Groundwork OS · Complete Digital System · Notion

The whole
system.
Connected.

Twenty-eight tools. Four pillars. Two specialist series. Twelve linked databases. One Notion workspace where everything connects — from your values down to today's three priorities. Nothing floats. Nothing is lost.

Get the complete bundle — £54.99 See it in action Read the Method →
Four pillars · two series · 28 products mapped · 12 linked databases · Opens every morning
Pillar 01
Cascade
Annual Blueprint
90-Day Goal Planner
Weekly Review
Daily Focus Sheet
Ideal Week Architecture
Pillar 02
Capture
Brain Dump Page
Weekly Review
Quick Capture inbox
Pillar 03
Constraints
Daily Focus Sheet
Deep Work Planner
Stoic Journal
Meeting Mastery
Interview Prep Kit
Pillar 04
Compound
Strength Log
Net Worth Tracker
Habit Stack Builder
Sleep & Recovery
Fatherhood Planner
Reading Log
Career Clarity Map
Promotion Case Builder
New Job 90-Day
Series
Coaching
Values Architecture
Weekly Debrief
Accountability Framework
GROW Sessions
Series
Resilience
Resilience Audit
90-Day Debrief
Pressure Response Journal
Transition Planner
Transition Intelligence Kit
See it in action

The OS as you'd
actually see it.

Six views from the live workspace. Hub, daily ritual, weekly review, the goal cascade, the pattern dashboard, and the Coaching layer. Built in dark Notion. Click any view to open the interactive preview.

Open the interactive preview →

Click any view to land directly on it · Full sidebar navigation · 13 pages built

What is the Groundwork OS

Not a template.
An operating system.

Most Notion templates are a collection of pages that look good in screenshots and break when you add a second task. The Groundwork OS is different — it's a single connected workspace where every entry feeds something above and below it in the system.

Your daily priority traces back to a 90-day goal. Your 90-day goal traces back to your Annual Blueprint. Your Annual Blueprint traces back to your Values Architecture. The cascade is live, connected, and automatic.

Values
🧭
Values Architecture — ACT framework. Sits above everything.
Annual
📐
Annual Blueprint — Four domains. Four quarters. One year.
90-Day
🎯
90-Day Goal Planner — Three goals. One metric each.
Weekly
📅
Weekly Review — GTD processing. Intentions set.
Daily
🟧
Daily Focus Sheet — Three priorities. Score. Close.
New here? Read the Method first. The OS is the implementation. The Groundwork Method is the four operating principles it runs on — Cascade, Capture, Constraints, Compound.
Read the Method →
If any of these is you

You already know
why you need this.

Most of the people who buy the OS are tired of the same four problems. If one of these reads like a description of your week, the OS is built specifically to fix it.

The pattern
Notion full of tabs. Nothing connected.
You have a tasks page, a notes page, a goals page, a habit tracker, and four templates you forgot you imported. Everything works in isolation. Nothing talks to anything else.
What the OS does
Twelve linked databases. One spine.
Tasks roll up to Projects. Projects roll up to Quarter Goals. Quarter Goals roll up to the Annual Blueprint. The Annual Blueprint sits below your Values Architecture. The cascade is live — open the Hub and you can see your three priorities today, and the values they trace back to.
The pattern
Pretty template. Abandoned in week three.
You bought a beautiful template. It looked great in the screenshots. By week three you'd stopped opening it because filling it in took longer than the work itself.
What the OS does
Three priorities. Five fields. Done in two minutes.
Daily entry takes ninety seconds at most. The Hub keeps everything one click away. The deeper layers are there when you need them and out of the way when you don't. The OS is designed for a person with a job — not for a person whose job is filling in templates.
The pattern
No idea if anything is actually working.
You feel busy. Some weeks feel productive. You couldn't tell anyone in five sentences whether you're closer to your three goals than you were ninety days ago — because the data isn't anywhere.
What the OS does
Daily score → weekly average → quarterly debrief.
Every Daily Focus Sheet entry rolls into a weekly score. Every weekly score rolls into the 90-day debrief. Strength sessions, sleep hours, net worth, reading — all plotted automatically. At the end of every quarter you sit down with a complete, honest picture of what actually happened. No guessing.
The pattern
Crisis hits. System collapses entirely.
A bad week becomes a bad month. Redundancy, illness, a hard transition. The planning falls apart precisely when you need structure most. You come back six weeks later with no idea where you were.
What the OS does
Resilience series activates. The daily ritual keeps running.
Activate the Resilience series — the Resilience Audit, Pressure Response Journal, and Transition Intelligence Kit foreground in the Hub. The daily ritual keeps running underneath, simplified to three priorities and a daily journal. The structure is the anchor during a crisis, not a casualty of it. No other planning system is built this way.
If two of those four sound familiar You don't need another book about productivity. You need an actually-built system. The OS is £19.99 standalone, £54.99 with all 28 print + digital products and every format included.
Get the bundle — £54.99
The four pillars + two series

Every tool.
Its right place.

