Transcription
Today, I'll take you from a beginner to a Notion expert in under 20 minutes. This is my full Notion guide so you can finally master this app.
Maybe you've tried Notion before and it felt overwhelming, like a blank page staring back at you. You've wasted hours building pages that look nice, but they just don't work. Or you've got a to-do list scattered across sticky notes, docs, and your phone's note app. If any of that sounds familiar, then you need this.
By the end of this video, you'll have a clean, powerful Notion dashboard that keeps your tasks, projects, and calendar all in one place. No more switching between apps. No more guessing on what to work on next. You'll finally have a system that works with you, not against you.
I've spent years building Notion workspaces for productivity nerds, professionals, and total Notion newbies. So, I know exactly where beginners get stuck and how to skip all of that confusion. Because if you don't master this app, then you'll stay stuck in an endless cycle of half-finished to-do lists, missed deadlines, and projects that slip through the cracks, and Notion will feel like just another app instead of the ultimate productivity hub that it can be.
Here's what we'll cover. The absolute basics of how Notion works so nothing feels mysterious. The secret power of databases and how to actually use them. Building your own to-do list, project tracker, and calendar in only a few minutes. The basics of filters, sorting, and grouping, which are the three most powerful Notion features that no one is taking full advantage of. And then how to connect it all so you never have to look anywhere else for your tasks again.
Because once you've set this up, your day will flow. You'll open Notion and you'll see exactly what needs to be done and know when you're going to do it. If you follow along step by step, you will finish this video with a full working Notion dashboard. No guesswork, no "I'll figure it out later." You'll have it all by the end of this tutorial. You'll master the basics of Notion and have a fully optimized Notion dashboard in under 20 minutes.
So, open up a blank page in Notion. Follow along with me and let's turn you into a Notion expert. Subscribe for Notion tutorials. Let's dive in.
So, here is our blank Notion document. Now, let's start with page structures. So, the way Notion works is you can do forward slash and I'll go through this in detail later, but you can add a page here. So, a document, let's just call this "blah" because I have no creativity. This is a document just like a Word document, but it's also a folder. So, in this page, I can put another page, and in this page, I can then put another page, and it keeps going and going. And as you can see here at the top, we have a very long breadcrumb. So, if I go back to the original page, you can see the "blah" document sitting in here. So, documents are also folders because in here, you know, I can have multiple pages. So, here's the new page, but I can also write text. Hope that makes sense.
Now, let's talk about text editing. So, here I have my text and here there's a few different options I can do. I can ask AI to explain what this means. I can leave a comment for someone else that I might be sharing this workspace with. I can then change this text into something else. And this is all of the stuff from the commands list, which I'll go through later. I can make it bold. I can make it italic or what? What? Italicize. I didn't realize that's a word. I can make it underline. I can cross it out or strike through. I've always called it "cross it out." Okay, you can change it into code. You can make it a formula, or you can turn it into a link. And lastly, you can change the color of it. So, hey, I can make this a yellow background to it.
Now, the next feature here is critical to understand. If you do forward slash, you get the commands list. It's also got a bunch of other names, but I call it the commands list. And in here, you can see there is just an absolutely endless list of stuff that you can do. So, in your Word document here, let's just pretend this is a Word document. You can embed different things and you can change things to become other things. So, let's just stick with the pages example because we created some before. I just want to show you how this works. If I do "blah one," "cheese," and "water," if I highlight these and click on these three dots, I can actually change these into pages. So, now these are now pages. They're not just text.
Now, the basic blocks involve like text, headers, stuff like that. Bulleted lists, numbered lists, to-do lists. You've probably seen that in Word or PowerPoint or something. Dividers, you can add links to other pages. Then you can embed media such as images, videos, audio, code, files, and web bookmarks, which is pretty cool.
