How to Use Notion - The Beginner’s Guide

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Yetunde Ososanya & Okikiola Babalola | Friday, 17 September 2022

Working with too many tools is undeniably inconvenient and messy. However, with Notion, one tool is sufficient to meet all your online work requirements. Here is a simple beginner’s guide on how to use Notion.

As a remote worker or freelancer, you will always need a simple workspace to help you work creatively, collaborate with team members on projects, and stay organized with your work. Notion is that ideal tool! You may be familiar with Google workspace tools or other online tools, but Notion differs from these note-taking tools. With Notion, you can adapt and customize your work needs with any template you desire.

What is Notion?

Notion is a project management and note-taking software that allows you to think, plan, write and collaborate with team members in a single space.

Its flexible features allow you to customize and build just anything with several work management tools, broad templates, and project styles. Notion helps you stay organized and creative with every feature at your disposal.

Unlike Microsoft Word, Notion offers remote collaboration, database creation, task assignment, and most importantly, the ability to work from anywhere and everywhere with Notion’s mobile app. Interesting, right? Let’s take a quick dive into the basics of how to use Notion.

How to use Notion

As a beginner on Notion, you can keep it simple by starting with a single workspace. Follow these steps to create an account and workspace:

Download the Notion app from your iTunes app for IOS and Play Store for Android, or visit here to use the web version
Create an account with your name, email address, and password
Open the workspace switcher at the top left of your notion window
Choose the required email address
Click the three dots on the top right corner, beside your email address, to “Join or create workspace”
You can “Join workspace” if you are using your work email already added to your company’s Notion account.

For a better visual understanding, you can click here

Voila! You’ve successfully created an account and workspace on Notion!

Setting up your workspace

After you’ve successfully created your workspace, the next step is to own it. Your workspace is your territory. You have the right to customize and design it to suit your work needs. To achieve this:

Use the navigation bar/sidebar to arrange and organize your pages.
For work purposes, you can have two workspaces - “workspace” and “private”
Use the “Template” option on your sidebar to customize your pages
Create different pages and sub-pages using your Sidebar, e.g. Home page, Documentation page, Tasks page, Team Home, etc.
Use the “Import” option on your sidebar to import files from other apps.

Adding and Editing Contents on Notion

Every piece of content you add to Notion is called a “block”. Blocks can be texts, images, headings, videos, databases, etc. Creating these blocks or contents on Notion is super easy, all you have to do is:

Click on a selected page
Place your cursor on the page
Use the / command or click on the plus + sign to get a list of options for the contents you want to create. The list includes text, page, to-do list, headings, bulleted points, links, / toggle list, emojis, quote, videos, images, and more.
Select from the options given and get started
Highlight texts to use the text format menu
Drag and drop blocks to create columns and arrange your contents.

Collaborating with Team on Notion

Notion allows you to work with your team members from the comfort of your home. It allows you to assign tasks, create to-do lists, share pages, add comments, add discussions, view updates and add reminders to tasks, among other interesting functions.

To collaborate with your team:

Share your workspace/page with your team members via the setting menu
Invite team members as a guest in your workspace to share a page with them
Use the “add comment” and “add discussion” to comment on a page and discuss with your team members.
Set a reminder by adding @remind, date, time, and message to remember tasks
Use the “All updates’ menu on the top left corner of the sidebar to keep track of various activities in your workspace.

Notion Plan

Since you're on your way to becoming a Notion expert, here's some additional juicy information: the Notion team plan has a free trial with a limit of 1,000 blocks. Also, its single plan is free for individuals.

Now you understand why Notion is the ideal all-in-one solution for you and your team. You can become a Notion expert in no time! Don’t be afraid to explore the various features on Notion; after all, it’s your workspace.

At Virtual Tribe, we use Notion for all our remote work needs. Join our community today to make the most of your skills and talents!