Notion is surprisingly versatile, especially when you know how to push the notebook past its basic limits. Here are some of the most interesting and unusual ways that you may use Notion.

1Use Notion as a Daily Planner

Productivity tools become most useful when you combine them, but it can be difficult to keep each one updated. Learning how to embed a calendar in Notion is a great way to minimize this strain.

Before you may embed a calendar, you’ll need to take the following steps to adjust your Google account settings:

fetching the url to embed my google calendar in notion

With a copy of that URL, you’re able to now embed your Google calendar in a Notion notebook using the following steps:

Not all websites allow their content to be embedded. If you receive a Failed to Load error, it’s probably because the website you’re attempting to access restricts embedding.

creating a new embed in my notion notebook

2Pace Yourself With a Progress Tracker in Notion

One of the most frustrating parts of working towards a long-term goal is ambiguity. By creating a progress tracker in your Notion notebook, you can keep an eye on how well you’re doing.

Notion makes this straightforward with support for progress bars and progress rings via its database feature.

setting up progress bars in my new notion database

You’ll need to set up some behind-the-scenes database math to create a seamless progress tracker for your Notion notebook, but you can do so in just a few steps:

Now that you’ve created your database, you can access the progress bars it generates by creating a view on any page of your Notion notebook. You can take the following steps to insert your new progress bar:

editing the formula for my progress bar in a notion database

you’re able to make the view of your table more aesthetically pleasing by right-clicking on any table columns that you don’t wish to see and clicking onHide in view. Now, you’ll be able to track all of your tasks by their completion status.

If you want to prioritize your tasks by how close to completion they are, you can selectSort descendingin theCompletioncolumn to ensure the tasks with the most progress show up first.

managing task progress bars in a database in notion

3Ditch Reminder Apps and Create Recurring Tasks

It’s frustrating to manage recurring tasks in productivity apps when the feature isn’t supported. Luckily, Notion natively supports recurring tasks through databases. With just a few clicks, you can create tasks that recur at almost any frequency.

If you don’t already have a to-do list in Notion,create a database with the to-do list template. Then, open your database and take the following steps to create new recurring tasks:

It’s worth noting that, depending on the repetition frequency you select, you can set tasks to recur at complex frequencies (such as on specific days of the week or month). Once you’ve created a repetition template, you can create tasks that use it by clicking on thedown arrowand clicking on the template of your choice.

4Give Your Notion Notebook an Aesthetic Makeover

Eye-catching bullet planners and calendars are wonderful, but they’re challenging to mimic in Notion. Beyond taking basic steps tomake your Notion notebook aesthetically pleasing, learning how to draw in Notion is one of the best things you can do to take your notebook to the next level.

Depending on what kind of graphics you want to add to your Notion, there are plenty of incredible options. Some of the best include:

Notion doesn’t support drawing natively, but there is an embed-supported tool for nearly any graphic design task you can imagine. You can use Witeboard to add a cheerful drawing to your notebook, or even embed easy-to-read project flowcharts through Figma.

Once you’ve created your graphic, adding it to your notebook is as simple as grabbing the embed link and inserting it by typing/embed.

5Use Spreadsheets in Notion to Budget for Your Future

Budgeting is one of the best things you’re able to do to take control of your finances—and with Notion, there are many ways that you can create, manage, and view your budgeting spreadsheets. Beyond the built-in database feature, one of the most powerful ways you can budget is to embed a Google Sheet.

There are a few reasons why embedding a Google Sheet is preferable. Using Google Sheets allows you tochoose from a practically limitless variety of powerful spreadsheet templates—many of which feature aesthetically pleasing designs and convenient macros. Best of all, if you use the share link, the Google Sheet will even be editable directly through Notion.

You can add a Google Sheet to your Notion notebook with the following steps:

6Jam Out During Work and Study Sessions in Notion

Now that you know how to add useful embeds like spreadsheets and calendars to your Notion, you’re on the right track to making an ultra-powerful notebook. Notion provides many ways to customize your notebook via embeds—you’re able to even add your favorite playlists. Here’s how to embed Spotify, for example:

Unfortunately, individual track embeds don’t appear to work in Notion. Embedded playlists are functional, though.

Now, all you have left to do is jam out and get to work. And remember: with the right inspiration, the possibilities for what you can accomplish in Notion are practically limitless.