An all-in-one productivity platform that actually works: Notion

I’ve tried many tools to stay organized and cover different aspects of my job within a single platform. Notion ended up being the only one that truly worked and got the job done!

In this article, I’ll show you some real-life examples of how Notion’s versatility and flexibility can make a difference in your workflow, regardless of the context of your project.

Moving away from task-oriented organization

One of Notion’s standout features is its remarkable flexibility. Unlike many other project management tools that limit you to task-oriented planning, Notion empowers you to plan and visualize your projects without any constraints. It’s like having a customizable bullet journal and personalized webpage rolled into one seamless interface. What’s more, Notion’s user-friendly design makes this flexibility incredibly easy to leverage. Once you’ve determined the best way to represent your project, you can effortlessly create templates for streamlined data entry. This adaptability ensures that Notion remains tailored to your evolving needs over the long term, making it an ideal choice for personal projects as well.

At first, I attempted to adopt a task-oriented approach, since I didn’t know ant better. As someone who juggles multiple tasks at work, what I really needed wasn’t just to see what I completed, but rather to track my progress throughout the day. This way, I could seamlessly pick up where I left off the next day, ensuring I stayed on top of everything I needed to accomplish.

Next, I explored the idea of creating a daily-refreshing template, but found it cumbersome to maintain for tasks that occurred irregularly. Trying to recall when I last worked on something became more of a hassle than a solution.

Finally, I devised a dashboard system. This approach involved outlining the main activities I needed to address periodically. (Refer to the image below for a visual representation.)

This is a very simple dashboard, yet it does the job. With the new home feature of Notion hopefully activated soon, it will definitely look MORE sleek than this. But I am not a designer, so right now, practicality matters the most.

Excel vs Notion

When it comes to streamlining tasks and projects, Notion emerges as a versatile and user-friendly platform. In this comparison with Excel, I’ll highlight Notion’s strengths, helping you discern why it might be the ideal choice for your organizational needs.

Notion offers several advantages over Excel, particularly in flexibility and collaboration. Unlike Excel, which functions primarily as a spreadsheet tool, Notion provides a broader range of features, including database management, note-taking, task tracking, and project planning. Its flexible structure allows users to create customized databases and templates tailored to their specific needs, making it suitable for a wide variety of tasks and workflows.

Additionally, Notion’s visual organization tools, such as Kanban boards, calendars, and galleries, provide intuitive ways to visualize and manage data, making it easier to track progress and stay organized. While Excel certainly has its strengths in data analysis and computation, Notion’s versatility and collaborative features make it a compelling choice for modern teams seeking a more integrated and streamlined workflow solution.

In my dashboard above, eash line is a page. An each page can have different formats. I generally use databases, and customise all according to their purposes. For example, when you click Abstract Templates from dashboard, you’ll see such a table.

I regularly submit abstracts to congresses and need to keep track of what I’ve submitted to each one. While Excel can handle this, it’s not the best platform for creating databases. Moreover, it’s less practical because:

• Excel requires manual setup for design and data validation, which can easily lead to style inconsistencies when copy-pasting. In Notion, you have a consistent style and can create options effortlessly with its “multi-select” property, eliminating the need for separate sheets and data validation.
• Filtering is cumbersome in Excel, where you’re limited to understanding data filtration through small arrows next to column headings. With Notion, predefined filters can be easily activated or deactivated, providing convenient access. In the figure below, I’ve defined two filters: the year filter is active, while the presenter filter remains available for quick toggling.

• In Excel, you typically work with a blank spreadsheet for your data. However, in Notion, every piece of data is treated as a page, allowing for additional information to be entered within each entry.
• When you open a data page in Notion, you’ll find additional properties that might not be immediately visible in your main view. It’s kind of like a pivot table but with the flexibility to edit as needed. This gives you a focused view of your data while still having access to all the details — details that can come in handy for filtering and analysis. Check out the example below, where the red box highlights another property that’s tucked away but can still be used for filtering purposes.

• The concept of a dashboard isn’t very practical in Excel. Trying to display different databases within a single file can be cumbersome. Usually, you end up creating separate files for different concepts. However, in Notion, everything is easily accessible within one page. This streamlined approach makes navigating between different databases and concepts a breeze, enhancing overall efficiency and organization.

Content Calendar in Notion

I use another dashboard for my daily work: my content calendar. For me, Notion is hands down the best choice for crafting a content calendar, especially given the very specific nature of my content, which’s not just about ticking off tasks; it’s about anticipating how long I will work on them, how they will interact with each other, and keeping a record of their features in one place, called “properties” in Notion. And they are all possible in this platform.

In this database, I wanted to put every possible content from ideation to drafting status but I wanted to avoid seeing all at once when it is not necessary. I also wanted easily see my database by status, by format or simply in calendar with a single click, and filter them when necessary without building the filter conditions from scratch every single time. So, I customized every property and view according to my needs and created this dashboard.

In my next article, I will mention the template pages of databases and I will compare it with cloud-based writing tools like Google Docs, because I actually write my content in Notion, too!

Let me know what you think!