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Once in a while, we discover something that changes how we work—and we can't figure out how we lived without it.
In late 2023, for use here at Career Contessa, that game-changing something was Notion. We want to be clear that Notion does not sponsor this article in any way. We wanted to share how to use Notion because we have had so much fun learning how to use it ourselves!
Notion is a workspace that allows users to take notes, organize data, and collaborate on ongoing projects in a single workspace. One of the most appealing features of Notion is its customizability.
Using AI and an ever-growing library of templates to use and build from, users can achieve anything from creating a grocery shopping list to running their entire freelance business.
Table of Contents
- What is Notion?
- How Much Does Notion Cost?
- How to Use Notion at Work
- Notion Features to Know
- How to Create Your First Page on Notion
What is Notion?
It's difficult to explain what Notion is because it is so many different things.
Notion Labs Inc. is a startup based in San Francisco. Started in 2013, Notion was built as collaboration software that includes productivity and project management features like kanban boards, tasks, and databases. Since its inception, Notion has
Notion describes itself as a single space where you can think, write, and plan. Often used for note-taking and task management, Notion can be used to create templates to organize everything. Some users even use Notion to run their entire business.
Users can create custom templates, embed videos and web content, and collaborate with others in real time. Students, like Jason Ruiyi Chin (aka Easlo), popularized Notion while using it to take and organize lecture notes.
Realizing the customizable platform could be used for much more than late-night cramming, Chin began creating templates like budget trackers, habit trackers, and meal planners. He started sharing his templates for free using Gumroad. Three years later, he earns well into six figures with his Notion templates. Check out Easlo’s collection of templates.
How Much Does Notion Cost?
Notion has a freemium model, meaning users can use a free version. However, more robust versions of Notion exist under paid tiers.
If you’re using Notion for personal projects, the free version will likely suit your needs. However, as you progress and become a more experienced user, you might find yourself upgrading to the next tier, which allows unlimited blocks, file uploads, and more guests.
There is also Notion AI, which is boosted by artificial intelligence. To add Notion AI to any paid plan, it will cost $8 per member/month when paid annually.
To access up-to-date pricing, check out Notion’s pricing page.
How to Use Notion at Work
Use Notion to increase your organization and perfect your productivity. Picture this familiar workplace scenario. It's Monday morning, and you've been working for about an hour. As you plan your day and the upcoming week, you are suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer number of tabs and programs you have open.
Imagine one productivity tool that allows you to organize everything in one place. Now, your Google calendar, your to-do list, your work journal, and even your favorite podcast playlist live together in one workspace—a workspace customized to you.
Here are a few ideas to help you to manage your work in one place—without toggling from tab to tab.
Task Management
Keep your projects, to-do lists, deadlines, and collaborators organized with Notion's task management. To begin managing tasks with Notion, use their pre-built Tasks and Projects template.
This template shares three sample project tasks with status, assignees, due dates, priority level, and summaries for each task. But it gets even better. Depending on your preference, you can organize your view by tasks, boards, or viewing all tasks.
Meeting Notes
Notion gained popularity with students looking to take class notes, study for exams, or organize their overall student life. Similarly, you can use Notion to prepare meeting agendas, take notes on meetings, or organize to-dos after a productive meeting.
Instead of creating another editable Google doc or Word doc, file all your work notes into an easy-to-find Notion page or workspace. From there, organize any to-dos, projects, or collaboration opportunities using Notion.
Planner
Since Notion can (and will!) sync with your calendar, you can use it to plan your personal and professional life. Connect your calendar to Notion and watch all of your work, personal, and family to-dos populate in one place.
Journaling
If you keep a work journal, a goals journal, or a personal journal, Notion can be the to bring them all together in one digital journal. When I first began using Notion, it reminded me of the helpful organization bullet journaling provides.
Goal Tracking
Use Notion to set, track, and ultimately exceed your goals! Notion is the perfect tool to track your goals, especially ones that might take a long time to achieve and that require many moving parts.
Specific Job Functions
We'll go deeper into templates later in this article, but there are Notion templates for just about every job function under the sun.
