup” a Rollup?

In Notion, you may want to roll up a value from say a Daily Log Book page into a weekly page. There are many, many ways to achieve this and I caveat this entire article with the fact that generally, better database structure allows you to not have to use my method. But sometimes, a quick and dirty way to get something done is the best way to do something and that is what this is.

In the sample video below, I’ll show you how to roll up a point value that you rolled up from another database into a daily journal into your weekly log.

How do you perform this awesomeness?

There are really four steps in creating a “rollup” of a rollup.

Create a relation between the two original databases. We’ll call them the source database and database 1.
Create a rollup from the source database in database 1.
Create a formula in database 1 that simply restate the property that you just rolled up from the source database.
In database 2 (where you want to put the rollup of the rollup) create a relationship to database 1 and then create a rollup of the formula you created in step 3.

Does this always work?

I’ve tried this with a variety of numerical properties and I’ve not found a time when it has broken yet. I’ve also tried it on things like showing original text and that seems to work as well. So, thus far, I’ve not found a time when it doesn’t work. That said, I’ve certainly not come close to replicating every use case so I’m sure it’s possible there is a use case where it fails.

Can I see this in a demo?

Why, yes you can. Here is a relatively quick video (about 6 minutes) demonstrating one way I used this process.

The use cases really are endless. Have a specific example you want to know if it works? Drop me a comment and I’ll consider testing it and posting as a video.

Where can I learn how to do things like this?

As I mentioned in the video, the use case I showed was inspired by Marie Poulin’s “Domestic Awesomeness” database.

This was her original tweet about the concept.

And this was her follow up where she started to show how she was actually gamifying it.

I’m a member of Marie’s incredible Notion Mastery course and community. You’ll come for the course and not only will you stay for that, you’ll also stay for the community. I’d love to have you join me in Notion Mastery (affiliate link).

Here are Tasia’s amazing Journal Headers: https://tasia.gumroad.com/l/notion-headers and her full-fledged journal template: https://tasia.gumroad.com/l/2022journal

I’d love to know how you use gamification in your own workflows — Notion or otherwise. Post a comment here and let me know where you find this helpful.