Why use Notion in October 2023

About 3 years ago I started using Notion. Initially as a work productivity tool but then I added it to my daily life.

The functionalities it offers are endless, however it has a big “BUT”, and that is the initial learning curve, since having so many options can be overwhelming.

That’s why in this first article of a series that I will do, I will give a brushstroke to the beginning of the use of Notion, its advantages, disadvantages and possible uses, to later go deeper and to be able to get the full potential of the tool.

Advantages

• The functionalities are extremely customizable.
• Allows handling different types of texts embedded by blocks, such as programming languages, which makes it excellent for documentation.
• Ability to handle “databases”, important clarification, they are internal to the App, it is not that we connect to a SQL database, but rather something similar to an Excel or Spreadsheets.
• Teamwork, allows us to work with collaborators from a complete workspace, to a specific project, to a specific page.
• It has integrations with many external applications.
• It has mobile App, both Android and IOS.
• An excellent functionality is the ability to add formula fields, which are extremely customizable.
• Possibility to take different tables (databases), combine them or even make them dependent on each other.

Disadvantages

• Initial learning curve is very high
• It has many configurations, which often leads to be unproductive by misuse
• To have more than 5 collaborators you have to pay for the pro version (for the cost and the number of collaborators could also be a plus point)
• Visually (aesthetic section) it is not very editable

Uses

At this point there are 2 groups to differentiate, personal and professional use.

Personal

For those who write articles or carry out projects, as in my case that I carry out programming tests and cloud infrastructure, having a place to document the processes is key. I also like to keep track of everything, including my routine.

For those who are organized and like this, or for those who are not and need the support of an application, Notion is the one. It is time consuming at first because of a setup issue, but then it is very useful.

Some uses are:

• Second brain, a methodology I recently started using and it is giving me great results.
• Habits, expenses, training, etc…
• For personal projects it is excellent, since within the task tracking or the project itself, it gives us the possibility to visualize in dashboards, gallery but also in calendar, seeing when we start a task and when we finish it.

Professional

In the professional aspect it is excellent because of the advantages mentioned above. The collaborative aspect is outstanding since it allows us to manage comments in each document, for example mentioning people, either in a specific block, or in the comments menu of each page.

Another plus point is the database functionality, with different types of views and configurable parameters. Among these parameters we can choose the format, such as “person” which allows us to assign a responsible to the task, there are also “date”, “status”, “multi-label”, “label” among others, which give us the ability then to visualize and filter the projects or tasks in the way that is most comfortable for us.

Some uses are:

• Project tracking
• Documenting tasks
• Collaborative workspaces, both internally and with clients or collaborators.
• Task distribution

Summary

It is an excellent tool for any aspect of a productivity App, with a high initial learning curve, but when you overcome it you can get many uses.

In the next article we will see the basic uses and some templates for personal use.