Your cart is currently empty!
Category: Systems
-
Your Systems are like Mushrooms
I’m obsessed with mushrooms. Their texture and history and growth patterns are so fascinating to me, and the way that they spring out of what seems like nothing when just the right conditions are met feels like nothing short of magic. In the same way, seeing how the individual factors that make up a system come together and impact each other feels like another sort of magic. While we have a much better idea of how business and creative systems work and can be impacted than we do about the mysteries of fungal life, every time I learn more about mushrooms I can’t help but see how many parallels there are between nature and the work that we do here at Rain or Shine. Just like how mushrooms are all connected, every individual part of your systems is connected in ways that you can’t always see until you start digging.
As Merlin Sheldrake says in his book Entangled Life, “Many fungi can live within the roots of a single plant, and many plants can connect with a single fungal network. In this way a variety of substances, from nutrients to signaling compounds, can pass between plants via fungal connections.” In the same way, your actions, environment, and other outside factors can also support and impact your systems and should be equally considered when you want to make any changes.
“How a given plant or fungus behaves depends on… where they happen to be.” Even if you’re not actively seeking change, just showing up and considering how your environment and your actions contribute to your success can help you more accurately meet your needs in a variety of other settings.
“Some people think about symbiosis as being like a package from IKEA,” Toby Spribille explains, “with clearly identified parts, and functions, and order in which it’s assembled.” His findings suggest instead that … lichens are dynamic systems. They are a product less of their parts than of the exchanges between those parts. Lichens are stabilized networks of relationships; they never stop lichenizing; they are verbs as well as nouns.”
Dynamic systems are characterized by constant change, activity, or progress. We talk a lot about living systems, how we’re not here to help you write something down once and never look at it again. I love this analogy of IKEA packages because I think a lot of people have an idea of systems that is very similar. And perhaps we as systems experts feed into this idea, because it’s often easiest to visualize how all the parts come together by providing diagrams and flowcharts that make it look as deceptively simple as IKEA instructions. But just as putting together IKEA furniture is never as easy as it seems, systems require an understanding of your needs that goes deeper than the flowchart or step-by-step process. And of course, because we are living beings with complex relationships, those needs and the ways in which we support them are going to change as well. After all, “A mycelial network is a map of a fungus’s recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life-forms are in fact processes not things. The “you” of five years ago was made from different stuff than the “you” of today. Nature is an event that never stops.”
Systems, whether they’re made up of mycelium, nerves, or processes within a business, can be incredibly complex. You don’t have to know what you’re doing or what needs to change to get started exploring what’s around you and the impacts those external factors have on the actions that you’re taking. Systems Recess was designed to help complete beginners and seasoned systems thinkers alike find connections between what’s already worked and things you’d like to change.
Download your Interactive Notion tutorial today:
Once you have your template, Join us live every Thursday to ask questions, share your insights, or just go through the process with others who get it.
Systems Recess is genuinely one of my favorite things that we do here at Rain or Shine, and it’s a process that I personally come back to over and over again because even when everything is going well, taking the time to ask myself why and explore those connections gives me space to explore new ideas and grow in unexpected ways.
“Our perceptions work in a large part by expectation. It takes less cognitive effort to make sense of the world using preconceived images updated with a small amount of new sensory information than to constantly form entirely new perceptions from scratch… Tricked out of our expectations, we fall back on our senses. What’s astonishing is the gulf between what we expect to find and what we find when we actually look.”
The process of Systems Recess gives us the chance to actually look at our systems and the connections around us. Self-compassion and curiosity are values that require constant practice, and this process of seeking out connections helps me come back to the idea that myself, my life, and my business are constantly shifting, growing, and learning in ways that I can’t wait to continue exploring. I hope you’ll consider joining us, whether on your own time or during our weekly live sessions.
P.S. If you’ve attended Systems Recess or done the process on your own, I’d love to hear what you think! Fill out this quick survey & you’ll get a fun little gift as a thank you <3
-
Streamlining Your Tech Stack: A Notion Guide to Subscription Tracking and Cost Analysis
Keeping track of all your subscriptions, especially as a small business owner, can be super overwhelming. We’ve all had times when we’ve evaluated our software by vibe alone – it’s hard to know which of the many tech products you’re using are providing you with the most value when you’re not tracking use, cost, or subscriptions. This Notion guide walks you through setting up a subscription tracking system for your businesses Tech Stack, a simple way to calculate how much you use each software, and a cost analysis formula so you can make data informed decisions about your business finances and the programs you keep in your Tech Stack.
