Notion — The secret product to staying organized and super productive

But is it all good? Find out!

In the last couple of months, I have become somewhat obsessed with Notion, simply because it blends and helps me organize aspects of my work, personal finance, and life all in one place!

For two years, I have tried more than a dozen productivity apps, searching for the one that could organize the many components of my life and boost my productivity even by 0.001%. I went from Microsoft OneNote to Evernote, Apple Notes, Trello, Bear…you name it. But they just didn’t work out for me. I found myself still having to work with multiple Google Docs, Sheets, Notes App, and Kanban boards. This always made me forget where I stored things and I ended up feeling even more disorganized! I also thought the UI’s of some of the previous applications I had tried were either too clunky and restrictive or that I was being forced to upgrade to the premium plans without receiving any significant value from the free versions first.

Notion is an all-in-one workspace for writing, planning, collaborating, and getting organized. The app not only allows you to take notes, but to also add and manage tasks, projects, and life generally! One cool thing I particularly love about Notion is that it provides the building blocks for me to create my unique layouts and toolkits to get work done.

My personal Notion board 😊

If you’re still not convinced that Notion is the real MVP, here are 6 major reasons why I am obsessed with it, and why you might be too:

1. Interface: Notion has an interface that is clean, minimal, and aesthetically pleasing to look at. There are several customizable designs that can be achieved by utilizing the emojis labels, background colors, and layout types. I love being able to design my Notion board to fit my personal style.
2. Navigation: The tool is extremely easy to navigate and I can easily have a birds’ eye view of all my pages from the sidebar. The favorites menu also makes it super convenient for me to access and view my most used pages from the top and at a single glance.
3. Flexibility: I like how flexible and accommodating Notion’s free plan is. We all know that at some point, almost all freemium tools will ask that you upgrade to the premium plan. Well, not Notion. I have never received any promotional Ads or upgrade emails, and I still have not had a reason to opt for an upgrade. Notion provides the opportunity to access almost all their features using the free plan and then allows you to upgrade only when you are ready. I also like that the product is easily accessible to everyone as it is made completely free for students and educators.
4. Compatibility: Notion is compatible with all Desktop, MAC, IOS, and android apps, so it is super convenient for me to have and access my data across all my devices — synced, and ready for offline use.
5. Integrations and Connections: It’s hard to stay focused if you are constantly switching back and forth between multiple apps or browser tabs. I love how Notion solves this problem for me by embedding virtually any online content to my Notion pages — from video and audio players to Figma mockups, Google Drive, Slack, Gmail, Trello, Github, Calendars, Jira, etc. It also includes streaming multimedia, PDFs, forms, and interactive maps. Talk about a power tool! ⭐️
6. Functionality: Finally, Notion has a ton of fun board templates which I use to create my to-do lists and work schedules, and keep track of my applications, blog posts, calendars, exercise routines, prayer intentions, movies, and book logs. A Google search with the type of template you need will fetch you thousands of results. I also love how these lists could turn into a Kanban board as I often enjoy the satisfaction of dragging a tab into the ‘done’ section thereby helping me keep track of the progress of my activities.

At this point, you might be thinking “Hmm…this seems too good to be true 🤔”.

Well yes, you are right. Although Notion is a pretty top-notch tool, like most things, it is not perfect and can be improved.

For one, Notion has multiple data protection and privacy concerns, and research shows that this is a deal-breaker for most users. Personally, unprotected data does not sit well too well with me as I sometimes store my work, finances, health logs, and other information that I would like to remain private on my Notion pages.

Notion is currently encrypted via Transport level Security (TLS) which means your data is only encrypted when it is at rest and in transit. Unlike a product like WhatsApp, it is not end-to-end encrypted (meaning even the servers don’t have access to decrypt your data), which makes your data vulnerable and susceptible to leaks and unauthorized access. While building end-to-end encryption can affect the speed and full-text search feature, it is important that Notion prioritizes data privacy while maintaining the user experience in order to boost their adoption, retention and engagement rates. This can be done by creating end-to-end encryptions, enabling two-factor authentication and page password protection options for users so they can trust that there would be no violation or unauthorized access to their data.

However, Notion remains my number one application for now, as I am not yet extremely paranoid about my data privacy to completely prioritize that over the other amazing features, benefits, and simplicity it provides to me.

Notion can do a gazillion things — Whether you are a busy professional, digital creator, entrepreneur, writer… they’ve pretty much got you covered. This simple video explains what Notion can do for you, and you can also find a ton of videos on Youtube which show you how you can set up your Notion pages.

So here is my advice: Decide what areas of your life need organizing, and build Notion to do just that for you. It’s easy to get caught up and overwhelmed with how powerful Notion is, and somewhere along the line, you might find yourself creating a personal website when in fact you do not need one. Relax; take it one step at a time and always remember to pay attention to YOUR OWN needs and journey.

Productivity isn’t about doing more things — it’s about doing the right things. — Chris Bailey

Please leave me a comment. Let me know if you’re interested in jumping on the Notion bandwagon or if you’re on it already 😄.

Until my next post…

Hoping to inspire someone out there, one post at a time.

Your PM girl,

K