How to Notion: Tips & Tricks

1. Intro: Hey, how's it done? So no matter who you really are, what you really do, everyone has to do some level of tracking and management. And with all of the things that we always have going on in our lives, it can be really hard to make sure that the things that need to be done or getting done, the things that we want to do. We're at least trying to keep them in mind so that we kind of have this excitement about her days and just don't have to worry about the small things that if we don't know, we have a structure in place we're constantly worried about. And so I personally have really struggled with this. I've tried out Google, keep Google docks, Google sheets, asana click up to do is trail Oh, and probably 10 other different APS out there in order to try to, like, have a way where I can manage all of the things I really need to do, as well as manage all of the other organizations and I'm a part of and things of that nature. And so, after years of trying to find the perfect system for me, notion created this pretty valuable yet structured way for me to actually have everything that I really need. And so, in this course, my goal is really to focus on helping others do this. And so, rather than having a really long course where I address a bunch of different things that may be relevant to some people may not be to others. I wanted to break it up into a bunch of smaller courses, probably anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes, just so someone can sit down, just fly through it and actually get the course completely finished. And so here I've really condensed some of the really cool tips and tricks I've picked up on the way from using notion. I'm looking forward to working with you and just hope to see you on the other side, But 2. Coolest Icons in Town: welcome to my course. Thank you so much for making it past the trailer and let you jump straight in. So a huge part of notion for me is creating something that looks organized but also looks appealing. And so there's so many features, like all of these headings, all the colors people use in order to make it look appealing. But one thing that has always stuck out to me is you know, you make a page and you go back here. You see this, these icons to me particularly or hideous. And so obviously they've addressed it with these different you know, emojis you can use. But for me, I've always wanted something that almost felt like I had my own personal website where I could just kind of store all of this information, but not really have to worry about. You know, other people looking at it now. And so this is whenever I came across one draw. So, undrawn, is this really, really cool website Andhra dot co, where you can basically browse all of these different files and use them in your notion, really effortlessly because you condone it, download it as an SPG or PNG and things of that nature. And so, with the flexibility of choosing your colors and things of that nature, you tend to find what you want. And so say that you are actually a videographer and you want to use notion in order to kind of create a set up for your video flows. And you wanted to use this icon. So you download SVG. You come back here and to change the icon, you can just literally click upload an image. And here we go. So now this will actually be a part of everything. And so it looks really sleek things of that nature. But I sometimes will take it to the next level, because sometimes these icons a really small and just not having that ugly page there is really meaningful. But say you want to actually let's put this icon also in here just so that you can actually feel the full effect of it. So let's choose an image videophiles and ask. And so now we have this. Let's say we kind of want to just use this for our own personal flow, so that's quick, quick heading and let's just say you know quick ideas. And so we use this weaken, drag this up here and, you know, creator divider. And now we just have a quick, bulleted list where we can list their ideas. But we have these icons in order to just make it look a lot better. Um, I hope you definitely check out on draw dot com. I have no affiliation store whatsoever, but it definitely made me feel like I was really creating a personalized flow that was just really fun to scroll through and work with so that I actually end up using notion for everything. 3. Copy-Paste Effortlessly: number two on our skill share class is the ability to really speed up the different kinds of things we do. So one of the best features that's ever been invented is kind of the idea of copy paste. So you know, you can always highlight stuff and you can try to copy it. But one thing, if you know, if you try on notion to copy it here, um, it won't work, and so just kind of have the last thing you actually copied. And so whenever you do this, this has to go away in order to copy it and obviously just a couple of seconds. But it can still be annoying. So one thing that notion has that's really, really cool is the ability to hold down the option button in order to quickly copy and paste. And so now it's a completely different situation where you know, if you ever need anything, you're able to just kind of highlight it. Or if you just want the heading, your we'll just quickly highlighted, shifted down and start getting back to work. And so it's a really quick hack on Max. All you have to do is hold down the option button whenever you click on it and you have this kind of screen or whatever on you just kind of drag it and you're good to go. 4. Templates through Buttons: All right, So now this next video is going to be about using buttons. This is actually a fairly recent