How To Use Notion for Productivity and Organization

Scroll through a few reviews of Notion and you’ll find users calling it a “productivity powerhouse,” “mental clutter clearer,” and “deep organizational tool.” The creators of Notion call it an all-in-one workplace where you can write, plan, get organized, and store your docs, wikis, and projects side by side.  

If you’re wondering if you can use Notion for your unique needs, this guide through Notion for beginners will reveal the most popular capabilities of the do-it-all note-taking and organization app. You might want to check out how to use Notion templates if you’re a busy business owner who wants to reduce the number of other tools you’re using to keep your ducks in a row. Or as a student, you could learn how to use Notion as a planner to keep your notes, important dates, and study guides in a central place that won’t get lost in the bottom of your backpack. 

Notion for Productivity

Notion users praise the app for its ability to help them stay productive. For Monica Lim, English consultant and mom of two, Notion keeps all of her most important resources like a library of interesting English articles and a family calendar right at her fingertips, which helps her use every minute of her day to stay on track and get her daily tasks completed.  

The three main ways that most Notion users take advantage of the flexible and adaptable platform are: 

• Work: With the ability to store calendars, databases, project management systems, and more, business owners and big businesses like Nike, Uber, and Pinterest all turn to Notion as a place to keep all of the documents, wikis, projects and schedules together. 
• Everyday life: If you’re someone with hundreds of notes saved in your phone, a busy calendar connected to your email, and notebooks full of side projects, you might benefit from Notion as a way to only have to click into one tool to get access to your life’s most important data.  
• Studies: Staying organized and on top of upcoming projects is one of the most important skills a student can have. Learn how to use Notion as a planner, a calendar, and as a way to store your notes and interesting articles and you’ll be better prepared than ever.

Notion Elements 101

Notion is often praised for its ever-adapting tools. You can decide if Notion is the right fit for you by exploring some of Notion’s most popular elements and tools: 

• Pages: Everything inside your Notion account begins with a new page. Each blank page can be transformed into a new online space like a reading list, a social media calendar, a public—and searchable—blog post, a resume, a CRM, and much more. 
• Sidebar: Your sidebar is your database’s home base. As an overview of all of your main pages, this is where you’ll navigate through every page you’ve created.
• Blocks: There is a very long list of blocks that you can add to your pages including text, images, tables, bullets, web links, calendars, pages within your existing pages, checklists, toggles, quotes, galleries, and embedding hundreds of well-known apps. 
• Toggles: Streamline content-heavy pages by using toggles to hide any content under collapsible headings. 
• Images: You can add images and photo galleries to any page including blog posts, contact lists, and travel guides. 
• Tables: Made to help you better organize, rearrange, and structure your thoughts, ideas, and projects, the tables tool can turn any information into a categorized collection of columns and rows. 
• UX: Notion’s user experience is straightforward but does require a lot of exploration. The best way to learn how to make Notion work for you is to spend a few days clicking through the app, watching tutorials, and discovering tools as you go. 
• View: By changing a database’s “view,” you can adjust its layout, add and remove filters, create new groups, and show and hide new properties within your database. 
• Files: Video, audio, PDF, GIF, and .doc files can all be added to any page, table, and database. 

How to Use Notion? Step-by-Step Guide

Now that you have an understanding of the tools within Notion and ways that businesses, students, and individuals use Notion to stay organized and productive, it’s time for you to see if Notion is a good fit for you and your needs. 

1. Create an Account

Begin your Notion journey by entering your name, email address, and password to Notion’s sign-up page. 

2. Download the Notion App

For a clean, distraction-free Notion experience, you can download the Notion desktop app so you can work without the temptation of tabs and the world wide web. 

3. Install Web Clipper

To optimize your Notion experience, you can download web extensions like Web Clipper to your browser. Available on Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, this time-saving tool will allow you to save any webpage to your Notion space so that you can read or edit it later. 

4. Log Into Your Account

Once you’ve prepped your computer for Notion by downloading the desktop app, installing any web extensions, and looking through the content you might want to add to Notion, all you have to do is log into your account to get started. 

5. Create Pages for Block

A Notion page is a completely blank slate for just about anything you want to turn it into. With 3,500 Notion templates and 500 blocks to choose from, you can fill your Notion pages with calendars, book proposals, pitch decks, to-do lists, journal entries, guides, shared workspaces, and more. Learning how to use Notion templates can help streamline the creation of your database, but you can also try creating a few pages from scratch so that you can really get the hang of Notion’s capabilities. 

6. Learn Databases

As one of Notion’s main features, databases are collections of pages that keep your Notion space organized and easy to navigate. If you need an overview of a bunch of pages at once like your calculus notes from the entire semester or a list of all of your business contacts, databases offer a place where any pages can be stored together and easily opened to reveal even more details inside. 

By learning how to use rollup in Notion, you can also aggregate the information in your database based on relations using seventeen different calculations. 

7. Database Views

Notion databases help you store information in an easy-to-navigate and straightforward way. You can adjust how you view any of your data by changing whether you see it as a table, list, board, gallery, calendar or timeline. 

8. Organize Notion and Create Habit Trackers

If you’re looking to use Notion to help you be the best version of yourself, a well-organized Notion account can do just that. Explore Notion’s organizational tools like toggles, linking to pages within other pages, nesting more niche pages within more general pages in the sidebar, and creating habit trackers. 

9. Your Tasks

To use Notion to improve your productivity, you can save your tasks and to-do lists within a Notion page or database. 

10. Using Notion for Project Management

Project management tools like calendars, roadmaps, timelines, directories, and checklists can keep any important information or dates from slipping through the cracks. 

11. Storage

Your data might live in your phone, computer, notebook, paper calendar, and a variety of other apps. Consolidate data like photos, contacts, quotes you love, lists of books you want to read, and more by creating storage pages within your Notion account. 

12. Planning and Agenda

Learn how to use the calendar in Notion and never forget another important date or task again. You can organize your children’s busy extracurricular activity, your show dog’s upcoming events or your wedding planning all in one place within Notion’s calendar and timeline blocks. 

Boost Your Organizing Skills with Notion

Makeup artists with a booked-out schedule, stressed middle schoolers with looming deadlines, and creatives with a million ideas can all use Notion to keep their data, dates, and duties in one place. No matter if you're a make-up artist, middle schooler, or creative yourself, Skillshare offers a wide selection of classes on Notion that can help you build an account from scratch or optimize the one you already have. 

Written By

Calli Zarpas

Producer & Writer by occupation. Ceramicist & Newsletter Editor by avocation.

Share

• 
• 
• 
•