Lifestyle Organizing

How I Organize My Life: Second Brain

I know you’ve been looking forward to this post since I announced it. But believe me, there is an incredible amount of work involved in what I’m going to share today, so it took me a lot of time. As you know, I like to live my life systematically and disciplined; I have routines, I have many goals, I organize my weeks accordingly and I take systematic steps to become a better version of myself. It is amazing to have dreams, but in order to realize them, you have to plan the steps leading to that dream one by one, otherwise they will remain as dreams forever. So in order to be successful, it is essential to establish your own system in your life. Today I will tell you how I achieve my dreams.

A brand new system…

Normally I use my planner & my phone to plan my life. But lately I noticed that it’s easier for me to plan everything digitally. I started saving everything on my phone; be it my to-do’s, my appointments, my notes – they are all saved on the phone because it is more practical. I used the physical planner only when I had it at hand, and especially to plan work-related things. But I didn’t like how messy things were. Finding what I was looking for in my notes was impractical and confusing. Actually it was a successful system in itself, but it wasn’t organized enough. I felt that this system could be developed further and I decided to plan 2023 differently: I designed myself a Second Brain! It sounds weird, but it really is.😄 Let me talk about the details.

A successful life = Second Brain

I discovered an app called Notion. You can download it for free as an app on your laptop and on your phone (available for Mac, Windows, IOS and Android). If you do not want to download it, you can also access it via the internet browser, so there is access from anywhere. The biggest advantage of this application for me is that it is completely customizable and when I work from my computer, it is synchronized with my phone as well, so I don’t have to save anything over and over. You’re editing your notes on your phone, and it’s on your computer – absolutely time-saving! You can even create a workspace with your colleagues/classmates and work together on projects. In other words, it is an application that is extremely practical and provides great productivity for both you and your team. I wish I had this system in my school time.😄 If you set up the right system for yourself, the probability of you failing on the way to your goals is pretty pretty low. You can plan your entire life, work, hobbies, routines, monthly finances, anything you can think of, and tidy up the library inside your brain. All you have to do is create a free account on Notion and set up your digital planner. I have prepared THE ultimate template for us!

My Second Brain

You can think of Notion as a blank notebook that provides great planning tools. You design your own system completely according to your own needs, your own life and your own style, you are 100% free in this regard. It’s a little confusing at first. There is no redirect, it is a blank page, you will learn and set it up yourself. You may not know where to start and let me tell you, it takes a lot of time to build up a productive system. I’ve been working on this template for 1.5 months to make it exactly what I want. I add, subtract, change etc. But it has reached its final result, now I am extremely happy with the result and it has given me great results since the beginning of the year. So that you don’t have to design a working system on your own, I’ll share my Notion template with you (at the end of this post, there will be a guide of how to download it). ♥️

What awaits you in this template: This planner will help you keep track of tasks, appointments and ideas, get organized with your job/school and hobbies, manage your home, finances and pets, and switch up your dreams into plans! It offers many topics you can plan just in one place and is the ultimate guide to start planning a successful and happy life. I’d be more than happy if my systems and minimalistic designs help you building the life you always dreamed of! ♡

Dashboard

The first page is our dashboard. Here you can see all categories & access all pages at a glance. It’s the guide of our Second Brain.

I divided the pages of this planner into 3 categories: tasks, personal and hobbies&life. These also have subpages, for example, in the tasks category, you can list your work, to-do lists, projects, etc. I organize my Youtube and social media content ideas & plan my other projects here. By the way, the layout system of each page is different, I thought a lot about how the system would be most efficient, and I designed each topic accordingly. The personal category includes my 2023 goals, finances, habit tracker, beauty and health logs, my journal and my dream life vision board. Last but not least – the hobbies&life category contains a fitness hub, hobby pages, pets, library, recipe book and a travel planner.

Apart from the category map, there is a weekly view and to-do list on the dashboard, you can write your tasks here and tick when they are completed (extremely satisfying).😄 There is also a monthly view where you can note your appointments. At the bottom of the page there is section for your most important monthly goals and additionally a birthdays & gift ideas page, special days list and a wishlist.