Twenty-eight products organised by the four operating pillars — plus two specialist series for depth and adversity. The pillars run every day. Coaching opens when surface-level planning isn't enough. Resilience activates when life gets hard.

Pillar 01 · Spine
Cascade
Annual Blueprint, 90-Day Goal Planner, Weekly Review, Daily Focus Sheet, Ideal Week Architecture. The time-horizon spine — every action traces upward. Values → Annual → 90-Day → Weekly → Daily. Nothing floats.
The spine
Live in OS
Opens daily
Pillar 02 · GTD
Capture
Brain Dump Page, Quick Capture inbox, Weekly Review processing. The mind is for thinking, not storing. Everything appears here first; the Sunday review processes it into Action, Project, Reference, or Trash.
The inbox
1 database
Always open
Pillar 03 · Friction
Constraints
Daily Focus Sheet, Deep Work Planner, Stoic Journal, Meeting Mastery Planner, Interview Prep Kit. Three priorities. One deep work block. Hard caps on commitment. Less, executed completely. Friction is the feature.
The discipline
Daily ritual
Three only
Pillar 04 · Long horizon
Compound
Strength Log, Net Worth Tracker, Habit Stack Builder, Sleep & Recovery, Fatherhood Planner, Reading Log, Career Clarity Map, Promotion Case Builder, New Job 90-Day. The domains that only change over years. Tracked weekly, reviewed quarterly.
9 products
5 databases
Weekly / monthly
Coaching series · Depth
The psychological layer
Values Architecture, Weekly Debrief (Motivational Interviewing), Accountability Framework, GROW Session Planner. Opens when surface-level planning isn’t enough. Used by therapists and coaches; built into your week.
4 products
1 database
As needed
Resilience series · Adversity
For when life gets hard
Resilience Audit, 90-Day Debrief, Pressure Response Journal, Transition Planner, Transition Intelligence Kit. When activated, foregrounds in the Hub. The daily ritual continues underneath — the structure is the anchor during a crisis, not a casualty of it.
5 products
1 database
In adversity
By the numbers

Built for
serious use.

28
Products mapped
into the OS
12
Linked databases
with live rollups
6
Pillars + series
fully integrated
6
Methodologies
fully integrated
How it compares

Better than the
alternatives.

The best-selling Notion templates pick one of two things — methodology or aesthetics. Groundwork OS is the only template that takes both seriously.

Competitor
Ultimate Brain
Thomas Frank · ~£120
Deep database architecture
Proven GTD-adjacent methodology
No visual identity — looks like a spreadsheet
No coaching or resilience layer
No physical product ecosystem
No cascade from values to daily
Groundwork OS
Your system
Groundwork OS
Included · £54.99 bundle
12 linked databases + live rollups
6 methodologies, fully integrated
Premium industrial design identity
Coaching + Resilience series
Print + GoodNotes + Notion ecosystem
Values → Annual → Daily cascade
Competitor
Second Brain
Easlo · ~£50
Clean minimalist aesthetic
Simple enough to actually use
Shallow methodology — decorative GTD
No coaching or resilience layer
No physical product counterpart
No cascade — goals and tasks unconnected
What people are saying

Built by someone
who actually
uses it.

The OS is the system I run my own week with. Every Sunday, every morning, every Friday debrief. The product is shipped only when the daily ritual has been live, in my hands, for at least one quarter. Below are notes from the early users who've been running the OS for sixty days or longer.

★★★★★ · 67 days running

"I've bought four Notion templates in the last two years. This is the only one I'm still using after a quarter. The cascade is the difference — every Sunday the weekly review actually has somewhere to point. Before, I was making up the week from scratch."

JM
James M.
Senior product manager · London
★★★★★ · 90 days running

"I went through a redundancy six weeks in. The Resilience series activated, the daily ritual kept running underneath. I don't know what I would have done without the structure already built. The Resilience Audit kept me from spiralling. The system held."

SR
Sarah R.
Engineering lead · Manchester
★★★★★ · 120 days running

"I'm a father of two and I run a consultancy. Before Groundwork I was reading Atomic Habits for the third time and not actually doing any of it. The Two-Sheet Minimum got me started. Three months in I'm running the full cascade and I haven't missed a Friday debrief."

DK
David K.
Independent consultant · Edinburgh
★★★★★ · 75 days running

"I print the Daily Focus Sheet on A5, work in Notion during the day, and journal in GoodNotes in the evening. All three formats run the same methodology. Other systems force a tool choice — Groundwork lets the tool fit the moment. That's the difference."

PT
Priya T.
Strategy director · Bristol

Names changed at the request of early users. Verified purchases via Etsy & direct. New testimonials added monthly.

Three formats. One system.

