Beginners guide to Notion
Notion is like Apple Notes, but a bit handier and quite a bit more versatile. Everything is a 'block' in Notion and you can create a block with the /symbol or by clicking the little + symbol you see when hovering over the left of the Notion window. You can modify blocks and move them around. I think you can also embed all kinds of other services into your page - like Google Drive or Dropbox.
- Notion offers sharable, public pages and private pages.
- Some companies use Notion for onboarding and getting new employees up and running.
First, here's a Youtube video by Robin MacPherson, who uses Notion to learn languages. You don't need to watch it all to get the gist, but it's quite a good intro. You can then look at the rest of this page as a practical/boring example.
You can use stuff like a 'toggle' block to open and collapse your notes etc. Click on this gif to see it in action.
Notion works as a web interface or app for which you need a free account. There are desktop and mobile apps, so your notes can travel with you like Apple Notes. You can be super simple and have a 'main page' with links to other more specific pages. Or go mad building a kind of complicated dashboard of all the things you check or use daily. You can check out the nerds over here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/
There are blocks for all sorts of things:
study notes with toggles (click here)
... to see the text in here...- bullet points for your shopping list
- embedded maps or websites as above
- mini spreadsheets
You can also change existing blocks into other kinds of blocks, like into a 'kanban board'. Slide it to the left to see the whole board. Click on the gif for more.
There is a block for embedding images. Type '/image' or '/' and scroll to find the image block option and there's a block for code as I'm trying to take notes on that stuff
print("Hello, world!")
There are blocks for spreadsheets and timelines, too. Click on the gif to see them in action.
You can create sub pages by typing '/page' and choose to create a new page or link to an existing one. Below, you can see a page being created for an app called Flotato. Flotato is used to create apps for any website you need to log into often. Click on the gif to see a subpage in action.
In Notion, you have a sidebar with all your pages on the left, which you can auto-hide (moving your mouse to the left makes it pop out). You can also command-click/control-click on a page to open that page as another window. Below, you can see the sidebar.
Exporting your work: go to the upper right corner and choose from two options in the free version: you can export your notes as 'markdown + CSV' (see shortcuts page below) or as a set of HTML pages.
Here's a link to Notion's shortcuts, which might prove useful: https://www.notion.so/help/keyboard-shortcuts
The Notion website is at https://www.notion.so/product and the official tutorial videos are on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/c/Notion/videos