Notion—the cool girl notetaking app used faithfully by everyone I know who has their life together. For years I had watched on the sidelines, too scared to take the leap into a new notetaking app and just held silent envy for those who have the ability to link their Google Calendar with their assessment notes. But on the brink of the final year of my arts degree, I thought this was the year to see what all the note taking hype is about. 

Throughout the earlier years of my degree, I was a die-hard OneNote user . Conveniently included in the Microsoft Office package you get for free as a student, it was what I had used in high school, and assumed it was the logical option for university. However, with a newfound desire to lock in this year, I knew something had to change with my current notetaking methods. I had been using OneNote in conjunction with paper notes, creating a handwritten list of every single reading I had to do each week. Naturally, I tended to give up on writing these lists after about week 3 of each semester because they took way too long. I felt like I was trying to organise my work in too many incompatible ways that it was getting too overwhelming. Therefore, for a switch to Notion to be successful, it had to fulfil my need of easily displaying how much work I had to do, in a way that was not labour intensive to maintain.

In leaving my beloved OneNote, there were features that I needed to be sure could be replicated on Notion. Firstly, I enjoyed making different “tabs” for each of my subjects, as if I was using a physical subject book. I had stuck to a strict formula of five tabs—one for each subject and one for “extras”: random notes, job applications and lists. So, Notion had to replicate this so I could view each subject on a horizontal or vertical dashboard whilst accessing another note. Secondly, I really liked the ability to create a subpage on OneNote, especially when planning for assessments. So, I required Notion to have this ability to “tier” rank pages, preferably endlessly, as I always felt a bit restricted by OneNote’s limit on subpages. Finally, I was a big fan of the infinite sized pages in OneNote, and the ability to drag and drop paragraphs around the page, draw lines between thoughts, and add in pictures or tables without them being bound to their location like the nightmare it is when you add a picture to a Word doc. So, Notion’s pages also required this flexibility of the text to be dragged and dropped with ease. 

Upon downloading Notion, to be honest, I was a little overwhelmed. Notion has so many features and the capacity to do so much, that I didn’t know where to start. This is where I met my best friend for the next two weeks. A little inquisitive face known as the Notion AI Agent. I am typically very sceptical of AI, as I feel most arts students are, and try to stay away from it. But Notion AI is perhaps the most helpful use of an AI model integrated into a platform that I have encountered so far. As I had pretty much no idea how Notion worked, I explained how I would like a tab for my university subjects that gives me access to a selection of pages, and it created for me a simple database layout titled under my subject name, with the option to begin adding pages. This was my new “tab”, as it conveniently displayed itself on the concealable dashboard down the side of the page. The database option, however, held so much more organising potential for my pages than OneNote ever could, allowing me to assign properties to each page and subsequently organise my database with features such as date, topic (which I sorted by week) and status (to do, in progress and completed). Although it sounds very labour intensive to change all the topics and status names, which would have been a major deterrent for me, using the Notion AI in this setup helped significantly and saved so much time. Once I had used it to help me build my ideal layout for one subject, I was subsequently able to ask it to replicate my layout so I could have identical approaches to all of my subjects. 

Although the status option was a game changer compared to OneNote in allowing me to visually see how much work I had to do, I still felt restricted by only being able to view one subject at a time. So, I tried to take it one step further and turned to Notion Agent to see if this was possible. And being Notion, it is. I was able to create a database of databases, and filter by topic. This means that on one page, I could view my to-do list for each subject and filter them to only show my work for a specific week. This has been an absolute game changer for me, and I can actively see the improvements in my productivity and peace of mind, as I feel so much more in control of my course content and no longer like the disorganised old me with her outdated paper lists. 

However, tragedy struck when I asked my little friend Notion AI to complete a mundane task for me, and I was hit with the devastating alert that I had used up my free trial of Notion AI. I didn’t even know I was on a free trial! Serves me right for becoming too reliant on the help of an AI, I suppose. But this revealed to me another can of worms—Notion’s premium features. As uni students, we all get access to Notion Plus, which I was under the assumption would include Notion AI. But this led me to discover that notion has four packages—Free, Plus, Business and Enterprise—and the AI tool is only available in packages Business and above.

I understand Notion is a very powerful tool and can very well be used to help run a whole business, but I think a smaller version of the AI tool should still be available in the Plus package, considering most users are still paying $10 per month for this level of membership. Even if Plus members had access to the Notion Agent itself and not additional features such as the AI meeting notes, I believe that would be sufficient and practical for someone just using the platform for personal note taking. I found the AI agent significantly helpful in discovering the vast features of Notion and making it more accessible to first time users. 

For the nitty gritty of notetaking, I found the software itself to be very useful and it made me feel like I’m not missing anything from OneNote. You still have the option to make subpages, but with even more scope than before, as you can make endless smaller subpages, but also databases that hold other databases, making you effectively able to zoom in and out all you like. In terms of the page itself, although I would like a few more highlighter colour options, you have the freedom to move and adapt individual sections of text in a unique way which ensures the page retains structure. Despite not having the exact same infinite page quality as OneNote, you could effectively scroll forever, and in a way, it forces me to keep my messy planning a bit more orderly. 

Safe to say, my change to Notion has changed my life. I feel as if I’ve discovered a treasure trove of organisation I had been previously sitting on, and that I could tackle any project I set my mind to. There’s still so much more I have to discover on the platform, and features and uses I’m yet to uncover. So, if you think it’s time to move away from OneNote, or the whimsical written notes are just getting too hard to maintain, the world of Notion is just around the corner. And don’t forget to get the student discount!