Notion 101 for Beginners

1. Welcome to Notion 101: Hello and welcome to Notion been the one to beginners. My name is Nancy and I will be your instructor for this course. I'm an educator and I've treated thousands of people to build apps, websites, and automations without ever writing a single line of code. In this class, I want to introduce you to a powerful new code and productivity tool called Notion. Notion is a powerful productivity tools that has become increasingly popular over the last few years. It is a platform that allows you to take notes, organized projects, and create databases all in one place power users have built their entire second dreams are notional. Template traders are now making thousands of dollars and passive income every month just by selling Notion templates on their digital store. If you want to go, I started with this tool. This class is the best introductory course you will find. In this class, you'll learn all the basics of motion and get started with using it to its full potential, will start by setting up your account and getting familiar with the notion interface. You'll learn how to format text and images and collaborate with others on projects. You'll also learn a few intermediate features such as Notion databases. By the end of this class, you'll have a solid understanding of notion and you'll feel confident to be able to use it for your work and personal productivity. So join me now and productivity to the next level with motion. 2. What is Notion?: What is Notion? Notion is basically an all-in-one tool. It combines the functionality of a task manager, a database, a Wiki, a note-taking app, and so many other things. Notions, clean UI means that you can get started very easily, but it's advanced features also allow you to build complex systems where such, whatever the build or notion, it always starts with a blank canvas. So why should you use Notion first for increased productivity by having all of your information, documentation, and tasks in one place, you can work much more efficiently and get more done in less time. Next, for better organization notions, flexible and customizable databases allow you to keep a track of your information in a way that makes sense for you, helping you always stay organized and on top of things. Next, for improved collaboration with your team, you can easily share information with other people on your team or even the public notions, collaborative features. Next, for a better understanding of your data notions, databases allow you to turn your information into visualize data, making it easier to understand trends and patterns and form relationships. Finally, for easy integration with other adults, usually integrates with a wide range of other tools such as Google, workspace, Trello, and Slack, making it easy to continue using the tools that you already love. So let's get started with using Notion to create a notion account. Simply go to the notion website, notion.com and click the Sign Up button. You'll need to provide an e-mail address and password to create your account. Once you've signed up, you'll be taken to your notion dashboard where you can start using Notion right away. The notion interface is designed to be intuitive and easy to use. On the left-hand side of the screen, you'll see a list of your Notion pages and databases. Once you create them at the top of the panel, you'll see the notion toolbar where there's a bunch of settings where you can access all of notions, features and settings and customize your workspace the way you want it to look to start creating a new page or database, simply click the New Page button on the left. If you're searching for existing pages for databases, simply use the Search option on the left side toolbar. Now that you have your Notion account, Let's get started with building on it. 3. Formatting and Adding Content: Let's get started with building your first notion page. In this video, I'm going to introduce you to some basic features on motion. First, we learn about headings and how to customize font, such as bold, italicize, and underline. We'll learn about lists and toggles. And finally, we'll learn how to add links and attachments. So let's get started by giving this page a title and an icon. It's important to note that whenever you press Enter a notion, it will create a new block for you. How do you know if it's a new block when the cursor is hovering, just see the six dots like this one here. If there is, it means that that's a block. Let's say that this is block number one. I'm going to press Enter and create the second block. Now I can actually click and drag this block with these six dots and drop it right next to the first one, like so. How do you know it's going to drop next to it? You will see that little blue line over there, that little blue line on the right. That means that the second one is going to be dropped right there. And now two columns have been created using these two blocks. In the first block I'm going to add a heading. To add a heading, you can either press the plus button like so and search for heading, heading one. Or you could simply press forward slash and search for heading one, like so, the same thing. Finally, you can also type one hashtag space and that also converts it into heading one. So now that there is a heading, I'm going to type something. Again. I'm going to hit Enter, then type some text. Let's say that this is my homepage that I will keep revisiting every single day. It's very helpful to have a list of my top three goals for that month right there being displayed very clearly for me to see every day and be reminded of that. So I'm going to enter those goals here. One way to do it, of course, is by adding lists. You can do that by basically just typing one period and space just like you would on Microsoft Word. And then that creates a list, as you can see, the other way to do it is forward slash and search for