Notion — Notes, Tasks, Wikis. How to use Notion in a productive way?
Get over your iOS Notes app, OneNote, Samsung Notes app and other pre-installed (bloatware) softwares for taking notes. Let’s get started on a journey and I am here to guide you.
So, what is Notion? Notion is a productivity software which brands itself as ‘All-in-one workspace’. It is a note-taking tool for me and for some, it is a place to collaborate.
Notion came into existence in 2013 as a start-up and the initial release happened in 2016. It is stable enough, and has been around for a while. However, it is one of the underrated applications, in my opinion.
I signed up to be a user on a Friday in October 2020. To this day, I use Notion for various things, one of them being to brainstorm for this blog.
How do you use Notion?
- Sign up on Notion. One advantage is that Google and Apple ID users can sign up with those accounts.
2. Fill in your name and details. Once signed up, you can adjust the start week on Monday and connect other applications (such as Google Drive, Evernote, Trello and Asana) to it.
3. Browse the pricing plans. There are about four types, and if you are using it for your sole needs, I believe that a personal plan will suffice.
4. Notion pays back to the community. Take a look at the picture below and as you can see, I have been able to earn credit which I can avail for four months of Personal Pro Plan.
5. In the ‘Settings and Members’ and under Workspace settings, update your workspace name, icon and set a domain that you would like to use to share your pages.
6. On the left sidebar, there are templates available at the bottom that could be used for various activities. I am amazed at the templates under the ‘Personal’ and ‘Marketing’ category. I have been able to replace existing information in the template with my own.
7. If one has pre-exisiting documents that they would like to import, Notion allows you to do that. Once again, this feature can be found on the left sidebar under ‘Templates’. Here is an example of what you can import into Notion:
8. Familiarise yourself with these menus. Do not hesitate in using these menus as ‘turning knobs on and off’.
Using the three-dot (navigation) menu, one could import other documents and export the Notion documents in multiple formats, including PDF. The three-dot menu includes various other features too.
9. More information can be explained through the information in the template. Give it a read before replacing the pre-exisiting text.
10. If the above steps are still unclear, I recommend to check out Notion’s YouTube channel. They have created tutorials for beginners and playlists according to needs.
Tip: To execute commands use ‘/’ on a Notion page. This will display all options from creating tables to formatting the text on the page.
More about Notion
The latest interesting update (on July 27th, 2021) was all about inclusivity of multicultural people. Notion had stated that often there can be cultures who do not subscribe to the ideology of first and last names. Thus, they will merge that field as 'Name’.
Moreover, other organisations and applications, such as Clubhouse, have been using Notion to draw out their information documents.
One drawback could be that while it allows signing up using Apple account and Google account, Notion still does not have calendar integrations. Calendar on its own can be created in Notion. It has a long way to go with software integrations. Another drawback could be that offline desktop mode is not available yet, as of August 2021. Even with these drawbacks, Notion goes far and offers a freemium model for its pricing.
The inspiration behind this blog was YOU. I took to my Instagram story and did a poll on who was aware about Notion and who was not. These were the results:
About 50% of the total 26 poll takers said that they did not know about Notion. I thought it was about time to introduce everyone to Notion, so that they could incorporate this note-taking/productivity app to their lives. It is about time that we minimise the use of simple note-taking apps that create more mess than organisation of our thoughts, tasks and information storage.
While Notion is gaining recognition, it is still not as famous (massively underrated) and recognised as it should be. I have entered Clubhouse rooms to notice that out of 30–50 people (listeners and speakers combined) in a room discussing about tools will have about 5–6 users who will recognise and express that they use Notion.
I plan to use this with my work and online/offline courses. I have already started using it to track any applications related to work or study. I could have provided examples of my Notion documents but I possess some personal information on there.
Lastly, I request everyone to leave a comment or to reach out to me (via my socials) about their Notion experience or with any queries that they might have.
This is not a sponsored post. Notion has not reached out to me to create this blog post or to make any comment. The intention behind this was to introduce my blog readers to this productivity tool.
