A few months ago, I came across a productivity app called Notion. I didn’t think I needed another app in my life, but then I saw the aesthetic and functionality of it and was very intrigued. I also learned that it was free for students and educators, so there was no good reason for me to not try it out. I have been using Notion for a few months now, and here are a few things I like and dislike about the app.
But first a little background:
Notion describes itself as an all-in-one workspace, designed to prevent you from having to use a bunch of different productivity apps. But, to be honest it is kind of difficult to categorize Notion as one particular app as it can be used for so many different things.
Things I like about this app:
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The aesthetics and visual customizability: One of the first things that inspired me to use Notion initially is how beautiful the app is. It incorporates plenty of emojis and cover photos that you can choose from as well as a clean white background and pastel colors.
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The flexibility: Notion organizes content through blocks (a to-do list, a bullet list, a file upload, a paragraph are all different types of blocks), and the fact that Notion has so many options for blocks gives this app a flexible design to serve many purposes. Notion can probably be used to organize some part of anyone’s personal, educational, and/or professional life.
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The comprehensiveness: In many of the YouTube videos that I have watched about Notion people have stated that this app helps them put everything in one place instead of having things so spread out. While I am still very much at the beginning of my Notion journey I can start to see how this can soon become an “all-in-one” app for my digital life.
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The community: While this isn’t necessarily directly connected to the app itself, I feel that Notion as a company cares about the people who use their product. There are so many YouTube videos with people showing how they use Notion in their daily lives and it clearly shows that they genuinely enjoy using this product. The company Notion makes it a point to engage with its users by commenting on videos featuring their products and hosting a series called Office Hours on their YouTube channel where they answer questions from their users about their product.
Things I don’t like:
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Blank text editor: I am not a fan of using Notion for writing projects because it doesn’t have a very strong spelling and grammar checking tool and it is hard to format text.
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Just 3 fonts: While I don’t dislike the 3 font options I would like to see more.
But it makes sense that there is still a lot of functionality that can be built upon as Notion is a relatively new start-up company. If you are interested in trying out Notion for yourself you can sign up here: notion.so. If you sign up with your .edu email address you can access the personal plan for free.
I watched a lot of YouTube videos on the app, here are some of my favorites: