Between meetings, classes, emails, working on personal projects, and managing a social media presence, all while trying to find the time to eat healthy, exercise, and read. It’s true: we really do live in the busiest world of all time. Lately, I have been discovering that success really does start at the bottom–in the small habits you do everyday–and using the right tools to manage your busy schedule will change your professional and personal life.
Since my university has temporarily switched to remote learning, I have found it more challenging than ever to have the motivation to keep my daily life on track. While I still do all the things I want to, it’s difficult without a rigid schedule and I end up wasting more time than I would like. Lately, this pressure to fix my bad habits has sent me on a quest beyond the realms of the default Apple Notes app and google calendar, and I have been scaveneging the web high and low for the perfect productivity app to suit my needs.
And I have found it… (well, mostly…)
Notion (Developed by Notion Labs Inc.) is the most powerful productivity app I have come across. It has literally inifite possibilities of page layouts with infinite depth hierarchies, extremely well developed databases which are able to do complex calculations, and a gorgeous desktop UI. With all this customizability, It’s exactly the kind of program a person like me loves. And now, since discovering Notion, I have spent the last couple of months basically moving my entire life onto it, and I want to share some of the cool ways I’ve been using Notion to level-up my productivity.
Aside from (almost) entirely replacing the Apple notes app for keeping track of ideas and quick notes, I primarily use Notion for keeping track of all my assignment and exam due dates.
Here you can see all the midterms and assignments I should be doing instead of writing this blog post…
One of the greatest features about Notion databases is the ability to hide and sort entries based on whatever data you want. For me, I have it set to hide my completed assignments and sort ones tagged “In Progress” to the top.
Removing this filter shows my completed assignments for the semester.
But really, the best part about notion databases is the ability to switch views of any database to whatever view is the most convenient.
Clicking the “Calendar View” option shows my assignments in a calendar, that I can look at to see how busy I’ll be at a glance.
Notion databases aren’t just useful for keeping track of deadlines, they also come with awesome Kanban Board displays for grouping items. One of the places I use it is for keeping track of my books based on their read status…
or by genre.
Notion also has web bookmarks that turn links into page elements.
In case you can’t tell yet, one of my favourite parts of Notion is the beautiful high-res image headers and emojis you can use to really make each page unique.
I love hiking, camping, and pretty much anything outdoors. Notion can even help out there. By putting my gear in a table database, I can easily filter out what items I need to bring based on the convenient, multi-select tag feature and I’ll never forget another essential again.
However, despite all it’s upside, there’s still a few reasons that Notion doesn’t satisfy all my needs. I typically use my iPad for taking notes during classes, and Notion lacks the ability to hand write notes on ike OneNote. Also, Notion was primarily designed for as a desktop-first platform and the mobile app reflects that. It feels like it takes forever to load on even my iPhone Xs and it’s clunky to navigate, even with my larger screen-size.
But even with these few downsides, Notion hits all the right markers for a desktop file-system replacement and I will definitely be using it for the forseeable future. All-in-all, for what is only a two year old app, Notion delivers a lot in terms of UI and power, and with API access promised to be coming soon the future looks bright for Notion.