Creating a Notes Dashboard in Notion

Chapter 1: Introduction - The BEST Way to Take Notes on Notion-Overview: An introduction to the tutorial and a brief explanation of why the method covered in the tutorial is the best way to take notes on Notion.

Chapter 2: How to Use This Notes Dashboard-Overview: A step-by-step guide on how to use the notes dashboard, including instructions on how to customize the dashboard to fit the user's specific needs.

Chapter 3: Building Your Notes Database-Overview: A section on how to build the database that will store the user's notes, including information on how to organize and structure the database for easy access and reference.

Chapter 4: Turning Your Database Into a Dashboard-Overview: A guide on how to turn the database created in chapter 3 into a functional dashboard that the user can easily use to access and reference their notes.

Chapter 5: Sorting Your Note Entries-Overview: A section on how to sort the entries in the dashboard, including instructions on how to sort by date, title, and other relevant categories.

Chapter 6: Organizing Your Note Archives-Overview: A guide on how to organize the archives of notes in the dashboard, including instructions on how to create and manage different folders and subfolders for the user's notes.

Chapter 7: Adding the Note Capture Form-Overview: A guide on how to add a note capture form to the dashboard, including instructions on how to customize the form to fit the user's specific needs and how to use the form to add new notes to the database.

Chapter 8: Outro-Overview: Final thoughts on the tutorial and encouragement for the viewer to start using the method covered in the tutorial to take notes on Notion.

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Hello and welcome back to another video. My name is Carter Surach, also known as "The Productive Dude" here on YouTube. In today's video, I'm going to be showing you how to actually capture your notes and then come back and find them later.

Because I know for me, for the longest time, I would just put notes in a notebook like this, or I'd stuff them in my Google Drive, and I'd lose them. I wouldn't be able to find those notes because they weren't tagged properly, or they were on a physical piece of paper, and I really couldn't find them. So, you know, it's great to take notes, but if you can't find them later on, and it's hard to capture them quickly, then you're probably not going to have the best note-taking system. But that's what I'm going to show you how to create today. The best note-taking system that I have actually come across, and I'm going to show you how to do that in Notion. So, let's jump right in.

Alright, so this is my notes dashboard. On the left side, we have the capture and create column, and then on the right side, we have the utilize, archive and track column where all of my notes are stored. I've got my learning notes, my introspective notes, my video plans. They're all organized, it's amazing. And then, I can also change the type of sorting I want to do. So, I can sort by related person, and then I can see notes that are related to specific people.

So, I even have some of my own notes in here that are my introspective notes, and that's why they're under Carter Surach. But I have some thought leaders in here, or some clients, or just people that I want to learn things from, or maybe people that I found interesting. So all of those notes are listed out here. And some of these people only have one note because I've only ever worked with them once, or I've only listened to them once. But some have more.

For example, here's Quasi, he's a YouTuber. He makes videos on manifestation and things like that. I have three notes for him because I've taken three notes on him.

Now, over here on the left, this is where it gets interesting, right? I can create new notes. So let's imagine that I'm watching a YouTube video. Let's imagine you're watching my YouTube video, "10 Productivity Tools I Can't Live Without in 2022." So, what I would do is I would start up this video, and I would think to myself, "Oh, I want to take notes on this video." Right? So, over here in notes, I could simply create a note using this form. So, productivity tools, let's name it that.

So, let's scroll through our tags here, and give this video a tag as well, or a couple tags. So like health, let's say, because I do offer some health stuff in here, maybe a routine. Okay, so now that I've got those tags in here, I'll also want to add a source. So, copy that link, paste it here, and then note type, what is this? This is going to be a learning note because I'm watching a video and I'm trying to learn something from "Productive Dude" here. And if I hit related people, I can also type in the name of the person that I'm taking notes on, so Carter Surach in this case.

Then let's click off of that and if I wanted to here I could also make the note private if I don't want it to show up in my main notes over here. And then what I would do is I just hit submit, and you'll see that that note pops up right here and it says "Amazing, we saved your answers. Thank you for your time. Have a great day."

