Notion For Software Engineers: Finish Your Projects Today.
Whether you are trying to code a simple todo app, or write code to launch a nuclear missile, there should always be a system in place that helps you manage your goals, deadlines and promote collaboration for team projects.
In this article I will introduce Notion. Notion is a multi-purpose organization tool that works surprisingly well as a software engineering project management tool, especially if you’re collaborating with others.
Today I will go through the coolest features of the Notion workflow, and I will expand upon concepts discussed here within future articles.
So without further ado, lets get started!
Before we start, I recommend you sign up with Notion for free. This is so you will be able to follow along with the article and experience the power of Notion at the same time.
Notion
Notion is essentially a block-based editor that can be utilized on desktop, mobile, and the web.
Each block in notion can contain various types of content, ranging from basic text to inline databases and external integrations such as Google Drive and Google Maps.
Here is an example of a block in Notion:
If you enter / on a new line, you will be greeted by a menu from which you can insert an abundance of different items, including an inline database, which is a stand-out feature of Notion:
In this database, you can insert different properties (e.g. Name, Tags) to customize your data (A.K.A pages in notion). I recommend you search YouTube for tutorials on these properties as there are way too many for me to cover in this article.
Views
Another fundamental concept regarding Notion Databases are ‘views.’ Views give you different ways to display your data, here is an example of me displaying recipes using a ‘Gallery’ view:
This is a beautiful way to visualize your Notion pages. The use cases for such views are only limited by your imagination due Notion’s limitless DIY system.
Inline Reminders
Another fundamental feature that any Notion workflow should use are inline reminders. These allow you to embed a reminder within virtually any block inside Notion. Take this example of me embedding a reminder inside the title and body of a Notion page:
You can imagine the collaborative power this feature brings, you can simply type ‘@’ and enter a date to be reminded on to review this block via email; how cool is that!
Buttons
Last but not least, there is another cool feature called ‘buttons’ that allow you to create automations for your Notion pages and databases.
Add a button by typing /button and clicking enter to create a button block.
From here you can:
- Insert blocks to the current page
- Add page to an existing database
- Edit pages within an existing database
I personally use buttons to navigate between pages and to automate creating and opening pages with a single button press. As always, you can create complex automations only limited by your imagination.
Out of all of these features, the button is my favorite because of it’s flexibility and ease of creation.
Conclusion
We have briefly discussed Databases (inline), Ways to visualize your database content, inline reminders, and finally, the use of buttons to implement automations.
If you enjoyed this article, check out my profile for many more stories like this, and stay tuned for future articles! 👍
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- Notion: Use this to manage your programming projects.
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