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My Favourite Productivity App for Students - Notion

2019-09-17 · Tech review, setup or bag tour · Ali · recording, 16:29 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech (also: Learning and studying) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: Aimed at students, Sponsor segment present

In a video sponsored by Notion, Ali calls Notion his favourite productivity app of 2019, a flexible and delightful alternative to rigidly structured note apps, cheap or free for students, and shows its student templates and his own MRCP revision pages built for scoping the subject and active recall.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Notion, his favourite productivity app of 2019, and the plan of the video

  • ★★★ Notion is Ali's favourite productivity app of 2019: he has used it every day for six months and says it has supercharged his productivity, organisation and creativity like no app before. — 00:00:00 · Notion

00:00:29 — What Notion is: a structure you build yourself, pages, blocks, icons and covers, and its plans

  • ★★ Ali describes Notion as a hybrid of a note-taking app, a database app and a content management system, the behind-the-scenes system people use to build websites. — 00:00:29 · Notion

  • ★★★ Note-taking apps such as Evernote, OneNote and Notability impose a rigid structure, Ali says, like buying or renting a ready-built house, while Notion has no set hierarchy and is like building your own house. — 00:01:07 · Notion, Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Notability

    “on notion it's like you're building your own house”

  • ★★ Ali finds Notion a delight to use, with its icons and cover images; by what he calls the value of delight, anything that makes note-taking or organisation more delightful encourages him to use it more. — 00:02:02 · Notion

    “what I like to call the value of delight”

  • ★★ In Notion any item can be turned into its own page, which makes it easy to set up your own hierarchy and organisational system; a breadcrumb shows where in it you are. — 00:03:41 · Notion

  • ★★ Every Notion page is made of content blocks, which Ali calls the app's main unit of hierarchy. — 00:04:57 · Notion
  • ★★★ Notion's free plan gives anyone 1,000 blocks to start with; the Personal plan costs $4 a month. — 00:05:54 · Notion

00:07:00 — Pre-built templates, the database feature and the student and educator templates

  • ★★ Notion comes with many pre-built templates to use and customise, found under a template button in every version of the app: iOS, iPad, Android, web and macOS. — 00:07:00 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali says another video is coming on Notion's database feature, a really big part of the app that he does not cover in this one. — 00:07:23 · Notion
  • ★ Notion's student templates include a reading list, a grade calculator, thesis planning, a Cornell note system and a personal CRM for keeping track of the people you meet. — 00:08:36 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali says testing yourself is easily the most efficient way to get information into your brain. — 00:08:36 · active recall

00:08:50 — The Cornell note-taking template: notes, recall keywords and a summary

  • ★★★ In the Cornell note-taking method, Ali explains, you write keywords and questions for yourself beside your notes, then answer them without looking at the notes. — 00:09:05 · active recall
  • ★★ The Cornell note-taking method also puts a summary of the important points at the bottom of the note, and maybe at the top; in Notion Ali writes it in a callout block. — 00:09:50 · Notion

00:10:55 — How he uses Notion for the MRCP: scoping the subject, toggle lists and questions before notes

  • ★★ Students with a .ac or .edu email address can get Notion's Personal plan completely free of charge. — 00:10:55 · Notion
  • ★ Ali calls Notion's $4 a month the best money he spends on any software. (overstated) — 00:10:55 · Notion
  • ★★ Preparing for the MRCP exam, Ali keeps a Notion database with a page for every subject of its syllabus. — 00:10:55 · MRCP, Notion
  • ★★★ For MRCP neurology Ali went through the syllabus, the textbook and other sources to list all the topics; this scoping the subject gives a skeleton of the subject in your head before you learn any single part of it. — 00:11:41 · scoping the subject, MRCP
  • ★★ Ideally, once he finishes revising neurology, Ali goes through its topic list and, on his iPad, actively recalls everything he knows about each topic, such as strokes. — 00:12:11 · active recall, iPad
  • ★★ Splitting a subject more and more into knowledge trees helps Ali remember what belongs in which category. — 00:14:03
  • ★★★ Under each MRCP topic in Notion Ali writes a list of questions and hides his notes, copied from an online question bank, under a toggle, so he sees the questions first and is forced to active recall. — 00:14:27 · Notion, active recall

00:14:50 — His other uses of Notion, from newsletters and videos to a life wiki and a resonance calendar

  • ★★ Ali also uses Notion to manage his email newsletters, his videos, his weekly review, his online courses, content for his website and YouTube channel, his team and his ideas. — 00:14:50 · Notion
  • ★★ In Notion Ali also keeps a life wiki of his thoughts on creativity, organisation and productivity, a gym log, money-making and podcast ideas, a resonance calendar and plans for book reviews. — 00:15:19 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali says he will talk at a later date about the resonance calendar he keeps in Notion. — 00:15:19 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali says he will discuss his many other uses of Notion in further videos. — 00:15:19 · Notion

00:15:53 — Thanks to Notion for sponsoring, download links and plans

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Answering a viewer in October 2020, the channel says Notion is now free for unlimited blocks. — creator comment · Notion

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: active recall · Cornell note-taking · Notion

Also: Evernote · Microsoft OneNote · MRCP · Notability · resonance calendar · scoping the subject · value of delight · weekly review

Also centred on Cornell note-taking: My Favourite Note-Taking App for Students - Notion · Study With Me - Weekend on-call

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