list. And you can search for bulleted lists or numbered list and toggle list. So here what I'm going to use a toggle list instead of a numbered list. Let me show you what happens then. I'm going to say goal one. I'm going to add three of them. So basically a toggle list hides information inside it. You will not know what is there inside that list competent unless you open it. How do you open it? You press on this green triangle. It's empty. Now we can add goal saying, let's say that is my goal one for this month. Now the toggle triangle has turned into black because the content is not empty anymore. If I press it, it will collapse. And I can go ahead and do the same thing for Goldwyn goal three also. Now let's move on to adding images on motion. I'm going to head over to the second block here. And this time I'm going to say forward slash and search for image. Now it allows you to upload an image either from your computer or you can search for something from unsplash. It's up to you how you upload it. To format your text better. All you have to do is select the text, like so. And just as in Word, you do get a bunch of options here. You can add a link, you can add a comment. Can also bold, italicize, and add some color to the text or to the background, like this. So this is how you can add headings, format text, and add images on Notion. We've also checked out toggle list so far. Now let's check out how to add links and attachments. The easiest way to add links is to add the URL in a new block, like so. And it will give you an option to create a bookmark written, embed, or dismiss. If I just said dismissed, then it will be left as a text. If I created a bookmark, it will give you a preview of the site to add attachments in your notion page, all you have to do is attach a file. So I'm gonna say a forward slash and search for the file. And that's it. I can either upload the file from my computer or embed the link from somewhere else. Let's say that I'm saving some important receipts in my notion, this is how you would add them on your page. So there you have it. This is how you can get started with motion on your very first day. And notion is perfect to be used as a tool for your documents. 4. More Types of Content : Here's a few examples of other types of content that notion supports. First, images and videos. In the first video, we've already seen how to add images on notion. That notion also supports a wide range of video formats, including direct and beds from YouTube and Vimeo. Second, files and attachments. Please remember that notion supports adding your files on the document. All you have to do is click on the Plus or forward slash and search for file. And then either click on the upload button to upload it from your computer, or you can even drag and drop the file directly onto an osha third, and adding external content notion also allows you to embed external content such as google Maps, Google Sheets, and other embeddable content. This feature makes it possible to embed live data and interactive content into your Notion pages and databases to embed external content, click on the Plus button or forward slash embed, and then paste the embed code or link. If you want to add fancy graphics, all clickable buttons directly onto your notion page, you can use a tool called indifferent to add widgets and even directly embed audio notion workspace. Hope these tips have been helpful to supercharge and ocean build. 5. Pages and Databases: Notion has two main types of content, pages and databases. Pages are usually used for text-based, an image-based content such as four nodes, articles, blog posts, etc. But of course, you can also embed databases into pages. Databases are usually used for more structured content, such as lists, calendars, databases, and dashboards. Let's go back to our build to create a new page on Notion. As always, just type forward slash and search for a pitch. So that option pops up, just click on Enter, and a new page has been created for you. I'm now going to create three pages to organize my goals and long-term vision. To duplicate the first page, all I have to do is select the block and just click on Duplicate. Or when the block is selected, just say Command D or Control D. And now you have three pages. I'm going to quickly go ahead and rename them. I'm also going to reorganize these blocks with a better look. Now I can always open the pages and add cadet. That's how you create new pages and add sub pages inside an existing page in Notion. Now let's see how to create a database just as we created a page earlier, all we have to do is forward slash and search for a database. Now when you search for database, you have a bunch of options. Database, Inline database, full page and so on. For now we'll go with inline to view Inline Database as a full-page. You can always do that by clicking on the open as Will Page button right here. If you add an Inline database, you can always view it as a full-page later, I'm going to rename this database as Task Manager. I'm going to customize this database to have a few properties that might help me build my task manager. So I just renamed the first two columns by just clicking on the headers. Now I want a deadline column for my task manager. So I'm gonna go with this little plus button right next to the category column. And I'm going to click on that and search for a date column. So this date column is now only going to accept dates. When I click on the Header again, I can rename it to deadline. And now you have a deadline column. When I click on the cell, it will only open a calendar. You cannot enter other types, such as text or numbers and so on. It will only accept a date. Finally, what else do you need for a task manager database? Well, you should be able to check off tasks and say that they're done, right? So to be able to check off tasks, I need a checkbox. So again, I'm going to click on the Plus button right