Subscription Tracking and Documenting Your Tech Stack in Notion
To begin, we’re going to create a Database in Notion that allows us to document all of the tech, software, and subscriptions you’re using in your business. You can also use the individual pages within this database to record any special instructions or information related to those service.
Create a table view and name your database “Tech Stack” or something similar. Then add the following properties:
- A ‘Name’ property, to record the name of the service
- A ‘Status’ property, named “Use Status” or something similar, with the options “Upgrade”, “In Use”, and “Archived”.
- A ‘Number’ property, named “Price/M” or something similar, and select your countries currency as the Number Format.
Your database will function perfectly fine with only the above properties. If the following properties seem useful to you, you can also add:
- A ‘Select’ property, named “Use Frequency” or something similar, with the options “Daily”, “Weekly”, “Monthly”, and “Yearly”
- A ‘URL’ property, to link to the service’s website
Now that the database is created, you can add pages within for each of the services, softwares, or subscriptions that you use in your business and update the information for each.
Tracking Subscription and Software Use in Notion
Now that we have a place for our Tech Stack documentation to live, we’re going to get into the data collection aspect of tracking the uses of each of your subscriptions and softwares. To do this, we’re going to create a separate tracking database and connect that to our Teach Stack database by utilizing Notion’s relation and rollup properties.
Making the Use Tracking Database
Where you want this new database to live in your Notion workspace is up to you. If you’re tracking multiple subscriptions and softwares, it might be best to have this be it’s own page, or if you’re only interested in tracking a particular service, you could create it inside that service’s page in your tech stack database.
To begin, add a table view of your new database to the page you’ve decided on. Then add the following properties:
- A ‘Date’ property, to track the date of each recorded use.
- A ‘Relation’ property, to connect this database to your Tech Stack database. Select the Tech Stack database you created earlier, and make sure that it’s shown on both databases.
If you’re going to track the use of multiple subscriptions or softwares directly within this database, you can set up templates within this database to make recording uses easier. Within each template, set the date as ‘Now’ to record thew exact time of creation, set the name as the type of service, and the relation to the page in your tech stack for that service.
Now we’re going to go to the Tech Stack database and add a ‘rollup’ property. We’re going to name it Total Uses, select the relation to the Tracking database, select the ‘Name’ property, and select the ‘Count Values’ option for the calculation. This ensures that each time a new record is created in our Tracking database that’s related to this service, the number shown in this property is updated.
Using Buttons in Notion to Track Software Use
Since we’re using two different databases for this process, we can utilize Notion’s Button feature to make adding a new use case recording a one-step action. You can choose to add this button to your primary dashboard, if you have one, or you can add the button directly to your Tech Stack database. Either way, the steps are the same.
To start, add a ‘Button’ block or property. Name the button: “used (service name)”, and select the trigger as ‘When this button is clicked’. Then add the following steps:
- Add a page to your Tracking database.
- Update the ‘Name’ property to the name of the service you’re tracking.
- Update the ‘Date’ property to Now – time when updated
- Update the ‘Relation’ property to link the page in your Tech Stack database for this service.
Now each time you click this button, a new record will be added to your Tracking database stating that you’ve used that subscription or software.
Using Notion to do a Business Cost Analysis
Now that we’ve created a place to document the software and subscriptions inside of our Business’ tech stack, how much we’re paying for each, and how many times we’re using them, we can add a ‘Formula’ property to the Tech Stack database that will allow you to do a simple Cost Analysis.
We’re going to start by navigating to our Tech Stack database and adding a formula property. Name that property “CPU” or something similar. Then click to edit the formula. In the window that opens, select the name of the cost property in your tech stack database. Then type ‘/’ to divide that by the name of the formula property, which in this example is titled “CPU”. Click ‘done’ and update the number format to your countries currency.
Now you can see at a glance how much each item in your Tech Stack is costing you per use, and use that data to analyze the value of each of these business expenses.
Notion for Business Management
Organize your entire business in Notion with the Complete Business Hub!
Through the strategic use of Notion, you can document your tech stack, monitor usage, and conduct a thorough cost analysis, ensuring you’re making informed decisions that optimize your businesses financial resources and help make decision making easier.
Whether you’re streamlining for efficiency, evaluating for value, or planning for future investments, If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur looking to navigate the complexities of business operations, we’d love to help! Schedule an Exploration Session to chat about custom system solutions for your business, or browse our other free resources.