I already detect some things that I am not able to do at the best possible level I should with the tool. Help me!!
Here we are for the third post about how the process of using Notion as my default system to handle notes for my work and personal stuff is going. And after some initial series about how I would like to use Notion and how I was using it at the moment that you can check in the post below, I would like to update you on where I am. So, if you haven’t read the other post until now, please take a look before moving forward:
So Today, I would like to comment about things that I know I need to improve and things that I don’t master, and I would like to be very honest before I start. Probably the only topic that should be in the post is “Everything” because I have just been using Notion for several weeks now, so I am far from being a master in any feature the tool can have. But even on my level, I notice that some features or processes that are available I am not using as I should, so let’s go through them.
#1.- Search
This is just my bad because I am losing a lot of time moving from one page to the other. Especially because of my work, I often need to change my task from one customer to another, so that requires a quick way to change the page that I need to write. So until now, I’m just following the mouse approach of following the tree structure until I get to the page I like to be on.
As I have created a deep structure that you can read about in my previous post, I lose a lot of time that I would like to save in the features. I know this is not a problem with the tool because the tool offers a great Search capability just in the power of your hands clicking Cmd/Control + P (I am a keyboard person and believe keyboard is key to your productivity in front of a computer). Still, I don’t have just this shortcut fully interiorized in my brain.
#2.- Content Export
The second topic is also a very crucial one, and in this case, I didn’t find the right fit for me yet. I try to use Notion for everything: the drafts of my articles, note I am talking about one specific task or even to start some content that in the end will become full documents, and I still don’t find a way to quickly move this content in the right structure to another kind of document. Notion has great export capabilities for each of the pages, as you can see here:
But most of the time, I would like to Copy & Past the section that I am interested in and to keep the format, but this is not happening because of the structure of the Notion page (similar to WordPress) in blocks:
I guess this is something that I need to improve to solve quickly, but it is being a bit complex and generating a non-efficient workflow for me.
#3.- Integration and Automation
Again, this is my fault because I have seen what other people can do with the Notion page and the available templates, but it is not too simple, or I don’t understand how to do it. But one of the things that I lack at the moment is better automation capabilities.
I created a custom page linked to two databases to tell you an example, one for meetings and another for tasks. But at this moment, I am not able to do that. I create a meeting or a task page from a customer page, but the data is not automatically populated with the customer referred to; I still need to go manually and select the property and assign the customer. So I guess that this is probably my fault and I need to invest more time in this.
Summary
So these are my main weak points and where I would like to invest more time to solve them and be more efficient in that process. So if you already have some solutions for my challenges (even if this is documentation and article, youtube video, or anything), please let me know in the comments section, and I would like to follow up based on that.