Print. Digital.
Notion.

The Groundwork OS is part of a complete three-format ecosystem. Use whichever fits your context — or all three. The methodology is consistent across every format.

🖨️
Print Pack
A4, A5, Filofax, US Letter. Ink-optimised. Print your weekly pack once — set for seven days. The physical ritual: pen on paper, no notifications, no screens.
4 print sizes
🗂️
Groundwork OS
The complete connected workspace. 28 tools. Four pillars. Two series. 12 databases. The only format where daily scores feed weekly averages, which feed quarterly reviews.
Notion · All plans
Pricing

Get the OS.
Three ways.

Free
7-Day Focus Sprint
£0
Notion Template Gallery · No sign-up needed
  • Hub + 3 day templates (Mon, Wed, Sun)
  • Brain Dump / Quick Capture inbox
  • Groundwork Guide — methodology explained
  • The full daily ritual
  • No Compound · No Coaching · No Resilience layer
Get free on Notion Gallery
Notion only
Groundwork OS
£19.99
Notion template only · Gumroad + Etsy
  • Complete OS — all pillars + both series
  • All 12 linked databases with schemas
  • All formulas, rollups, and filters pre-built
  • All page templates — 7 daily variants
  • Cover images for every page
  • System Guide + 20-step setup walkthrough
Buy on Gumroad — £19.99
Common questions

Everything you
need to know.

Do I need a paid Notion plan?
No. The Groundwork OS works on Notion's free plan. All databases, relations, rollups, and page templates are fully available. If you use Notion heavily across multiple workspaces, a Plus plan (around $8/month) removes all block limits — but for most users the free plan is never a constraint in daily use.
How long does setup take?
The template is delivered as a pre-built Notion workspace. Setup is: click the template link, click Duplicate, enable dark mode, read the Groundwork Guide (20 minutes), and open the Hub to create your first daily entry. You can be using the daily ritual on day one within an hour of purchase. The deeper layers — Compound, Coaching, Resilience — you add over the following weeks as the habit builds.
How is this different from Ultimate Brain?
Thomas Frank's Ultimate Brain is an excellent collection of task management and note-taking tools. It has no visual identity, no coaching or resilience layer, no cascade from values to daily priorities, and no physical product counterpart. The Groundwork OS is built around a single philosophy — the Cascade — where every daily action traces back to a value. It also has a premium industrial design identity that makes it genuinely pleasant to open every morning. You won't use a system you don't want to look at.
What if I've never used Notion before?
You'll be fine. The OS ships with a Setup Guide that walks you through duplication, basic Notion navigation, and your first daily entry — twenty minutes from purchase to running the daily ritual. The OS uses standard Notion features only (databases, relations, rollups, page templates) — no formulas you'd need to debug, no third-party integrations. If you can use Google Docs, you can use this.
Does it work on mobile?
Yes — the Hub, Daily Focus Sheet, and Brain Dump are designed to be usable on Notion's mobile app. The longer-horizon tools (Annual Blueprint, 90-Day Debrief) read on mobile but are best edited on desktop. Realistically: capture and daily ritual on phone; weekly review and quarterly debrief on a laptop.
Will I get free updates?
Yes. Because this is a Notion template, you receive a fresh copy of the latest version with each major update — never automatic, always opt-in. Each release ships with an Upgrade Guide showing exactly what changed and how to migrate your existing data. Updates are typically twice a year, focused on new tools or methodology refinements rather than visual churn.
Is this for personal use or can I use it with a team?
Personal use. The Method is built around individual planning — values, daily priorities, weekly review, quarterly debrief. You can share specific pages with collaborators (a project page, a meeting note) but the core OS is designed to be your private workspace. If you're building a team productivity system, the OS is not the right tool.
Refund policy?
Yes — 30-day refund guarantee on all direct purchases. If the OS doesn't fit your week within thirty days, email refunds@groundworkos.co with your order number. No questions asked. Etsy purchases follow Etsy's own digital-goods refund policy. The methodology is documented thoroughly enough that you'll know within a week whether it's for you.
Does it work alongside the print products?
Yes — that's the design intent. Many users print the daily sheet for morning priorities (pen on paper, no notifications), work in Notion during the day for task management and deep work logging, and annotate in GoodNotes on their iPad in the evening. The methodology is identical across all three formats. The Notion OS adds the connective layer — live data, linked views, and long-horizon tracking — that print can't do.
What's the difference between this and reading the books?
The books tell you the principles. The Method tells you how the principles fit together. The OS gives you the actual built workspace where they run. The Groundwork Method page sets out the full synthesis and what each book contributes to it. If you're someone who's read the books and is still missing a working system on Monday morning — the OS is the missing piece.

Get the complete
system today.

All 28 products. All formats. The Groundwork OS. One download.

Buy on Etsy — £54.99 Buy direct — £54.99 Start free — 7-Day Sprint