Crash Course Guide to Notion ep. 1

Notion is currently one of the most prevalent online organization tools available. However, many people find it difficult to use as there are SO MANY tools that are available on the site. This series of articles will take you through the basics of Notion and how to use all of the tools available to effectively organize your entire life.

Ep 1: Notion Basics

When you open Notion for the first time, you are looking at nothing. I repeat, there is nothingthere. This is intimidating to a lot of people, and they abandon the idea of even attempting touse Notion. Never fear. Let’s begin.

Step 1: Create a page.
To create a page, you are going to go over to the sidebar on the left of the screen. You’re goingto see buttons that say‘Search’, ‘Updates’,and‘Settings & Members’.Ignore these and click‘Add a Page.’Congratulations! You have completed step 1.

Step 2: Give that page a personality.
At the top of the new page, you’re going to see ghost text that says ‘Untitled.’ Click on this ghost text and type in a title for your page. Usually, I go with ‘overview page’ or ‘docking station.’ Some sort of landing page for you when you first open Notion. (I use lowercase because I think it looks better, but you do you).
Next, hover over the white space above your title and you will see 3 buttons; ‘add icon’, ‘add cover’, and ‘add comment.’ For now, worry about the first two. ‘Add icon’ will allow you to add an emoji that will appear next to the name of your page in the sidebar. Pick whatever emoji you want. ‘Add cover’ will allow you to add a pretty picture at the top of your screen. You can use the ones they provide or put in one of your own.

Step 3: Give the page a function.
So now, you’ve got to put stuff on the page. This is the most difficult part because Notion has a lot of functions. Depending on what you want this page to accomplish, you are going to want to use different things. I am going to guide you through each of Notions’ basic functions below. Next episode, we’ll cover databases and complex instalments. First things first, you are going to see a bunch of ghost text. Just click on the one that says “empty page”. Now, type a forward slash to bring up the menu of options. Notion Options–A Guide to Basic Functions Text–self-explanatory; just writing straight into Notion like it’s a Word document (useful for note-taking).Page–this is what you would select if you wanted to create a hyperlink to a new, blank Notion page (useful for creating a list of separate documents that are related).

1. To-do List–create a bulleted list using checkable boxes as bullets (useful for to-do lists or anylist where things are eventually eliminated).Headings–there are three heading sizes here (useful for note-taking).Table–insert a table of any size that you need (useful for note-taking and data display).Bulleted and Numbered Lists–self-explanatory; if you click the tab key on a bullet, it will indent(useful for list-making).Toggle List–a bullet format where you can open the toggle and type below; when the toggle isclosed, you will only see the list item (useful for making lists that need to be annotated).Quote–creates large text and indents it slightly (useful for note-taking).Divider–create a dividing line in the page (useful for notetaking and pages with multiplefunctions).Link to a Page–allows you to link to pages that already exist.Callout–creates a box to type in information (useful for highlighting important information).EmbedMedia–you can also embed images, web links, files, audio, and video straight intoNotion (useful for keeping information together that is stored in multiple formats).Step 4: Read the next episode.These are all of the basic functions of Notion. Hopefully, you have added one or a few of theseto your new landing page. In the next episode, we will cover databases and complex functionswhich will allow you to make your Notion page more functional.

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