How I Use Notion to Organize Resources

UpdatedFebruary 16, 2021

•11 min read•View as Markdown

Alyssa Holland

Welcome to my blog 👋🏽

I'm a Front-End Developer with a passion for learning!

I write about Programming 👩🏽‍💻 and Productivity Tips ✅

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Abby Friedman5y ago

Thank you for this post! Did you end up making a template? Cause if so, I'd love to use it! This is exactly what I need in my life right now... :)

Alyssa Holland5y ago

Hey Abby! Thanks so much for your comment! I really appreciate you reading my article 😃 I didn’t receive any interest in a template when I originally posted this back in August so unfortunately I did not end up creating one 😞

However, I hope that the steps I outlined in the post will be helpful enough for you to create something similar. All the best!

Abby Friedman5y ago

It was actually easy to create the table following your steps. I also added the extension to Chrome, which works well for adding things to the table, but when I tell it to add things to other pages, I can't figure out where they are going! Hopefully I will find my Notion sea legs, with more practice, soon :) Alyssa Holland

Alyssa Holland5y ago

Abby Friedman I’m sure you will figure it out soon. It took me some time to get accustomed to how things work in Notion.

Feel free to reach out if have any further questions going forward!

Bolaji Ayodeji5y ago

I'm a big fan of Notion, the whole world needs to read this article. Thanks for sharing :)

Alyssa Holland5y ago

Thanks for the kind comment Bolaji Ayodeji 😊

Skay5y ago

Loved the article! Infact, I was writing an article about using notion to publish to blogs like hashnode and devto. You beat me to it. However, I have a different twist to it and will probably go ahead and publish it. I'm also a very big notion fan. 🙌

Alyssa Holland5y ago

Skay thanks for the comment! I am really interested in seeing how other people setup their workflows so I would definitely encourage you to publish your article on Notion. I look forward to reading it

Chris Bongers5y ago

Hi alyssa 👋

Nice article, I’m a big notion advocate and use it mainly to streamline my blogs writing. So awesome to see other people working its magic

Alyssa Holland5y ago

I have a Kanban Board that I use to store my blog ideas so I'd be curious to see how you're leveraging Notion to organize yours. Notion is so customizable I've probably just scratched the surface. It's cool to hear that you're using it as well 😁

Chris Bongers5y ago

Alyssa Holland Hey Alyssa, I'm using a table layout to store every day, and make some feature articles to keep a backlog.

I'm keeping track of things like re-check, links, titles, not actually writing the articles in Notion for now, just used to iaWriter.

Alyssa Holland5y ago

Nice! I find what apps & tools people use to be very interesting so thanks for sharing!

Shamaayil Ahmed5y ago

Really helpful..

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The Productive Dev

65 posts

Welcome to my blog 👋🏽 I'm a Front-End Developer with a passion for learning!

I write about Programming 👩🏽‍💻 and Productivity Tips ✔️

Notion is an application that claims to be an "all-in-one workspace." It allows you to create things like personal dashboards, wikis, and databases. Plain and simple, Notion is way more than a note-taking app. I had heard a lot of hype around Notion and decided to give it a try earlier this year. I'll admit that I was skeptical at first. However, I am a huge fan now and it has become an essential tool in both my personal and professional life. In this article, I'll be focusing on Notion's database feature and how I utilize it to create an ever-growing knowledge and referral base of web development resources.

The Why 🤔

As developers, googling for information is part of the job. Even though there are tons of resources out there, it does not mean all solutions you find are created equal. You might be wondering, "How do I decide on what to save?" My answer is simple: Save whatever you think you might want to reference again.

For example: If you find a solution to a difficult problem or find a great article that makes a programming topic finally "click" for you, save it! You never know when you may need to solve a similar problem or need a refresher on a particular topic. As you continue to save resources and your database grows, you will reduce the amount of time you have to spend researching something. In return, this will speed up your overall development process.

Next, I'll provide an overview of some of Notion's key features that make this whole system flow.

Databases

Similar to spreadsheet applications, like Excel, databases in Notion allow you to structure and store information in a tabular format. However, with the added capabilities of filtering, views, and tags, the features of this extend way past a basic spreadsheet. There are three features of databases that make them unique from their competition:

Customizable properties
The ability to toggle between multiple views (Calendars, Galleries, etc)
Every item is its own page that you can edit

Image from official Notion Docs

Filters

Filters in Notion allow you to distill the information in a database so that it only displays the relevant information based on the criteria you specify. Filters can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. Because my Web Dev Resources database is constantly growing and currently contains well over 100 items, filters make finding the relevant information fast and easy. Later on in the article, you'll see how filters and views play a key role in making all of this work cohesively.