feature they've added, and it's pretty pretty cool in terms of just automation. And so the way buttons work is scroll up here and see a bunch of things. But template button, right? And so basically, what this does is you're able to make your own button based on whatever you want it to do. And so the thing that kind of differentiates this from a lot of other things that it could do is it really gives you a lot of autonomy and what you want. So for example, say you really, um, constantly or you're trying to make a page of quotes, right? And so you could do the option thing that we talked about. Or you could just have ended this empty quote, uh, box where you know, and you can say, you know, adequate. And then if it closed this off, then you do this. And every time you press this button, you'll get this new quote. And so it's also a really just quick way to make a quick automation based on whatever you want and so I would definitely recommend experimenting with buttons. It's really one of those things that it will only go as far as you are willing to kind of test it. And so, ah, lot of it really just involves playing around with it, seeing what you want to use it for and kind of having that clear purpose. A lot of these features There's just so many that unless if you really know what you're trying to accomplish, it can actually take more time or just be a waste. And so really, just test out these features and try to play with how you can really utilize them. 5. Sleek Design: All right, So now we're in this video and I think design again. Like I said, uh, emphasized is such a huge component of this. And so I want to help everyone kind of be ableto make really cool designs like this one. I'm a huge fan of just how all of this is looking because it's just at a glance, really easy to capture all this wonderful information and also just makes someone feel like and so in this video will kind of hop into how we can make this. It's actually a little more complicated than it looks, but we'll break it down really easily. We're here and ready to do some really cool design stuff, and so this is really a design thing that can kind of be used in any regard. But I typically use it like this. And so, for example, let's saying, Well, you want to capture our revenue stream so we'll just make this quick like and revenue streams. And we have, you know, are different list of things. But say we want to capture revenue streams from our YouTube channel channel. And so now we're here, one color thing that really that just looks cool is the ability to use heading. I think heading one is actually cooler here, so we'll do a church one. And let's say we want to basically just look a simple input output system. So how much time, Um, when I spend on something, what is the kind of return on investment and so say on our YouTube channel? Every time we make a video, we typically average around $500 so now we kind of want toe, calculate the amount of time it typically takes us to make our video and say, Let's just let's say it's around 10 hours to make a video right? So we can just call that 10 hours and that let's say we just released one video per week. So for a week, um, and we kind of have this information now what do we typically earn on a video? So that's a like we said, it's $500 and we will typically make this also per week. Um, but now let's say that we want to further extrapolate so in a month that would equal about $2000 a month and so on so forth now whenever it comes to making this look a lot cooler. I really like, um, splitting it up in a way that makes sense to me. And so, for example, that can be input output and put. And so we can have this input here and then output Conover. Now, we want this output to kind of align with this value we have here, so we'll just tossed us over here. Let's say we tossed this also over here. And so now again, we're here kind of able to be in line, and now we want to start making the local. And so this turned into future is a blessing. So you just quickly turn it into whatever you want. And so now we're here. And now let's make this look or so say we want to make this a great color. I say we make this a default. Great clip. Then we can kind of do the same here, where we're able to put this whenever you have this many line right here, we know that were in line, so it will be able to hand off, draw it here, or you can do a different method where you're dragging this and you're placing it right there, and all kind of allow you to do similarly and so say instead of 2000 we want to use to K because then in the future, we can handle for the extra plate. You know, in a year that would be 24 came. So we're out here, No turn into one. Let's make thes K's gray 3.5 k And so now we have for a year. And let's see if this works color. Great. Yeah, so, no, you're able to kind of have this system of input. Maybe we want to even put aside, put just this accordingly to have it like this. So now, below this, we have this. You can't see it. I think on dark mode right now. But it's there, um and so where you can just kind of remove it entirely. But I am a huge fan of kind of using this gray and white in order just make things look a lot prettier. And so then say you want to put some you don't put some space in between here and what kind of group this together now really quickly at a glance you kind of have this really sleek set up. And then, obviously, if you want to use tables in order to calculate all these values just so that you have to input a single value, you can always do that. But I'm a huge fan of this leak set up. I think it just looks so cool. 6. Notes in Notion : thing to talk about notes and notion. And so this is kind of oriented