I now write straight into Notion and use it as the single source of truth for my entire writing, editing and publishing process. Notion saves your work, online or offline, and makes sure it’s safe without having to remember to hit save, so it’s finally time to break the habit.

When writing a piece like this one, I always start with a simple blank page to focus on the task at hand. The writing experience you get is minimal and beautiful, thanks to Notion’s monospaced font, and just like iA Writer, the interface stays out of the way until I need to dive in and start formatting or insert a different block.

Markdown + shortcuts

With full Markdown support you can write however you’re accustomed to, either with all the manual parameters you’re used to, or just use the interface to format and export to markdown later.

I love using Markdown and tend to habitually write it by hand, but if it’s not your cup of tea you can use the visual interface instead by selecting it, then using the pop-over menu.

As with other tools, the usual shortcuts for text formatting work, like CMD + B to bolden, but there’s one key improvement worth knowing about: inline linking.

Tucked away at the bottom: word count

When adding links to your writing, just remember that CMD + K is your friend — this shortcut instantly drops an inline link onto the text you’ve highlighted without a need to use your mouse or deal with clicking through a dialog box or typing the right markdown.

There’s a full suite of keyboard shortcuts available for the full array of Markdown features, from bullet-point lists to code blocks, so keep this link handy and you’ll be a pro in no time.

Word count

Sooner or later you’ll find yourself needing a word count, which you’ll find close at hand.

To see how you’re tracking to that word limit, click the three dots on the top right and it’s right there at the bottom of the page’s settings menu.

Organization and editing power

Simple, easy reorganization

During the writing process you’ll inevitably end up needing to move something around, delete it, or save it for later.

This is simple in Notion, and helps with rearranging your narrative as you’re editing, or even just during the writing process itself.

To rearrange a paragraph — or many block types at once — just grab them all by holding down the mouse and dragging over them. Once you’ve got them all highlighted you can take all of the selected blocks with you by grabbing the dotted menu at the top, then moving it around, or just using cut and paste like normal.

This is a complete revelation for those who are accustomed to traditional text editors, which either make a complete mess of your text, or leave bits behind when you try to move them.

Notion treats each block as unique, and it’ll safely bring them all in the exact layout you chose before moving them. It makes the editing process a lot easier, especially if you’ve written something particularly long and later want to move it all around.

Nested pages

To really get the most out of Notion nesting your pages is a key concept to wrap your head around, and decide how you’ll use.

I use nested pages to organize everything relating to a topic and create a master page at the top level to act as a sort of ‘contents’ for what’s found below.

For example, if I was writing a piece about how to use Notion, I’d create a top-level page, then a document called ‘Draft #1’ inside of that and start writing there. As I collect references, create to-dos or other material, I create that below the page, since it’s all related to what I’m working on.

This practice offers focus, and organizes my space around what I’m working on, which hacks my process in order to hone in on the specific piece I’m working on, avoiding distraction while keeping references close at hand when needed. No context shifting is required, because I’m staying in one tool.

Your own preference for nesting will dictate how you organize Notion, but my one piece of advice is this: try to nest, and organize as soon as possible — it’s easier to organize later as your workspace grows.

Toggles and highlights

Sometimes you’ll find yourself needing less text or a way to draw attention to something, but it isn’t enough to deserve an entire page.

Toggle blocks are your secret weapon for keeping useful information right where you’re working, without switching between pages.

Basically, toggles do what they say and let you hide anything away beneath a sub-header, but while retaining them inline for later.

I use these all the time because they’re a great way to add reference information to a document without needing to see it all the time. This is especially useful, for example, when you need the outline for a story close at hand, but don’t want to stare at it the whole time you’re working on it.

To make a block collapsible using toggle blocks, just insert a new block by hovering in the left margin of your page then choose Toggle List from the dropdown. You’ll get a new, empty toggle that you can drag any amount of blocks into for collapsing.

I use these in a variety of ways: for comments and context, for references about a piece or just to keep the outline handy without seeing it all the time.

Toggle blocks basically give you instant clarity, and I’m a big advocate for using them liberally.

Highlights are great for the opposite: drawing more attention to something for remembering later or highlighting to a collaborator.

Like here on Medium, you can choose a block to be highlighted and make it stand out. Just select the section you wish to highlight and click the three-dot menu in the formatting bar that appears, then choose your favorite color.

The bigger picture

The sidebar, and the way in which your organize your Notion space, is a great way to get the bigger picture at a glance.