here. I'm going to search for a checkbox, and there it is. The checkbox column should be called done question mark, which is to say, is this task done? Then I will check it to say yes it is done. So the thing about Notion is that instead of this ugly big column, I notice click and drag the column right towards the beginning, like so, and click, drag the column edge to collapse on itself like this. This is only possible for checkboxes to make it very clean and neat look. Now going to go ahead and populate this database just to show you what it might look like. So there you have it. This is how you build databases in motion. In the next few videos, you'll continue to see how powerful notion databases are and you'll learn more about how to use them. 6. Introduction to Databases: In this video, we'll learn more about properties in Notion databases. To do this, let's get back to our belt. Let's head over to the first database that we created here, Task Manager. Remember that Notion, databases are much more powerful than a spreadsheet like Google Sheets. This means that you can customize the type of input that you can add in every single column, e.g. in this case, we have this task name column as a text property, the category column as a multi-select property. You've seen these little icons next to the heading of the column that shows the type of column that is, this is a calendar icon next to deadline which says that that's a date column. Let's go ahead and try to add a new column, as we saw earlier, to add a new column or a property to a database, all you have to do is click on this plus button. You have a bunch of options that you can add. You can see the text. You can see this hashtag which is number dropped down. A single drop-down is a single select option. A drop-down is a multi-select option, the status option, calendar for date, a person that from your workspace that you can mention. Sure. I'm the only person, but if you have more members of the team, then you can add them as well. You have this clip to show files and media where you can add pictures and other files. A checkbox, which we've already added in the previous video, a URL, e-mail, phone number, formula, relation, rollup and so on. You can see that Notion databases are very powerful. You can very clearly customize a kind of input that you can accept. And every column here we've already added a new date and a checkbox column already. So I'm going to let it be for now. But let's say that you want to change the type of your column. Let's say from a multi-select column in category, I want to change it to a single select. The way you would do it is click on Category, which is the header of the column, and search for type. Here it's a multi-select column. Just click on that and choose single Select, which is just select instead. And now the column has been changed. This is how you would edit existing columns. You can also edit the name in the same way. And when you click on Edit property, you can customize a property even further, e.g. these are the options right now, if I click on the option, I can change the color of the option or the name of the option, like so and type enter, It's all done. So this has been how to customize Notion databases. It's very important for you to get comfortable with using databases in Notion because they can completely transform the way you use Notion very soon in this class, I just want you to be comfortable with the different types of properties that are on Notion databases such as text, URL, single select, multi-select date files and media. And the other basics. 7. Sorting and Filtering: In this video, we'll learn more about filtering and sorting data in Notion databases. Let's go back to our first database. Let's say that the tasks are not ordered in an alphabetical order. Simplest way to sort data in an ocean database is to simply go to the top of a database and search for the sort option right here. When you click on Sort, I'll give you a bunch of options by the properties. Here, I want to sort the task name by alphabetical order. So that property is the task name by default because it's a text column, ascending and descending refers to alphabetical order. And then ascending alphabetical order means from a to Z. So if I click outside now, you can see that it has been sorted according to 12.3 because that is the right alphabetical order. Now of course, you can choose to categorize it by other properties such as category ascending, again, alphabetical order or deadline ase ending would be the first task will take priority. And finally, done is ending would be not done and descending would be done. So I'm gonna go ahead and remove this sort rule. Click outside. Now I'm gonna show you an incredibly powerful tool in Notion databases and it's called filters. Let's say that you only want to see pending tasks. Yard database. You don't want to see all the tasks that are done anymore. You only want to see the tasks that are not done. So I want to filter these tasks by the ones that are not done. We already have the information about the status of the task as done or not done in the first checkbox column. