Daily Plan: Bullet Journal, Notion & Google Calendar for ALI Success
Jan 21, 2025
Managing your time effectively is key when juggling the demands of an assisted living business. You need tools that keep you on track, help you prioritize, and simplify your life. For me, the perfect system combines Notion, Google Calendar, and bullet journaling.
This blog will walk you through how I use these tools together to stay organized and productive. Whether you’re managing residents, running a facility, or growing your business, this method can help you stay focused and accomplish your goals.
Check out the video too:
Why These Tools Work Together
Each tool plays a unique role in my planning system:
- Notion: A digital workspace for long-term planning, task tracking, and meeting notes.
- Google Calendar: A visual scheduler for time-blocking tasks and appointments.
- Bullet Journal: A flexible, creative space for daily planning and prioritization.
Step 1: Organize Long-Term Tasks with Notion
Think of Notion as your “digital brain.” This is where I:
- Keep an Advanced To-Do List: I organize tasks into categories like today, tomorrow, or specific days of the week. Filters help me focus on what’s relevant.
- Take Meeting Notes: During calls or meetings, I jot down notes directly in Notion and create to-dos based on action items.
- Plan Weekly: Every Friday, I update my Notion workspace with next week’s tasks, meetings, and priorities.
Notion is great for big-picture planning and ensuring nothing gets lost in the shuffle.
Step 2: Prioritize with Matrix Planning
For my daily tasks, I turn to matrix planning in my bullet journal. Here’s how:
- Set Up a Grid: I draw rows for morning, afternoon, and evening and columns for work, family, and personal tasks.
- Transfer Tasks from Notion: I move items from my Notion to-do list into the matrix.
- Prioritize Tasks: I assign importance to each task, so I know where to focus my energy.
For example:
| Morning | Afternoon | Evening |
|---|---|---|
| Review policies | Team meeting | Plan social media |
| Family breakfast | Call Medicaid rep | Dinner with family |
This system ensures I balance my work and personal life effectively.
Step 3: Schedule with Google Calendar
Once my matrix is ready, I use Google Calendar to block out time for each task.
- Create Events: I add tasks from my bullet journal as calendar events, assigning specific times.
- Use Colors for Clarity: I color-code my calendar by category—work, family, or personal—so I can see my priorities at a glance.
- Stay Flexible: Life happens, so I adjust my calendar as needed.
Time-blocking helps me focus on one task at a time, reducing distractions and improving productivity.
Step 4: Review and Update
At the end of each day, I review my progress:
- Mark Completed Tasks: I check off items in my bullet journal and Notion.
- Add New Tasks: If something comes up during the day, I add it to Notion for future planning.
- Weekly Review: Every Friday, I go over my completed tasks and update my system for the next week.
Doesn’t This Duplicate Work?
Yes, this system involves writing tasks in multiple places—but that’s a feature, not a bug! Repeating tasks reinforces their importance and ensures nothing slips through the cracks. The entire process takes just 10–15 minutes daily, making it a small investment for big returns in productivity.
Tips for Finding Your System
- Start Small: Begin with one tool, like Google Calendar, and add others as you grow comfortable.
- Experiment: Try different setups until you find what works best for you.
- Stay Consistent: The key to any system is sticking with it. Regular updates make everything run smoothly.
Final Thoughts
Planning your day doesn’t have to be stressful. By combining Notion, Google Calendar, and a bullet journal, you can create a system that keeps you organized, productive, and in control.
Remember, productivity is personal. My method works for me, but you can tweak it to fit your style. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s progress. Start small, stay consistent, and watch your assisted living business thrive!
