Showing Up Every Day, Notion’s Calendar a Few Months Later, and More

March 8, 2024

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5 Ways to Show Up Everyday (March Focus Digest) »

Welcome to March!

Our monthly Focus Digest is for folks who want to create a more ideal schedule, get organized, and stay in control of the things that matter.

If you are new to the digest… here’s what to look forward to at the beginning of the month:

A short article on a single concept around focus
A couple quotes that we’ve enjoyed thinking on
Links to interesting or related articles from our corner of the internet
Upcoming events and resource spotlights for our Focus Club members

If this sparks any ideas I’d love to hear from you!

A Few Months with Notion Calendar »

Calendars are in a weird metamorphosis period right now. How we use calendars is changing, this is clear. But where calendars are going is hard to pinpoint — we’ve seen calendar apps with to-do lists, AI integrations, and even full-on email applications built in. I’m not sure I can stand here and define what the winning calendar combination will be.

I do think the modern calendar has to morph though — a standard manual calendar that doesn’t have video conferencing, scheduling, or some sort of productivity feature set is not taking advantage of what modern technology has created.

Notion’s new calendar app is the company’s efforts at morphing a calendar with its increasingly-popular database software. Fervent Cron users will argue Notion Calendar is Cron and nothing more. But Notion Calendar indeed includes some new Notion integrations that Cron never had and brings the cohesion between the apps to a whole new level.

I’ve been using Notion Calendar exclusively from the day it was announced, and I’ve become enamored with it. There are elements in Notion Calendar that have unlocked a new level of productivity for myself and our office, such as lightning-fast scheduling and instant Google Meet calls, or the ability to view a database right in the calendar alongside your events.

Notion Calendar isn’t the leader in any particularly calendaring category, but it’s an impressive first foray for the database app.

Here are three major reasons for why our office is all-in on Notion Calendar right now.

We Updated Our Review of the Best Habit Tracking App for iOS »

The best habit tracking app for iOS (or any platform, for that matter) is Streaks. It offers everything you need to create good habits or break bad ones, features a great design that is very customizable, has some useful widgets, integrates directly with the Apple Health app for automatic tracking, and offers great support for Shortcuts. At only $4.99 on the iOS App Store, it’s also a bargain.

Building Better Habits with James Clear »

James Clear is the author of the bestselling book, [Atomic Habits][book].

Here’s what you’ll hear about during in the interview conversation:

Mindset: How long does it truly take to build a habit, and how is that mindset at odds with what most people do for their New Year’s resolutions?
Simplicity: How do you keep from burning yourself out? How many new habits and routines should you incorporate as part of a New Year’s resolutions?
Purpose: Why do habits even matter? Why should you pay attention to your habits and routines? Can building better habits make you a better person?

How I Use Notion AI Q&A Each Day »

Artificial intelligence. Everyone has heard about it at this point. And it’s likely AI has affected the way you work already, for better or worse.

If you use AI, you likely use it in a unique way. Some folks are using AI to build out transcripts. Others use it to create fake data for showcasing a product demonstration. Others use it to process tedious work, create meeting agendas, streamline the creation of meeting minutes, organize their day — the list of possibilities feels endless right now.

With each day that passes, I find myself using AI more and more. Or rather, I use AI more and more in Notion. Notion AI is my current go-to tool — I use it to create first drafts for new emails and letters I don’t normally write. I use Notion AI for improving my writing. I use Notion AI for summarizing transcripts, for creating standard operating procedures, and more.

At large, our office uses the heck out of Notion. We plan all our projects and engagements in Notion. We track our daily work in Notion. We store all our internal documentation in the app and build out our own internal knowledge archive — I’ve even stored all my old school notes in Notion, which I return to a number of times each week to reference something.

Omnivore is a Really Good, Completely Free Read Later App »

Omnivore is one of the newest, and probably one of the most underrated read-it-later services out there. Many of us know about Pocket, Instapaper, Matter, and Readwise Reader, but Omnivore deserves to be in the conversation as well, as it does quite a few things very well, and even better than the rest in some cases. And it does all this completely for free.

We’ve Updated Our Review of Day One »

If you’re looking for the best journaling app, or a great app for logging and recording various events and milestones of your life, then by far and away the best journaling app is Day One.

Day One has outstanding apps for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad that all sync. It has a clever and rich feature set that lets you integrate photos, videos, current location, weather data, and more into your journal entries.

Day One was acquired by Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, Simplenote, and more in 2021. Though no longer owned by a small company, Day One has seen consistent development right through its time under Automattic. We don’t think there’s any reason to believe Day One has a shelf life.

In fact, some of Day One’s most recent updates are some of the app’s best features yet. Day One just introduced Shared Journals, allowing users to create a journal that can be added to or changed by anyone, even if they don’t have a Day One subscription. There are also Journaling Suggestions in the latest version of Day One, piggybacking off Apple’s own Journal API. Suggestions are the best way to track your daily doings in Day One and a far cry better than Day One’s own implementation in the past.

Interesting Links From Our Friends and Around the Web »

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