Once things are nested, you can easily see where you’re at, and jump between tasks, pieces or clients in general.

During the writing process itself I prefer to reduce distraction as much as possible, so I collape the sidebar and work with a minimal interface.

To do this, click the two arrows on the top left, near your workspace name, and it’ll tuck away for later — but you can still access the context of where you are at the top of your screen with the breadcrumb menu.

To get the sidebar back just hover near the left edge of the screen or click the hamburger menu on the top left.

External workflows

Collaboration

When I’m at the draft stage, I’ll invite one of my editors into the page to provide feedback with inline comments.

To collaborate you can let anyone into a Notion document , even if they don’t have a Notion account. Everyone has their own tool preferences, but Notion lets your collaborators sign in with a Google account, rather than making them sign up for Notion from scratch — a refreshing change of pace.

To share your document, hover near the top of Notion to reveal the share button, click that, then hit Invite a person to choose who you’ll share with and how much access they’ll receive. If you prefer they just jump in an edit, you can throw on public link sharing, which lets them immediately open it in the browser.

Collaborators can comment on your document, tag you and set reminders, just like in other tools. I’ve found inviting writing clients into a client space, and having various iterations of your draft there, to be a much more open process than I’m used to which has helped with actually writing the piece itself.

On the go

There’s an app for basically everything you care about, now that Notion’s available on Android.

You can use the entire feature set of Notion on mobile, on the web or on the Mac and Windows apps for editing or note-taking on the go. It’s great for quickly taking notes, correcting a mistake, or brainstorming an idea!

Portability and exports

When I’m done working and ready to publish, it’s just as flexible to get content out of Notion as it is to get it in — there aren’t any proprietary file formats here.

Generally, I export the page directly to Markdown or PDF from Notion and upload that into whatever CMS we’re publishing in (personally I use Jekyll, so this makes it super easy). For visual CMS’ like Wordpress, copy and paste works too.

Research, ideation and more

Ideation in one place

If you’re a writer you probably have a ton of ideas circling around in your head for a piece at any given time, and know that only some of them are going to make the cut. I’m constantly dreaming up ideas for pieces but tend to forget once the moment passes.

Writing these moments of inspiration down as soon as they pop up helps with this dramatically, so I’ve created a simple workflow for keeping the ideas I like around until I have time to write them, rather than a series incoherent series of notes that I never look at.

To do this, I use a combination of Notion’s clipping tools, columns and whatever other types of blocks take my fancy, like videos or other embeds if needed. Below, there’s an example of my ideation board in its current form, on a weekend.

In this ideas board, I just store whatever I’ve been inspired by, thinking about, or just things I would like to write about one day. Eventually, if they grow into an idea for a piece, like this one, I’ll drag them out into a new document, underneath the page I’m writing in, to clear away the clutter.

This board uses two types of block, combined Notion’s flexible column support. To get started, grab any block that you’ve created, then move it to the right until you see a little blue bar appear. Release your mouse when you’re happy, and you’ll have a nice fresh column.

Drag to the right!

You can do this as many times as you like — if it starts getting messy, flip the page over to a full width document by pressing the three dots on the top right of your page, then choosing full width.

If you’re adding rich content, like a webpage or image, you can create a nice scannable embed with the web bookmark block. Just hover on the left of your page, hit the plus icon and scroll until you find the web bookmark type, then paste your URL in.

A block for everything

Notion’s block-based layout system allows you to embed a wide array of rich media in one place.

Embed a Figma prototype you’re talking about, YouTube videos and attach PDFs to your documents — it all works.

There isn’t much to say here beyond that the core set will keep you happy for a long time and constantly surprises me with how many different types of media it supports.

Long-term storage

One of the biggest problems I’ve faced as a writer is how short-lived content tends to be. The internet feels like it’s forever, but the reality is that lots of great writing is lost to time — be it a publisher going out of business, a domain name expiring or just an inability to figure out where something lives five years later.

In my Notion workspace, I’ve now taken to storing both the original draft, and ultimate published piece for the long haul. When the piece is published online, I print it to PDF using Chrome’s printing features, then upload that into the client workspace for long-term storage — there’s a special attachment block for this.

I’ll also keep a raw text format version of the document in Notion by either copying the final product back into Notion, or just storing the final version in the same client workspace. Because you can always export from Notion in PDF or Markdown, this is a practical way to store these documents and not worry about what file format they’re in.

Notion’s roadmap has a web clipper on it, which would make this even easier, and I’m eagerly awaiting its release!

Task and project management