In high school, I was one of those people who carried my planner everywhere. The school-distributed planners weren’t big enough for me; each year, I bought my own to ensure that I’d have enough space to write down every assignment and commitment.
This year, I’ve decided to forgo my paper planner in favor of using Notion.
I discovered Notion on TikTok over winter break (one good thing to come from my hours of scrolling). The best way to describe it is as a planner, vision board and bullet journal all in one! It’s essentially like having your own website to keep track of your life.
It’s so satisfying to compile your interests, goals and commitments all in one space. Although it’s a practical tool, there’s also plenty of room for creativity: you can embed pictures, GIFs, Spotify playlists, and more.
Be warned ᠆ it’s very easy to stay up until 3 a.m. organizing your life and crafting the perfect aesthetic for your Notion . . .
Creating your Notion from scratch can be a little intimidating, so I found a template that someone had already created and worked from there. The template I used can be found here. All you have to do is hit “duplicate” in the top right corner, and the pages will be added to your personal Notion for you to edit as you please!
The most basic way to use Notion is as a planner. You can create bulleted to-do lists and calendars to keep track of your commitments. This is one of my own Notion pages:
I’ve entered the due dates of big assignments for this semester, because I like having a monthly view of my commitments to gauge how busy each week will be. I also find it useful to make daily to-do lists so I remember to accomplish smaller tasks.
My favorite feature in Notion is the calendar feature. You can view the same information in multiple ways (a table, a list, a gallery, etc.) and switch back-and-forth between formats. So, for example, the assignment calendar I have can also be viewed like this:
The color-coded tags are so satisfying and really helpful for visually sorting your assignments.
Notion is perfect for staying organized as a student, but you can also use it for lots of other things! Although I have pages for school and extracurriculars, I also have ones for keeping track of the movies and TV shows I want to watch, songs/albums I’ve been meaning to listen to and DIY projects I’ve been wanting to try.
You can access Notion from a web browser, desktop app, or phone app. The best part: it syncs among all of these platforms/devices, so you can edit wherever you need! Notion is already free for individual users, but if you use your student email, you can upgrade to the Personal Pro Plan for free.
Happy organizing!
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Photos 2 & 3 provided by author