more towards students or people that are really looking to kind of just build up knowledge. And so a lot of knowledge, as we know, is really based on your ability to analyze the information whenever you're first acquiring it. And so if you analyze it well, then it doesn't matter if you screenshot it or if you type it out because whenever we're typing were not necessarily fully analyzing information. But it can always be a really useful thing tohave when you're reflecting back on these notes or you want to quickly check something. And so one of the best features that I love the notion is the ability to do this in a very slim and sleek way. And so, for example, say you are in a business class learning about marketing, right? And so the the most common way to go about this is you make a bulleted list and you know, you just start taking your notes. But one of the most important things that we can do is really kind of have a lot of information stored, but also kind of have these folders so that not only is the information and folders, but it's also categorized in her mind in these kinds of folders. So I think the Targo feature is absolutely phenomenal for this. So here with the toggle features, say we're talking about, you know, about supplying supply and demand and we hit enter, and then we hit tab in order to be in the struggle. So, you know, say we need to remember all of this different kind of information. But while we're learning that we really paid attention to the information but maybe you wouldn't have time to take notes. The best thing about notion is really you know, you can even just screenshot the information included in this toggle so that, you know, referred a picture from notes are from lecture slides. And so, no, you're able to have this huge picture which, if you were in any other notes setting, and you have to kind of resume your notes after it. So, you know, we have talked again. Um, it would be a huge hassle, because now, or notes or so segmented, you know, by the time you get to your next topic, you kind of even forgot what the previous topic was and all of these pictures. But by just simply closing this off and you're able tohave it right there, it just makes it so much easier to categorize information. And so I think the toggle future is so simple, but it's so undervalued and so, especially whenever it comes to notes where you don't necessarily wanna have to see all the information. At the same time, the total feature is huge. 7. 2 Day Rule: now we're going to jump into the two day rule. So I came across the two day rule by a video from Matt D. Avella on YouTube, where basically, in the process of building habits, sometimes if it's something like going to the gym there days where you just don't want to do something, and that can kind of it can be really demoralizing and can lead to burnout if you don't give yourself the space to skip a day and things of that nature. And so the two day rule is basically you. Whenever you're developing a habit, you're working on something new that you want to ideally do every single day. You simply just don't go two days without doing this habit. And so notion is a really, really fantastic way to explore the two day rule just because there's so many different features with all of the tables. And so, for example, say we were set up a table or calendar, let's just make it a calendar. Even Calendar will call in Line one and say are we want to really look at, you know, exercise. And so every single day of this calendar, it makes it really easy for you at a glance to capture what you want to capture. And so say, You know, I ran three miles today, and so here you see that you're in three miles and then if you skip a day, it's really easy for you to just have this calendar set up without necessarily actually having to use your Apple calendar and Google calendar and things of that nature where you may be pre scheduling your workouts, ending the vet nature. Or you may be kind of cluttering it with all of your other work. And basically, it's a way to just keep everything in notion without having to actually do anything. Um, that will kind of mess off, mess up your other senses of flows. And so I think this is a really nice way just to keep track of everything. And once you have a calendar, you know you can jump from month to month. It's really easy to set up 8. Habit Tracker: talk about a quick way to make a habit tracker. And so I know a lot of people, really, whenever they're trying to make these habits kind of how we saw with the two day rule, they want to be able to have an easy way to kind of just go through their habits every single day and make sure that they're doing them. And this fulfillment of just checking a box incentivizes them to do more. And so, with bullet journals and things of that nature, many people kind of have multiple habits that they're trying to build at the same time. And so, in notion, we can very easily develop a habit tracker That's not just conducive to this one single view that you would make if you just had a had a regular sheet of paper where you were doing it. But now you're able to kind of customize it however you want, And so typically you want to just do a table and say, This is our have a tractor and say, You know, many times this is actually deem, uh, the most annoying component of this is where you have this, this main sell that you have to kind of populate one way or another, but you're you're really not sure what you want to put there, so we'll come back to that. So exercise is, say, one of the things that you want to know. Drink 10 glasses of water quarter. So you want a journal, and we'll just squeeze all these together, um, and will make all of