But that note or all of the notes that I've taken today will show up right here. And if I click on that, this is where I can start entering information. So as I'm sort of watching this video, I know I can turn it up on 1.5 speed and I can go through this video. I can look at the different chapters and I can create different headings based on these chapters. So these are headphones. Okay, so maybe I'd put like "Sony headphones" and then I might take a few notes on that.

In the next chapter here, what would it be about? Well, it'll be about the Aura ring. So I might go into Aura ring and the other nice thing is you can even take like a screenshot of this video if you wanted to because maybe you want to remember something specific about it. I'm just going to hit command shift 4 on the mac and that will allow me to grab a screenshot of a specific frame. So let's say I wanted to save this frame, I could then drag that into my Notion account and I could put it beside that Hygge red light note, and then I could take some more notes on this column.

This is essentially how I quickly take notes now. Let's get rid of my video here and let's go back into this note. And as you can see, we have this note organized and created very quickly and efficiently. If I hit command R, just to refresh the page, and then it went to dark mode. So if I hit command shift L that will bring me back to light mode and I'll have my form back right here, and I can continue writing out notes. And then I can organize, utilize and track them here. So that is the note dashboard and I'm actually going to show you how to create this thing now.

So if you're interested, stick around and hit the like button if you're enjoying this video so far. It'll help us out a ton, and I would really appreciate it because we did put a lot of time into making this video, my editor and myself. So let's jump right into building this note-taking system.

All right, so we're going to start out with a fresh blank canvas here in Notion and I'm just going to name the page "Note dashboard" and in parentheses, just so I don't confuse this with my other dashboard, I'm going to call this "Tutorial". okay "Note dashboard tutorial." You can name this whatever you want, but this is where your note dashboard is going to live.

Then we're going to have to create a few pages. So if I hit "/page" hit enter, we can create a page and we can call it "Notes" and I'm going to put "Tutorial" once again. We're going to hit "Table" and then I'm going to go back up to the breadcrumbs here and I'm going to click back to my original page. And then we're going to create another page, "/page" Enter and this one we're going to call "People" and "Tutorial" in parentheses, once again, "Table."

Let's call it science, cells, biology and here we'll do notes, tasks, notion. Here we'll put whiteboard software. So now we've got some tags that can describe these notes and if you open them up you can add your notes here. Okay, and once you do that it will actually uh create this little page but you can add an icon if you wanted to so there we go, we've got our first few sample notes in here.

We're also going to create a column that is property type of select and this one we're going to call note type. Okay and we can give these notes a few different types but what I like to do is I like to have introspective notes. The notes that I just take without watching anything or learning anything they just come straight from my mind. Think of these as journal entries or notions funny enough that's what this software is called Notion, but you get what I'm saying, like your own notions, your own things that you come up with so introspective and I think uh for this one, I I like to do it as purple, I think that that's a kind of a a good color for introspective.

And then we might also have uh learning. Okay it's another type of note that we might want to create here so learning notes are for when you are listening to someone and learning something new. And introspective notes might be things that you come up with on your own, let's say like all these are learning notes and then maybe you have another note that you create that is something to do with you know personal journal entry and it could be a day. You can add as many note types as you want here as many that make sense for you, but just remember you don't want to have too many note types, these are meant to help you organize overall like which notes uh you want to search for in the future. Tags are better for like the more granular things the the descriptive words that have to do with your note, this should be reserved for the high level note type.

Then we're going to create another new column and this is going to be property type of created time just so we have a record of the time that this was created and we're gonna click on it and call it time created. And then finally, we're also going to add one more column okay and this is going to be the related person column so that we can sort by person but don't get that confused with this person column. We're actually going to use relation and we're going to click select a database. And here I'm going to type in people if you remember right we created that people database. So if I click into that and hit create relation and then we name this people, we could have a separate database where we add people. So in this case I haven't added anybody to that database but we can add people from here. So I haven't added anybody to this database yet this people database. So let's go back up to the breadcrumbs hit back and now we're on that original page we created from here we can click people and we can add some people that we want to be able to write notes about. So let's just say Carter Surach is one of those people. Let's just say.

