A guide for your freelance, social media, or service-based business.
Trying to get organized? Not sure where to start? This article will show you how to use Notion, Lavendai Creative’s productivity app of choice.
All service-based business owners, freelancers, and social media managers know that there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes before you present your deliverables. Without a system, it can quickly get overwhelming. There are recurring tasks, one-off tasks, internal reminders, varying due dates, follow-ups, delegation, and more. Further complicating this is the fact that each task segment needs to be split and organized into different clients.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably tried every productivity tool in the books. From Asana and Trello to TeuxDeux and beyond, nothing seemed up to the task. That was until I met Notion. In this article, I’m going to give you the beginner’s guide to Notion: how to use Notion, how to customize your dashboards, and how to make it everything you ever hoped for in your life and business.
This article is designed to be used alongside Notion because I’ll be walking you through the details step-by-step. If you’ve never used Notion before, click here to create an account and come back. I’ll wait for you here.
Note: It’s completely free. It will look like this:
What is Notion?
Notion is a task management software that helps you effortlessly manage all of your tasks and files in one place. It has a host of customization options and integrations that allow you to make your Notion dashboards and pages exactly how you want.
Here are some reasons small businesses and freelancers like Notion:
- Free for personal use and small teams.
- Inexpensive for large teams.
- Powerful integrations. (Thanks to integrations with other tools like Figma and Google Drive, you’ll be organized all in one place in no time).
- Works across various devices. (They have an app for smartphones and tablets that syncs with your computer).
- Variety of Notion templates to help you lay the foundation. (We’ll recommend a few at the end of this article).
People sometimes shy away from Notion after their first visit because it seems complicated. Unlike some of the other productivity software options out there, it’s a bit of a blank slate. There’s a learning curve you’ll need to get past to get the most out of it. But that’s what I’m here to help you do today. After this Notion 101 class, you’ll be a pro. Let’s dive in: how to use Notion.
Getting Started with Notion
When you first log in to a new Notion account, you’ll open up to your new dashboard. It will look like the screenshot below. We’ll start working from here.
As you can see, Notion is designed to help you with everything — well beyond your business. I’ll focus today on creating a business dashboard, but many of the principles can help you design personal dashboards as well.
If creating your own dashboard from scratch sounds like more time than it’s worth, I’ll stop right here and let you know that you don’t have to do it yourself. Click here to get our Notion template for freelancers and small business owners. It gives you the business dashboard and built-in functionality all ready to go (as I’ll go through for you below). My Notion template takes the learning curve out of it, offering you helpful hints and instructions that make it easy to get started. If you’re not interested in a Notion template, then keep reading — this article is for you.
How to Use Notion: Creating Your First Dashboard
When you look at Notion, you’ll see a beige/cream-colored section on the left. This is how you’ll navigate through Notion and find your content. You can toggle to hide it if you’d like the content to display full screen, but for our purposes today, keep it open. To create your first dashboard, follow these steps:
- Create a page. Under the “Reading List,” you’ll see “+ Add a page.” Click this option. This will add a top-level page called “Untitled” which is a blank canvas for us to work with.
- Rename the page to whatever you’d like. Mine is called “LIFE HUB” (Screenshot is included below).
- Click “Empty with icon” and you will end up with a blank screen (besides your title).
Congratulations! You’ve created your first page. Now let’s customize it.
Customizing Your Page
- Hover your cursor just above the title. You’ll see options appear to “Add icon,” “Add cover,” and “Add comment.” Click “Add cover” and a randomly generated photo will appear.
- Hover over the image and the options to change or reposition the image will appear. Click “Change cover” to open the options. You can choose from the gallery, upload an image, add a link to an image hosted somewhere on the internet, or search and choose from the Unsplash library of royalty-free photos.
- Next, add an icon by selecting “Add icon.” Similarly, a random emoji will appear. Click on that emoji and you will see options to select a new emoji, upload an image, or add a link to an icon hosted somewhere else on the internet. I use https://super.so/icons and https://indify.co/ for my icons (select the one you like and paste the link in the “Paste an image link…” section).
- Now it’s time to add content. Click just under the title of the page and a command to “Type ‘/’ for commands” will appear. Do as it says and type ‘/’ which will open up the “blocks” you can choose from.
How to Use Notion: a Walkthrough
To walk you through the next few steps, I’m going to show you a screenshot of my actual Notion dashboard to walk you through how you can continue to set up your personalized Notion.
You’ll see on the left-hand side, I’ve broken mine into sections called, “Dashboards,” “Personal,” and “Life.” Under each heading is a series of links to other pages and dashboards.
This is my central home for everything on my Notion board. It is the only top-level page I use. Every new page I add links back here so that I can easily find it.
Start Designing Yours
To pick up where we left off and start building yours, you will:
- Type ‘/’ and select “Heading 1” or “Heading 2” (I use heading 2 just because I like the font size better, but the choice is yours). Fill in your header text (the title of the section could be “Business” for example).
Note: if you’d like to have a colorful background like my example, hover over the title and click the six dots ::: and choose a color using the “Color” section.
