Okay so this is the first post I’m going to write that may actually be useful information and has an actual focus rather than just rambling. My intention here is to provide an overview of the application “Notion”. Notion is a productivity tool aimed at providing a system for organisation, note-taking, planning, meal prep, exercise tracking and everything in between. It seems to be, from my experience anyway, a jack of all trades kind of thing.
I first started using Notion when I was hunting for a way to better organise all my work for university. This was in 3rd year, so that would be 2019/2020. I had originally used Notion to store a collection of all my courses and relevant documents, questions and material. For this purpose, it seemed to do the job. However, this was only the surface of what Notion was capable of. Since I first began using it, I have improved my use cases to include almost everything in my life. Notion currently contains my calendar, projects and courses, resources and references for both university and otherwise and a media library where I try to write down information about media I have consumed. Some areas of this have been more fleshed out that others, based on how often I use them. I have tried multiple things on Notion and have found some things work better than others. If you have a creative eye, Notion can be made into a brilliant looking dashboard for anything. I did experiment with making myself a productivity based dashboard however I found myself spending too long making the dashboard and less time doing the actually productive work. For this reason I’m now dashboard-less and navigate Notion using mostly the sidebar and the search shortcut (Ctrl+P, Cmd+P).
If you take a look at my page structure on the sidebar you can probably get a sense for how everything is structured.
Moving from top to bottom, I’ll try to explain what each page is for.
Inbox – This is a database with only two properties, one for a title and one for a URL. I use this to send anything into Notion, using either the web clipper or the share menu on my phone. Sending things to this table first allows me to save them but not lose them in my setup without being able to review them first. When I’ve reviewed the content in my inbox I send it to the relevant location in my workspace. For instance, if I find a site that has lots of useful information on writing CSS code for my website I send it to the inbox and come to review it later. After reviewing whether this is worth keeping as reference I send it to the resources and references database where I can give it tags, data and links to other databases accordingly.
Tasks – This is essentially my calendar page. Databases can be viewed in a number of ways in Notion. The most frequently used view I use for the tasks page is the calendar view and occasionally the timeline and deadline view. I use this to timetable all of my university lectures and link them to the corresponding project page and the relevant resources. Most of my tasks have a “Do Date” which is when they are to be completed. This allows me to timetable when I intend on completing the task rather than just when it is due. the due date is also included however to help prioritise what needs to be done first.
Before talking about Projects and Courses, Areas, Resources and References and Media Library I want to give a quick explanation about how all of these link together. I’ll do this with an example:
As you can see from my pages above, I’m enrolled in the course B31DE. Say I had been given a task to write an essay for this course. I would first add a new page to my Tasks database and fill in the fields relating to this essay. Some of these fields however are also links to other databases. For instance, the project field links to the projects and courses database so that any tasks can be related to any page in the projects and courses database. Through this link I can relate my essay task to a project called B31DE. This means when I want to see all of the tasks for a specific project I can simply go to the project page and filter a table of tasks that only shows tasks that have been related to that specific course.
This structure means anything added into Notion almost always ends up perfectly organised into a relevant area to ensure it is easier to find. New pages are essentially filtered through the system to allow them to end up in the perfect location once all off the relevant information had been added to it.
The filter essentially follows this pattern:
Essay for B31DE → Assign Area University → Assign Project/Course B31DE → Assign all other relevant fields
This perfectly locates the task within my Notion system and allows for links to be formed between everything I could possibly need.
Resources are much the same:
Specification for B31DE Essay → Assign Area University → Assign Project/Course B31DE → Assign Task Essay for B31DE → Assign all other relevant fields
Again this means that all related information is easily locatable.
This basic flow of information is what allows for me to keep on top of everything that I do. Deadlines, coursework, datasheets, lecture notes, holiday dates, shifts, personal projects, it all follows the same basic route through the system into it’s own perfect location.
Notion, though not perfect , is as close to perfect as I think I’m ever going to get. It is missing an offline mode, the loading times are occasionally horrific, and the mobile app on Android is just barely usable for basic tasks. Notion is however still relatively new and if the developments that have been made so far are anything to go by, then it’s only going to get better. For instance Notion is currently private testing an API that should allow better integration with the likes of Google Calendar once developers get their hands on it which is something I’ve wished Notion supported since the beginning and an offline mode is apparently on their roadmap. So for now I think Notion is indeed perfect for me and I expect it to remain so for some time.
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