Let's just say, John Smith. We could add tags for these people so, for me, if you're adding me to your people database, you might want to put like, "Notion productivity" and a few other things. Uh, and then for John Smith, maybe he's a scientist so we're gonna go science, biology things like that.

And now let's go back up into the breadcrumbs again, come back to this page, go to notes tutorial and now we have some people to choose from. Okay, so for cell biology note, we're going to add John Smith and for these ones here, you might want to add me. It's useful to also add yourself so whatever your name is, you can create a person in your people database for you. Let's say your name is Sam Smith and uh, this is this is just you so you can you don't really need to add tags for this one if you don't want to. Um, but you could just do personal then go back to note dashboard, notes, and you could add yourself for that journal entry that you wrote.

So now we have these notes organized out into people, we have them organized by tags, note types. So how can we visualize this as a dashboard over here? Well, that's what I'm going to show you. So we're going to create some callouts to separate this page out. So let me show you what I mean. Hit slash, type call out and hit enter. And we're going to call this column, "Capture new notes." I'm going to hit enter and I'm going to hit slash call out once again, enter and organize, "Bold notes." We're going to drag the organize old notes to the side and you can edit these callouts, you can change the color of them and things like that if you want to, just to make them look unique to your own setup. And you can also bold this text here if you want to, you can underline it, you can do all sorts of things with it.

And if you wanted, you could also change the emoji that is accompanying it. So let's just do some notes and (music) light bulb for capturing new ideas. Let's make them both uh gray. I like this simple look personally. And then down here if I hit enter, we can hit slash and we can type create and you're just going to click this create linked database button. And then I'm going to start typing in the name of my notes database that I created. So in this case that is "notes." This is the notes database that I showed you in the very beginning, but this is the one I've created in this tutorial. So I'm going to click this one and we're going to hit duplicate on that. And then I'm going to drag the other one over here to "Organize old notes" so now we have two columns with these notes databases.

If I hit the three buttons in the top corner and go full width, it's going to be a little bit easier to see everything. (Music) And now we just want to manipulate this data so that it shows up right. And then I'm going to show you how to create that form that I was showcasing in the beginning of this video. So let's just add a view and I like to go with the list view for this. And we're just going to call this one, "Today's Notes." And this is only going to show the notes that we've taken for today. So in order to do that, you're going to hit the three dots here, you're going to hit filter.

This text describes steps for setting up a task management system using a tool called Notion. It appears to be instructions for a video or tutorial, and the text is somewhat disorganized. Here is a cleaned-up version of the transcript:

Add a filter, and then select "Time created is today." This will only show the notes for today.

You can also mess with this filter to show different ranges of time. For example, you could show today and yesterday by adding a filter and selecting "or." This way it's a little bit easier to see your recent notes.

To make things more organized, we can add a view. Go to "List" and call it "Sort by tags." Create it, and then use the three dots to "Group by tags." Now we are able to sort these notes out by the different tags that we've created so far. We can see all the notes that have to do with those specific tags.

If there's one with a zero like this one here, you can click the three dots, go to group, and if you want to hide those with zeros, you can hit hide empty groups. You can also hide specific groups here if you want to.

Let's also go ahead and delete this old table that we had. Remove it, add a view, go to list and we're going to sort by people. Create it, and then right here we're going to hit the three dots, group by people and hide empty groups. Now we have carter sirach john smith and sam smith in the notes that are associated with that particular person.

Later on, you can click into these people and add an icon. You can upload an image of their face if you want to.

Next, you're going to want to add a form that the author showed you in the beginning of the video, so that you can capture notes a lot easier. Normally, you can just hit new and fill out the information, but the author prefers to use a form to start, because they don't want to miss any of the fields. If you don't fill out all the required fields, organizing it later on will be harder.

The author recommends using notionforms.io, a website that allows you to quickly and easily create a form that integrates well with Notion. There are various pricing options, with the basic plan being free, but the author prefers the pro plan because it allows for more fields and the ability to remove branding.

Customization is important, and you can make the forms look exactly how you want it. That's just my personal preference. Now, if you go up here, there should be a button that says "Create an account" or something like that. I've already created my account, so I'm going to go to my forms.

