12. Guidance Inc.
In the last email (subject: System upgrade), I shared how Notion had finally given me what I wanted - a satnav for work. I now had a fully functional dashboard, showing me what I should be doing today, sorted by priority.
I had also started wondering how I could apply systems thinking to my client work (it was around this period in my career I had become disenchanted with L&D's focus on training, and I’d started taking performance consulting more seriously).
Surely these ideas could be integrated to help people perform better too?
I couldn’t help but wonder what I was missing…
And as I continued to explore Notion’s functionality, I discovered something incredible: ‘templates’.
Now, that may be a combination of words that has never been said before. And unless you’re a performance-focused, systems thinking, home automating productivity dork like me, I wouldn’t blame you for skipping past this email to spend your day doing something more gratifying.
But, seeing as you’re still reading, I shall proceed…
TEMPLATES. ARE. AMAZING.
And I’m not even talking about the functionality - but the implications.
As I mentioned before, Notion is built on databases. What I didn’t mention is that each database entry is a page - a bit like a webpage - in which you can add text, lists, images, videos etc.
And the fascinating thing about pages is they can be saved as templates.
So, not only could I embed information into each task, I could create pre-designed content which would automatically appear when a particular task type required it.
Let me share an example…
I used to make YouTube videos. And I developed a pretty reliable workflow that looked like this:
Brainstorm video ideas
Research high ranking titles
Write script
Design storyboard
Setup camera and lighting
Record video
Edit video
Write description
Publish to YouTube
Share on socials
With Notion’s template feature, I could turn this workflow into a checklist, and then save it as a template. Meaning any time I created a new task, I could auto-populate it with this pre-saved checklist.
And this is where the whole thing started to blow my mind.
Because you can embed any type of content into a Notion template. So, not only can you create a checklist, you can also embed:
guidance on how to do each task, and
links to the tools needed to complete the task.
For example:
the ‘brainstorm video ideas’ step might have a hyperlink to a ‘video idea generator’ website
the ‘write script’ step might link to my Google Docs scripts folder
the ‘setup camera and lighting’ might show me a photo of my regular equipment setup
For years I’d seen amazing on-the-job resources designed by wicked instructional designers. Only to see those resources die on Sharepoint or be hidden in the resources section of an eLearning module.
But this functionality overcame that problem.
Not only did my dashboard tell me what to do, it could tell me how to do it!
Can you see the implications?
I hear the phrase ‘in the flow of work’ thrown around a lot - and it drives me nuts, because very rarely are the things being discussed actually in the flow of work.
But this was!
It was the first time I had ever seen a truly integrated performance solution - a ‘performance guidance system’, if you will.
And it was becoming more sophisticated by the day. It showed me the route, and gave me advice on how to navigate tricky junctions.
And if it could work for me, there must be a way to leverage this for my colleagues, right?
Maybe.
But I’d only just started to scratch the surface of what was possible.
Stay tuned,
- Ant
