Notion Project Board Setup for Managing Deadlines

Table of Contents

starting with a blank board in notion

The very first time I opened a Notion board, it was so empty that I just stared at the white space like… now what :P. I thought I could just drag in a calendar, maybe a few tasks, and it would magically keep track of project deadlines for me. Nope. The board was just sitting there with a single sad column named “No Status.”

So here’s where I actually started: hit the slash command “/table board” and picked Board Database. Suddenly I had columns titled “To Do,” “Doing,” and “Done.” Sounds useful, right? Except these are defaults, and they don’t line up with deadline tracking at all. I needed things like “Upcoming Deadline,” “Needs Review,” and “Overdue.” Changing those names is easy enough — just click the header, rename it, done. But I learned later the hard way that changing names can wreck any automations you build later, especially if you’re syncing with Zapier or Make. If something downstream is expecting “Done” and suddenly it’s “Completed,” the Zap just silently fails. Learned that the frustrating way.

Visualizing helps. Picture three buckets side by side:

Setting this up feels almost silly at first, but having these columns customized to *my* types of deadlines completely changed how the board felt. Instead of generic “to do,” I could see which tasks were creeping up on me.

adding a deadline property that actually works

Now, the board alone is just colorful boxes unless you put deadlines in. I clicked on “Add Property” at the top and created a Date field. Named it “Deadline.” Sounds straightforward, but here’s the trap: Notion lets you add a “date created” and also “last edited” timestamps by default. I accidentally left a “date created” column active for way too long and confused myself, because I kept scanning those little date stamps thinking they were deadlines… and then realizing those were just when I typed the note. Ugh. If you’re just starting out, definitely delete extra date properties that aren’t helpful.

When you put in a deadline, you can also toggle “End Date.” Helpful if your work spans over multiple days. For me, writing a full tutorial always takes three days, so I set start date as Monday and end date as Wednesday, and then I can actually see how bloated my week is getting. Once you have about 20 tasks, the only way to avoid panic is coloring them by status or due proximity.

Tip: right click the property and “Format” lets you make the calendar view start on Sunday or Monday. I had it accidentally on Monday for months before realizing it was throwing me off, since my brain still thinks of Sundays as the start :).

connecting deadlines to project stages

A huge beginner mistake is leaving “Deadline” as just a passive column. If you want a project board that actually nags you, you’ve got to hook that date into your board views. In Notion, click “Add a View” and create a Calendar View of the same database. What happens next looks almost magical: every deadline you typed in pops up on a calendar. The catch? If you created different date properties, Notion sometimes defaults to the wrong one (I had “Finish Date” on one card and “Deadline” on another). Check that little gear icon in the Calendar view settings and make sure it’s bound to the right date.

Once I had the deadline view tied to the board view, it was easier to spot the disasters — like three items all landing on the same Friday. I also filtered the calendar so it only shows items not marked “Complete.” Without that filter, your entire board clogs up with finished tasks, and you get the false sense of being busier than you actually are.

using filters and sorting to see what matters

One of the least intuitive moves in Notion is filtering by date. The options sound like math problems: “is within,” “is on or before,” “is in the past week.” What worked for me was combining two filters: “Deadline is on or before Today” AND “Status is not Complete.” That way, at a glance, I get just the list of things that are overdue or due today. Everything else hides politely in the background.

Sorting was another lifesaver. I sorted by deadline ascending (earliest first) and then by status. Suddenly, instead of this chaotic pile of half-finished projects, my board spills out like this:
– Build webinar slides | Due today
– Update client table | Due tomorrow
– Draft case study | Due Friday

The difference is night and day. No magic, no automation, just the right filters layered in. It reminds me of that time I spent hours debugging why my Microsoft To Do sync wasn’t working, when the whole issue was that tasks were just sorted by “alphabetical title” and not “due date.” Facepalm.

setting up reminders for deadlines

Here’s my embarrassing admission: I thought Notion would just push notifications by default. Spoiler, it doesn’t. You actually need to set reminders manually. When you click a date inside a task, a little dropdown shows “Remind at time of event” or “Remind 1 day before.” If you don’t set that, nothing pings you and you’ll definitely miss something huge, like the tax deadline, which I almost did.

My hack: for recurring weekly content, I duplicate the card and then just drag the deadline forward one week on the calendar view. The reminder carries over, so I don’t have to reconfigure it every single time. If you’re syncing reminders with Google Calendar through something like Zapier, be very careful — the Notion API likes to spit out deadlines in UTC, and suddenly your meeting is two hours off. I made that mistake and ended up sitting on Zoom all by myself once.

custom views for different projects

When you’re juggling multiple projects, you’ll quickly hit the wall with a single board. I handle this by creating linked databases. In a new page, type “/linked database” and choose your projects board. Now filter it down: only tasks tagged with “Client A.” Do another view for “Client B.” Now you’re looking at the exact same database but through separate lenses.

Why does this matter? Because deadlines are relative. Client A’s editing tasks due Thursday won’t matter if you’re spending all of Wednesday in meetings for Client B. With linked databases, the same deadline field travels around, you just slice it differently. I even built a personal view that only shows tasks with the “Personal” tag and a deadline within the next five days. That’s how dentist appointments don’t get lost in the chaos of client projects.

avoiding the pitfalls of renamed labels

Remember earlier I mentioned renaming “Done” to “Completed”? Yeah… that broke an entire Zap I had feeding into Google Sheets. The Zap was set to trigger when status changed to “Done,” and suddenly, nothing happened. It wasn’t obvious until about a week later when I realized no completed projects were logged. Lesson learned: if you ever integrate Notion with outside apps, keep a change log of what you rename. Even just a plain text doc noting “Renamed ‘Done’ to ‘Completed’ on March” saves headaches later.

It’s not just Zapier either. I also once renamed a property from “Deadline” to “Due Date” thinking it sounded nicer. But my filters and sorts were still pointing at “Deadline.” So the board showed blank values. Took me an annoying half hour to realize nothing was actually broken, I had just changed the label. The properties underneath still function fine — but your settings don’t auto adjust.

when automations misfire on deadlines

There’s another chaos factor if you sync Notion deadlines through external tools. At one point I tried using Zapier to push new deadlines into Trello as backup, just in case Notion ever went down for a day (it has, btw). I set “Trigger: when a new item is added with a deadline.” Except it fired twice every time. I got two Trello cards, double notifications, double the headache.

After running tests, I realized the trigger was “database item created” and then the deadline property being filled counted as an update, so it repeatedly pinged. The fix was changing the trigger to “property updated” where “Deadline” is not empty. It still feels like half duct tape, but at least the duplicates stopped.

I guess what I’m saying is Notion project boards can totally replace a massive tangle of other tools, but you have to be exact with properties, filters, and naming… or everything downstream falls apart without warning. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