Toolbox Talk: Notion

Notion is the type of software that, if you know, you know. After hitting the scene only a few years ago, it has amassed a somewhat cult-like following among personal productivity buffs. For me, Notion is a love affair that started during Melbourne’s extended COVID lockdown in 2020. During this profoundly confronting time, where life seemed beyond control, I found solace in taking control of my tools and systems. A whole new consolidated and streamlined workflow emerged with Notion at its centre – and wow, do I have some thoughts! If you came purely for the Notion nitty-gritty, feel free to skip to the Getting Started section. Otherwise, for Notion newbies, here are a few of my feelings about digital tools for science and how Notion fits the bill for me.

Need a notion about Notion?

First and foremost, Notion is a blank canvas that you can make and mould into (almost) anything! In fact, its versatility is often something sceptics point to as a reason to steer clear. But really, this is where the magic happens. Unfortunately, it also makes Notion incredibly hard to describe! So, here goes.

First: think spreadsheets on steroids. At its core, Notion provides an architecture for building relational databases which are like spreadsheets that can be linked. But, **more than that, each entry itself is a ‘page’ that can contain another database. Which brings me to… Second: think lego! The second aspect of Notion’s design strategy is that all content is considered individual Blocks (even databases). This means that you can stack and link different types of content (from normal text, quotes, callouts, bulleted and numbered lists to more complex structures like embedded webpages, code blocks, equations, date reminders, embedded google drive files, and even databases). Layered on top of this is the ability to display databases as tables, boards, galleries or lists, plus filtering and sorting that makes sure you can see the information you need in the context you need it. Last but not least is the aesthetic! With a simple palette for labelling metadata, headings and text, coupled with optional icons and header images it is super simple to make pretty pages

What we arrive at is a highly versatile and customisable ecosystem that you can use to build and personalise any architecture you need, from a task manager to a shopping list to a workplace wiki to a second brain… The possibilities are endless! And for people like me, it presents the opportunity to unify all the disparate digital tools that we had cobbled together to take care of these functions in the past, like Evernote and Trello. In this way, Notion for me embodies the Atomic Habits principle of removing friction, by letting me focus on the work without context switching.

A simple sneak peek

In honesty, Notion is sometimes a tool you need to see to understand. So, here is a quick toy task management example. I’ve even provided this page as an open-access template in case you want to try it out!

To start, databases can look just like a regular spreadsheet, but can also be displayed as a board (think: Trello), list, gallery, timeline or calendar. Here is an example of two databases: “My First Database” viewed as a gallery, and “My Second Database” viewed as a table, placed on a single page titled “Example Relational Databases”. Each column of the table view shows some of the metadata for the individual elements. There are lots of types of metadata you can add, including dates, categories from a dropdown, checkboxes, formulas which calculate a property based on other metadata columns, urls, emails, attachments – so many choices!

Most importantly, we can link these two databases using a relational property, such that we assign Task 1 as associated with Project A. This opens up lots of possibilities, including new formula options called ‘rollups’ which let you see how many tasks for a project are complete.

Now, to this point most of these features you could fandangle out of a spreadsheet if you tried hard enough. But here comes the magic. Each of the entries in the database are themselves pages, which can contain any of the rich content blocks I described above, including more databases. It can also include filtered views of a database so, within a single project, you can overview associated elements.

Last but not least, one of my favourite time-saving functions – templates! You can add templates to any database, such that when you add a new entry to the database it can be prefilled with page content. This is a super-efficient way to capture essential and consistent information for each new entry beyond the metadata options. You can even pre-filter included databases, such that the filtered view automatically includes only related sub-entries.

Ok… But what about Notion for science?

In my 10 years as a scientist, I was not once introduced to the idea of “project management”, much less software fit for the task. It was mostly something that we were inherently supposed to do; keeping track of the overarching aim of our individual project, tracking goals and milestones and tasks. It wasn’t until my first post-doc, when suddenly the number of projects I was involved in exploded, that I found myself reaching for help in the form of digital project management tools.

In contrast, Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) are a digital platform that is slowly permeating all levels of science. The available options seem to be multiplying at a steady rate, and institutional uptake is slowly increasing. Many of the front runner ELNs have connectivity covered, being accessible via browser or app across devices, and provide documentation processes, like versioning and witnessing, in line with funding body and research institution requirements. However, all of the many platforms I have tried suffer from similar issues: (i) they have quite a rigid structure for what constitutes an “experiment”, (ii) data storage size is limited, (iii) structured similarly to a paper notebook which treats experiments as a single entity, not just one of a number of specialised outputs researchers manage and produce, (iv) have no mechanism to track what stage in the experimental process that experiment is in (idea, design, data gathering, data analysis, summary and storage) and (v) are somewhat of an isolated island.

