3 ways I use Notion to make my life easier
Notion has become an integral part of my daily workflow. During the week, not a day goes by that I’m not at Notion for at least a few hours, if not most of the workday. Here’s how Notion makes my personal and professional life so much easier.
Notion keeps track of all my work
Here at How-To Geek, I write quite a few articles each month. At any given time, I have 30-40 ideas I’m working on and a dozen or more articles in various stages of the drafting or editing process. That’s a lot to keep track of and I’ve tried several tools over the years.
Eventually, after going through Trello, ClickUp, Obsidian, and Asana (often trying the paid plans), I landed on Notion’s free plan to keep track of everything. Notion can easily organize each article idea at every stage, from ideation to outline to writing and finally submission. I can also keep other key information with each article, like internal tracking notes and more.
You can sync Obsidian notes between your PC and phone for free, here’s how
There is no need to use third-party cloud storage.
Like I said, I used to pay for tools to get the custom field areas that I rely on for my writing, but Notion makes it extremely easy and free to create various custom fields – and that’s what really sold me.
I also like that I can write all my articles directly in Notion using Markdown, then copy them into the backend editor, and all the formatting goes with me. This is something I have never been able to achieve with other platforms.
It’s safe to say that I wouldn’t be able to do my job as effectively as I could without Notion.
I can easily track my transactions on Facebook Marketplace
Earlier this year, I started trading crafts for items on Facebook Marketplace. I’ve made some really good swaps, like a cutting board I made for an M1 MacBook Pro and some random tech items I had lying around my office for an M3 iMac.
I like to keep track of the trades I have made and the value of the item I donated and the item I received. Why do I have to follow this? I’m not really sure, but I like being able to remember the items I traded when I go to sell them later.
5 tech products I would happily buy second-hand
Low price, low risk.
Using Notion, I was able to create a quick form that integrates with a database. I simply fill out the form with item names, values, date the exchange was completed, and attached photos. This all gets imported into the database and becomes easy to search, view and edit if I need to in the future.
One of the best features of Notion that I use a lot for this project is the unlimited upload of files 5MB or less, which is really nice because I can attach multiple photos from a project if I want.
Vacation planning became simple once I created a template
My wife and I recently vacationed in very different places: Texas and Florida. We used Notion to plan everything because of how organized it is.
We took the time before the vacation to not only plan the trip itself, but also to develop a template that we can use for future trips. One thing I really like is the packing list my wife and I made together because it has check boxes so we can check off each item as it’s packed to make sure we don’t leave anything behind. I was also able to create a complete dashboard containing all the hotels we were staying at with phone numbers, addresses, confirmation numbers, and stay dates in one simple space.
I rely on these 4 apps when I travel, here’s why
These four travel apps make exploring new places easier, safer, and much less stressful, no matter where you’re going.
Then I used multiple databases to track everything: where we wanted to eat, what sites we wanted to visit, where we wanted to shop, and more. It was really nice to have individual pages for each location and then be able to consolidate everything onto a dedicated page for each day so we could organize everything nicely.
Now when we go on vacation, I just go to the template we created, copy it, and start typing in all the things we want to do on the trip. Notion has made our vacation planning so easy.
Notion is way more powerful than I need, and that’s a good thing
I’m only beginning to scratch the surface of the power of Notion. I use it for other things that I haven’t covered in depth here, like taking notes at church and for my Sunday school classes, writing down the settings for my lasers, and much more. But Notion is more than just a note-taking or database tool: it can be a hub for your entire life. That’s what my goal is with Notion going forward.
Right now, Notion is just a simple, lightweight note-taking and database tool for me. But I hope to do much more than that over time. I’ll be integrating it into my n8n workflows to automate various things like moving articles between stages, creating drafts for me, and much more.
- Operating system
-
masOS, Windows
- Supported Desktop Browsers
-
Web Clipper extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari
This customizable workspace simplifies and combines the processes of taking notes, creating tasks, and scheduling dates to create an all-in-one productivity workspace.