Now, the thing that makes Notion different from a Word document is this here: databases. Now, databases sound very scary and they're pretty overwhelming when you start, but once you get a hang of them, I mean, every single thing you can think of in the world can become a Notion database. And it's truly the most powerful thing because this database here, a list view, can also be a bar chart, which can also be a donut chart, which can also be a form, which can also be a board view, which can also be a gallery. Notion databases can be viewed in all of these different views. As you can see, it says "view" here for these. That makes it incredibly, incredibly powerful. I'll talk about that more in detail in the next section as we will be using a very simple database to make our simple dashboard. But first, I'll just list off the other stuff. We have advanced blocks with all of this stuff here. You know, you can make columns and stuff, which is pretty cool. Stuff like mentioning a person, you can mention a page, add reminders, add emojis, and then of course, you can embed stuff. And you can pretty much embed anything from, I mean, every single software in the world pretty much has a Notion embed feature. It's insane. So, yeah, there is a lot of possibilities here.
Now that you understand the basics of Notion, let's build a simple dashboard that has our tasks, projects, and a calendar. What we'll do is forward slash and write "data." So, this slash here again, this brings up all of our different commands. And when I write "slash data" immediately after, I'm bringing up all the stuff that has the word "data" in this list of commands. So, here I can see all the database stuff. And what we'll do is click here on "table view." So, if we click that, we've now created a new table. Now, in Notion, they call it tables, but this is also a table. This here, this doesn't connect to anything. It doesn't have properties like this does. So, really, this here is a database, but we're seeing it in a table view. Hope that makes sense.
So, what we're going to do is call this something like "our to-do list." And in "Headquarters," my personal productivity Notion template, I have quite a few different properties that are built around really effective productivity methods. But that is going to be way too complicated to build today. So, we're going to keep this nice and simple. But if you do want to just save some time and start using an effective dashboard that works, then there's a link to the full Notion template tour in the description. It's got over 2,500 users and a five-star rating, and you can start using it in a few clicks, and then you don't have to learn how to build a Notion dashboard. But for those of you who do want to learn, let's get to it.
So, let's do "research." So, I have to do some research. Nice and vague. Then, what we'll do is click on "add property" here. Now, because Notion AI exists, it's going to start coming up with different ideas. So, it's pretty cool that Notion AI does that. But what we're going to do is scroll down here and we're going to click on "checkbox." So, the reason we're doing this is because we want to know, have we actually completed the task or not? Now, I'll just do a space bar for the name here because we know what a checkbox means. We don't need to write the word "complete." So, for a to-do list, I have the task like "research," and I know if it's complete or not.
Now, the next thing that I want to do is add a property and we are going to click on "select." Now, this here is going to be our project. Now, again, in "Headquarters" and in other templates that I've built, I normally do this a different way where I use this thing called "relations," but again, that gets pretty complicated if you're a beginner. So, I wanted to start off nice and friendly. Let's just do "projects." Here you have a project called "writing a report" and you have a project called "presentation." Nice and vague. So, let's say you have to do research for the report. So, this here is a select property. So, you can write all of your different projects in here. All right. So, we have the task name, we have the project that it's to do with. So, this is the report. And here we can see if it's complete or not.
Now, longtime subscribers know that I say "your day is your to-do list." And basically what that means is we are going to need a calendar. So, what I'm doing here is forward slash and writing "calendar." And now I can see "calendar view." So, now I have my tasks. Now I have my projects. And lastly, we have our calendar. Then, after we've set this up, I'm going to teach you about filters, sorting, and groups so we can organize our projects even better. But let's finish this calendar first.
This calendar is actually going to be the same database as our to-do list. Your day is your to-do list. So, what I'm going to do here is search for whatever we named this. So, I called this database here "to-do list." So, what I'll do is search for "to-do list." Now, obviously, because I've made a thousand tutorials, I'll have quite a few, but this one is coming up here. So, I'll click there. And now, you can see this little arrow here is saying, "Hey, this isn't a new database. This is actually showing me this database." So, that's what that arrow means. And as you can see, automatically this property here appeared: "date." And that's because for us to have a calendar, obviously we need to have a date property. So, what I'm going to do is just move this to the side here. And I'll just make that smaller, like that. So, now we have the name of the task, the project that it's related to, the date property, and if it's complete or not.