Category: Tasks

The contents of the pages in the tasks section are all different from each other. There are even home tasks page. I do not share the entire content of the pages so that the systems are not copied, but you can see the examples here.🥰

Category: Personal

2023 Goals: Now I will share with you the system that works best for me to realize my dreams. I’ve been doing it this way for years and I’ve only seen the benefits. You can do it with pen and paper as well. STEP 1: You list your goals for this year one by one. STEP 2: You divide the year into 4 quarters and distribute the goals you listed to these quarters. What you need to consider here is how much time is needed for which goal and when is could be accomplished? Place it in one of the 4 quarters accordingly. STEP 3: Now divide the 1st quarter into its months. The first quarter of the year is, for example, January, February, March. Place the goals you wrote under the 1st quarter to these months. If you need to do other things before, now is the time to add those steps. Thus, the dreams in my 2023 goals list will now turn into a plan and there will be no obstacles to reach it. This system is attached in our planner, you just fill it with your goals.🥰

Finances: I have to admit that I never kept track of my money until the new year. I wasn’t even aware of my monthly total expenses. I have a good balance between spending and saving money, but I wanted to to see it more detailed. Since January 1, I write down all my expenses one by one, label the paid / unpaid status (so I can take into account the bills that I still need to pay that month), determine the type of the certain expense (fixed, flexible, hobby, food, etc.) and enter the amount and the total is calculated automatically. This finances tracker will be very beneficial for me, because I set myself a monthly expenses and savings goal. I don’t say limit because I don’t want to see it as a limitation, if I want to do something that will exceed these limits, I will do it anyway. Money is for raising the standard of living in the first place, you don’t need to save your whole income, only a part of it. I also created a section for investments. Invest and make your money work for you. 😊 You can plan all this clearly in the finances section of the planner, there is a wonderful system.

Habit Tracker: If ticking tasks motivates you, you’ll love the habit tracker. You can keep a record of your daily routines in this section. If you want to form a new healthy habit, you can plan it here. It takes 21 days to form a habit and 90 days to make that habit a lifestyle. Try ticking for 90 days. Some habit examples: exercise, 10K steps, drinking enough water, 8 hours of sleep, meditation, reading a book, getting up early in the morning, going to bed before midnight, sugar-free diet, etc. It’s entirely up to you.

Beauty & Health Logs: Here you can track and manage your beauty procedures and log your health data.

Journal: I created this page so that when something special happens, I can write a sentence or two about it. When I feel the need to talk to myself, I write here and my mind flows. When thoughts are embodied in words, my confusion fades away. So journaling is really helpful.😊

Vision Board: I recently shared my vision board on my Instagram stories and invited you to make your own vision board, too. In order to be successful, you must first know what you want. Visualizing it will help you focus on those goals. You will gain familiarity with these dreams that you constantly see and you will begin to experience selective perception. This will make it easier for you to see opportunities related to these goals. Just give it a try. For example, when you buy a red car, you start seeing red cars on the road all the time. In fact, they always existed, but because your perception is focused on it, you feel like red cars are constantly appearing in front of you. You can do this with your dreams, same logic.

Dream Life: This page is pure inspiration! Here you can add dream cards and visualize THE life of your dreams. You can plan these here as well, just click on the card and do what you have to do to achieve that goal.🥰

Category: Hobbies & Life

Fitness Hub: You can add your weekly workout plan to your fitness hub and track your exercises (my workout videos, cardio, weights, horse riding, ballet, stretching, etc.). Filling this area with ticks feels absolutely satisfying and shows that you’re active. At the bottom, I created a section where you can list your fitness goals, so you can tick as you achieve them throughout the year.

Hobby pages: My hobby pages are equestrian and ballet, you can use those pages to organize your own hobbies, I left them blank in the template. On these pages, you can plan your goals related to that hobby. I created databases with 3 phases: goals / in progress / achieved. At first, all goals are of course in the goals section. When I start working on them, I pull them to the in progress block. When I complete it, I collect them in the 3rd block. With such a system, you can become professional in your hobbies at the same time.😊 Apart from that, I save my course notes and I also have created vision boards for my hobbies, which is very motivating for me.

Pets: I designed a cute page for our pets.😍 By clicking on the cards, you can see the vaccination calendars, the brands of their food & vitamins, the commands I taught, etc. I’m saving everything pet-related here. You can customize the cards with your own pet’s name and picture of course!

Library: I created a library – it’s one of my favorite pages. It includes a reading list, an online courses list and a watch list.

Recipe Book: I used to save my recipes quickly in the notes app of my phone, but it was very confusing like that and I forgot them after a while. I also have a recipe book in my kitchen, but it is very time-consuming to write in it. That’s why I created a digital recipe book and started to save my new recipes that I tried here. We can also add tags such as breakfast/snack etc and filter them. I hope it will be useful for you and you can create a great food archive.

