I have been a fan of anything that increases my productivity or solve a core problem. It could anything such as a new system / process, a simple physical maintenance of register or an online tool.
Tried using a couple of tools earlier such as Evernote (never really got a hang of it), Physical Post it Notes, Online Post It Notes, Asana but nothing really stuck. I always felt that some or the other functionality is missing and the structure of each of these tools is the reason for such restriction.
So one time during COVID 19 lockdown when I was going through some of the tweets of people that I follow, I noticed a tweet from Rajan Anandan (Sequoia Capital) – @rajananandan that mentioned about what the Business Owners / Founders need to do during COVID 19 to get a grip on things. This was years of knowledge available right there on 1 single page. You can visit the page here.
The structure of that 1 single page enamored me to no end. I was so struck by the simplicity of that page and found that it was created on Notion. Read the page and saved it in my bookmarks to refer to it later.
Again Notion came up when I found it among the most useful productivity apps as was mentioned by an Influencer in their timeline. I decided to give it a try.
So Notion is basically a structure that you can mold it to your requirements. It is quite flexible, has on the fly features and can used as a common workplace for a team.
Where can you use Notion?
- To Do Lists
- Managing multiple versions of Resume and Job Applications and tracking it
- As a Habit Tracker
- Notes taking
- Clipping links and taking notes
- List is endless…
Notion is all about creating pages, that is the first step. But every page can either be created from scratch or you can use one of the templates available to start with a structure that you can modify. Templates are from different areas such as Design, Education, Engineering, Human Resources, Marketing, Personal, Product Management, Sales, Support.
So for example, I had to create a Database for the Stocks that I bought. My need was to take a note of the name, date of purchase, price of stock, quantity, date of sell, quantity of sell, realized profit, %age profit. Yes, I agree this could be done with a Simple Excel file too. But Notion makes it way too much attractive and with so much ease. So I was able to quickly create a simple table with formulas just like excel or google sheet.
Similarly, I was able to quickly clip URL’s that I would refer later through the Notion Web clipper which would immediately appear in Notion. I would later be able to take notes just below the Article. I would also be able to track which are the articles that I have read, to read or reading.
I would soon be doing a full tutorial of Notion in a couple of weeks with video. Since, most of the tutorials on youtube are in English, I will be doing this tutorial in Hindi language. If you are interested in having me do the tutorial in English, please do connect with me on facebook.
I do hope that I have helped you understand what is Notion and how it can help you.
“Adaptability to technology is key to success”
~ RG ~