Introducing Brian • My Personal Workspace 🧠
A full replica of the Notion workspace I use for life and work, for you to clone!
This article is the second in a two-part series about personal knowledge management. Last week’s one covered my process and guiding principles — go check it out if you haven’t already 👇
This one, instead, is about the workspace I have been using for about 4 years, which I call Brian.
I like to give my tools the names of people, as if they were my team. Brian comes from brain, but I have many others, like Bridget, who keeps the budget — stories for another time I guess!
For this edition, I created a full template of Brian that you can clone, plus instructions on how to use it. It is a full replica of what I built for myself, also improved in various parts that I would do differently if I could start over (sigh, tech debt).
This is going to become a permanent resource for Refactoring members. Just like I update my own Brian continuously, I will keep this updated and create release notes about it.
🛠️ On using Notion
Brian is built in Notion but — I can’t stress this enough — you don’t have to use Notion if you don’t want. What matters is the process, which is simple enough to be replicated in any tool.
I use Notion because of how powerful and flexible it is: it has databases for organizing structured data, and APIs for building automations. But it is also slow and frustrating at times, and I know the are faster, offline-first tools out there, like Obsidian or Craft.
So, your tool of choice ultimately comes down to personal preference. In the article I will explain everything about the Notion workspace, but I will mostly focus on the approach and process, while keeping the Notion-specific parts to a minimum.
❓ Why this, why now?
You may also wonder: you have been doing this for 4 years, so why publishing it, and why doing it now? I have two answers to this:
🏅 Maturity — I got to a point where Brian is a key part of my work and life. I am confident about it being useful, because of the things I achieved with it, like Refactoring itself.
🤖 AI — I believe people who journal and store their knowledge are going to get massive leverage thanks to AI. The more AI knows about us, the more it can help us. I got a glimpse of this just recently through the release of the new Notion AI Q&A, where you can literally ask questions to your workspace. Though still limited, it felt like chatting with myself, and it was magic!
📌 Agenda
So here is what we will cover today:
🏗️ Structure — the general organization of the workspace, including principles for evolving it sustainably.
📊 Dashboard — how I do most of the action on one page.
☀️ Journaling — recording your days and thoughts.
📑 Notes — the backbone of the whole workspace.
🗃 PRT — a dead simple project management and organization framework.
🍻 Personal CRM — staying in touch with people of your life.
I will go through these both in a video walkthrough, and in writing. Let’s dive in!