A Free Notion Life OS for Your Setup Upgrades and Game Backlog
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Most gaming setups come with a running list. The games you bought on sale and never started. The cable mess behind the TV. The monitor setting you found once and lost.
Life OS is a free Notion template that gives that list a home. It’s a general second brain and goal system, so it covers far more than games. Its five databases are linked to each other, and that’s what makes it work for a setup and a backlog.
The template: Duplicate Life OS in Notion. It’s free. You need a Notion account to copy it into your workspace.
What You Get
The template describes itself as “a second brain and goal system where areas, goals, projects, tasks and notes all talk to each other.” Those are its five databases:
- Areas: the big parts of your life. The Type options are Health, Career, Money, Relationships, Growth, Home and Fun.
- Goals: what you want from an area, with a Horizon (This quarter, This year, 3 years) and a Target Date.
- Projects: jobs with a finish line, with Status, Priority and a Deadline.
- Tasks: the single steps, with Done, Focus Today, a Due date, Priority and Energy.
- Notes: ideas and reference material, with a Type, Tags and a Source link.
The Home page has sections for Today, Capture, Projects, Goals, Areas and Rituals, plus a Databases page and a Weekly Review page. Sample rows come filled in. The template’s own start note says to delete them when you’re ready, then add your Areas first, since “everything else hangs off them.”
Start With a Fun Area
Make one Area for gaming and set its Type to Fun. Each Area also has a Standard text field. Use it to write down what a good setup looks like for you, like “everything within reach, no cables on the floor.”
Every Area shows its Active Projects and Note Count, so the gaming area shows at a glance how much is in motion.
Setup Upgrades Go in Projects
Each row in Projects is one upgrade with a finish line:
- Move the PC to a standing desk.
- Run ethernet to the console.
- Clean up the cables behind the TV.
Link each one to your gaming Area. Status runs Planning, Active, On hold and Done. Priority is High, Medium or Low. Deadline is there for upgrades with a date attached.
Projects also count their Open Tasks and Overdue Tasks, and they carry Completion and Progress Bar columns, so you can see how far along an upgrade is without opening it.
If your first project is the desk itself, our pick for one desk that handles gaming and work is the ErGear 48x24in Electric Standing Desk. It’s fully electric and has 4 programmable memory-height presets, so your work height and your gaming height are each saved to a button.
The full breakdown is in The One Standing Desk That Works for Gaming and Working From Home.
The Steps Go in Tasks
Break each project into tasks and link them to the project. “Measure the desk space.” “Order a longer ethernet cable.”
The Energy column is the useful one for a dad schedule. Its options are Deep focus, Quick win and Low energy:
- Quick win: ordering the cable. Fits a short window.
- Deep focus: rerouting every cable behind the desk.
- Low energy: labeling the power bricks after bedtime.
Tick Focus Today on the few tasks you want to get to. The Today section color-codes due dates: tasks go red once they’re overdue and orange on the day they’re due.
Your Game Backlog Can Be a Project
Life OS has no games database, but a Project with tasks covers a backlog well. Make a project called Backlog in your gaming Area and add each game as a task.
- Priority marks what you play next.
- Energy matches the game to the session you’ve got. Deep focus for a long story game, Quick win for one short match, Low energy for something on the couch.
- Done gets ticked when you finish or drop a game.
The project’s Open Tasks count then tells you how many games are left. Tasks have no platform or store link column, so put that inside the task’s page, or add a column yourself.
Settings and Fixes Go in Notes
Notes holds anything you had to look up once and will need again: the monitor picture settings you landed on, a controller’s pairing steps, the router setting your console needed.
- Set Type to Reference and add the how-to tag.
- Put the guide or forum thread the fix came from in Source.
- Tick Favorite on the notes you open most.
- Link the note to your gaming Area or to the project it came from.
The Capture section handles quick thoughts. Drop the idea in Notes with no Area, and it lands in the Inbox view to sort on Sunday.
The Sunday Weekly Review
Life OS has a Weekly Review page built for 30 minutes every Sunday. The page itself warns: “Skip it and the system goes stale in about two weeks.” It runs in three steps:
- Clear: empty the Notes inbox so every note gets an Area or a Project, and get the loose tasks out of your head, your email and your phone.
- Review: check every Active project for a clear next task, and look at your Goals to see if each one is still worth chasing.
- Plan: tick Focus Today on the 3 tasks that matter most for Monday, and move anything overdue to a date you can hit, or delete it.
Who It’s For
- You keep a backlog in your head, in a phone note, or across a few store wishlists.
- You have setup upgrades you keep meaning to get to.
- You want one system for the rest of your life too, with gaming as one Area in it.
Skip it if you want a backlog tracker that pulls in game covers, playtime or achievements on its own. Every row in Life OS is something you type, and it asks for a Sunday review to stay current.