If there is one thing I can attribute to my balance of going out every single weekend while keeping up with all my assignments during my first semester of college, it would be Notion. While it took me about two weeks and a couple meltdowns to figure out how to use it, it was well worth it. My Notion page, designed by myself to organize just about every aspect of my life, is where I manage school, my working out routine, personal daily habits, extracurriculars, book lists, and more. Now I’m no expert but seeing as I can sympathize with the horrid experience of attempting to understand the language of Notion, I’ve decided to share tips I’ve learned to spare you all the pain and help you all become Notion baddies just in time for spring semester.
home Page
The first (and most important) part of setting up Notion is your home page! This is your hub where all aspects of your life come together and also where you can add widgets and other unnecessary features that contribute no function. Pick a color scheme and then add features accordingly. I have linked my personal home page template as well as some other options. Click “duplicate” on the top right corner of whichever template best fits your vibe.
You can personalize the template, taking out features you may not find useful, and adding cute widgets to make it more you. The most important part of the home page is to link all your pages so everything can be accessed from one home (ex: your school, habit, budget, etc. pages). Embedding an Apple Music/Spotify playlist, adding a cute clock, or motivational cutes are all additions to make to personalize your home page. Here are some websites with easy to use and free Notion widgets:
ADDITIONAL PAGES
Now that you’ve got your home page set up, here comes the hard part. Decide which aspects of your life you would like to organize and create a page for each one. Some things I have pages for are:
- School
- Tracking my workouts
- Daily habits
- Weekly goals
- Extracurriculars
Choose whatever is most relevant to your life. Many of the linked home page templates already have pages in them. You can choose to keep, delete, or tweak features to your liking. Notion has many page templates, from project management to vision boards, that can be found here.
USING NOTION FOR SCHOOL
My most useful Notion page has been my school one! While it is frustrating and quite time consuming to set up, once you get the use of it it will be a lifesaver. I took a couple hours at the beginning of the semester to enter in all my assignments from my syllabi along with their due dates into an assignments and exams database and I never once missed an assignment or even had to look back at a syllabus. The calendar view of the database allowed me to see all my assignments and map out how I wanted to spread out my assignments. My to-do lists, organized by degree of urgency, were also very handy in keeping me on track and not letting any assignments or exams creep up on me. I was also able to embed my school Google Calendar to have an easy view of my class and exam schedules. Having all of my school needs in one page was very helpful and kept me organized.
I hope these tips and tricks serve you well. Remember, its grueling work to set up but it will definitely be worthwhile. Start your Notion journey now and you’ll be on a straight path to working out everyday while having a 4.0 GPA.