← The Quarterly PlannerThe guide
How to use Your First Quarter
Your First Quarter is a free planning template. It helps you set one objective for the next twelve weeks and check in on it for twenty minutes every Sunday.
The template runs in Notion. If you’ve never used Notion before, this guide walks you through everything you need, one page at a time.
What Notion is
Notion is a free app for notes and planning. It works in any web browser, and there are apps for computers and phones.
You don’t need to learn all of Notion to use this template. The guide covers the handful of things you’ll do each week, and nothing else.
What you need
- A free Notion account. The next page shows you how to make one.
- A computer for your first session. Once you're set up, the weekly check-in works on a phone.
- Ninety minutes on a Sunday for your first plan, then twenty minutes each Sunday after that.
- An AI tool, if you want one. The template comes with copy-and-paste prompts for each step. They're optional, and the free version of any popular AI tool will run them.
How this guide works
- 01Get your own copyDuplicate the template into your own Notion account — it takes about two minutes.
- 02Notion basics in five minutesThe handful of Notion skills this template actually uses, and nothing else.
- 03A tour of the templateWhat each section of the dashboard does, from the progress tracker to the backend.
- 04Your first SundayThe ninety-minute session that sets your life roles, your Enough sentence, your objective, and week one.
- 05Your Sunday reviewThe twenty-minute weekly habit: tick off the week, decide what happens to anything unfinished, and plan the next one.
- 06The daily promptA two-minute AI prompt to start each working day pointed at your objective.
- 07When the quarter endsHow to close one quarter and start the next, without losing your record.
- 08Questions and fixesCommon questions — Notion costs, using it on your phone, starting late, and what to do if something looks wrong.
Don’t have your own copy yet? Open the template in Notion first, then come back and start with step one.