Marketing professionals can run their entire content calendars on Notion. Product teams can organize their entire roadmap using a template. Leaders can use Notion templates to collaboratively brainstorm ideas in one place, even if they are a remote team/
Notion Features to Know
To use Notion effectively, familiarize yourself with its tools. As a user, you can create a workspace that's as simple or as complicated as the tasks you hope to achieve with it.
For example, if you're looking to use Notion to create an organized to-do list, you'll set up your workplace with a calendar, a Kanban list, and blocks to keep any notes or links to pertinent resources. We'll quickly review the following pieces of a Notion workspace, and how each can be used.
- Pages
- Blocks
- Databases
- Templates
- Integrations
- Notion AI
Pages
Pages can be used to organize everything. Each page is a blank canvas where users can add text, images, to-do lists, calendars, playlists, and more.
After creating pages, users can also create sub-pages. Like a website, users can use Notion to create pages that navigate to more detailed information or related resources.
For example, if you use Notion to create a journal, your sub-pages might be dated journal entries.
Once you create a new page, simply type "/" to insert the block of your choice.
Basic Blocks
Everything in Notion is a "block". When you create your first page in Notion and begin typing, you've already started with a text block. But Notion pages can contain a lot more than plain text!
Think of every element you want to add to your page as a building block. You can stack an image atop a to-do list. You can place a calendar next to an embedded video beneath today's to-do list. Use blocks to create a visual workspace where you can see everything at once.
As Notion is a newer type of software, it's constantly improving. It lets users connect their Google calendars, Asana tasks, Google Maps, and recorded Looms in their blocks.
Databases
Databases are among Notion's most powerful tools. As such, they are a little difficult to explain. In my personal experience, it was best to work on databases from a template. This reverse-engineering allowed time to learn how they actually work—and what kind of information they can handle.
Databases are used for storing information and can hold any number of rows and columns. By default, each row will have two pre-populated properties: 'Name' and 'Tags'. Users can add more properties, such as date, checkbox, multi-select, URL, etc.
Templates
The same thing that makes Notion so incredible to use is what makes it challenging for beginners. Personally, I would have never been able to use Notion without their library of free templates.
Notion's template gallery hosts tens of thousands of templates to help users get started managing tasks related to school, work, personal projects, and everything in between. Many users start with completely customizable templates. From there, they learn how to manipulate features and recreate a template that works for their precise needs.
Here are a few examples of customized (and customizable!) templates:
- Journal Template
- Habit Tracking Templates
- Brain Dump Template
- Good Morning Template
- Simple Content Planner + Calendar Template
Integrations
Perhaps you already use project management or productivity software that you love. Connect your favorite tools to Notion using their integrations. As of publishing date, Notion allows integrations for over 80 tools. Here are a few integrations you might use to get all of your productivity and planning tools in one place.
- Google Docs
- Dropbox
- Canva
- Asana
- Loom
- Everhour
- IFTTT
- Slack
- Trello
- Zoom
If you're curious about if and how your favorite tools integrate with Notion, check out their integrations page.
Notion AI*
Of course, Notion also uses artificial intelligence to predict results, generate text, and solve math. Notion's integrated AI assistant can help users to brainstorm, autofill tables, answer questions, explain technical jargon, and even translate text.
*Notion AI is a paid subscription and is not currently available as part of the free model.
How to Create Your First Page in Notion
Before leaving, let’s talk about creating your first page in Notion! When you sign up for Notion, you will be given a workspace. All pages will live in the lefthand column, where you can easily access them.
When creating a new page, you can either start with a page type, a template, or an empty page that you can customize on your own. Starting out, we enjoyed working from pre-made templates. This helped to give us an understanding of what it was possible to build using Notion.
Here are some great existing templates to use as a starting point for different types of pages.
- Ali Abdaal's Series, How I Use Notion
- August Bradley's Life Design
- Hannah Elise's Tour of Notion
- Sab Yang's The Easiest NOTION Tutorial for Beginners