Now, because this is the same database, these two here are the same database, but we're just seeing one as a table and we're seeing the other as a calendar. Because they're the same. If I do anything to this, it's going to impact and show up here. So, for example, "research." Let's add that to today. And as you can see, "research" now shows up in my calendar. This is incredibly effective. When I get tasks, I can immediately start adding them to my calendar so I know if I actually have time to do the task.
Now, before we start adding filters and sorting to the different views in this to-do list, let's start off simple with this calendar here. What we're going to do is hover next to this "to-do list," and we'll click on this plus here. And what we're doing is adding a view. And we actually want to add another view, which is also a calendar, and it's still going to be the "to-do list." But this time, we don't want to see the full calendar of the full month. Instead, we're going to click on "settings." Here we are going to click on "layout," and we're going to change the layout to not have the full month. So, "show calendar as month," but to just have the week. That way, it's just a bit less intimidating.
So, now we have my "to-do list" and we have my "weekly calendar." But of course, I can click here and see the "monthly calendar." If I want, I can right-click on "calendar view" here and rename, and I'll call this "month." And then I can right-click on "calendar view" here and call that "week." So, I have the month view and the week view. We're already saving a lot of time because you now don't have to check your Google calendar and then check your to-do list. This is all in the one page. So, now I can add everything directly in here. So, let's say the boss is like, "Hey, let's meet on Friday at 3 p.m." All right, "3 p.m. meeting, boss." And I can see that directly in here because a meeting is just a task. These are the same thing. It's just a thing that I need to do that involves my time.
Now, when I'm looking at my calendar here, I see "research" and this "meeting." I don't know what these tasks are to do with. Now, what I could do is click here on "research" and see, "Oh, okay, this is to do with the report." But that's a bit of work. I have to actually click on it to see that. I want to be able to know, "Hey, have I done this task here? And what's it actually about? Like, what's this to do with?" So, what I'm going to do is click on these three dots here, and I'll click here on "property visibility." And here I can literally select which stuff do I want to see before clicking on the task. So, I actually want to know, "Is it complete?" So, I'll click on that eyeball, and now I can see that checkbox. And I'll click here on "projects." So, now I can see, "Hey, this is to do with a report." Let's say I think it's a bit weird that I have the checkbox and then the projects. Well, I can literally just drag this here and reorder it. So, now I see the task name, what it's to do with, and if it's complete or not. So, now I have a really effective calendar system.
Now, the problem here is this to-do list is not very effective because if I add a bunch of tasks, I'll call that "task" and "task." And let's be creative and call that one "task." If I have a bunch of tasks in here and let's say these are all complete, this is going to end up being a very, very long list, and that's not going to be very effective for me. So, what we're going to do now is start playing with filters, sorting, and lastly, groups. These three things here can make or break your Notion dashboard.
So, what we're going to do is go up and click on the plus here to add a new view. And this view here will again be a table. So, now I have this table view and this table view. And what I'm going to do with this table view here is right-click and I'll rename this and I'll call this "all." This here is going to be absolutely every single task ever. Now, most likely I won't be using this a lot, but I do find it very useful to have this. That way, if you ever think, "Hey, have I lost a task or anything?" You can just go here and search. I can search for "research," and then it comes up here. "Oh, yeah, there it is." You know, if I ever lost it, it's just useful to have.
Now, you probably won't be working in this. Most likely, you'll spend your time in this view here. So, let's rename this and we'll call this "uncomplete." This here will be all the tasks that are uncomplete. Now, right now, we are seeing all of these tasks here that have been checked in. So, I don't want to see them in this view here. So, to do that, we're going to have to filter out the tasks that have been completed. So, let's click on the "filter" here and then we'll filter it by this checkbox. And all we're going to say is, in this view here, I want to see the checkbox that is unchecked. So, now I'm seeing these two here because they are unchecked. They're not complete yet. Now, we haven't deleted those tasks. If I click on "all," I can still see them here. We've just created another tab here with different filters, with different rules.
