I’ve always had trouble getting organized. I tried a traditional paper calendar. I tried notepads. I tried my Notes app, Google Calendar, and physical checklists.

They never worked. I always had too many tasks for each system. I needed a tool that could easily adapt to all of my different tasks, events, and anything else – a one-stop shop

I didn’t have a good solution for a very long time…until I found Notion.

What is it?

Notion is a little hard to explain. It’s a piece of software – which has an app and website – for organization, note taking, and anything and everything in between. In simplest terms, it’s sort of like if the Notes app and Excel had a really customizable child.

Notion is a very complex beast, which means I wouldn’t be able to easily explain how to set it up and use it. However, there are some great tutorials, like the official one, a simple how-to, a beginner’s guide, and a deep dive.

The weekend I set it up, I spent 8 hours making my pages. Whoops.

Just so you know, that is neither normal nor healthy. One of the many great things about this tool (that will help you avoid my mistake) is that you can literally just copy and paste thousands of templates online, from places like blogs, Reddit, and Notion’s own website; it doesn’t have to be difficult.

Now, moving back to my horrendous organizational habits, I often have to-do lists with at least 20 tasks that I should have gotten done by at least the day before. However, while Notion did not help me get rid of these tasks (I’m afraid they may never go away), it did help me to organize them into an amazing system.

Notion’s best tools

I was able to use a spreadsheet to organize all of my tasks – for school (by class), for extracurriculars, for personal activities, and for literally anything else. I have tags that I can sort with based on what type of task it is, and tags to sort based on priority.

This priority-based sorting feature is by far my favorite. I’m able to add potentially hundreds of tasks to the database, and then only see the ones that I need to get done. It basically makes a step-by-step guide for the night.

While the to-do list was by far the most revolutionary and helpful, there were also so many other ways to use Notion spreadsheets. I was able to make different lists for all the books, movies, articles, and more that I wanted to look at.

I also created a place for daily journal entries, a one-click habit tracker for as many habits as I want, a wishlist, and even more.

Since everything is online, I’m even able to add specific links, reviews, and websites into an item.The sheer versatility of Notion is by far the biggest reason I love using it so much. It’s always able to adapt to changes. 

So, while I’m still no productivity master, I am able to have all of my tasks perfectly organized, and if you have any difficulty keeping track of your tasks, I strongly recommend trying Notion out.