For more tips on productivity and investing in assisted living, visit Assisted Living Investing. Check out our free resources including the Business Plan Checklist.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
the last several videos i've been kind of going through my process of the different tools that i use to plan things and organize my life and get everything in place to help me be a productive person i use notion i use google calendars and i use matrix planning bullet journaling to get that all done and that's a lot of stuff i'm sure you've been watching these and you're like oh my gosh this guy this guy's crazy he's got so much going on today i'm going to get into how i
00:00:28
take all three of those things put them together and make it into a process that works for me so that you can kind of learn the process of how my brain works and how you can implement something similar for you it could be using all three of those tools could be using two of them but just like get familiar with a process that works for you and get it done hi everybody i'm brandon gustafson i own two assisted living facilities and i created this channel to help people just like you learn the ins and outs of
00:00:57
investing in assisted living welcome to assisted living investing [Music] hey everybody welcome back to the channel in our last video we talked a little bit about um how to add a new calendar to google calendar and help you stay organized um as you're doing that it's a tool that i found to be extremely helpful and i hope that you're able to learn something there that could help you out and just kind of helping you do some time blocking and make it so that it looks um cool make it look like it's something that
00:01:35
you want to work with so i hope you found that video if you did make sure you go and watch it and and hit the like button for it i'd love to get your feedback on that in today's video i'm going to get into a daily kind of plan with me process that i do using all the tools that i use so bullet journaling using notion and google calendar i'm not going to get into a screen share or anything like that i'm just going to kind of talk you and walk you through the process and then you can
00:02:03
go through and watch each of those videos again and kind of learn how i do that process and then this this video is meant to give you context on how i pull all three of those things together to make a good planning process that allows me to be effective get a lot of things done and make progress as i'm operating my facilities and working a full-time job and doing a youtube channel and just the other business ventures that i've got going on um which is a lot but i'm hoping that this video gives you a
00:02:32
little bit of context so that you can do that i'll try to link those videos up above as i talk through each of those points so one on notion one on bullet journaling matrix planning and one on google calendars so that you can go in and watch those as you're watching this and and get some information on that right so the first step in my process and i'm going to walk you through exactly kind of my process on how i do things the sequence that i go through as i work through this just so
00:03:02
you kind of get a feel for it but step number one is notion so i'll link up above um notion and and how i use notion with the advanced to-do list is kind of the way that i do this so the first thing that i do is i have my own advanced to-do list very similar to what i went through in that video but it's a little more i would say robust and a little bit more custom to what i need and i have a bunch of different flags in there and a bunch of different things that allow me to work through it but if you go and watch that
00:03:32
video on how to make that advanced to-do list in notion you're gonna be able to see kind of how i work through things and my notion acts as the um the future log that we talked about in um the bullet journal method so the bullet journal method and i'll link this down below so you can go and and purchase it on amazon if you purchase it there i'll get a little bit of a kick back on it but it's an awesome book i highly recommend it make sure you go on and read that and learn a little bit more about future
00:04:03
logs and how they work but that's how i use mynotion is it allows me to have this big long to do list of all the things that i need to get done then i have custom filters built in for what i'm going to do today and tomorrow and for the rest of the week and then i also built in filters for separate days and i'll just go and adjust those so i have a wednesday thursday friday saturday sunday um kind of filter that allows me to look at things so i can plan a week out in advance and it has really helped me kind
00:04:33
of stay in line and i really use that a lot when i am doing things like planning for the weekend so on friday i'll do a kind of longer planning session that i do a weekly planning session making sure my calendar is completely up to date with different meetings and things like that that those meetings are in my notion to do list that they're on there and then i'll kind of do that matrix planning for the weekend and make sure that everything is in there and kind of plan saturday sunday
00:05:00
and monday or if i'm heading into a holiday weekend i'll do it throughout the entire holiday and those different views are what allows me to do that really easily it's one of those things that you set it up once you put it in there and then you just have to adjust filters a little bit as you move along and it just makes it easy streamlines the process so highly recommend you taking a little bit of time to set things up how you need it to be and it's just gonna make your life a lot easier going forward and then the
00:05:26
way that i use notion as i go throughout my day is if i'm in a meeting i'll pull notion up and i'll type in notes or once a meeting's over i'll take notion put it up and i'll recap the meeting or things like that as i'm in a meeting i will have notion to the side and i'll type up my to-do list i do this with my administrator all the time um where we're talking and they're like oh i need this and this and this i need you to talk to our our vendor that does the
00:05:53
internet and fix a problem there we need to get a tree removed um let's have a conversation these are actual things that have happened um recently for one of our facilities and so i just put those in my to-do list and from there when i do my kind of daily matrix planning process which i'll get into here in just a second all of those to-do lists are there and then i'll assign them out to two days in the future so they'll pop up into my list when it gets to the day that it's due
00:06:20
or the day before it's due so i can do my matrix planning process and i use a lot of those tags that we talked about in that advanced cr in that advanced to-do list video on notion that is linked up above um a little bit earlier in the video where i go in and i have those different tags and so it allows me to really hone in on what is what i need to do which area i need to do it in and i just kind of fill those out as i'm going through the day when a to-do list item comes up i'll put it in
