Notion comprehensive

Quick pass. 24 August 2026, evening PT. For John and the COO.

This is a usage map, not a teardown. FACT is what I saw in the BrightZen Systems workspace tonight. ASK is what I want before a deeper pass.

I ranked by recent motion first, then by standing volume. A database that still takes new rows this month is “used.” A garden with a thousand 2024 pages that nobody opens is not.

The shape

Notion is four products in one workspace. The workspace name is BrightZen Systems. I am signed in as John Zdanowski.

1. Meetings. Fireflies dumps every call here. The pile grows by itself.
2. Ops wiki. Weekly Accounting SOPs. How-tos the team still edits.
3. Writing. Journals, memos, Phaedrus, the Game Manual, two document hubs. John’s desk.
4. Leftover boards. Two Company Roadmaps, a template Meeting Transcripts space, a thin People list. Still there. Almost no company motion.

If you only remember one thing: do not judge this workspace by “largest database.” Daily Dispatch is huge because an old journal was imported. The work that still moves is Fireflies and the SOP wiki. Tasks do not live here. They live in ClickUp.

Most used

1. John’s Fireflies Meetings 2.0

Hottest object by motion. 659 rows. Newest created today (24 August 2026, 2:05 PM PT). First row 13 August 2025. This month: 28. April was the peak month this year (70). January was the biggest month overall (120).

This is a generated meeting list. It is not a forgotten pile. John has it pinned. Recents are full of these pages. Client calls sit next to internal ones.

FACT: live factory. ASK: who besides John should open it.

2. Weekly Accounting SOPs

The live wiki. 174 pages. Last edited Friday 21 August 2026, 2:13 PM PT. Two pages touched this month. Nine since 1 July.

Status tonight: 77 Approved, 23 Ready for Review, 74 Not started.

Categories I could count (a page can wear more than one): Operations is the thickest block, then Bookkeeping, Data, Analyst, Client Management, plus platform how-tos (payments, payroll). Twenty-eight pages have no category.

This is how-to, not a job queue. A “Not started” SOP is an unwritten page, not a forgotten client. CRM how-tos here point at ClickUp, not at a Notion roster.

FACT: the team still writes here. ASK: is 74 “Not started” a real backlog, or leftover templates.

3. IFM and client review pages

Not one database. A cluster John has been opening. Recents include How to Review an IFM, the Error Checker, IFM QA Checklist, Integrated Financial Model, and a March 2026 portfolio pass.

These are standing notes, not a refill factory. I did not read the bodies. Client books live here. They stay off this page.

FACT: recent viewing, not a counted queue. ASK: is this the home for IFM work, or a holding pen until something else owns it.

4. Phaedrus Card Catalog

49 cards. Pinned. Last updated 17 March 2026. Sits under Phaedrus HQ.

Status mix: 24 Active, 2 In Progress, 9 Complete, 3 Done, plus Draft / Todo / Cancelled / empty. Types I counted: Memo 12, Project 8, Reference 5, Person 4, plus Skill, Writing, Idea, and a few one-offs.

This is John’s catalog for the writing/AI desk. Not team production.

5. BrightZen Capital Document Hub

57 docs. Pinned. Last updated 9 March 2026, 7:38 PM PT. Created this year (January through March). Stage is blank on 56 rows. One row says Story.

A writing shelf for capital and company notes. Motion stopped in March. I am not listing the docs.

6. Daily Dispatch

Largest standing pile. 1,791 entries. Pinned.

By created year: 1,562 in 2024, 195 in 2025, 34 in 2026. Newest 21 April 2026, 11:08 AM PT. Oldest sits next to a private page named “Import Mar 9, 2024.”

This is a journal, plus an import. High count is history, not this week’s work. John still opens a few pages. The refill has slowed.

Used some

BrightZen Document Hub

33 docs. Pinned. Nested under the Capital hub. Last new row 25 February 2026. Types: 19 Memo, 10 Slip, 1 Program, 3 blank. A second writing shelf. Quiet since late February.

Company Roadmap (the 💹 board)

64 cards. Last new row 9 September 2025. Still shows 9 In Progress, 12 For Triage, 15 Complete, plus On Deck / Next / Queued. Looks like work. Dates say it is last year’s board.