these our check boxes, checkbooks, checkbooks and check looks. And so now we have this and there are a couple ways weaken. Go about this so one you can kind of pre populated. So it's like May 1st may 2nd come, but it's kind of a monotonous way to go about it. Another way that you can go about this is that it's a your past is the thing that's actually motivating you to keep going. And so, for something like that, you would want to use either the date feature where you're able to kind of select the date . Um that you did it. So you called this date and you can go from that, or you actually make it even easier that by So you're we have this created time. And so now automatically populated. And so every single day, whenever you fill this out say we just shift this over here, we can even push this off to the side. And if you really aren't looking to use this main cell, what you basically do is you add a filter to it or you simply go to properties and your ableto you're not able to hide it. I'm a liar. I'm a horrible liar. But you can kind of keep it out of the way and not really think about it. And so basically, we'll have to keep this. But you can every single day that you go about this, you're able to track. Oh, you know, today I did these two. And so, with the combination of the two day rule, you'll be able to kind of make sure that you're keeping up with their habits, but you're not necessarily falling behind on anything. And so that's a really, really cool way to do this. But now say you've been working on this habit for for an extremely long time, right? And these dates are actually different dates. What do you do? Because now it becomes so long. Well, here is a fantastic timeto Add some filters and so say we do. We want to do it based on our date and we want to do. Is, is within the past week and so now will only see the past seven days, and so they'll just provide you kind of a way to look at it on a daily are a weekly basis. If you wanted to actually use this and kind of just see the pleasure of seeing calendars of you doing this day after day after day, then this would be a fantastic way, because now, rather than it all being stacked here, which I can't really do in Ah, in this kind of setting, you're able to just see months and months or weeks and weeks of you doing this habit in a calendar setting. And so this is a really, really cool way to just keep track of your habits and a way that is literally just clicking a few buttons every single day. Rather than having toe worry about something, you and if you wanted it renamed is You could always hit these three dots and rename 9. Don't Over Notion: kind of have all of this information before we jump into the last couple videos where we're going to be building out end of systems that have the potential to really change a lot of things. I really want to emphasize the idea of not over complicating or over tracking, and this is coming from someone that loves tracking everything in their lives. I think one of the things that we have to do is really keep everything really conservative sometimes in the sense that you know, we can make a table in notion that's embedded in pages and bedded in tables embedded in pages. But sometimes you enter the same issues that you ran into with all of the other Ah, different APS out there is just you. You are doing a lot of work for something that may not require it. And so, for example, when planning out this video rather than having a table off all of these individual classes within our skill share course I and then deciding Oh, which videos need to be a screen recording in which ones actually need to be a recording of my face. Actually speaking, I went about it a completely different weight. And so I had a toggle feature, and I was like, OK, so we have the introduction introduction in this introduction. Oh, I'll have, you know, sentences. Um, some fax, maybe etcetera. And this introduction I wanted to be me actually saying Get out loud. And so rather than making it a page and things of that nature, I just turned it blue. And then I e for all of these other videos where, you know, we're kind of going through how to use the option button in orderto copy paste really quickly. So that's a option button. Uh, you know, and maybe what examples? To show things of that nature. I just made this orange, and this kind of indicated to me that I want this to be, ah, screen recording rather than just my face speaking. And so this simple way of just kind of going about this so that I'm able to really captured this information as quickly as possible really comes back to the idea of not over complicating notion. It has a bunch of features. But if we try to overused everything, then it ends up just being more work. It ends up being more tiring rather than just capturing your information really quickly. So that now, whenever I'm filming this video, I know the content that I need to talk about, and I know what I need to do for it without actually making a huge process out of it. 10. Idea Machine: we're back in this and now we're going to talk about the idea machine. So there are two really, really big things that I enjoy using notion for so much, primarily because I used to just use random scraps and notes in order to capture this information. And the worst part was, even whenever I created these complex systems within journals, it was just so hard to find an idea that I would, ah, want to reflect back on. And so so many people emphasize the ability to be able to take notes any time, right? And so that's why people have all these mini notebooks just so that if they have an idea, they're able to capture it and before they forget it. And I used to be just the same way, and so