10 REASONS TO START USING NOTION
Ranging from OneDrive to Google Drive, Evernote to OneNote, Google Keep to Microsoft To Do, Trello to Asana, I have tried my luck with a notion to pull my life together. But there is one thing that bugged me; I always had to switch between these apps to access different various, and productivity seemed like a chore and features too restricting. I always pondered about a one-stop-shop or more consolidated and centralized app (super app maybe?). Well, that is when I stumbled upon Notion, and I am blown away! I will share the top ten reasons why Notion is my ultimate go to app for brainstorming, note keeping, productivity and management!
One-Stop-Shop
Imagine yourself sitting at Starbucks with your vanilla latte and using ten different apps to organize the day; it’s chaos, right? However, Notion is the one-stop-shop. You don’t have to open various tabs and constantly switch from one window to another, with copy of the same work at all these different places. Notion has added everything under the roof in simpler words, so it has every feature one needs, without compromising on the convenience and performance. Find anything missing? Design the whole thing yourself, with powerful customization. I made templates that suit me and reuse them for each all my projects.
Generous Free Version
Of course, Notion offers a VERY generous free version for individual use. However, for business use, the free trial is available for clients to see if Notion will work for them. On the contrary, it’s essential to acknowledge that the free version might not be suitable for group use since the features and trial periods are limited.
Cross platform
Sure, you want the entire workspace at your fingertips, an Idea might strike you at the strangest of places, in the middle of the night or in washroom. When you opt for Notion, you have all your workspaces synced seamlessly across your devices. Accessing anything in notion isn’t a hassle!
OCD Compliant Organization
For everyone who (like me) has an OCD for document organization, Notion is an apt choice. The fine combination of uncluttered, clean, and straightforward interface empowers everyone to keep manage everything they are most comfortable with.
Wikis
Notion can host all your Wikis. It can host collection of all your office policies, business goals, contact details, and technical practices. Even more, users can add various content forms (HR forms), such as images (brand guidelines), embeddings, and lists. Also, the drag-and-drop feature eases the management.
Databases & Everything
Database is unarguably a nuclear feature in Notion. It serves as the backbone for most of the things you will do in Notion. Databases in notion comes with rich features such as ability to make multiple views based on filter, search and sort. It comes as a gallery, Kanban board, table or even a calendar among many other formats.
Sweet Embeds
It’s important for me to have rich notes within workspace. While research I might come across youtube videos, articles, a tweet, a Github Gist, maybe a prototype on Invision or brainstorming Miro board. Notion let’s you embed these and more into your page with a single click (sweet!).
Collaboration
With the advent of remote working, the surplus of information and need for collaboration is evident in the cyberspaces. With the free version you can’t technically someone to your workspace as a user but as guest if that makes sense? If you ask me, if you are a small team this serves the purpose. Comments are there for collaboration between peers within a workspace.
Powerful Templates
Notion comes packed with powerful templates ranging form notes to engineering management. Once you get comfortable with how notion works you are all set to making new templates or customizing existing ones as per your comfort and requirement. My personal favorites are Cornell Notes System and Engineering Wiki.
Notion Community
Although few years old Notion amassed over 4 million users using their platform. Along with tons of resources covering notion, there is a very active community on reddit (at the time of writing 75k members) discussing notion’s features, helping other members and sharing custom templates.
Bottom Line
Truth be told, I absolutely love Notion but there are hindering points that bug me. To begin with, its not the most user friendly app out there. Yes, it comes with number of useful templates but you easily get lost when you get into customization. This is amplifies with their mobile app. It seems to be lagging behind on the features compared to the desktop version. In addition, I didn’t find the notification feature reliable enough since notifications some times didn’t go through. All these small bits aside, Notion is a very powerful platform, flexible to cater for every use case out there. And is highly recommended for personal and team use.