Intro to Notion and My Set up Part: 1
I may have talked about Notion in the past, but I am going to start fresh and reintroduce it. I also started typing this and realized that it was getting way too long, hence the part 1. Part 2 will come out on June 6.
I have searched the internet for a way to manage everything . While there are programs such as google, Asana, Airtable, Monday.com, Trello, etc. Yet, I feel those are too complex to use and not visually structured for productivity or they are not free forever. Notion is free!
What is Notion?
Notion is an organizational platform where you can create your wiki using a kanban view, a calendar, or a list view. It allows you to capture your workflows and document everything by creating spreadsheets and databases. Notion works across all outlets including on Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, and the Web.
Notion replaces the various Excel sheets you have scattered across platforms.
Too much Versatility?
Notion is very open-ended and has infinite ways you can configure your workflow. Which can also be a problem. This means it can work the opposite way or to put it bluntly, makes you less productive.
That’s the issue I had with Notion. I was spending too much time perfecting it to my needs and trying out new templates,
I have to confess, I have consumed a whole day trying different layouts and templates only to discover it had been hours since I had moved from my computer. I ended up constantly procrastinating and becoming less productive. A productivity system should be easy and most importantly, effective!
It can help you manage various aspects of your life as explained below:
Personal
It can be used for personal aspects of your life, such as:
Team
It can also be used for collaboration purposes for example a business team.
The “all-in-one” workspace concept of Notion is being embraced by businesses that cannot afford to have numerous expensive tools for multiple jobs.
Notion Terminology
However, let me briefly explain some terms I will be using so you don’t get confused:
Block:
A block is used to create the layout. Think of it as a brick. You can arrange bricks how you want but in the end, it builds something. A block can be any of the below. Let me be clear, there are many other blocks but the ones below are the simplest ones.
- Images: Add images to add more detail to your pages. You can upload any link or file on your PC
- Web Bookmark: Upload articles, links, and videos as web bookmarks for later
- Audio: Embed Spotify and SoundCloud files to stream your music via Notion
- Video: Embed YouTube and other video services and watch all within Notion
- Code: Code snippets to any page and save them as you go, in all major languages
- Files: Save PDFs, documents, and more. You can even import them into your Notion too
All those blocks (and more advanced blocks) make up your page layout.
Database:
A database is a series (i.e. 2 or more) interconnected spreadsheets. Each spreadsheet has columns and rows and they are connected using a primary key. By linking spreadsheets, you avoid having to enter the same information twice.
Page:
A page in notion is like it sounds. It is like a blank piece of paper. This is where you can create anything — text , bullet points, add images etc.
You may be still confused on a page vs a database and that is okay! Check out this article about a more in-depth explanation of the two.
My Major Workspaces
Let me give you a peek into my workspaces. For Me, I have three major workspaces which are often called dashboards.
The Hub: It houses my personal pages like bucket lists, wishlists, design assets, and hobbies.
Check out Prototion’s Notion dashboard templates here
Content Hub: This contains all my content and social media hub.
- This also includes my blog post planner and Podcast episode planner.
College Hub: This one is very new I started it just within the last month
Health Hub: This is for keeping track of all your doctor and medical info in one place. This is so useful especially if you see many specialists for illnesses such as cancer and others.
A Tour of my Hub
Today, I will just be going into the content of my personal pages called: The Hub. In my “The Hub”
Quick Links
I first have a gallery database titled. It has a title block labeled quick links. This is a clickable URL database to my link manager. I changed the settings so when I click the quick links checkbox in my database it will show up on my homepage.
Toggle Menus
Next, I have 4 collapsable menus. It is divided into the following:
- Life/List
- Hobbies/Fun
- Design/Art
- Other
I used toggles so I can collapse them when I am not using them which cleans up the space.
Life/Lists
Under the Life and List heading, I have my bucket list, wishlist, and contacts. My bucket list is everything I would like to achieve in my life. Then my wishlist is how I keep track of what I want for my birthday and Christmas, and finally, I have my contacts with names, email addresses, street addresses, and birthdays. I also have bucket lists for friends and a packing list.
Hobbies/Fun
Hobbies and Fun contains my Tv and movie tracker which is where I used to update what I was watching but now it is where I record notes or quotes from what I am watching. I now however use trakt.tv to keep track of what I want to watch, what I have watched, and what I am currently watching. This is because I can track each episode in trakt.tv
It also contains my pen pal tracker. This is where I track how long the letter takes for each person. It also has a notes section for what the letter is about and what I got inside the envelope. It is super simple.
Design/Art
The design and art category contains my brand assets so for example my podcast cover and the specific details like the type of font used, and the color codes which connect to the Color library page which is right below it.
The photography hub contains my photography. It contains a photoshoot database. This helps me keep track of all my photography projects and I even have different views to view specifics. For example, I can categorize it by upcoming shoots, and the status of the shoot:
- Booked
- Shot
- Edited
- Sent
It has a column titled contacts which is a clickable URL to my contacts database which is below it. I use the equipment database as a packing list. And just to view all my equipment, I have and who it was made by. And last, in the photography hub, I have a database for bucket list locations.
The Canva page is my dumping ground of template URLs I have acquired.
Other
The other section has the vanity dashboard and the scholarship database. I am eventually going to move my scholarship database to my college hub but I was working on it so it was in my main hub workspace.
The vanity dashboard where I will keep all the beauty products I have used and loved to the point I would get again. I always forgot to remember the name of products I used or got samples of so I hope this will help me to eliminate that issue.
Countdowns
After the toggle menus, I have embedded two countdowns. I used an embeddable widget for these. There are so many places to get widgets like this but I used Indify.
Greeting Widget
After the countdowns, I have a box that displays a greeting, the date, and the time. I found this one on Shorouk’s blog.
Links
The block next to the right of the greeting block. Serves as a Link manager. There is the main link manager page, but I also have pages that act as a dump for links. I have a page for Canva templates for Notion, templates, and notion resources that are not templates.
That is where we will end for today’s post. I realized that I cannot write a book. I highly recommend checking out Notion.so. I will say it does take a while to learn how to use it but I hope this post helped slightly. I will be sure to link some templates and resources below.
