In 2022 one of my purposes was to prioritize collaborations. I was finally confident with my Notion skills and it was time to blend that technical knowledge with other industries, creators, projects, and ideas.
99% of those collaborations were with other women, and it was a fantastic experience, and therefore, I think, worth it to share one of those experiences over here. This is a mini story of my collaboration with Pamela Mondragón.
It was early this year when I discovered Pamela on Instagram. We connected and started following our work. We also followed our mutual newsletters and it was in one of these emails that my head made the connection about Notion + “what Pamela does”. Pamela is a Ph.D. student in Psychology and also a Certified Positive Psychology Coach. In her newsletter, she shared some templates for effective journaling and that is what I proposed we translate into Notion.
The first meeting was great, it was mostly only to connect and do a little brainstorming. After that, we agree to do some brainstorming ourselves and share that in the next meeting. The next meeting was one of the best in terms of learning. My idea in Notion was very concrete, I wanted to do a journaling template based on Pamela’s best practices, however, Pamela wanted to do a lot more, not only journaling but a complete set of Self-Care exercises using Notion.
This was our first challenge, I was used to working fast and concretely in Notion and I even went to the meeting with a full journaling template that was enough for us to modify according to Pamela’s experience. On the other hand, Pamela was used to working in a more conscious way and it had a more broad idea of our template, a full Self-Care set. It took us one more meeting to finally get on the same page, but it was worth it. After that we build and review for 3 months and launched the Self-Care System in Notion 💛 Now the template is even in two languages!
Here are some learning points from all this experience:
- First meetings are not a reflection of the entire collaboration, we must give ourselves time to get to know the other person.
- It is important to give our idea clearly but without closing the door to listening to the idea of our collaborator. Without knowing how to listen we would never have achieved a Self-Care system, we would have stayed with a journaling template.
- In the case of Pamela, her idea was more oriented to use Notion as a PDF, mine was to go further with Analytics and trackers and we managed to discover the balance point until the third meeting.
- It is super important to find a joint rhythm of work. Not everyone works at our pace and in collaborations, you have to find a balance. We did this by scheduling the next time we would see each other when we finished every meeting.
- We lose nothing by contacting other people. Let's lose the fear of talking to strangers because great things can happen if we combine our skills with those of others. Good things can happen → Our last feedback "This template is so comprehensive it seems to have missed nothing. I;m not a spiritual person, but reading your descriptions might change a man. Thank you for your dedication to mental health, especially after a 2+ year pandemic"
