With almost everyone attending Zoom University now, it can get tiring switching between tabs all day. You have a to-do list app for homework, a calendar app for deadlines, an app to take notes, and more. For me, I would stress the most about missing an assignment because I didn’t write it down in the right place or forgot to write it down at all! And I’ve gone through so many different organizational apps but none of them stuck. Some weren’t functional enough and some weren’t aesthetic enough.
Eventually I stumbled down a YouTube rabbit hole and ended up watching numerous videos on Notion. It looked intimidating at first but I was desperate to try a new note-taking app and this one looked clean and user-friendly. So, I downloaded it onto my laptop and have been using it ever since! I realized that the app had more useful features than I thought. You can take notes on it and make lists, but also create homepages, databases, research papers, and basically your own mini website for whatever you want.
To start with, they have so many templates for school, which you can use for free with your school email. You can duplicate their templates for taking notes, reading lists, assignment trackers, weekly agendas, etc. And once you’re comfortable with them, you can personalize them however you want! Your workspace can look completely different than someone else’s so that it’s tailored to function how you like it best.
I treat my Notion like my online bullet journal. It makes it so easy to keep track of everything in one place from my school life to my personal one and prevents me from forgetting where I wrote something down or getting overwhelmed. And I have it synced from my laptop to my phone so I can easily refer back to it whenever.
The look of the app is very minimalistic and clean with a few simple fonts to choose from, but you can add your own touch by choosing emojis for each page, uploading pictures for headers, or using the pastel highlighter colors! It really helps make organizing all the busy work a bit more fun. And if you want even more pleasing templates, reddit has plenty with links to duplicate from. Our days may be jam packed with staring at screens, but at least with Notion we can make the process a bit easier, prettier and more efficient!