Hey all! 😁
I'm Thomas Frank, and I'm a YouTuber and Notion creator. I'm pumped to share my template, Ultimate Brain, with you. (Thanks so much for hunting it, @benln !)
I've been using Notion daily since 2018, and since then I've wanted to create a truly all-in-one system for my personal productivity within it. I wanted a place to track my tasks and projects, take notes, clip web pages and highlights. and plan my day.
Ultimate Brain is that system. It's a template that you can drop into your Notion workspace to create a complete productivity system.
My team and I launched Ultimate Brain in April of this year; since then, we've sold over 7,500 copies, made several tweaks and updates, and answered over 830 threads in our support community.
I'm confident Ultimate Brain is the best productivity template you'll find for Notion, and here are a few reasons why:
🦸♂️ Active Support - Highlighting this first! Ultimate Brain comes with an active support community led up by the absolutely fantastic @aantoszek , who does a fantastic job of answering every question in detail.
📚 Comprehensive Beginner's Tutorial - Including written guides, an interactive demo version of the template with tons of example content, and over 6 hours of video tutorials. The videos cover everything from how to get started, to how you can deeply customize the template and add to it.
📄 Update Guides - when Notion releases new features, we make detailed, step-by-step update guides that show you exactly how you can upgrade your template to include them.
🗃 P.A.R.A. Organization (12:55 in the video) - I'm a big fan of @fortelabs PARA system, so it's deeply integrated into Ultimate Brain.
✅ GTD Dashboard (27:37 in the video) - Ultimate Brain supports a complete GTD workflow ➡ Inbox, Next Actions, Calendar, Snoozed Tasks, Someday/Maybe List, etc.
However... the GTD features are completely optional - you're not forced to use them. You can practice GTD, or follow a more traditional (and simple) productivity workflow.
📅 Recurring Tasks (32:50 in the video) - Ultimate Brain has an extremely robust recurring tasks system, allowing for complex intervals: End of the Month, Last Workday of the Month, Mon/Wed/Fri, etc. @yomartholomew spent two full months developing the most monstrous Notion formula I've ever seen in order to make it all work seamlessly.
Our docs even have a guide showing you how to automate your recurring tasks - for free - using Make.com.
🥅 Quick Capture Dashboard (03:12 in the video) - an always-clean page that lets you quickly capture notes and tasks.
🧹 Auto-Cleanup Features - one problem with task and note apps is that we often capture and schedule too much, and then end up with tons of overdue tasks and irrelevant notes.
I know I deal with this messiness myself, despite my best efforts to do weekly reviews. So I built in auto-cleanup features to help with this problem.
- Cold Tasks (25:50 in the video): Tasks that are more than 2 weeks overdue and non-high-priority go to a safe "cold tasks" page and disappear from your normal due lists (this is also easily customized).
- Fleeting Notes (35:02 in the video): Ultimate Brain has a special area for notes that are "fleeting", i.e. only relevant for a short period of time. After a month, they go to your safe Archive and don't crowd your inbox or other folders.
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There are a lot of other features I could list, but I'll wrap up this comment by mentioning that Ultimate Brain has a no-questions-asked refund policy.
I set out to create a world-class customer experience with this template, including active support, multi-modal tutorials, and help docs. I believe a great refund policy is part of that experience as well. If you try it out and decide it's not for you, we'll refund you. Just like that.
If you have questions, I'll be here (along with some of my team) to answer all of them!
P.S. - I'm always happy to answer questions and nerd out about the biz/marketing side of selling Notion templates as well. Don't hesitate to comment here or reach out on Twitter 😊
At first I was hesitant to get the template. It seemed super useful but I thought I could do something similar myself. However, seeing the level of thought that went into it made me realise I’d be saving weeks of work for a very low price. I bought it and it’s been incredible so far! I especially love the book tracker and how it can be linked to the other resources.
@bassel_ghazali thanks so much Bassel! Really happy you like the book tracker too. That was a fun addition. Is there anything you'd like to see added to it?
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@tomfrankly Thanks Tom! I’ve transferred over from using a physical planner since I felt the way things connect in this template were next-level.
I’ve been slowly adapting it for personal preference (you’ve made it very easy to do so, thanks for that) e.g. I prefer a weekly journal page divided into days, instead of a daily journal page.
One thing I’m going to add, which I’ll share in case you find useful: In my physical planner, there is a calendar view for the month, which I found myself using to briefly summarize each day (e.g. “went to x restaurant with sister”, “saw cool new park”, etc.). I liked having that view of the month so I can remember what I did. I can’t speak for everyone regarding if they’d like this, but I personally would and I’ll be working on adding it to my workspace soon!
@bassel_ghazali oh yeah, that would be a great addition to the journal page!
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Thanks to his amazing YouTube videos, most people know how much Thomas knows about Notion.
What a lot of people don't realize is how comprehensive, hard-working and thorough he is. In every interaction I've had with him, I've been blown away by the level of effort and excellence he puts into things. On top of this incredible ethic, he's also just a good dude (see the support services that come with this product).
I cannot endorse Thomas, his team, and his work product highly enough.
@andrewbarry5 thank you so much Andrew! And thank you for being a huge influential figure on my path to finally launching my own products. I'm not sure if I told you, but Creator's Companion (my first product) was inspired by everything I learned in your course creator's fellowship. I intended to create a course (which is why I joined), but ended up making a product instead!
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@tomfrankly that's very kind of you to say my friend, and sounds like you made a wise choice back then!
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This is so exciting. I am going to go very deep in my review simply because of how much I've gained from the Ultimate Brain. I've been using it for the last ~3 months now. I'm a founder-in-the-making and working on launching my company very soon! I've used UB in this context.
My why: I am a learner for life but it's impossible to remember everything. It's worse when I need to access specific data but don't know where to find it. This means I need a system not just to record data when I'm consuming it but also to bring it back up when I need it.
What else did I try: Google Docs, notebooks, notes, paper notes, planners, heck even my own notion workspaces. But the system itself was always broken. Either I felt overwhelmed with the amount of info, drowned in the guilt of not being able to manage it well, or just simply that I'd lose the physical notes.
UB: ultimate brain helped me synthesize not just note-taking but also note-using. I hadn't read Tiago Fortes' before this but the template itself was so intuitive that I didn't need to do anything beyond. It's also a super efficient system to manage life. I don't record everything (for ex: i don't record books, recipes, etc.) except for work stuff + my day planner, but that itself has been such a benefit. I know I'm happier, more in control, and less stressed about my knowledge consumption and utilization.
Recommendation: if you're just starting your journey, don't rush to 'fill' everything. Use it regularly. Maybe you'd need 2-3 diff note-taking systems but you want to aim for moving to your UB eventually. If you rush to fill it in instead of using it, productivity inertia will come in!
Excited about @tomfrankly 's work and vision to make knowledge workers' life more manageable and productive :)
@tomfrankly@arunachawla Thank you so much for sharing your story, Aruna!
It means a lot to us (Thomas especially), knowing that after such a long journey, you found UB, and actually, it was **the** solution. Appreciate the tips, I definitely agree! It's better to take things slowly rather than rush everything at the same time.
We're honored to have you as part of our community 💚
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@tomfrankly@aantoszek of course! Thrilled to see you here. It's only getting started.
@sobedominik Thanks, Dominik! We absolutely love HelpKit - it helped us build a comprehensive help center very quickly. What a terrific product.
Thank you so much for your support here 🙌
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