Over my 13 years of school, I’ve tried literally every way of organization and planning, only for most of them to fail. I got sick of paper planners and spent way more time making them neat than working. Those big, teacher-desk calendars didn’t have big enough boxes for my writing while simultaneously being too big to walk around with. The Apple calendar felt secure but lacked the personalization aspects I wanted.
I admittedly spent too much time looking for the perfect organization method throughout middle school and high school until I came across something that had exactly what I wanted, just in time for college.
Notion, created in 2018, is an application that can be summed up as an “all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.” It’s a cohesive database where one can combine work and personal content while simultaneously keeping them separate. Having been created recently, you also receive emails about updates in a Tesla-esque manner from co-founder Ivan Zhao.
My favorite part about it is how customizable it is, making it the perfect tool for students, employees, teachers, or really, anyone. As a college student with a job, here are my pages: I have a page for my schedule, a calendar page for my assignments, a reading directory where I rate my 2021 reads, a work/pay tracker to organize my hours and paychecks, and a to-do list for the things I don’t want to forget within the week. It keeps everything organized in one place as the app promises, and it’s accessible from my laptop, iPad, and my phone — a great feature for the busy student always on the go. I pull it up in any place to check for anything and everything. Not only is it great for tasks, but also for day-to-day life. Over the two years I’ve been using Notion, I personally believe it’s improved my time management. The visual aspect of the way everything has formatted so I can see everything in one place. With its help, my productivity has been off the charts.
The sleekness of the application itself combined with the emojis used to label everything makes it an aesthetic and academic dream for me. Just looking at it makes me happy until I’m overwhelmed by all the work I have to do. Ready-to-use templates are available for modification also by groups, making it an accessible tool for teams as well.
Notion is flexible, easy, efficient, and life-changing for a student who’s tried everything. It looks like I’ve finally found the one.
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