I’m all about lists, and I’m all about being able to track them. I’m also all about having a digital tool that makes life easier for you. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t always like this. I used not to have lists at all and believed that I was being productive enough. I look back on those times and realize how wrong I was. Here’s the thing: life can be as hectic as it is (no matter what stage of life you’re in), and you need to be able to track everything that needs to get done on a given day. I have used a couple of different tools over the years, and for the most part, they have been effective. Now, however, I’m using a tool called Notion, and I’m on a completely different level.
1) EVERYTHING is customizable – I don’t know about you, but for me, one of the hardest things about working with most pre-packaged digital tools is that they are so pre-configured that it makes it impossible to learn how to use them in the first place. Once you learn how to use it, you can be a complete wizard at it, but that takes time. I like Notion because nearly everything is customizable. When I first started using it, some of the standard features they had (Header art, emojis, etc.) were cool, but I wanted to dig in a bit and see what I could make my own. As it turns out, I could make everything my own, and it’s fantastic! I love that within the tables (a subject I’ll be digging into more next week), I can set it up so that I have categories, which makes it easier to find everything I keep in Notion. You can also browse Notion’s collection of art for headers on your pages, as well as emojis, which serve as easily recognizable icons. What’s great is if you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for in your artwork or icons, you can upload something, and Notion will use that instead.
2) Templates galore – Assuming you don’t want to go through the hassle of creating everything from scratch, there are thousands of different templates that you can use to get you well on your way. While I do like making things work in a specific way, I sometimes get stumped on how to make them work in Notion, so I have turned to templates. There are a variety of free templates that you can get in thier store, as well as some paid ones. I will say this about Notions Templates: some of them have worked out well for me. What’s great is that when you’ve loaded the templates into Notion (which is super simple, by the way), you can still modify them however you’d like.
3) Everything can be connected – While I love my to-do lists, having to look at one with everything that I need to do is daunting, so I have set it up so that only my tasks for a given day show up on my home page. This way, I only need to see what I need to do that day and avoid getting distracted by anything else on my list. Similarly, no matter what table you happen to be working on, you can set it up so that it connects to another table in another part of your notion system. I like this because it allows you to see how various projects are interconnected. In a professional setting, Notion is also great because you can easily connect to different accounts between users. This allows you to collaborate with a group of people through Notion.
Honestly, I love Notion. I prefer using tools that consolidate everything in one place. Having to switch between six or seven different tools to accomplish anything is a pain, so having everything in one place makes sense to me. I’ve used a variety of tools to keep myself organized, and on occasion, I’ve used multiple tools simultaneously. I have found that Notion is the only one that actually works for me, allowing me to keep everything organized in one place.
We’re going to be focusing on Notion this month. I LOVE using it for all of my organizational goals. It may seem daunting, but I promise you it’s a tool worth exploring and utilizing. While there are loads of different tools to help you get organized, this is the one I like the best.
Do you think you could use Notion to keep yourself organized?
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