Using Notion for 1:1s

Recently I've started to hold regular 1:1s with members on my team, as part of a transition to the Engineering Manager role. I was having regular 1:1s with my manager also, so now things were starting to get out of control: I had to have notes on all meetings, and some action points that were result of those meetings. How could I keep things organized?

Notion to the rescue!

Notion is a platform for organization and knowledge base. It has an interesting concept of blocks that can be anything: a paragraph, a title, a list, a table and so on. It also has templates, which you can use to create repetitive blocks, or sets of blocks.

How do I use Notion to organize my 1:1s?

Linked databases for tasks

First, I create a main To Do list for everything work related, so I don't lose track of my tasks. Then, I create a tag for each 1:1, and assign that tag for tasks that are related to that 1:1, like "Buy conference tickets for Mary", with the tag "1:1 Mary".

Then I create a page for each person, containing the notes about each session, and the To Do list, filtered by that tag that I created. You can do that by creating a linked database, getting data from that main database, and filter it by tag. In this example, the tag is "1:1 Mary". That way, any change I make in that task is reflected on all boards. Pretty cool!

Template button

Another way to keep things organized is having notes of each 1:1 session. To speed up this, I've created a template to add new 1:1 session notes, with a template button.

All you have to do is give the button a name, and write the blocks that will be created when you click that button. Simple, but effective.

And the result is this:

Example

The example I've shown here is available at my Notion Workspace. Remember to set the database visualization as "Board View".