Mia Krysa

Tag: productivity

  • Notion: The Project Management Tool You Can’t Go Without

    Notion: The Project Management Tool You Can’t Go Without

    No, I’m not sponsored by Notion. I just love it.

    What’s Notion?

    If you’re unfamiliar with Notion or other project management tools, you’re missing out. They can be used for anything and everything — especially when it comes to juggling multiple projects at once, which is exactly what I’m doing right now. With Notion, you can create templates to make to-do lists, calendar appointments, track deadlines, or even do fun things, like cross things off your bucket list. It’s completely customizable, has clean UX/UI, and makes the user feel accomplished when they cross something off their list. I’ve even know people who’ve made templates to track what books they’ve read, how they rated them, and any more information they wanted to include in one sheet. The possibilities are endless.

    Using Notion to Organize my LinkedIn Project

    In this instance, I’m using Notion to organize my LinkedIn project for the next six weeks. Each week, I’ll be writing an article on LinkedIn, discussing different gaps and inequalities in women’s sports vs. men’s sports. Since I want to work in sports media and stay in the WNBA world, it’s important that I become a thought leader in the industry, and this is one of the ways I can do that.

    I organized each week like the photo above, and included due dates, status updates, and tags, so I could keep track of each assignment. In each task, users have the ability to expand and create another template. For mine, I chose to list smaller tasks that I could cross off throughout the week. At the end of each week, my subtasks should look like this:

    I plan on checking into Notion each day to stay on top of my studies. Plus — this is one class, and I’m also completing my master’s capstone at the same time. It’s safe to say that my plate is full.

    This week, I also annotated my bibliography with the current sources I have. I plan on starting to write my first article as well, just because this class happens in such a short period of time, I’d like to get ahead of schedule. I love to write, so this isn’t an issue for me. For this project, I picked something that I genuinely enjoy, but also in an area where I know I have some work to do (my LinkedIn presence), and establishing leadership.

    Updating my Profile

    This past week on LinkedIn, I tried updating my profile to the best of my ability. In one of the videos I cited in my bibliography, Tommy Clark spoke about how important it is to have a clean, concise, and clear presence. In other words, who are you, and what problem are you solving? Why should someone in your target audience follow you on LinkedIn? You don’t have to have a long bio, or try to answer multiple questions at once. Keep it simple. If I’m going to post an article each week on LinkedIn, and I want people to engage with my profile and my posts, my profile has to look top-tier. I updated my profile picture, bio, and headline. I’m starting this experiment with 265 connections, and I’m hoping to reach at least 100 more.

    Stay tuned for my first article next week! Connect with me here.

  • Maximize Productivity with Asana: A Personal Review

    I love lists. Grocery lists. To-do lists. Packing lists. Affirmation lists. Homework lists.

    I’ve used an agenda for school since fourth grade and I don’t think I could have gotten through my middle and high school years without one. To this day, I appreciate my teachers who would require us to write everything in our agenda as part of the homework assignment. For me, it never felt like work. There’s something about seeing everything taken out of your brain and written on a sheet of paper that makes it seem more accomplishable. At the end of the day when it came time to fill my backpack with books, I’d know exactly what I’d be taking home and what could be saved for later. And the best feeling is when you get to cross something off your list of scribbles (and never think of it again!).

    This week, I decided to use an online version of a to-do list/task management system called Asana. I’ve had experience using Asana in previous internships and loved it. I enjoy how you can organize everything. It reminds me a bit of Notion, which is another website you can use for organization and to-do lists. Asana, however, feels much more work- and project-related.

    I decided to set up my Asana so that it’s strictly project-focused and separated my schoolwork and business into different folders. I run a small business on Etsy and create digital artwork. It’s something I genuinely enjoy doing because it allows me to be as creative as I please. This week, I had a few custom pieces to create for customers. I used Asana to input each order, the steps I had to take to complete the orders, and the days I needed them completed by. For my custom pieces, I allow for a 3-5 day turn-around time. The due date feature on Asana is great for this!

    My favorite overview is the list overview. I love the fact that you can also create subtasks within each task, so you don’t have an extremely long to-do list that instantly creates anxiety. You can hide the subtasks and cross them off as you complete them. Here’s an example of what a list looked like for one of my to-dos:

    If you don’t like the list overview, you can choose to switch it to a board view, timeline view, and dashboard view, among many others.

    As far as course organization, I created a new folder specifically for the white paper which is going to take a lot of time and focus. Then, I created a separate project folder just for this week but used the calendar option to organize it. Here’s what it ended up looking like:

    Overall, I can see myself using Asana week-to-week. The little unicorn explosion that happens each time you complete a task is enough motivation for me to keep checking things off of my to-do list! I’m hoping that as my time as a graduate student continues, I become better and better at managing my time and projects.