00:06:48
there and then i'll review or if i know what the due date is or when i'm going to work on it i will put the appropriate date and i just put it on there if it's a quick recap i'll just throw everything in there kind of bring down my to-do list and then i'll go back in later in the day and i'll clean it up and give it more appropriate to do to do more appropriate due dates um so that i can kind of work through that process and then when i go in and i start doing my my planning for the following day
00:07:14
anything that has gone into my to-do list at some point is going to just kind of feed up and it goes into that filter that is things that are due tomorrow and then they just kind of pop up and then i just put them into my matrix plan which i'll get into here in just a second so that's kind of how i use notion as my future log again that i reference with the bullet journal method by writer carol and i'll link this down below so you can go and purchase it on amazon but it's my ongoing to-do list it helps
00:07:42
me with everything that's coming up and just makes helps me know exactly what needs to get done and i found that to be a much better process for me mentally than the way that he describes it in the book i've tried it and for me it just didn't work that doesn't mean it's not going to work for you and everything that i'm talking about here you might be able to just do in a bullet journal for me using notion as this portion of of my planning works very well and so i'm going to
00:08:11
encourage you to find the process that works for you and it might take you 3 6 12 24 months to figure out exactly what's going to work for you but if you take the time and really kind of commit yourself to it you're going to find a process that really works well and is going to benefit you so that's kind of how i do phase one is in notion i've got things going i'm in meetings i'm taking notes adding them to my to-do list and then giving them appropriate due dates and then they're filtering up as as it
00:08:40
gets closer to their due date and that allows me to do my matrix planning which is step two in the process all right so step number two is matrix planning and really step two and three kind of go hand in hand i do them pretty close they're pretty pretty much in line with each other but i'm going to talk about step two being matrix planning um first here and so what i do is i have this big list of things that are built in notion and i have it filtered so it's just giving me the things that are coming up
00:09:09
in the next day or whichever day that i'm going to be doing my matrix planning for so i adjust it look at that filtered view for what i want on that advanced to-do list and notion and once i have that in that filtered view i also have those different sorting features for those different tags so things like time of day and the different area that i'm working in that we talked about in that matrix planning video so if you go and watch that you'll get a feel for exactly kind of how matrix planning works and
00:09:38
how i build out that grid and where you're supposed to be adding things and things like that so watch that video it's going to give you a really good overview of what that looks like but i've adjusted my i'm looking at that filtered view and notion it's kind of got a matrix style of to-do list items and then i pull out my bullet journal and start adding things in there so as you do a call from that matrix planning plan with me video i created the matrix in my bullet journal and i have the time of day as
00:10:05
the rows and then the different areas as my columns and you know you can go and watch that up above but in reviewing that notion to do this i simply just kind of start looking at those different items on my to-do list and start adding them to the corresponding cell in that matrix plane so if it's something with my family and it's in the afternoon it's going to go in that slot if it's something that's a meeting with my administrator in the morning it's going to go in that slot if
00:10:29
it's a meeting or project at my full-time job and it's in the morning or the afternoon i'm going to put it in that slot so i just start kind of fitting things in there i will typically have around 10 to 15 items that i want to get done in a day and those could be tasks or they could be meetings but those things are all kind of just kind of filtering in and going into those 10 to 15 per day and then they each of those cells is gonna you know have one zero to four items in it um but it makes
00:10:58
it pretty manageable to get things done for me it works i know a lot of people like to only have a couple of things to work on and i do prioritize things i make priorities you know these are the the three things that i really want to get done today in each of my time periods am pm and the evening i'll when i do my planning session and i'm doing my matrix planning i will also outline these are the three key things that i want to get done but these are the other 15 things that i want to work
00:11:28
on throughout the day and then i'm able to kind of prioritize those things and get them done so that's kind of how i build out my bullet journal and my matrix planning and that brings me to step number three so while i am doing the matrix planning and i have that up so i've got notion and i'm lucky enough to have multiple screens so i've got notion on one screen i have my calendars on the other screen and then i've got my bullet journal down on my desk and so i kind of pull those
00:11:55
things up and i just take 10 15 minutes a day and we'll do this and kind of design what my day is going to look like the following day when i'm going to work on things and get them done so i've got my google calendar and while i'm adding things to that matrix plan i am blocking off time on my calendar using the method that we talked about in adding a new calendar to google calendar so i'll link that up above as well but i kind of go in and i'll create an event put in the details of what it is
00:12:25
whether it's a task or a meeting and then i will change that calendar view to the corresponding calendar of the thing that i'm going to work on and then it gives me the color that i want it to look like and for me just visually it makes it work for me and then once i'm done with that i can look at my calendar and i have time blocked off for the different tasks that i'm going to work on and they are they have a corresponding color for the different area that i'm working on and
00:12:51
so i can very easily and quickly see okay in the afternoon i'm gonna be recording youtube videos for two hours um and that's what i'm gonna be doing for the afternoon and it's you know the color that i have set for that in the morning i've gotta make a phone call i've got a meeting with my manager i've got to um just kind of have the conversations that i need to have i need to make this phone call i need to have this meeting i need to do check in on this email those types
00:13:17