Image from official Notion Docs

Adding Resources

Finding and storing resources is the core of this whole process. First, you will want to install the Notion Web Clipper extension. Once that's installed, adding resources to your database is quite simple:

Click the Notion icon in your extensions toolbar. You will see a box appear to allow you to select a database. At this time you can also edit the display name.
Click "Save Page" and it will immediately get added to the database of your choice.

Table Properties

My resources database contains specific properties that make it easier for me to categorize the copious amounts of data that it stores. There are five properties that I have defined:

Name
- This is the label that is associated with the resource and will be used as the title of the page.
URL
- Links to the website where the resource was found.
Description (Optional)
- I use this property when I want to provide some more context around the topic to which the resource links. I tend to use this more often for articles that cover broader topics or if I want to leave some keywords to make it more searchable.
Author/Source (Optional)
- I use this property if the resource I found was from a well-known author or site that I reference fairly often. It lets me know where the information originated.
Tags 🏷
- Tags represent the topic that the resource covers. I’ll discuss my tagging system in more detail in the next section since it's an important piece of the puzzle.

Organizing Resources

Tags 🏷

Tags are the crux of how I categorize and filter my database so associating the proper tag with the proper article is crucial. Thankfully my tagging system is pretty straightforward. If I find an article that fixes a React issue I was having, I give it the “React” tag. If a resource covers multiple topics, I just tag it with all the related topics. You get the picture.

Subset of tags that I use

Views 🔭

Once we have our entries tagged properly, we can now move on to creating views. In Notion, databases can have multiple views that allow you to see your data in different formats. For this particular table, I opted to stick with the default table view. However, there are other view options, like Galleries and Kanban boards, that may suit your fancy better.

Filters 📊

Whenever I create a new view, I immediately set up a filter that only shows data with a specified tag. Then I give the view the same name as the tag creating a one-to-one correlation between the two. Configuring it this way makes it easy for me to drill down and find the pertinent information I am looking for. I can quickly toggle between different views to find what I need.

Example - Project Assets

One of my favorite and frequently used filters is one that I have tagged as "Assets for Projects." Needing to store these particular resources was the catalyst to set up this whole Web Development Resource database in the first place.

What gets stored in this view you may ask? Pretty much any type of asset that I may want to leverage on a project at some point. As I'm sure many of you all know, there are copious amounts of development project resources out there. There are so many that it can be hard to keep track of them all. In this view, you will find things like free icons and images, gradient and color palette generators, and the list goes on.

If you walk away with only one thing from this article, at least come up with a system where you store resources like this. I find this especially handy when I work on personal projects, as it significantly reduces the amount of time spent trying to find things like that free icon library I read about in that article a month ago that I don't remember the title of, for example 😆. This view is pretty much the solution to those kinds of problems.

Preview of my Web Development Resources database

Benefits

I'm sure some of you have picked up on this by now, but I have a Type A personality and like structure 😅. This may look like a lot, but I promise you that it's well worth the reward. The initial "work" is in setting things up. After the initial setup, it's just a matter of adding what you want and assigning a tag. Once you get into the habit of adding helpful resources to your database, it becomes second nature.

Because I have a solid system in place, I am much more efficient and I can quickly and easily find what I need when I need it. Overall, it reduces the cognitive load needed to find useful information and I can work more effectively as a result.

El Fin 👋🏽

I hope you enjoyed getting a peek into part of my productivity process as a front-end developer. I use Notion, but there are myriads of other apps on the market that you can utilize. The main point is to find a system that works best for you and how your brain works. This is the process that works for me and I hope, by sharing, I have inspired some of you to take a second look at how to store information when it comes to working as a developer.

For those of you on the fence about trying Notion, they recently switched to a free plan for personal accounts so it's a great time to give it a try if you're interested.

Thanks for reading and happy coding!

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Comments (5)

More from this blog

The Why 🤔

Databases

Filters

Adding Resources

Table Properties

Organizing Resources

Tags 🏷

Views 🔭

Filters 📊

Example - Project Assets

Benefits

El Fin 👋🏽