By Lauren S. Edited by Laura C.
Here’s the thing, physical planners are adorable. They’re so helpful in keeping you organized and on track with your personal and professional tasks. And getting to highlight important tasks with pretty colors and use little stickers? That’s the best part. But, if you’re anything like me, it goes well for a while, and then all of a sudden it falls off. You end up not taking out the planner anymore and it just sits in your bag. Finding Notion and implementing it into my daily life has been one of the best and most rewarding tools I have come across. Whether you’re a student, full-time employee, parent, or all at once, Notion is a great tool to help you stay organized!
What is Notion?
Notion is many things, meaning it has many uses. But at its core, Notion is a free, digital adaptable workspace that is designed to help its users coordinate and maintain deadlines, objectives, and assignments to boost productivity.
How does Notion work?
All you need to do to get started is create a free account and you’re into a whole new world of customizable organization. Notion has many premade templates organized into different categories for your needs available for free on their site. And on top of the already provided templates, other Notion users have made their own templates and will make these available for you to duplicate and incorporate into your own Notion.
Through these templates, users can customize their pages according to their needs. Adding images or gifs, calendars, tables, lists, notes, and even embedding songs to the page. It truly is something that you can make your own and continue to change as your life moves forward.
Playing around with the templates in Notion is the best way to learn and understand the system. To get you started, here are some templates from Notion users ranging from student-oriented to personal life to an all-around template:
- Deborah’s World – Great for college students & creatives
- Ywzarchive’s Template– Another great template for students
- Throneofpages Notion – Great for organizing your personal life
- This Dashboard – An all-around Notion template for professional and personal life needs
If you’d like to explore more templates, Pinterest or Reddit are great resources to find other free templates to add to your Notion!
So, what’s the customization like?
My favorite feature about Notion is its customizability. Once you have your templates added to your Notion, you can change the colors of not only the text itself but also the text backgrounds. There are also options to change the font, embed images, audio, or links. And if there are certain aspects of your duplicated template you don’t like, not to worry, you can change them to fit your needs!
On top of this, there are sites available that provide free widgets for you to add to your Notion. The top two most recommended within the Notion community are:
If you decide to add these widgets to your page simply create a new text box where you want to place your desired widget and type the command /embed and insert the widgets link! Simple as that.
If you’d like to learn more about Notion’s customizability here’s a great YouTube video they made to help teach users the ins and out’s of the platform:
Overall…
Notion is a great tool to incorporate into your life. It’s a platform that’s so fun to learn and personalize and has endless possibilities to be used. Notion is a platform that is meant to move and adapt with you and your life. So, if you’re looking for a great organizational system that can meet all your needs, here it is.