What is Notion?
Notion is an all-in-one workspace, which provides a tool to take notes, plan and get organized. It can be used either for personal use and team collaboration.
Notion is quite simple to use, no high skills are required, you can use it as simple notes taking app or you can use it to plan things in your life and set reminders. Actually it can be seen as a white canvas which you can paint as you want. You can decide to start using it simple and the evolve based on your needs.
The core elements in Notion are:
- Blocks, everything in Notion is a block! With blocks you can build almost whatever you want from simple things like text, headers, lists, etc… until advanced stuff like databases, tables and more.
- Page, which is were the blocks are placed, and allow you to define your notebooks.
Nothing is definitive, for example you can transform a text block, or a database into a page!
The possibilities is almost endless.
What is the main competitor of Notion?
Evernote is one of the most popular note taking application, you can use it to take note, collect several type of resources: documents, images, etc…
With Evernote you can create an entire system of notebooks and append tags to categorize your notes into topics.
Evernote has its strengths:
- it can rely on a wide community support
- integration with several apps like Google Drive, Gmail, Microsoft Teams, etc…
- useful feature like document scanning, web clipper, etc…
Evernote doing a great job as block notes, but it doesn't help to improve your productivity and its plans it pricey.
With Notion you can do the same you can do with Evernote and more!
Note that either Notion and Evernote are just tools, none of them two do magic! To get organized and improve your productivity you have to get a method to follow. Given that, you can choose the software which fit more your needs, even a paper notebook if you prefer!
What can you do with Notion?
As said in a previously Notion comes without presets, at first it's a simple white page with no hints. It could be seems useless, but it isn't… That is a the strength of Notion, you can do whatever you want with no limits.
If you don't know how to start, don't worry, start simple! Create some pages to use as notebooks, and put your notes inside. You can always add complexity and move your notes around the pages, nothing will be loss. So it isn't required to find the perfect setup at the first time.
If you are searching ideas to use Notion, here some:
- Journaling. You can set up a database (a table for example, you can add as many views as you want) to store your daily journal. It can be useful to create a standard template (yes you can define even templates) to have some commons properties between each day.
- Habit tracker. Same thing as Journaling, you can create a database of habits, and track the progress. -Reading list, to keep track of all the books you've read and which you wish to read.
- Calendar. Notion provides even calendar, so you can schedule your tasks, view your due dates, set reminders.
- Life goals. You can set up a workspace to manage all life goals you are pursuing and plan how to reach them.
These above are only some examples, but you can actually do whatever you want, so don't give yourself limits.
Let's get deeper
Now I want to go a step further, and show how you can use Notion to keep tracked all the projects you are working on and their related resources.
This part isn't meant only for freelancers that have a lot of projects running at the same time, but you can set up your workspace as you want. For example by tracking your life goals.
PARA is an information management system created by Tiago Forte. PARA stands for Projects Areas Resources Archive.
Let's see what means each category:
- Projects, a series of tasks linked to a goal, with a deadline. (Hint: I use it to list only the projects I am currently working on and have defined another database which contains all the tasks).
- Areas, a sphere of activity with a standard to be maintained over time. (Here you can list the areas of your life, such as Finances, Health, Hobbies, etc…)
- Resources, a topic or theme of ongoing interest. (Here you can list all your interests and ideas)
- Archive, contains inactive items from the other three categories. (Here you can put all the projects you no longer working on)
PARA is just a framework, it can be adjusted to fit your needs. So if is not for you, don't be afraid and try to apply some changes.
More resources
I've talked about Notion, its basics and PARA a useful method to keep your resources organized. I hope all the info I shared have been useful to someone!
This article is just an overview of Notion, so I encourage you to go deeper and explore yourself the tool and all the productivity methods. If you need info don't be afraid to contact me.
I want to leave you with some useful resources!
Beginners guides to Notion:
Insights PARA method:
- Forte Labs - The PARA method
- RadReads- How to set up PARA in Notion
- Modern Makers - How to use Notion and the P.A.R.A method to build a second brain
An alternative of PARA mehtod:
YouTube channels:
- Tiago Forte YouTube Channel
- Marie Paulin YouTube Channel, she is a master of Notion and make absolutely great videos about it.
- Keep Productive, do amazing videos to improve your prouctivity.
If you want read more about Notion, let me know in the comments!
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