How I am using Notion to organize my life as a multipassionate (+ Free Notion task manager)

If you’ve been following me for a while you know I am raving about Notion quite a lot. If you don’t know what Notion is here’s a quick explanation: Notion is an all-in-one productivity tool & database. Similar to Trello, Asana, Evernote, Airtable… But better, and if not better, at least a lot prettier.

Here’s why I think Notion is amazing for Multipassionates and Multipotentialites especially:

• Notion is a do-it-yourself tool: It’s like building your own complete life-manual in website format, but easier to set up than a WordPress website. It doesn’t have a fixed form or shape, you can build so it works for you.
• It’s a very visual tool: you can add pictures, icons and colours as you please. Ideal for the creative souls and the visual people.
• It’s a hybrid tool: You and I know that your multi-disciplined life cannot easily be put into boxes. Notion allows you to connect the dots together

I would love to tell you more about all those things, but this blog isn’t about the features of Notion. (Remind me, I need to write another blog on that ;-))

No, in this blog I want to give you some real-life examples of what you can use Notion for in your daily life.

#1 Your most organised note-taking App

Every new page in Notion has the possibility to turn into amazing databases. Or you can just use it as a simple notepad.

Forget about Evernote, in Notion you can take notes easily and at the same time organize them in a way that makes sense to you.

What I love most is that you can share each page in Notion with someone else. This way you can co-work on documents, plans, or lists.

Here’s some inspiration on how to use Notion as a note-taking App:

• Your digital journal
• Recipe database
• Content Database
• Quick to-do lists
• Work together to plan out your holiday, or wedding

As a matter of fact: I am drafting this blog in a Notion page, like I do with all of my content.

#2 Your All-in-one database (a.k.a. library)

As a kid I loved to make lists of everything. Like, EVERYTHING. I wrote notebooks full of lists of plants or flowers I knew, different types of birds I learned about, Harry Potter spells… (yes, I was into Magic and nature).

Basically, Notion is a little girl’s dream come true for me: structuring my life (or brain to be more specific) in one system where I can make endless lists.

#3 A planner – task- and project manager

Dear Multipassionates and Multipotentialites: Planning and organizing all my plans and dreams into a system has changed my life.

First of all, they make my big life dreams more tangible. Secondly, it motivates me to go from dreaming to action-taking.

Notion has different views available for each database. For projects, you can use the board view, or the timeline view. If you’re used to Trello, you are familiar with the board view. The problem with Trello is that within a card, you have limited options. With Notion, you can create a page (card) in a page in a page in page… etc. Also, you can connect different databases, like your project- and task database. This way I can easily see which tasks are connected to which projects.

I created a free template for you with a task- and a project database. I created the basic features that I personally use in my productivity system, but you can use and edit the template as you please.

You can download it here.

What Notion is NOT ideal for …

By now, you might think I am an affiliate for Notion… Well, I am not, they don’t have an affiliate program (which I would obviously join if they had one). I am just someone who loves using the tool and likes to inspire others to use it too.

But to keep it real, here are a few things Notion is not ideal for:

• Storing or sharing all of your photos. You can organise your Google Drive links in Notion, but uploading large amounts of heavy data isn’t recommended. It makes your Notion slow, and there are just better programs for that.
• As a calendar. Although it’s possible to have a monthly calendar overview in Notion, it’s not the same as using a Google, or Ical calendar. Especially when you’re scheduling meetings with other people. Besides, I love to work with colourful time blocks, and those are just not easy to make inside of Notion.
• Recurring tasks. This might be the biggest frustration for Notion users: setting up recurring tasks (in an easy way) is not possible. There are a lot of workarounds to this, but since I am using my calendar for time blocks anyway, I put recurring tasks in my calendar.

In summary: you can use Notion for many things, especially when you want to structure and organize your brain. Just remember that you will probably always have to use different tools and apps, don’t try to force Notion to solve every problem when there are better-specialized apps!

That said, if you are a multipassionate or multipotentialite who wants to design a life around their passions, and move forward in all areas of life: Notion is the way to go. You can make your life goals real by planning out your projects and tasks.

Have fun, and I apologise in advance for being responsible for your newest addiction 😉