How to Make Mind-Blowing Todo Lists with Notion

Two weeks ago, I discovered that there’s this note-taking app that can simplify databases so much, and can fit into a notebook. Digital, that is.

But there’s one feature that enables you to make these so-called Mind-Blowing Todo Lists: check the Add Entries to your Database part.

This is a whole article about databases and views, if you’re already familiar with that you can skip to any step.

Table of Contents

[Open][Close]

Making a Page
Making a Database
Add Properties (Columns) to your Database
Add Entries to your Database
Add Details to your Entry
Other Types of Views

Making a Page

Click on “Add a Page”
Name your page (optional)
You can nest your page under another (check video)

Making a Database

If you’re familiar with WordPress, you can use slash to add blocks too!

Step 1:

Type /table, and then select the table view (database)

In this example we will make a table view, but there are numerous views, including calendar and lists.

Step 2:

Click on new database, then proceed to the next step.

Since what you just created is a view of a database, you can select one if you already have one. We will discuss this in another article.

Add Properties (Columns) to your Database

Columns are called “properties” in Notion databases. By default, there is only the “Name” property, and the “Tags” property, which is a multi-select type. You can add properties by following the video below. In the example, I will make a “Status” and a “Date” property. You can explore the other properties, or read about it in another article yet to be written.

Add Entries to your Database

Your table will look like below. You can name it if you want to. Click in any cell to add an entry.

Add Details to your Entry

This is the mindblowing part : After you add entries, you can add details within it! (Think of it like sticky notes on your calendar), so you can add notes without cluttering your table!

the @Remind command puts a reminder for you. Also pops up a notification in Windows or Android (should be that way too with iOS, but I don’t have one)

When I discovered that, it was really like…

There you go. Mind-Blowing Todo Lists.

Other Types of Views

Okay, you’ve created your database and table view. What if you want to view what you have for the month, for example? Use a Calendar view. Want a more simplified view? Use the List view.

Of course, logically, with all tables, you can also filter values.

There are two ways to add views that I know of. One is via the tabs of the database, the other is typing slash like in the step “Making a Database” above. See the video below for details.