Now, let's do that again. We're going to right-click on "uncomplete" and duplicate. And when you duplicate a view, you actually duplicate the filter settings along with it. So, we're going to have to fix that. Now, in this one, I want "unscheduled." This for me is now going to have the stuff that I haven't actually scheduled out yet. But as you can see, this stuff here, July 18th and July 15th, is showing up. That's because we duplicated the "uncompleted" view, which duplicated the filter settings. So, I'll click here on "filter," and we're going to delete this filter here. Now, what we could have done is just duplicated the "all," and then we wouldn't have to do that, but I just wanted to show you how it works.
So, in this "unscheduled" one, we're going to add a filter, and we're going to filter it by the date. So, let's add another task. I'll call it "task five." Let's click on "filter." We're going to filter this by the date. And the date here will be where the start date is empty. So, now I'm seeing all of the tasks that are empty. But of course, because all of these were empty but still completed. Let's just do that. And this will start hiding them because this has the rule: the date has to be empty. So, if I add a date to these, it's not allowed to show up in this "unscheduled" tab. But of course, if I click on "all," they're showing up here. I can see "task five" here as well. But if I click on "unscheduled," I'm only seeing the tasks that I haven't scheduled out yet.
Now, this is a really useful way for you to plan out your week because when you receive a task, you can add it directly here. "Oh, I have to meal prep." So, I'll look at my week here and say, "Oh, you know what? I think I have time on Thursday." I'll simply click here and say, "Let's do it on Thursday." And then it shows up here. It gets removed from "unscheduled" and it's on my weekly calendar. This is an effective to-do list. You're removing things from your to-do list and putting them on your calendar, also known as time blocking, aka time boxing, also known as daily scheduling. When we get a task, we want to know when we're going to do that task. So, ideally, you'll pretty much have nothing sitting in your "unscheduled" because if you receive a task, you want to know, "Hey, when am I actually going to do this task?"
Now, I'm going to go up here and click on these three dots and I'm going to click on "full width" just to give us some more breathing room. Now, let's do one last thing. We are going to right-click on "all" and we're going to do duplicate. And this here will be the "project view." So, in "project" here, or actually "projects" that makes more sense. In this view, I want to see these tasks broken up by the different project. So, I'm going to just say this is "report," this is "report," "presentation," "report," "task five," and then "meal prep." Let's say this is to do with "personal." So, I just wrote "personal" there, which created the new project of "personal." I want to now break these up by the different projects. So, I can easily see all the stuff to do with "report" in one list and then all the stuff to do with "presentation" in another. And to do that, we are going to use this thing called "groups."
So, I'll click on the "settings" here and I'll click on "group," and I want to group these tasks here by the project. So, I'll click on "projects." And now I can see, "Hey, here's all the personal stuff, here's all the presentation stuff, and here's all the report stuff." Super, super useful for me. Now, the problem here is the order. We've got "uncomplete" and then three "complete" and then "uncomplete." It's just a bit confusing. I want to see all the stuff that I haven't completed at the bottom of each of these lists. So, what I'll do is then sort this. So, I'll click on the "sort" button here and we are simply going to sort by the checkbox. So, now I can say "ascending" or "descending." So, we'll make this "descending." So, now I can see at the top here's all the stuff that I've completed, and here's all the stuff that I haven't completed.
Now, in Notion, you can do a lot of powerful stuff. If you wanted to, you could actually add another sort, which could be sorting it by the date and have that descending. So, now we're not only sorting it by if it's checked in, but also by the date. So, we see the 15th, then the 5th, and then the 4th. So, it's sorting the "complete" with its own sorting. It can get incredibly powerful. And that's how I built my Notion "Headquarters" template. I took the 10 best productivity methods in the world and built my template around that. That way, you stop wasting time and you actually start getting stuff done. Again, if you're interested, there's a link in the description.
But now we have a really effective Notion dashboard. We have our tasks. We have our projects, which are also showing up here in the "unscheduled" and "uncomplete." And we have our calendar, and we can see everything that we need to see in this one view. Notion can be that one app that has everything you need for your productivity.
Now, if you are looking for more features such as notes, bottlenecks, hourly time blocking, life buckets, dynamic journaling, and much more, then click on this video here where you can see my full Notion template tour. It's helped thousands of people. If you're interested, click on this video here.