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to head over to Susan other option, top of the database, click on Filter. And I'm going to say, I want to see tasks that are not done. So filter the tasks by the done column, where done question mark where that property were done is not done, right, where the task is not done, where it's unchecked, and now only the pending tasks will be shown. Let's see if I check this checkbox. That is not appending task anymore because the task is done. So now your task list is empty because all the tasks are done. Go ahead and throw this photo. Now, everything else is visible. The better way to use filters is by adding a new view to a database. What do I mean by that? I'm gonna go ahead and leave the filters as it is. The than Flutter has been cleared. I'm gonna go ahead and click on Done three dots and delete filter and leave it. Leave this table as it is, leave the Task Manager as it is, and unchecked my first task. So no salt, no filters right now, the best practice in motion is to leave the first table as it is. What I'm gonna do when I want to filter or sort the information differently. The top, there's a plus button next to table. That is what sets apart Notion databases from Google Spreadsheets. Let me show you what it will do. I'm going to say plus, and by default it has already created a table that's highlighted here. The view name is empty. And I'm going to say pending tasks only because that is the only data that I want to see in this table. And should I show database title, should I show vertical lines and so on. You can toggle it on and off and play around later. I'm going to say Done. So now it's basically the same table as before, but here, because it's pending tasks, only, what I'm going to do is click on the Filter. The same thing as before. We're done is not done. So now when I go to views and click on the table, I'll see all the tasks here. But if I click on the Table View and click on pending tasks view, I'm going to see only the pending tasks, right? So now you can add as many views as you want. Pending tasks, only completed tasks, only, upcoming tasks only. So this is a very smart way in which you can categorize your data. Remember that none of your data is being removed. It's basically the same amount of data that is just being shown in a different way. I'm gonna do this one more time. I'm going to add a new view. This time, I'm going to search for Category eight tasks only, and I'm going to say Enter. And now a new table has been created because this is only category a task. I'm going to say filter by category, this type where the category is category a only. I'm not going to select category number two, only the tasks that are tagged as category AR display. Now if I go back to the first table and task two is also tagged as category a. Even though it is done. When I go to Category a task, it will be shown because it is only being filtered by category a or not. So this is how you can use sort and filter on Notion databases. This is just the beginning of an incredibly powerful tool in your arsenal. In the next video, I'm gonna show you one more way in which you can customize data that you see on your Notion databases. 8. Database Views: So far we've explored the basis of motion, formatting text, inserting images and videos, and explore the basics of databases. In the last video, I taught you how to use filters and sort in the database. In this video, I'm gonna show you a final way to customize how you see data in a notion database. Let's go back to our first database before we continue, please remember that each of the items on a database can be opened as a single page. When you hover over the item and click on the Open button, it will open up as a new pair. You can view it as a full-page like this by clicking Open in full-page button. This is basically an entire page for you to add content in. You can add images, text and beds and so on just as you would in any other notion page, you can even add colors to your pages in Notion, not just two pages within a database, but to any notion page to add a cover simply hover on the top, search for an icon and add cover. You can add an icon if you'd like. Here I'm going to click on Add cover. Just as before. You can either change the color to something from the gallery. That notion gives you upload it from your computer or added from Unsplash. This is similar to adding an image inside a page. Let's say this is a finance related tasks. So I'm going to search for finance image on Unsplash, and then I click on the image has been added. So now let's go back to a database. The reason why databases are much more powerful than spreadsheets, because when you restrict the kinds of inflammation that can go on every single column, it makes it possible for you to display this data in different kinds of views. What do I mean by this? Let's say that you have a date column in any of the databases. In this case, we actually have a date column in the form of a deadline here in April. So what I can always do is go back to the views on the top click on the Table. View. I want to search for water depths can be displayed in calendars, right? So I'm going to search for calendar view, which is right underneath the table, is going to rename it as calendar. So I know that when I click on Calendar, I will see a calendar. Again. I'm going to double-click outside or just on the Close button here. And now you can see a calendar. This is February, but if I go to April, March, and April, you will see that task one, task 2.3 are arranged in the order of their deadlines. Now I can click and drag task one 6-8, just like this. Now if I go back to the table view, the first one, you will see that the deadline of task one has been changed to April 8. If I change this to April 27th here, I'm gonna go back to the calendar. Now you will see that it is being reflected on since February, March, April, April 27th right here. So remember that this is basically the same data. It is just being shown in different ways to make it easy for you to find patterns and make sense of your data. Let me show you other types of use. I'm going to go to Calendar and press Add view. This time, I'm going to search for a gallery. Sure, the name can be by image. So when I click on my image, I will see the tasks by image. They're organized by their images. And before clicking outside or on the Close button, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to customize this gallery a little bit because as you can see, it's basically empty, right? It's just a white big box. I'm gonna go ahead and customize this a little bit. And instead of card preview being page content, what does page content media, there's anything