Notion - the application that organises my blog posts
I’ve used several note taking applications, like Bear, but more recently, I’ve been using Notion for writing my posts and planning my episodes for my podcast. It’s used by companies such as Figma, Pixar, Nike, Amazon, Uber and Toyota.
And the fact that it does so much for free is mind blowing.
In case you don’t know what Notion is, it’s described as a connected workspace. Which offers features that support teams from Engineering, Design, to HR in creating effective documentation. Notion have also recently launched a separate calendar application as well.
I’ve very slowly begun to explore what Notion can do and I’m sure that over time, I’ll gradually learn more of the complex features behind it
Although the application is more geared for business use, but it’s also extremely useful for personal use. From planning trips, tracking tasks, to taking notes, Notion does it all. This is what I’ll be focusing on in this blog post.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of other free note taking applications out there. In fact, there are extensions available for the Apple Notes application such as NotesCmdr and ProNotes.
But I’ve ended up using Notion for so many things, not just note taking:
- Organising my LinkedIn Learning / Udemy course notes
- Managing my blog posts
- Planning trips
- Planning a podcast
Let’s jump into a few of my favourite features
Writing
At Notion’s core is writing.
Whether it’s for personal note taking, documenting for a product, or writing a book. Notion’s minimalist design makes it appealing for writing.
If you enjoy writing in markdown, then you’ll find some similarities between Notion and markdown syntax (especially if you plan on exporting your notes).
Databases
One feature that pulled me in to using Notion was that I could create a database on a page. I ended up creating a kanban board for my blog. I would have unique posts on the board, which would link to it’s own page for me to write the post contents and move it along the kanban board.
I honestly can’t believe that I’m excited over the ability to create and manage kabnan boards.
Plus, you can create a template so that when you create a new item on your kanban board, it’ll have whatever you want ready to go. I use this feature for my podcast, so when I start planning a new episode, Notion will use the template that will have an episode layout ready for me to fill in. I’ve found that this saves time and stops having to copy and paste something I did before.
But there’s more than just kanban boards. Notion offers galleries, lists, calendars, tables and more as databases than can be added onto a page.
Media
From YouTube videos, images, files and sound; media can be easily added onto a page in Notion.
The only media I tend to embed into my blog posts is code. When I export the post, it treats it as a markdown file, which makes it easy for me to publish the post on my website.
I can see embedding media being useful on documentation for marketing or HR teams. But for personal, I don’t use this feature that much.
Integrations
A way for Notion to stop you from switching to different applications is by offering integrations. Whether you want your data in Notion to be observable to keeping data from other tools in sync, Notion offers a wide amount of integrations.
I currently use the GitHub integration so I can see a table of the merge requests I’ve created for my website and their status, I find it to be a handy overview of what I’ve done.
Majority of the integrations available are more aimed at businesses rather than personal use, but I’ve found the GitHub integrations mentioned above to be useful for hobby projects.
I did discover something called Nigthfall AI, which seems useful for detecting sensitive information such as API keys on your pages.
Templates
Another part of Notion is the community templates that are available to use, from free to paid. There are templates for content creating, personal websites, teaching, engineering, personal finance and more!
I think this is one of the strongest points of Notion. Finding templates to suit your need where a majority are free to use is great. Plus, I find it’s a good way to learn Notion by seeing what others can create.
Publishing to the web
Speaking of templates, you can share your pages online for others to view, edit and comment.
I’ve uploaded an online version of my resume for anyone to see (in fact, there’s a link on the homepage to it!)
If you’re looking for a quick and professional way to build your web presence, using a Notion page is a good idea.
AI
Yes, Notion has an AI feature as well.
And it’s something that I would use, on both personal and in a professional use case. I’ve tried this with some notes from courses I’ve taken and it works surprisingly well.
The Q&A feature is incredibly useful if you’re searching through notes and are looking for a high level summary. There’s also features for helping with writing and autofilling tables.
There are also AI powered templates as well, ranging from planning a trip to product name description.
The AI feature is free to try, but it does cost a monthly fee (starting from $8 a month).
Even more…
This is only scratching the surface of what Notion can do.
Notion can also:
- Add table of contents to posts
- Add equations
- Add buttons
- Breadcrumb trail
- Add columns
- Add dividers
- Sync content across pages
- And more!
Wrap up
That’s a quick overview on how I use Notion.
It’s free to use and it offers great mobile applications as well as desktop and web versions as well.
If you’re like me who has a blog with over 100 posts, using something like Notion to organise your posts is worth looking into.