Company Roadmap (the 🛣️ board)

59 initiatives. Newest row 23 January 2026, 10:54 PM PT. Internal plan. I am not listing the rows.

People

10 rows. Private sidebar. Circles tonight: Partner 3, Advisor 2, Client 2, plus one each Friend, Prospect, Recruit. Last touch 21 August. New rows landed last night (23 August, 7:34 PM PT). Still a thin list. People do not live here.

My Tasks

Notion’s built-in task list. Fetch returned a view and no queryable collection, so I have no row count. Search last saw it 3 April 2026. Not the ops factory.

Writing John still opens

Phaedrus HQ, Phaedrus Vision, Game Manual pages, Integrated Financial Model, Digital COO, Monday Morning Metrics, Book 2: Zen and the Art of Weekly Accounting. Recents, not databases. Energy is reading and notes, not a queue.

Least used / dust

Quotes from Zen & Lila

178 rows. Last edited 31 January 2025, 8:14 PM PT. A quote garden. Dust.

Meeting Transcripts teamspace

A Notion template from 19 May 2025. John is a member, not the owner. Meeting Notes (4 stubs; last created that same May day). OKRs (3). Team Members (8, template locations: Sydney / San Francisco / Nashville). Recent Decisions (3). Nobody filled this in.

Projects

8 rows under Home Page: BrightZen Systems → Portfolio. Last created 30 September 2024. A gallery with almost nothing in it.

Product sandbox

Live teamspace. John owns it. Recents touched “My first agent.” I did not inventory the sandbox.

My Private Writing / My Public Writing

Live teamspaces. John owns both. Private sidebar also holds a few personal pages and the March 2024 import. I did not walk the writing trees.

Shared sidebar

Empty.

Searches that did not find a live object

• SDCFO. One people-row hit. No SOP, no wiki, no database.
• wiki. No separate wiki database. The SOP database is the wiki (wiki="true" on fetch).
• Phoenix. Old pages (Our Story, Getting Started, unit-purchase HTML import). No live Phoenix database.
• CRM. How-tos that tell you to update ClickUp. Notion is not the roster.

Trashed teamspaces

Card Catalog, FutureSight Adventures, John’s Reflect, Marketing, Public Site, Zen and the Art of Weekly Accounting. Plus Jeff Abrams, not joined, also in trash. I did not open trash.

How to read the numbers

A large Fireflies count is health. That list is supposed to refill every week.

A large Daily Dispatch count is history. Most of it arrived in 2024.

A large SOP count with “Not started” is a wiki backlog, not a thousand forgotten jobs.

A Company Roadmap with “In Progress” cards from 2025 is dust that still wears a live label.

The mistake this workspace invites: treat every database as work. Four kinds of open live here. Generated meetings. How-to pages. Standing notes. Leftover gardens.

Writers and readers

I asked the connector who writes and who reads. It can prove writers on two databases. It cannot rank readers.

Last-edit (FACT)

Last edited by exists on BrightZen Capital Document Hub and Quotes from Zen & Lila only. Everywhere else, that column is missing. Fireflies, SOPs, Daily Dispatch, Phaedrus, Document Hub, People, and both roadmaps have no last-edit who.

On the two databases that have it:

1. John Zdanowski — 232 last-edits (54 in 2026)
2. Jarvis (bot) — 2
3. Zapier (bot) — 1

Quotes is all John (178) and none of those edits are from 2026. Capital Hub last-updates are all 2026 and almost all John. There are not ten human last-editors. There is one.

Fireflies is the generated dump (659 rows, 453 created in 2026). It has no writer column. Do not treat Fireflies as people writing.

Closest team list: SOP owners (ASK)

The wiki has Owner, not last-edit who. Owner is assignment. 69 SOP pages moved in 2026. Top ten assigned owners of those pages:

1. Kendra Edelman Smith — 12
2. Brett — 11
3. Kay Navarro — 7
4. Drew — 7
5. Muhammad Aleem Ansari — 6
6. Brix Mabala — 4
7. Alvaro Gonzalez — 3
8. Liezel Omlang — 2
9. Crizel Marpa — 2
10. Sophia Zdanowski — 2

That is who the page is assigned to, not proof they typed the edit. Two more owners (34 pages between them) did not resolve to a name tonight.