of things and i get i can get pretty granular in the types of tasks that i need to get done especially if it's something that's just been sitting in my email inbox for for months now it's like okay i got to get this done i'm going to put it as a task rather than just clean up the inbox i'm actually going to specifically say i'm going to get it done and then i will put it on my calendar and then i can see those things that are in there i really like to kind of block that off on my calendar it
00:13:39
really helps to kind of protect that time for me so that if something else comes up it just kind of helps me stay on task which is really helpful for me helps me kind of visualize what i need to get done and it works really well for me it doesn't mean that i am a stickler and you know it was just an email that i needed to answer something else came up and said well i can't work on that i've got to answer this email i'm going to push those things off things that are not as high a
00:14:07
priority i'll push off to a future date or a future time period or whatever i'll be flexible with it but doing the planning and kind of saying this is what i am going to work on helps me keep on task and get things done which is great next is checking things off so this is i don't know that you would call it step four but it's just kind of the process that i go through so once i have completed a meeting i'll generally go in and i mention this a little bit earlier go in and jot down a few quick
00:14:35
notes in notion for that task and you know what what we discussed any takeaways create any new to-do list items for the coming days and weeks and then i will mark that meeting as complete in notion and then i will cross it out as well in my matrix plan so i'll do that there i also in my weekly review process we'll go in and review those notes and say oh was there anything in there that i need to remember anything that i need to for sure follow up on and i do those things and then once a task is completed i
00:15:06
simply just mark it complete a notion and cross it off in my matrix plan there are some times that i'll go in and make some relevant notes so i needed to talk to a security company for one of our facilities and set up a time and so i went into that it's more of a task kind of a thing but i went into that today typed in the notes that happened with that conversation and then pushed off the the task to the next time i'm going to do the meeting with them so that's kind of how i cross
00:15:33
things off i don't need to do anything with it in my calendar the calendar just kind of grays it out a little bit once the the meeting is passed um i will move things around if i don't get to it in a certain day but that's kind of how i check things off as i'm going through that process the next thing i'm going to address because as i'm going through this i'm sure you're like oh my gosh this guy is crazy like that's a lot of duplicate work he's kind of you're
00:15:56
you're doing so much and i will say you are not wrong so is this duplicate work and yes i think it probably is there's i'm probably doing a little more than i need to do but for me i found that as i'm putting things in three different locations i put it in notion i put it in my bullet journal i put it in my google calendar my brain says okay i gotta get this done i don't forget what i'm gonna do and it really doesn't take that long once i've set up these processes to stay on top of
00:16:23
it you know 10 15 minutes a day to do my planning session and then really kind of hit on those things and repeating it three times a day or when i'm doing my planning session in three different locations really solidifies in my mind that i need to get it done it helps me stay on task it helps me stay productive yeah it probably is overkill but it works for me and as i've mentioned several times in previous videos you need to find something that works for you and then do it stop worrying about
00:16:53
oh my my wife's going to think this and me or my husband's going to think this or my brother does it a different way stop stop wasting your time worrying about what other people think find something that works for you and do it that's all you got to do it doesn't matter what it is it does nobody's going to care this is for you to help you be productive figure out what it is and get it done and then also just to be completely honest sometimes i forget to cross things off in my matrix plan i'm pretty
00:17:20
good at staying on top of things in notion but sometimes i will forget to go in and to know or into my matrix plan and cross things off and that's okay you don't have to be perfect nobody's auditing my matrix planning journal and making sure i have crossed everything off or appropriately put the mark in there or things like that that nobody cares it's for me and that's what's important so just remember that just do the thing that works for you and if you're not perfect that's okay too it's not going
00:17:50
to be that big of a deal all right i hope that was a lot of information duplicative information for you but i hope you found it helpful if you did make sure you smash that like button for me let me know how you do your planning sessions i'd love to hear from you and learn from you because i my process works for me but there are certainly ways that i could improve on it and i would love to hear your feedback on what you do for your planning sessions that helps you be productive so make sure you comment down
00:18:16
below and let me know how that how you're doing things and it's going to help out the community as well so please make sure that you comment on on that in my next video we're going to get into a kind of crazy story i had an administrator quit on me um back a month or two ago um in december of 2021 and i want to share the story with you and what it was like and what that process was like and how we have kind of addressed it it was kind of scary i'll get into that in the next video so make
00:18:44
sure you watch that it's going to be kind of an opportunity for me to open up to you and tell you a little bit about kind of what happened and how we addressed it to learn more about investing in assisted living make sure you visit me on assistedlivinginvesting.net and for other content you know i've got other content up there free resources you can set up a time to to set up a call with me and we can have a conversation about planning about setting up your business just all all the things that you want to
00:19:11
do i i this channel is very much focused obviously through the name and assisted living but i do a lot of things with small businesses as well and so if you're watching this and like i don't do assisted living but i really like the way that he's talking about these things set up a time we can chat about whatever almost totally fine so make sure you uh get over to assistedlivinginvesting.net and and check out the website over there and remember it doesn't take a lot just a little bit keep making progress step
00:19:40
by step by step if you do it i promise you if you're consistent i promise you you're going to be successful just keep going you can do it thanks for watching and have a great day [Music] you
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