- Select the next line and type ‘/’ again. Click “Page” to create a sub-page. This will create an identical page nested within your dashboard. I named this, “BUSINESS DASHBOARD.” Follow the same steps to create a blank page, add a cover, add an icon, etc. so you can make this page look how you’d like.
From here, the possibilities are pretty endless, so let me walk you through a few examples of how you can use your new blank Business Notion page to the fullest. I’ll, again, start with a screenshot of my Notion page for my business to walk you through a few examples.
To create a personal dashboard as I did in my above working Notion screenshot, you’ll need to go back up a level to your main page and create new embedded sub-pages within.
As you can see on my business dashboard, *some of it you can’t see in this screenshot* I use a combination of features (beyond headers) to bring my business Notion dashboard to life. I’ll break down a list of the main ones for you here:
- Sub-pages
- Databases and filters
- Linked databases and filters
- Database templates
- To-do lists
- Embedded files
How to Create a Database
As you’ll see in the “ALL TASKS THIS WEEK” section of the screenshot above, there is a dynamic Kanban-style board. This is created in Notion by using a database.
This database, in particular, is linked to each client sub-page. Did I lose you there? Let me back up.
To create a database, you’ll start just like any other thing in Notion: with a ‘/’ and select “Board Database.” This will give you a clean version of the screenshot I posted above. Within this database, you can create tasks by clicking “+ New.”
Customizing Your Notion Task
By clicking within the new task you created, you’ll be able to customize the task template to make sure it’s collecting all the data you need it to. If you’d like to add data points, click “Add a property” and you’ll see the below, where you can change the name (currently “Property”), and choose the data type you’d like (from basic text to a formula).
The properties you select will be added to every single new task created in this database. You can delete or change these over time too, so don’t stress about getting it perfect on the first try.
Some properties you can add include:
- Client name
- Due date
- Type of task (like administrative vs. writing, for example)
- Attachments (a place to embed any resources you’ll need to reference for this task, for example)
You can also add comments to this task, or add notes/outline information at the very bottom where it says “Press Enter to continue with an empty page, or create a template.”
How to Create a Database Filter in Notion
Once you have a few tasks in your database, you may decide you don’t like the Kanban-style, or you’d like to see only one type of task. This is where filters come in.
Note: The data within the Notion database is stored separately, so by filtering or adjusting your view, you do not eliminate any of the tasks you’ve already created.
To adjust the database view
To adjust the database view from the Kanban-style board to something else (like a simple list, for example), click the “Board” toggle at the top of the database and click “Add view.” You’ll get a list of options (as shown in the next screenshot) and can select your favorite. Your tasks will automatically reorganize accordingly.
To adjust the filter
If you’d like to adjust the filter (and only see your tasks due this week, for example), click the “…” in the upper right menu and click “Filter.” Then click, “+ Add a filter.”
The properties you put in above are the properties you can use to filter in this step.
How to Embed Media
One of my favorite things about Notion is the ability to embed media, files, projects, and more.
Embedding is very simple. You have two options:
- Copy and paste a link. You can embed GIFs from Giphy, Youtube videos, Spotify playlists, images, files from Google Drive, etc.
- Type ‘/’ and scroll to the “EMBEDS” section. It will give you options there to add embeds like Figma, Tweets, GitHub Gists, Google Drive, Miro, and more.
Some Additional Notion Tips and Tools
Now you have a basic understanding of how to use Notion. Next in our Notion 101 course, let’s explore a few miscellaneous tips and tools to customize your Notion to perfection.
How to Make Columns
Columns are a great way to group text and visuals together without having to create a database or table. Like everything else on Notion, columns are customizable. If you’re using the desktop version of this software, then here’s how to make columns in Notion:
- Hover your cursor over the text you’d like to make a column until the six-dotted “:::” and “+” icons appear next to the text.
- Click the dotted icon and hold to drag the text anywhere on the page. A blue line will appear to help you position and align your text in its new place.
- Release the text.
You can create columns side-by-side, or move things into new rows/rearrange your page with ease.
How to Edit the Sidebar
As we’ve touched on, the sidebar is the beige/cream-colored panel that allows you to move effortlessly between dashboards and other pages. Much like with the columns, the sidebar displays a six-dotted icon and a + icon when you hover over it. Click on either icon to begin rearranging, moving, editing, and fully customizing your control center.
Still Not Sure How to Use Notion? Check Out The Notion Template for Service-Based Business
Now you have completed Notion 101 and know a bit more about how to use Notion. If you still feel a bit lost, try a beginner-friendly Notion template. As we’ve touched on, a template is a great tool for freelancers and content creation managers. A good template will allow you to get started with Notion quickly and easily. It takes the learning curve out of Notion and lets you get right to work.
My Freelancer and Social Media Manager Notion Template is perfect for content managers who want to stay organized. Its bright and minimalistic view is well-organized and includes several features to help you seamlessly manage and run your business.
With or without the help of Notion templates, you can easily customize your dashboard with to-dos, meetings, and more to keep your business more organized and manageable than ever.