you would use the Apple notes app I would use Google keep I would use Google Dogs. I would use everything, but my issue was that I wasn't consistent, and it was just so hard to search and find the information I was looking for. And so the idea machine is the It's a thing that I came across years ago, and it's basically if you force yourself to think of new creative ways. There is a lot of neuro networks that happen in our brain that will also start to increase our neuro plasticity and our ability to just have really cool, complex, fascinating creative ideas which will just make us more intelligent humans in general. And so I became really obsessed with this. And so the idea is, every single day you want to come up with five ideas and the days that you can't think of five ideas. You have to think of 10 ideas, and the whole point is to just really get out of this mode that a lot of us may enter where we are feeling stuck, or that an idea is in good enough and things of that nature. And so by just constantly cranking out ideas, some which will be phenomenal and others which will be utter trash were able to start changing the way that we view the world. And that will ultimately allow us toe come up with ideas, new revenue streams, new businesses, new ways to approach your relationships, things of that nature. And so now if I have a challenge of trying to capture five ideas every single day. I want a way that I can list them easily so that every single day I only have to see those five ideas. I don't have to necessarily get bogged down by all of the previous ideas and things of that nature. But also, I want to be able to see all of the previous ideas if that is, ah, something that I'm trying to reflect on. Or if I'm trying to search for an idea. And so again, notion has been my savior whenever it comes to this. And so since so many people have dashboards, I'll kind of explain it from that perspective where we'll kind of go step by step through this And but obviously it can be kind of curated to whatever needs that you have. So any time that we have something like this, so say this was actually our dashboard, right? So we have our dashboard. Just ignore this week of production. It board here, too. But, you know, we have our like have her family. We have our finances here. Maybe we have our YouTube channel. I don't even know why I referenced a YouTube channel. So much. I don't even have one. So a YouTube channel, things of that nature. And then we also let's say we have a table, which is a full page table for let's call this hour, you know, idea machine. And so now in our idea machine, what's important to capture? Well, we probably want to be able to capture the idea. We want to know what we think of the idea, and obviously, this is subject to change. But maybe just a rating system, right? So inherently, we can just kind of think of it as a 1 to 10 rating system where every single day, we'll just give it a quick rating. So we can just be like 1 to 10 space, Um, and maybe the date that it was created. And so now we have all of this and were able to sort it out by things of that nature. And so, you know, day after day, we have all of these ideas things of that nature. And this can kind of just be a place where restore this. Obviously, I hate these icons. And so we're just gonna sing crab, maybe choose a quick image. Oh, label moment perfect. I think this is gonna be a different color. Of course it is. Whatever. That's fine. Um, and so we have our little icon. So now this doesn't look ugly. And so we're back here, but say on and this is just a page. But again, everything is about trying to get to the information that we care about the most with the least number of clicks. And so here, one of the best things about notion again is the link create linked data base, which now, basically now we have idea machine did you do? And we have this now directly tied to this page. And so, for example, if we so if we're here and we add something about, you know, Santa Claus with a beard, you know, fantastic. Um, now, if we go here, will be able to see it. So that's kind of nice. Now, whenever we come to this, we probably want to arrange this in a way that's actually meaningful, because right now it's not that meaningful. And here we're seeing everything. And so this is where again we want to start using some of these filter options. And so let's say we want toe filter this by. We want the to be based on man. Sorry about that date. Um, well, shift this over here. So let's filter this by date is exactly today. And so now we will only see ideas that air. From today we're here, we would have literally everything. And so I say we just sort this by come descending so that we have our most recent ideas first and then at least a recent here. Now we have basically a way for every single day. If we're just honor dashboard or we're going through our morning routine and things of that nature, you're able to basically sit down, crank out five different ideas about, you know, notion class on how to start business or something like that, right? And so every single day were able to crank this out. But any time if we want to look back on it, we have just a single the single page that we have to click on. And then obviously we can add all kinds of different views and things of that. Nature is what But I think having an idea machine for anyone can really really test the way that you think and also cause you to start thinking in different ways because it's so easy to kind of fall within these different constraints that we put ourselves in. And so, by forcing yourself to think of new ideas every single day, there's immense potential to just see what you can actually make. 