Needless to say, Notion has now alleviated most of these pain points. A few of the best bits:

• It works where you do – in an app, browser, mobile, PC, Mac… Wherever you need to be, with synced content meaning everything is always accessible when and where you need it
• It is less rigid than Windows file structures, taking full advantage of the interlinked nature of what we do as scientists, building a web of research
• Allows you to automate some of the ‘boring’ (although I never find them boring!) organisational bits through templating
• Functional web clipper to capture resources and info while you browse
• Good selection of commenting, collaboration and automatic versioning features
• (Almost) infinite customisability enables you to work in a way that works for you

This being said, there are some important caveats to bear in mind:

• Funding bodies sometimes mandate data storage conditions, including the global location of servers for digital data. Notion may not always satisfy this criteria.
• Similarly, Notion should not be used for confidential information such as clinical data
• Due to the unique nature of Notion’s architecture, there is a limited ability to transfer to alternative systems – however there are substantial backup options to get your data out of Notion if you ever need to
• Small number of direct integrations with Google products (like calendar) has been limiting, although the fledgling API will hopefully help this to thrive in the near future.
• Some functionality has been slow to materialise – like the ability to natively add symbols outside equations, column-wise formatting within other blocks, and native drawing/writing/pdf annotation (I stick with the Notes app on my iPad, where the export-as-image and copy-as-text functions are my fired)

For me, none of these things were deal-breakers. But certainly, Notion is not fit for every purpose! Buyer beware, as they say.

My Notion Nitty Gritty

For my workspace, I started with the broad buckets of Science, Coding, Communication and Personal. Parallel to this are my Projects, Milestones, Tasks and Resources databases (think: P.A.R.A.), where individual items are linked to their overarching bucket. From here, filtered views of each of the Project, Milestone and Resource databases form the basis of my daily work ecosystem. I can open a Project page and see each of the Milestones on the go for that project (manuscripts, experiments, funding applications), Resources pertaining to that project (like articles, funding, and ideas), and Tasks for that project (of course sorted by priority and due date). I treat all individual research outputs as Milestones; whether that be a single experiment, a manuscript I’m writing, a presentation I’m giving, a funding application I’m preparing, or a seminar I’ve attended. As well as linked databases, you can also ‘mention’ pages or people inline using the ‘@’ function (almost like a hyperlink) that helps to link together pages to create your very own web of knowledge.

To help with easy access and focusing, I also have a Dashboard page, with some of these @ links to my current priority projects, milestones and tasks – plus a filtered and sorted linked database with some friendly reminders to focus my day!

Some of my other favourite Science databases include my Virtual Lab Book (a filtered version of my Milestones database, which has separate properties for Experiments as they move from conception to data gathering to analysis to writeup), my Reading List (captured as a filtered database from my Resources), and my CV database with which I can filter to produce tailored versions of my CV for individual applications. I have templates set up for different types of Milestones, making it easy to create a new Experiment versus a Manuscript. On the personal front, a sneaky favourite of mine is my recipes database – drool worthy organisation if I do say so myself!

Tips for getting started

If you made it this far, I’m sure you’re thinking “Ok – you sold me. Now, where do I start?”. For many people, staring at the blank screen of a fresh Notion workspace will be quite daunting. If you’ve only ever used out-of-the-box systems, the requirement to create your own from scratch can be overwhelming! However, I truly believe this is where the magic happens. A few tips:

• Start with stepping back – the first thing I recommend after installing Notion and creating your first workspace is to close the computer. Yup, put it away and find yourself a pen and paper. First, set to thinking about the broad buckets you want to encapsulate within the workspace. For this process, I found an adaptation of the P.A.R.A. method of project management was a great place to start.
• Remember to be flexible – your initial workspace should provide some guiding principles to start with, but should be fluid over time as you learn what works, what could be better and, most importantly, what you need. This is the true power of Notion – to grow with you.
• Prepare for growing pains – changing to a new system (especially if you are planning a whole-life overhaul like I did!) will invariably present some challenges. But, it will be worth it. Stick with it, and pay attention to the pain points at what you need to adapt.
• Face the future – with new systems, the temptation to retrofit your past outputs can be seductive. But (!) you should resist this temptation. Focus instead on ingesting only those things that you currently need into Notion, and leave the rest as the BN (before Notion) archive. You will know where to find things (hopefully) by sticking to the BN and AN line!

Once you have decided what your Notion might look like from a top-down point of view, it’s time to set to work creating the databases and entries that will comprise your workspace. If you’re still struggling with the basics, there are many great tutorials (like this one from the Notion team) and you can find plenty of inspiration, like here and here and here.

Wrapping up

Wow, what a marathon! In my defence, I warned you I had plenty of feelings when it comes to Notion! My hope is that this post serves as a basic run-through of how I use Notion on a daily basis to capture my research process and enhance my productivity by providing a platform designed and curated by me. Beyond the infrastructure that I provide for myself in Notion, there are a host of strategies I use to link outputs across various other platforms, such that Notion serves as my catch-all and launch point, but I can leave more specialised operations like task management and writing code to specific apps that were tailor-made for those purposes.

In short, Notion may be the broadest tool in my research organisation toolbox, but it is still only a tool that helps bring together other essential tools in the box. You could almost think about it as the toolbelt which keeps all my other tools handy!

That’s all for now. As organisation is intensely personal (what works for you will be very different to what I like and need!), I don’t think it is especially useful to go through my workspace in-depth here. If you’re keen to chat details, make sure to drop me a note on twitter or on the contact page!

Happy organising 📚

Image credits: @xavi_cabrera via unplash