This doc is an evolving and improving set of important tips and tricks (🔹), limitations (🔸), pitfalls (❗️), and technical notes (Σ ) on using Notion effectively.

Started internally at Holloway by @ojoshe—but we might publish more broadly if it proves valuable. Please add comments with ideas to add to this doc here! (We'll fold more updates in.)

• Table of Contents

General Organization

When and where to create docs

The question of how best to organize files on a team so they are maintained and all find and use them is a perennial challenge. This is true in every system—Google Docs, wikis, Confluence, Dropbox, Quip, Notion, and other team shared docs.

Bob Woodward famously declared that "democracy dies in darkness." Online documents die when they are unmaintained or don't have readers. This can be because they are forgotten or lost, they become out of date due to lack of maintenance, or people lose trust in them.

The way to counteract this is:

• Have clear ownership: Even if docs are collaborative, someone "owns" keeping the doc maintained and of high quality. ("Wisdom of the crowd" does not mean "no ownership.")
• Maximize audience: In general, write for and share with the largest audience unless there are good reasons not to (privacy, security, confidentiality, sensitivity, immaturity, etc.). Keep things organized so they can be found.
• Minimize number of documents: Other things being equal, fewer docs are easier to manage and have a bigger audience.

So how many docs should you create, exactly? As few as possible, but not too few! In general, a good principle is to divide things into a single doc only when three considerations align, and separate them if any of these are different:

• Owner: The one person ultimately responsible for the doc.