Again, one of the main drawbacks of having access to so much technology and apps like we do today is that it’s easy to feel like you’re getting things done simply by using the tool. You can feel productive setting up your to-do lists in Todoist or setting up your Kanban boards in Trello, but at the end of the day, you also need to get the work done.
Notion removes the hurdle of having too many tools at our disposal and not knowing where to start. It’s a very complex tool that can do almost anything all the other tools combined couldn’t do, and if you learn to use it right and stick to the functionalities you need, it can 10x your productivity.
“Allocate time for 90 minutes every day for the next 90 days to work on a goal that you want to achieve.” — Robin Sharma
When you’re busy running a company, it often feels like you don’t have time to develop good work habits. When I started running my business, I had just run a marathon, and I could hardly believe I had managed to develop such a consistent running practice. Running almost every day, following a strict schedule, seemed nearly impossible now that I had to dedicate almost all my time to getting my business off the ground.
There are a bunch of techniques to develop habits, and the 90/90/1 is a very efficient one because it “forces you” to think 3 months down the line, from the start. It’s not just about developing a habit, it’s also about making progress. Imagine how much you can improve on one specific thing by dedicating an hour and a half to it every day for 3 months.
When you combine mid to long-term thinking with putting things in the calendar, you get the 90/90/1 Notion template:
- Define what you want to achieve over the next 90 days
- Use the three different databases. Project to accommodate the project list, Notes to hold fixed notes, and Journal to record daily journals.
- Click + on the calendar date. Type in the task you want to accomplish that day, then tick if you did it
It can be challenging to know which projects to follow and which ones to ditch when running a company. Oftentimes, writing things down in a structured way helps a lot.
When my CEO sold his Saas company for $30 million a few years back, I had already been working for him for 3 years. I worked in the marketing department and our job was to promote and advertise our product and its new features. Every time we would meet with the tech team to get an overview of the timeline and what new features were coming out, we would argue about what needed to come out asap.
Our CEO got word of the situation, and he sent us all a simple PDF template to fill out and answer the following questions:
- What features are we working on right now?
- Which ones are we still optimizing/testing?
- Which ones are ready to go into production?
- Of the ones that are ready, which contribute to growth the most?
- When can we realistically go live with at least one of the features mentioned in (4)?
This helped us get a better overview of each project, and it was also useful to plan our marketing pipeline ahead of time.
The Notion Project Proposal template has a very similar approach, which is why I included it here. It’s originally meant for internal use in agencies, but it can work great for goals and project planning at a startup too. It also includes a “Deliverables & Pricing” category which is very handy, especially for young companies that are often short on cash and resources.
OKR is a goal management framework that helps organizations implement and execute their strategy. We used it at my CEO’s company to go from the brink of bankruptcy to selling for $30 million. Saying it was a game changer would be a huge understatement. The system is based on 3 main pillars:
- Clarity: key results lead to objectives, defined in the overall strategy.
- Segmentation: each department can have its own goals while being part of the same strategy.
- Scalability: whether you’re a one-person company or a 100-employee business, you can use this strategy.
OKR = Objective Key Results
- Objective: it explains where you want to go, and what the desired end result is. Once an objective is reached, another objective will replace the current one. Objectives in the OKR strategy are not technical, not measured, and usually don’t contain numbers. They should be as easy to understand as possible.
- Key Result: unlike the Objective the Key Result should be as precise, technical, and measured as possible. It is used as an indicator of whether or not the Objective is being worked on. Key results should be time-bound, often quarterly or yearly.
To implement this strategy at my company, we used Gtmhub and not Notion. Here is what the tool looks like:
