Notion is one of the hottest productivity apps today and can be turned into a tool to do almost anything. From trackers and to-do lists to databases and presentations, Notion’s versatility is its biggest advantage. Of course, that also makes it a little overwhelming to newcomers. But if you learn how to use it with these free tutorials and fix its missing features through extensions and third-party tools, you’ll find it quickly becomes an indispensable productivity tool for you.
1. The Ultimate Notionpedia (Template): Free Beginner’s Guide Course to Learn Notion
You’ll find a lot of expensive courses online that teach you how to use Notion, taking you from beginner to learning all the advanced tips and tricks. The Ultimate Notionpedia is a free (or pay-what-you-want) resource to learn all of that, as a one-page template within Notion itself.
The Ultimate Notionpedia divides users into three types depending on how familiar you are with Notion: New, Normal, and Expert. This will take you through items like pages, templates, mentions, databases, Indify widgets, filters, linking, relationships, and more. You’ll also find a list of Notion experts who have their own contributions to the app or offer tips and tricks on their page if you follow them.
Click each item to learn more about it in the form of an official Notion video or as a short piece by third-party developers like Indify. Then, once you’ve mastered it, tick the checkbox next to it to keep track of your self-paced course learning.
2. Red Gregory, Marie Poulin, Thomas Frank Explains (Web): Best YouTube Experts Teaching Notion Tips and Tricks
After learning the basics of Notion, you can level up your skills through some of the best YouTube channels and blogs teaching free lessons. Three of them stand out.
Red Gregory is both a blog and a YouTube channel entirely dedicated to Notion tutorials, so you can choose whether to read about tips or watch videos. He also makes free and paid Notion templates to download. The blog is neatly categorized, while the channel has dedicated playlists like beginner-friendly, builds and templates, and formulas.
Marie Poulin is a productivity and wellness expert whose preferred weapon of choice is Notion. Poulin offers excellent insights in monetizing Notion and using it for specific things like gardening. You’ll want to stick to her Notion Mastery playlist, as the channel has videos on several other non-related topics.
Thomas Frank Explains is another YouTube channel with a series of Notion tutorials. Thomas’s videos are longer and more detailed than the above two, but he goes into great detail and explains the thought process behind each tip.
3. notion-enhancer (Chrome, Firefox, Windows, macOS, Linux): Best Extension to Make Notion Better
There are no two ways about it, notion-enhancer is hands-down the best extension to give your Notion superpowers. It works in any browser or desktop and adds a range of extra features to Notion as “mods”.
Once you install notion-enhancer anywhere, you’ll find an option to enter its settings the next time you open Notion. In the notion-enhancer dashboard, you’ll see all the available mods, which you can enable or disable, and even choose custom settings within each. For example:
Tweaks will let you change Notion in many ways, like wrapping tables to full width, hide the Help button, add readable line spacing, etc. Right to left automatically changes text direction to be right-to-left, which is helpful for some non-English languages. Collapsible headers and properties add toggles to collapse sections Add scroll to top or scroll to bottom buttons Choose from several themes made by the community to skin your Notion
There’s much more you can do if you dive under the hood and explore. And you can join the Discord community to suggest more features or help build them.
4. Chillipepper (Web): Create Beautiful Forms Connected to Notion Pages
Notion is a fantastic place to create a database, so it’s only natural to use it as an alternative to Google Forms. Chillipepper is the easiest way to create beautiful forms that connect to your Notion Pages and also be embedded in them.
The form creation process is pretty simple, and you can try it out without registering (although we recommend registering first, it’s free). Add field name, field text, default text within the dialog box, and the field type from six options: multiselect, email, phone, text, long text, and number. You can see a live preview of your form at all times, and choose button text and color too.
Once the form is created, you can connect it to a Notion page for free, linking each field to a field on your page. Our suggestion would be to make this database in advance, so the connecting process gets easier. Once the form is ready, send it as a link to anyone to fill, and their choices will show up in Notion. Chillipepper also offers a straightforward way to embed the form on your Notion page.
5. Notion Charts (Web): Create Embedable Charts From Notion Tables
Notion is a fantastic tool for databases and tables, and you can now turn them into impressive charts with Notion Charts. The free app connects to your Notion account, where you grant it access to only those pages which have the data you want to create charts from.
You’ll have to specify which table to use in the chart builder and select the columns for your X-axis and Y-axis. You can also sort by any of the columns and group by various factors. Then, choose the chart type from nine options: line, bar horizontal, bar vertical, pie, donut, radar, area, card, or treemap. You can choose multi-color or single-color formats and enable or disable data labels. All changes are previewed live.
Once the chart is made, grab the embed URL, and paste it as an embedded element in any Notion page. You can also paste this into other embeddable web elements. Notion Charts is absolutely simple to use, and the free version allows you to make five charts.
Templates Make Notion Infinitely Better
These guides and apps are only the first steps in mastering Notion and creating productivity tools that serve your purpose. But before you start custom-building a Notion page for yourself, check the sites for the best free Notion templates, as someone else might have already made it.
Notion’s great strengths are templates, letting creators build ready-to-use Notion packs for just about anything. You’ll also find several paid templates online. And once you master Notion with the resources in this article, you can make your own templates and hope to make a quick buck from them.
