Notion Office Hours: Creating an Intentional Life with MuchelleB ☀️

Getting Things Done (GTD) works best when it’s treated as a trustable system—not a rigid set of rules—and MichelleB’s Notion setup is built around that idea. After revisiting the GTD book a second time, she moved from a scattered, paper-and-app workflow toward a single “life” hub in Notion, then layered in practical tweaks that match how she actually thinks and works. The payoff is a calmer day-to-day experience: fewer things slipping through the cracks, clearer next steps, and a weekly review that turns captured chaos into actionable plans.

Her GTD approach starts with capture, because the system fails if ideas stay trapped in the brain. She doesn’t rely on Notion for every capture moment. Instead, she uses Things (an older to-do app) to offload thoughts quickly, plus voice capture via Google Home and a physical inbox for paper. Everything eventually funnels into Notion during a weekly review, where she converts raw inputs into tasks, projects, and “someday” ideas. That separation—fast capture elsewhere, structured processing in Notion—keeps the workflow usable rather than over-engineered.

Inside Notion, her core dashboard centers on a master “next action” list. It’s organized as a table with context columns—home tasks, phone calls, errands, computer-based work, and “work waiting for”—so the system tells her what to do based on where she is and what tools she has. She also keeps “due dates” mostly out of the picture for tasks that don’t truly require urgency, using them sparingly for items that genuinely need a deadline (like buying a birthday present). Projects sit in a separate list with statuses such as not started, in progress, complete, and waiting on, and each project links back to its next action, following GTD’s insistence that every active project has a concrete next step.

Weekly review is the engine that makes it all coherent. Her reset includes classic GTD elements like getting clear and getting current, plus personal maintenance such as updating a YouTube content schedule, revisiting notes from podcasts and books, and running a money reset for budgeting. She also uses “trigger lists” during brain dumps—checklists that jog memory—so she can capture everything without holding it in her head. For long-term overflow, she splits ideas into “someday” and “hats” (things that sound appealing but aren’t commitments), preventing her project list from ballooning.

Beyond productivity, she builds intentionality into the system through “areas of focus,” including relationships, self-development, and health. She ties reflection to her values and uses monthly and quarterly resets to plan life admin and more occasional obligations. She also maintains a “life notes” section inspired by the commonplace book concept: high-level takeaways from podcasts, books, and content she consumes, stored with source and date so they can be revisited.

A key theme throughout the session is customization. MichelleB warns against adopting pretty templates that don’t match personal habits. Her advice: start small (often one dashboard or one task list), learn the essential database mechanics, and iterate slowly. She also keeps content creation mostly separate from personal GTD next actions, managing it through a content calendar and script/editing checklists, while reserving GTD for the everyday operational work of life.

In the end, her Notion setup isn’t about building the most complex system—it’s about building one that stays current, stays simple enough to maintain, and turns captured thoughts into clear actions on a reliable schedule.