And I'm going to hit "Create a new form." Here is where you're going to link up with the table that you've created. So let me go back to Notion and this table right here is the one that we need to link up. So let's click on "Notes Tutorial" and let's hit "Share."

And then, right here, you're going to click this empty space and you're just going to find "Notion Forms," click on "Notion Forms." You won't see that unless you've gone through the process of actually making your Notion Forms account. So remember to complete that process, and then hit "Invite." Now, Notion Forms is connected to this table.

If you want to, you can also connect it to your "People" table. So I'm going to go back to "People" and share, and then I'm going to hit "Notion Forms, Invite." The reason that I'm inviting them to this table as well is so that I can pull in new people into my form through the relational column. But, if you don't have the pro version, you won't need to do that because you can't use the relational fields if you don't use the pro version of Notion Forms.

Then I'm just going to select a Notion table. So then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back into my notes here, hit share, and I'm just going to copy link and paste your table URL here. Now, we have our fields popping up. So as you can see, "Notes" that's it right here. "Note Type" is mapping to this "Note Type," then we have "Tags" mapping to "Tags" and "People" mapping to the "People" column.

You can give this a nicer name, so let's just call it "Add New Note." Here, we can organize this, and we can give these fields names. So let's just name this one "Name Your Note." We can also make these required, and that's one of the things that I do like about having Notion Forms on your page because it does require you to actually fill out the full information for your note. So that later on down the line, you have all that information in there, and it's much easier to organize and sift through in the future.

So, I'm going to make most of these required, "No Type" required, "People" required. As you can see, that is pro. So if it's pro, that means that you need the $15/month to use this field. You don't need the $15/month version; you can just go with the free version if you just want to name your note, add a note type, and add tags.

Okay, I'm going to make all those required, and we're just going to give them better names. All right, this is going quite well. Where it says "Form Theme," I'm going to change that to "Notion" because I kind of like to keep that on brand and have everything looking how Notion looks. Let's make this full width. And then, you can add a cover picture or a logo if you want to. I'm going to make the dark mode preference just to pull from

Using that eyedropper tool I'm going to hit hide title and remove Notion branding just to keep everything super simple here.

If you know CSS and you have the pro version, you can also inject some custom code here so you can make this look exactly how you want it.

And then for the about submission, this part's important. You're going to want to name this "Add New Note" so that it looks pretty nice. Create new record is what you want this set to, and then where it says "Show Success Page", that's fine. But also click this button "Allow User to Fill Form Again". Add another note is what we're going to write there so that you get a button after you submit a note that allows you to click "Add Another Note".

And then right here we'll just do "Your Note Has Been Added". And if you have the pro version once again, you can get notified via email when new form submissions come in. If you're sharing this with multiple people, but in this use case you're not going to be sharing it with people, you're just going to use it yourself, so I don't imagine you need notifications when you take a new note.

Now let's just hit "Create Form" once you're ready. It'll say "Form Has Been Created" and there's tons of options here. But I'm just going to hit "Embed Form in Notion". I'm going to copy this right here then we're going to go back over to Notion and I'm going to hit this plus button right here. And we're going to type "Embed", hit "Embed" and then paste "Embed Link".

Now we have our form here. I like to drag it out to the max so that it looks like it's actually part of the page and it's not just an embed. And then you can drag this below today's notes or you can keep it above if you want. But the way that this will work now is I can create a name of a new note, so I could call it "How to Create Notes Dashboard". No type. Learning. Add people, Carter and click away. Add note tags. You can go to Notion here, Notes and then hit "Add New Note" and then watch and then boom it's added to today's notes.

If you wanted to add another note you can just hit "Add Another Note" and it will pull you back to the start. From here, you can start typing out your note. The nice thing is it's already been categorized extremely well and all of these were required fields opposed to just creating a note this way and then just scrambling into writing. Maybe not giving it a very thoughtful title, maybe you're missing some information like no type, maybe you're missing people, that's what I found at least. So that's why I like this form method opposed to just adding a new note right here.

All right guys, that's that. I hope you did enjoy today's tutorial on creating a notes dashboard using Notion. If you did enjoy this one, please leave a like, comment below and let me know. And then also subscribe if you want to see more videos just like this one.

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