Missives from Samsara

For years, I used Evernote as my digital brain, but now I am a devoted Notion user. I use other tools like the Google Suite and Apple Notes, but my day-to-day life admin happens in Notion. Many people don’t need tools like this, but I find powerful apps like Notion both immensely helpful and, dare I say, fun to use. I thought I’d share a few examples of how I use Notion.

One way I use Notion is for keeping a Daily Note, a productivity idea popularized initially by Roam Research. There are a ton of things I try to do every day, such as meditating, taking my vitamins, reading an entry from The Daily Stoic, and having my daughter share something with me that she is grateful for. For minds like mine, lists are helpful. I use a Daily Note template in Notion that I can reproduce each morning that contains a list of all the things I want to get done every single day. Obviously, as the day goes on I check ‘em off the list. I’m near a computer all day so this isn’t hard. At the end of the day, the Daily Note is a record of what I accomplished. I have other things in the Daily Note as well, including the top three To Dos that are unique to that day. I also have links to other heavily used Notion pages, like my ‘second brain’ note collection or my miscellaneous brainstorms. Notion makes their pages heavily customizable so I have dialed in my Daily Note to suit my personality.

Another way I use Notion is to save all my brainstorms. Like most people, every once in a while I need to do a braindump and get everything out of my head. With Notion I can save all these brainstorms and attach them to my Daily Note and add tags so they are visible in other parts of my Notion. Again, do you need this to be productive? A lot of people would say no; but it definitely helps me.

A third way I use Notion is for keeping trip notes. When I have a trip planned, I open a new trip template (on my Travel page in my Personal Dashboard) and I’m ready to drop in screenshots of hotel and plane reservations, along with my packing lists and other important notes. Having a system helps minimize the damage my natural forgetfulness can do.

There are a ton of other ways I use Notion and I’ll likely share more in the future. There are other apps that do what Notion does, like Capacities and Craft, but Notion continues to work well for me.