As a long-time Notion user, I highly recommend Notion for organizing notes and managing tasks. Notion offers unparalleled flexibility to customize your workspace exactly how you want.
In this article, I will share my tips for setting up an effective Notion workspace, with a focus on note organization and task management.
Table of Contents
Get Started with Templates
When first setting up Notion, I recommend starting from a template. Notion offers various templates to choose from based on your needs.
For note organization and task management, good template options include:
- Class Notes template to store lecture notes
- Personal tasks template to track to-dos
- Project tracker template to manage projects
Using a template saves you time and provides useful foundations to build upon.
Once you duplicate a template, you can fully customize it by adding databases, pages, properties, views, and more to fit your exact preferences.
Organize Notes in a Database
The best way to organize notes in Notion is using a database.
To create a notes database:
- Click the
+button in your sidebar - Select
Database - Title your database (e.g. “Notes”)
- Add desired properties like tags, status, priority etc.
- Start adding individual note pages into this database!
Databases allow you to filter, sort, and view your notes in different ways. You can also relate other databases to your notes database.
For example, I have a Projects database, where each project links to relevant notes in my Notes database. This allows me to instantly access all notes for a particular project.
Manage Tasks with a Personal Dashboard
Notion dashboards provide a single place to track everything you’re working on.
To create a personal task dashboard:
- Make a new blank page
- Name it something like “My Dashboard”
- Create linked databases for your Tasks, Events, Goals etc.
- Add calendar, table, timeline, and board views for each database
- Favorite this dashboard page so it’s always accessible from your sidebar
I like to break my dashboard into 3 sections:
- Tasks: Table view of my task database, filtered to show incomplete tasks
- Today: Board view of my daily to-do’s
- Upcoming: Calendar and timeline views for upcoming events and goals
Revisit your dashboard every morning or the start of each week to review and update tasks.
Collaborate with Teammates
Notion makes it easy for teams to collaborate by working in shared workspaces.
Here are some top tips for team note organization and task management:
- Share pages with edit access for real-time collaboration
- Use @mentions to notify teammates of important updates
- Add teammates as members on project pages to keep them in loop
- Assign tasks to teammates and track progress
- Set up a team homepage with docs, resources, and quick links
With these features, you can seamlessly work across multiple projects and tasks with your team.
Customize Views for Each Database
One of Notion’s superpowers is custom views for databases. Tailor the view for each database depending on how you and your team will use it.
For your notes database, it’s helpful to have:
- A table view to quickly scan notes
- A gallery view to visually browse notes
- Filtered views like “Review Notes”
For your tasks database, useful views include:
- Kanban board to visualize task flow
- Calendar view for upcoming tasks
- Table view of all incomplete tasks
Spend time setting up views that suit each database’s purpose for maximum productivity.
In Summary
The key to effectively using Notion for notes and tasks is understanding databases, linked views, dashboards and collaboration features.
Start from a template, then fully customize your workspace to match your needs and preferences. Notion offers endless possibilities to organize information exactly how your brain works!
Let me know if you have any other questions. I’m happy to help fellow Notion users maximize this incredible tool.