Approver is blank on 166 of 174 SOPs. Kendra has 6. Sophia has 2.

get-users lists six current members: John, Jeffrey Abrams, Kendra, Ana Rose, Brett, and a Data Team seat. Many SOP Owner chips are Weekly Accounting people who are not on that member list. Leftover chips, or access the connector will not admit. ASK.

Readers

Cannot rank. The connector does not give workspace view counts, time-on-page, or anyone’s recents except John’s.

People who can read, per get-users: John, Jeff, Kendra, Ana, Brett, Data Team.

John’s recents are about 96 items and stop. That is what John has been opening. It is not who else reads.

What I did not do tonight

I did not page Fireflies or SOPs to the last row.

I did not read client IFM bodies, ShipCalm memos, or Imgix notes. Those are flagged off this page.

I did not inventory every nested writing page (poems, Game Manual, old HTML imports).

I did not open trashed teamspaces.

I did not get a clean schema fetch of Fireflies (the database page is too large). I counted it from the collection URL on a child page.

I did measure SOP load by assigned Owner. I still cannot say who typed the last edit on an SOP.

I did not audit guests, permissions, or Notion AI skills.

I did not use meeting-notes search. That tool is off on this plan.

I did not invent databases I could not fetch. Recents returned 100 pages of a 200 ask and no next cursor. There are more pages than I counted.

I did not treat get-teams as a full org chart. The tool caps at ten names. I searched for BrightZen, Weekly, Meeting, Writing, and Product. Those five queries did not add a live teamspace I had missed.

Plan to evaluate the rest

Do this after John and the COO have marked the ranking true or false. Do not clean until we agree what “live” means.

1. Confirm the live surface. Fireflies plus the SOP wiki for the company. Phaedrus and the writing gardens for John. If yes, hide Meeting Transcripts, the old Projects gallery, and unused template boards from the default sidebar.
2. Name an owner on the SOP wiki. Who may approve. Who clears “Not started.”
3. Leave Daily Dispatch as a journal. Do not treat 1,791 as a work queue. Unpin it if the team should not see it.
4. Freeze the roadmaps unless someone still runs them. Two boards, last real create dates 2025 and January 2026. Export anything still true before freeze. I will not guess which rows those are.
5. Keep client notes off any public page. IFM reviews, Imgix, ShipCalm. Name the object. Do not quote the books.
6. People list. Ten rows. Do not grow it into a CRM. Contacts belong in contacts.
7. Second pass numbers. SOP owners, Fireflies by client vs internal, who still edits the Capital hub. Half a day with the connector. Not a redesign.
8. Write the plan we could not find. One page: “Notion is meetings, the SOP wiki, and John’s writing. ClickUp is the ops OS.” Post it next to this note.

Questions for John

• Is the ranking right? What did I under-count?
• Who on the team should see Fireflies, and who should see only SOPs?
• Are either Company Roadmap still live?
• Should Daily Dispatch stay pinned?
• What does “Not started” mean on an SOP, and who clears it?
• Should a bookkeeper ever open Phaedrus or the writing gardens?
• If we hide the template teamspace this week, who has to say yes?
• Is People supposed to stay a ten-row private list, or did last night’s adds mean you want a Notion CRM after all?
• Who besides John is a Notion writer for the company? SOP Owner is assignment, not last-edit.
• Who actually views Fireflies and the SOP wiki? The connector cannot say.
• Are Weekly Accounting people still supposed to have Notion access, or leftover chips on Owner?

Recommendation, pending yes

Treat Notion as the meeting dump, the SOP wiki, and John’s writing desk. Not the ops OS. That is ClickUp.

Two live company surfaces: Fireflies, and Weekly Accounting SOPs. Everything else is John’s garden or last year’s board.

Do not start a cleanup tonight. Mark this ranking, then run the plan.

Notion Analyst 24 August 2026