11. Journaling: It's ah lot of things that we've kind of hit upon. And hopefully, with your understanding of notion, you're able to really make the most of this. And along with the idea machine, there's one thing that's really changed, how I use notion, and that's my kind of daily log slash journaling method from I feel like many times when my mind is racing and things of that nature. What I really need to do is be able to kind of take the information I have in my mind and cage it somewhere where I know I will be able to find it. But I won't have to necessarily constantly think about it. And I think it's best captured by the idea of like our minds were made to analyze rather than to store information. And so I feel like notion is the perfect way to actually do a lot of this journaling and so just kind of like we've talked about with the idea machine or the way of creating a daily tracker and things of that nature, we can really use notion in order to create a really systematic way to go about this. So, for example, let's say we have our wait. Probably want to make this a full page table. Right? So and actually it might not even man, we got We got a fixed icon again. OK, let's fix this. Well, this pick the at home. No. Cool. No, it doesn't look ugly. God bless. And so here we have this. And so let's just call this our general, um and so every single day, what kind of come about this? And I think a gallery has been the thing. That's kind of been the most, uh, the best way for me to go about this. And so if we go to properties, we can actually, um it has all these different ways to go about this of its small. Then, you know, this makes it smaller, things like that. The preview could have nothing the previous So it's just the title of it. We could easily make it the date or something like that. But we have all of this. And so, in order to keep a lot of this kind of standardized, the best way to go about this is you go here and you make a template and it kind of religious call this our journal template Journal Template. Um, Well, at the same I can. Just to keep everything consistent. Great. And so now we have this. Now, let's first make this date, because that's pretty important home. And we want to change this Type two created time. And so now we have this. We can honestly delete this for now, and we go from there. So now we have the date and we call it journal Temple. Fantastic. And so now what are things that we want to think about whenever we're journaling? So a lot of people have their great fools. And so let's just do it. It's three, um, and you know, grateful. And so we can Oh, no. Let's use our option on option. Fantastic. So now you can list your three great fools for the day and you go from there se no focus for the day, The day, um, you know things on my mind eso maybe weaken, reduce, focus for the data One. We've been kind of Let's just say things on my mind and no, since this is kind of in and if you wanted, you could obviously just move this kind of put it side by side. Here. There's all of the things you can kind of customized for your own personal desire right there. But we have this set up so that now, um, if we just click out of it will be done. But if we hit on you and we just hit journal template every single day, Um and like, a lot of times, I'll just use this as a one word way to describe how I'm feeling. So if I'm feeling really excited about this course, then alright, excited and then consisting magically go through this and then you basically doing this, Um, you probably want to sort it based on descended. And so no, if I make a new one and I'm, like, tired. Um, no. So you come here. There we go. Um then no, Make it accordingly, and it will be able to have this view. And of course, if you wanted, like, you made this a separate page, but he wanted a somewhat embed this, you know, we can have come linked to Page, I believe. Is it so if we do link the page, it's this page. If we link toe link to create a database. Then there's a journal. And so here, um, it could have this view, or we can kind of change it to have the gallery view as well. So we can just call this our daily on. Well, come here. We'll change of these properties just so that it's easier to kind of keep. Perhaps it will just make this none. Just make it really small. Maybe it will show the date. And now, as we do this, if we wanted a filtered Oh, no, go back. So if we wanted to filter this out just so that we're only looking at the past couple days , so Date is Yesterday is after yesterday. So then it could be today, and that's one way to go about this, and so there's a lot of flexibility here. 12. Conclusion: Hey, looks like you made it through the course, which is absolutely fantastic. I I really hope that you were able to just capture a couple things throughout this course that you will be able to either use in the way that I use it, use it in a way that you would like to use its structure it in whatever way really works for you. The whole purpose of notion and just all of these different structures is to make something that actually works for you, not for the person trying to teach how to use it. And so if this course was useful at all, I would absolutely adored if you could just leave. A quick review may be sure, with some friends, my goal is really to help spread my love of notion. All of my personal friends are just tired of me hearing about it, ever hearing about it from me. And so now I'm looking toe Makesem. New friends were really willing to be fanatics about this awesome program. Please reach out if you have any questions for me or if there's anything I can do for you. Was great working with you. And I guess I'll see you. Maybe in another course