Top 9 Notion Tips and Tricks for Students

Notion’s modular and customizable project management approach aims to redefine the productivity space. Many people use Notion to organize their work schedule, life goals, manage projects, and more. Even students can use Notion to check their grades, schedule exams, semester schedules, create a CV, manage daily tasks, and more. If you’re a student new to Notion, read on for the best Notion tips and tricks.

You can build a database from scratch or opt for the built-in templates to get started with Notion. To save time, we will mainly focus on models and other tips for students to use Notion like a pro. Let’s get started.

Before you begin, GT strongly recommends that you check out and master the Essential Notion commands. We will use some of them in the examples.

1. Use a colored background

A highlighter can be very useful for marking important texts or quotations from lecture notes. Instead of using a standard highlighter pen with a yellow background, Notion lets you use one with various color backgrounds.

Just place the cursor at the start of the text you want to highlight and use the ‘/’ command to search for backgrounds of different colors.

2. Create a weekly planner

Notion offers a built-in weekly planner template to help you plan for a busy week. It can be helpful for students to plan their schedules to manage their homework submissions and exam deadlines. While you’re at it, don’t forget to use the color background trick to mark priority tasks and separate them from other tasks.

3. Use reminders

Notion is also presented as a dedicated task management application. While not as feature rich as competitors like Things 3, Todoist, Microsoft Tasks, etc., you can use Reminders with Notion to get notified for certain tasks.

For example, in the Weekly Calendar template, you can use the “/ reminder” command and receive a notification about a task on a certain date and time.

4. Use code blocks

Are you studying computer engineering or learning a new programming language? Notion provides a code block function to distinguish code from other elements on a page.

Type ‘/ code’ when you want to add a code string, and a dedicated code block will appear for you. It’s an efficient way to create a page with notes and code information for a potential project.

5. Create custom models

With custom templates, you can easily replicate the content combinations you use frequently in Notion.

For example, you want to generate the same to-do list at the start of each week. You can also create a personalized financial tracker according to your uses and reuse it each month.

We will ask you to refer to our dedicated article on creating custom models in Notion for more details.

6. Explore the Google Drive integration

Google’s suite of productivity apps play a major role for any student. The good news is that Notion works great with some of the popular Google services like Google Drive and Docs.

Type “/ Google” and the app will open Google Drive. You can select any document, sheet or even any image from cloud storage and add it directly to Notion with nice structure and details.

7. Use widgets in Notion

By default, Notion does not offer any widget functionality. But you must have seen those aesthetically pleasing Notion homepages presented by users across the web. So how do they do it? The answer is third-party widgets.

Using sources like Indify, you can integrate interesting and informative widgets like timer, clock, weather, Twitter feed, Google Calendar, etc. directly in Notion. Go ahead, try them out and create a real Notion home.

Visit Indify

8. Course calendar template

As the name suggests, the lesson calendar template is all you need to organize the next essays and homework in a classroom.

You can also use it to map exam details, and teachers can plan their day by adding different classes to attend, incorporating relevant topics to teach, attaching files, and more.

9. Create a CV in Notion

While creating a resume in Microsoft Word is no longer in fashion, you can use Notion to make it up to you. Notion lets you create the perfect resume with all the bells and whistles.

Instead of starting from scratch, you can choose a resume template and make the necessary changes to save time. Don’t forget to add color backgrounds and widgets to make it look attractive. When you’re done with all the changes, just generate a share link and start preparing for the interview.

Plan your studies with Notion

With Notion, students can carefully plan their weeks, homework deadlines, semester class schedules, and exam preparations. If you’ve found other ways to get the most out of Notion, share it in the comments section below.