In this lesson, we’ll create a personal dashboard for running your day-to-day life. My aim is to help you put together a basic structure and empower you to take the page and run with it. It’s a personal dashboard, so have fun with it and make it your own. You can include your goals, habits, timetable, or to-dos. Notion is your oyster!
This will be a fairly simple page and builds on the tools explained in the Notion Foundations series to date. The aim of this page is to help you organize your life in a single place. Interested?
Great, then let’s get this show on the road!
What To Include In A Personal Dashboard
When I think of a personal dashboard, there are three key areas I would like to see on it:
- Goals – I like to set annual goals and break them down into monthly and quarterly sprints. Having these shown on my dashboard helps me to keep it front and center. It helps me think about whether or not a task is helping me progress toward my goals.
- To-do list – This can be a simple checklist (what we’ll include), or a complex task manager that you can slice and dice your tasks into priorities and due dates.
- Knowledge hub – a resource where I can store all my notes and interesting tidbits that I collect along the way
As I mentioned at the start, you should take this dashboard “skeleton” and customize it to suit your lifestyle. If you’re a student you may want to include a calendar view or if you’re a solopreneur you want to have a list of your live projects on the dashboard.
Notion has a templates page here where you can buy ready-made designs from other Notion users.
How To Build A Personal Dashboard In Notion
The dashboard that we’re about to build is a great starting point if you’re looking for multiple pages for different areas of your life. We will include these three categories – Work, Home, and Side Hustle.
Add A New Page
Start by creating a new page, then add an icon and cover image.
What Are Your Goals?
Next, we’ll add a goals section. I like to break mine down into monthly, quarterly and annual goals so I’ll start by adding three columns (/3c). In each blank column, add a /callout block and populate with a numbered list block.
Here is an example of what you can start with.
Simple Task Manager
Next, we’ll add a simple task manager. Start by adding a /template button.
Change the button name to “Add Tasks”. The default setting for the template block already includes a checkbox, so no need to change anything. Next click on Close.
When you need to add a new task, just click on the “+Tasks” and update the checkbox as appropriate.
Check out our guide on building out a minimalistic to-do list here.
Your dashboard might look something like this:
Knowledge Hub
The last item we can add to the dashboard is a knowledge hub section. This is where you can store and organize all your notes and thoughts. In this day and age, we’re bombarded with useful information all the time. Why not create a simple system to capture and access it only when we actually need it?
Create three new columns next to the to-do list. Label them as Work, Home, and Side Hustle (or whatever helps you). Reminder – the faint lines are dividers, and the shortcut to add them is three hyphens.
Related article – How To Add Vertical Divider In Notion
Under each of the three headings, add subpages with /page. These will act as note pages for each of your categories.
A Personal Dashboard In Notion
There you have it – your very own personal dashboard!
I have turned this walkthrough into a free template for you to duplicate. As I mentioned at the start, this is just a starting point and you will no doubt make this your own dashboard over time.
In the next lesson, we’ll cover an introduction to databases which are the crown jewel of Notion!