Travel Planner: This is our travel agency.😄 We can plan and manage our trips here, make our travel budget calculations, and collect our travel notes. There is also a travel bucket list where you can save the places you want to visit one day. I also created 2 checklists: pre-trip checklist and packing checklist. You can see its content when you download my template, it’s super useful. 🥰

Birthdays & Gift Ideas: I have divided this part into months, you can write down the birthdays of your beloved ones and take notes of gift ideas.♥️

Phone Sync: You can access all these systems from your computer, as well as from your phone, by installing the Notion app and logging into your account.🥰

You can see the details of all the pages when you download my template. As you can see, there is a serious effort here and it took me an incredible amount of time to design such a complex Second Brain template. The internal systems needed to be useful and efficient of course. I thought a lot about them and adapted the systems to my own style. I hope you my minimalistic but productive template!


How to download?

Bu şablonu küçük bir ücret karşılığı satışa sunduğumu belirtmek isterim. Satılan şablonların ücretlerini inceledim. Bu kadar kapsamlı, geniş bir konu yelpazesi sunan ve hayatınızın her alanını planlamanıza yardımcı olacak şablonlar asla bu kadar düşük fiyattan satılmıyor. Ben en düşük rakamdan satışa koydum ki takipçilerim faydalanabilsin. Hem Türkçe, hem İngilizce, 2 dil seçeneği sundum. Benimle birlikte benim sistemimle çalışmak ve başarılı olmak isteyenler, indirip hemen planlayama başlayabilir. Bu arada burada sayfaların içeriklerini detaylı paylaşmadım kopyalanmaması için. Sayfalar daha kapsamlı sistemlere sahip, içerik daha zengin yani. Bu postu sadece tanıtım amaçlı düşünün.

I am offering this template for a small fee. I compared the prices of other templates and none of the templates which provide a complex, wide range of topics to plan, are this cheap. I put it on sale at the lowest price so that my followers can profit. Those who want to work with me and be successful with my system can download and start planning immediately. By the way, I did not share the contents of the pages in detail here so that they are not copied. Pages have more complex systems, so the content is richer. 🥰

Download
You can purchase the Second Brain template here!

*This is a digital product and all rights reserved. The design and contents belong to me and their unauthorized reproduction, copying and distribution is a crime.

Set up the template:
1. Create a free account on notion.so.
2. Download the app for your desktop here (available for Mac and Windows) or on your mobile phone here for free. You can find the app also in the Appstore of IOS and Android. If you don’t want to download the apps, you can access your digital planner via the browser.
3. Log into your account.
4. Purchase the template with a valid e-mail address (link here).
5. An access link will be sent to your e-mail address within 24 hours after your order is confirmed. Open the link.
6. Click the ‘Duplicate’ button on the top right corner of the page and wait until the template is set up.
7. Your digital Second Brain is ready to use, both in the app on your phone and on the desktop! Have fun!🥰


I hope my systems make it easy and beneficial for you to plan your life efficiently and achieve your goals. Discipline brings success in all areas – make this year your year and organize your life systematically!

xx,
Eylem

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(3) Comments

  1. Büşra says:

    İçim yine bir huzur yine bir umutla doldu her zamanki gibi… ne zaman ne yapacağımı bilmesem hep burda buluyorum kendimi. Tam günlerim boş verimsiz geçiyor ne yapıp düzenleyebilirim planlayabilirim daha kaliteli zaman geçirebilirim derken yine imdadıma sen yetiştin iyi ki ama iyi ki varsın. Eline emeğine sağlık 😍 her şeyini layıkıyla yapman diyecek kelime bulamıyorum.

  2. elcin coban says:

    Sistemin o kadar güzel ki 🙂 Bugün satın aldım bende hayatımda hiç düşünmediğim ama planlansa ne güzel olur dediğim bir sürü alan var 🙂 zamanla hepsini doldurup kendime hedefler belirleyeceğim.
    Kendi adıma çok teşekkür ederim benim gibi karışık zihinlere çok iyi geldi

  3. Tuğba Okul says:

    Bir Başak burcu olarak resmen yapmak istediğim ama nir türlü zaman ayıramadığım zaman yönetimi ve planlayıcıyı en ince detayına kadar tasarlamışsın canım. Emeğine sağlık. O zaman hemen uygulayı indirelim ❤️🌹

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