inside the page. You will see it that, well, there's nothing inside the page and task three, so it's empty. So instead of page content, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to flip it to page cover because we know that one of the tasks, at least it has a cover. I'm gonna go ahead and do page cupboard, and I'm going to say dot interests outside. Now you can see that task two is being shown by the image. If I go to task three and add a cover, then leave it like that. But because every time you add a cupboard notion, generate some random image, if you're happy with that, you can leave it. I'm gonna do the same thing with task number one. Now you can see there's a beautiful gallery here. Next, I urge you to check out other views on Notion. Usually the calendar view and the gallery view are very, very useful for most people. But if you click on Add view once again and explore some of the other view options. You can play around and see which ones you like. The bold option here is a Kanban board. If you're familiar with what Trello is, you know that you can easily click and drag cards from one column to the hour. That is basically what a kanban board is. You can show the same task. So the same data in a board view or in a timeline view, which is a Gantt timeline, a calendar view which we've already checked, a gallery view, which we're familiar with also, and also a list view, which looks a little better than a table for many use cases. So we've learned all about filtering and we've learned about database views in Notion, both of these options are incredibly powerful and mastering them will help you gain more expertise of motion. 9. Collaboration: In this video, we'll learn more about collaborating in Notion. Notion allows you to share your pages and workspaces with the whole team to share a single page on Notion, simply go to the top right button called Share. Makes sure that share to web is toggled on. If you want to share it with the public. And if you want to sell this page as a template, I made sure that allow duplicate as template button is toggled on just as in Google Docs or Google Sheets. You can always click on copy that link and share it with anyone who needs to see the page. If you don't want the space to be publicly visible though, you can toggle off the share to web option and invite someone through the e-mail option instead, if you want the entire workspace to be shared, which is to say all the pages on your entire notion workspace, then simply head over to the panel on the left, look for settings and members and search for add members to Workspace right here. Do remember that workspace collaboration is a paid feature so you will be billed per person. Next, let's check out how to use comments in Notion just doesn't Google Docs, you click and select the text and search for the comment option or simply type Command Shift M or Control Shift M if you're on Windows and the common swaption will pop up like so. You can see, you can even mentioned the person on your team to take a look at this. Here. I'm the only person, so I'm assigning it to myself, but you can assign it to your other colleagues as well. Then you can click on this button to enter the comment. Finally, remember that notion gives you an entire Version history of what has happened on this page. When to view the version history, suddenly head over to the clock option on the top right. Click on View all updates. You'll see exactly what has happened so far. It's just been me editing this page. But if you have more team members, you will see exactly what edit was made by whom Fen. You also have a handy analytics option to show how many times this page has been viewed, on what dates and times and who was viewed it and was edited it from the team. And when. 10. Next Steps: So this has been an introduction to Notion, and I'm sure that it has given you a great place to start using the tool for the final project. I want you to complete the bill that we just started. You will now move ahead to build your own personal HQ system in Notion, here's what your parcel HQ should have at the end of your build. First, a homepage. This will be the main homepage for your personal HQ. It can have a brief introduction as well as the table of contents linking other sections and pages if you'd like. Next, a task manager database, and it should display only pending tasks. And it will also have other views such as calendar view, board view, etc. You can also add a project tracker database inside one of the pages, a parcel information page, or all your personal details such as contact information, education, work experience, and so on. You can turn on the public sharing for this page to create a public CD if you'd like. Next, you can also have a hobbies and interests page for travel, photography, cooking, etc. You can add a personal growth page for learning resources, certifications, and so on. It'll be very helpful to add a note or journal page for your reflections on various topics. Notes from the books that you read, articles, important notes from events or condensations and so on. Finally, you can also have a tools and resources page to add clippings of interesting tools and apps that you come across once you're done building it, Personal HQ will be an incredible second dream within notion that you can store all the important information safely. You can download the Notion app on your phone and add the motion widget to your home screen to display the personal HQ page easily on your home screen for easy access. So you can keep revisiting this page throughout the day. So simply create a new project under this class and shared a link to your personal HQ, or simply share screenshots so I can give you feedback on your build. If you found this class helpful, please tag me on Twitter at Vinci Krishna and add pictures of your Notion setup. I'd love to see them. Thank you for learning for me and I will see you in my next class.