This post is aimed at teachers that have never heard about notion. I’m sure people have created more powerful and impressive workflows but this is what works for me. None of this is sponsored content, Notion is a free app that I think will help other teachers with their workload. Many, if not all of these ideas have been ‘magpied’ from people I respect (links found at the bottom of the page).

Being organised is one of the hardest things about being a teacher. Currently, there are three apps that I use to help. Notion, Evernote and Notability. Evernote and Notability both have very specific use cases for me, I will talk about those later. Right now, I want to talk about the app that I use to do a lot of the heavy lifting for me – Notion.

Spending nearly ten years working in sectors other than education, I was shocked at the workload that I found myself with during my NQT year. I began to look at how I could increase my productivity. A great book that I read was Getting Things Done by David Allen. I highly recommend this book, the principles found in there such as creating an ‘inbox’ have really helped me over the years.

I was introduced to Notion watching Thomas Frank on YouTube. Notion was used to ease the workload of creating and editing videos and content. In that video, he references Tiago Forte who talked about creating a second brain. This idea really resonated with me, I knew I needed a system where I could capture information and be able to recall resources. Ali Abdaal helped with the final piece of this jigsaw, his idea of a resonance calendar showed me how to efficiently capture interesting ideas as they cropped up and in a way that I would be able to review them later.

I began to create my own ‘second brain’. I created a system where I could capture information, create to do lists, save lesson plans and resources and a system to help me with long term goals such as subject leadership.

What is notion

Notion is an application, you can use it on your phone, tablet, browser or laptop/Mac. The application lets you build ‘pages’. You are able to create links to pages just like a website. Within a page there are lots of useful things you can create such as databases, calendars, text and images.

If you update Notion on one device – it is instantly updated across all your devices. Although I use it as an individual, Notion is set up to use within a team. It might be simpler to show you how I use notion and what value I get from it.

How I use notion.

I started off by creating my home screen. I use notion for home and for work (I really do use it as a second brain). From here I have links to all the other parts of my ‘second brain’.

The first part of my Notion ‘system’ is my inbox. This is where I save information, websites or videos that resonate with me. This becomes an inbox where I can then filter things to either complete or work on later. For more on this idea please look at Ali Abdaal’s video (link at the end) where he demonstrates how to create your own resonance calendar.

First splash page with all of my weekly to-do lists for that school year.

Notion has replaced Apple notes as my to do list. This is because I am able to link a task to that tasks page. For example, I can set a task to send out homework that links to the file that I will need to email out.

Next up, project management. Notion allows you to create databases and display them in different ways, this is how I organised Science Week this year. I was able to make sure that every class had at least one activity per day. I could see the times that these took place. It also helped when I created some whole school activities.

Lastly, this is how I use Notion’s ability to have a database within a database. We can see here that I have one database of the lessons that I will teach throughout the year.

Going through one of these links will take you to another database. Within this I am able to save the worksheets and presentation that I will use. This means that you can have every single lesson and worksheet you need for the whole year on your phone, tablet and laptop.

Final thoughts

Notion is a very flexible tool, you can see how I have created a system that compliments my workflow in the exact way I want it to. For me, this is still an evolving process, I wish to add in a database of resources for displays. I also use notion for non-teaching purposes such as recording workouts, budgeting and setting personal goals.

Links

https://fortelabs.co/blog/basboverview/

https://fortelabs.co/blog/notion-as-a-second-brain-video/

Tiago Forte

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-free-Productivity/dp/0349408947#ace-g5774773408

David Allen – Getting things done

https://www.notion.so/d121165345b241e1b78e1f37a96a602f?v=5764950497a042129f9808ad22591bee

Thomas Frank notion

https://aliabdaal.com/using-notion-as-a-resonance-calendar/

Ali Abdaal