Even if you’re relatively new to Notion, you’ll know it’s a powerful tool that can help you streamline your workflow and keep everything organized in one place. This is incredibly important whether you’re a solo operator or working with teams. As you get used to navigating around the platform, you’ll no doubt be looking for some tips and tricks to speed things up and be more productive. In this blog post, we will share some ways to save time while using Notion:
1. Keyboard Shortcuts for Notion
Keyboard shortcuts are one of the fastest ways to increase your productivity in Notion. Here are just a few:
- Using the “/” key in any page or database to bring up the command menu. From there, you can easily search for and execute the action you need
- You can toggle the left-hand sidebar with “Ctrl + \” – this is perfect if you want to see the whole screen or to quickly navigate to another
- “Ctrl/Cmd + K” pulls up the search box so you can search for any page, database, or block within Notion
- “Ctrl/Cmd + B” – bold text
- “Ctrl/Cmd + I” – italicize text
- “Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + L” – toggle between dark and light mode
- “Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + N” to create a new page (desktop app only)
- “Ctrl/Cmd + Left Click” to open up an internal Notion link in a new tab
- “:” followed by the emoji name e.g. :computer for 💻allows you to access emojis. You can also use “Windows .” or “Windows ;” / “Ctrl + Cmd + Space” too. This gives you added options such as access to GIFS, symbols and even your clipboard history
These shortcuts, along with many others, can save you a significant amount of time while using Notion.
Tip: download this Notion Shortcuts Cheat Sheet to act as a prompt.
2. Notion Templates
Notion’s Template Gallery
A great way to get started is to leverage the collective knowledge of the Notion community. Many templates have already been created with quite a few available for free or for a small cost. It’s worth taking a look. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel if there’s a template available that fits your use case.
To access the template gallery, click on the “Templates” link in the left-hand sidebar. It’s at the bottom left so you may need to scroll down. From there, you can browse through the various categories such as “Product”, “Design,” “Sales”, “Marketing” and “Operations”. Once you find a template that suits your needs, click on it to preview its contents. If you like it, click on the “Get Template” button to create a new page using the template.
Create Your Own Custom Notion Templates
This might seem a daunting task but it will save you time and effort in the long run if there are specific documents you frequently create, and the elements are common to each of them. This could be anything from a simple blog outline or a fully-fledged process for creating and producing videos.
This does require some planning upfront to flesh out your template, particularly if it’s a little more complex. You might want to create placeholders for any information that may change from document to document, such as names and dates. You can then quickly fill in the information without having to recreate the entire document each time.
There are a few ways you can do this in Notion. Firstly by duplicating the page and using it as a template:
- Open the page you want to use as a template in Notion.
- Click on the three-dot menu icon in the top-right corner of the page.
- From the dropdown menu, select “Duplicate”.
- A duplicate of the page will be created.
- Rename the duplicate page to indicate that it is a template (e.g. “Template – Project Plan”).
- Whenever you want to use this template, create a new page and duplicate the template page again.
Another way would be to create a template block using the “/template” command so that you can create a standard format and reuse pages.
When considering creating a new template consider the following three steps:
- Pull together the type of content you want to include in the template
- Add a template block
- Drag and drop content into the template block.
Tip: You can also create nested template buttons by treating templates as blocks and dragging and dropping template buttons into each other.
Finally, you can also add templates for a database by clicking the dropdown arrow on the “New” button (located on the right-hand side of your database).
3. Automate Your Notion Workflow
If you want to take things a step further you can use tools such as Zapier or Active Pieces to automate your workflows. Both software tools allow you to connect Notion with the most popular apps. This means you can automate your work without the need to code.
Here are some examples:
1. Create a task in your to-do list when a new email arrives
2. Automatically add new leads to your CRM database
3. Add an item to a database when a new row is added to Google Sheets
4. Create a new project in your project management tool when a new idea is added to your Notion database
It’s not so daunting to set up workflow automations with the help of Zapier or Active Pieces. These tools really do simplify the process.
Notion time savers
By using custom templates, keyboard shortcuts, and automations in Notion you can save time and work more efficiently. Hopefully, this has given you a taste of what is possible.