The traditional agenda can have the days numbered. Some want to keep opening their notebook and write down all the notes, resolutions or tasks for the next few days. But reality is stubborn and many prefer to use one of the many existing applications. Google Keep, OptimizeMe, Asana or Pocket need little presentation, where we can take notes or save any internet link that has been interesting to us. They all have something in common: making our lives easier and improving our productivity.
Notion goes one step further. This cross-platform task organizer is almost an "extension of your mind", describes Elena Madrigal, a systems designer who, since last year, has been creating templates with Notion so that her clients can have a "personalized digital agenda".
This tool, which can be used free of charge as of this week, notes, stores, orders and filters the information to be more productive and decisive. Everything is reflected in its customizable templates. And there is a thriving internet business around this app. More and more people are dedicated to generating Notion templates. In the US, the developers of these pages have earned millions of dollars. In Spain, the business is also important, although it does not reach those economic returns.
The Notion app is available for tablets, mobiles and computers. It is free, one of its strong points, although there is also a payment method to access the most advanced functions. There are templates for almost all tastes and companies: product roadmap, meeting notes, vacation planning, professional growth or people, habit tracker, company, personal planning, pending books or series, recipes or tasks done .
But the possibilities of Notion are almost endless. And we can design the template in our image and likeness, although sometimes companies or users turn to professionals like Elena Madrigal. An advanced level. There is a whole business around templates.
“In the end, Notion has democratized tool building. Now anyone with a bit of concern and desire can build solutions for their day-to-day life on it and sell them or even give them away to their audience. If you add to this that it is increasingly easier to reach more people through social networks and then offer these people the possibility of paying through platforms that make it very easy to sell products and services, the boom is a little inevitable”, explains Madrigal.
She gives an example of one of her most precious designs: the Productivity, Creation and Knowledge Management system, "a kind of extension of your mind into which you can pour all those ideas you have on a day-to-day basis, or the information you it comes to you through books, articles or emails”.
Beyond our borders, the Notion template business is even bigger. Thomas Frank, a youtuber specializing in productivity, explained through his Twitter account that he and his team had made a million dollars selling two Notion templates designed by themselves in just one year. Specifically, he singled out two: Creator's Companion, a complete project planning/management system for YouTubers and content creators; and Ultimate Brain, an all-in-one productivity system.
Another case is that of Easlo, a 20-year-old who, thanks to the design of these templates, earned two hundred thousand dollars last year alone, as he explained in a tweet.
In our country, it is not so easy to reach these figures: "In general, we are much less used to paying for things we find on the Internet (and this market moves 100% on the Internet, specifically through social networks since it is as most of the people who make templates make themselves known), and more when we believe that we can have them for free or make them ourselves".
"Selling something 'cold door' here, for now, takes much more work than doing it in the US," Madrigal acknowledges. In his opinion, he sees it as difficult for our country "to have many success stories of people who can dedicate themselves exclusively to to the sale of templates in Notion without any other additional source of income”.
Notion templates are templates that are built from scratch. Fully customizable. That is the secret of his success. “Every time you install an application, you have to adapt to it. Instead, these systems have a plug and play factor, which means that you can add and remove components to that system as you like, so that you can end up having a complete Operating System adapted 100% to your life (your habits, your hobbies, your finances...) or your business (objectives, strategy, projects...)”, continues the designer.
The possibilities of this application are almost endless. In this cross-platform task organizer you can create lists, notes, tasks, expense sheets, databases, tables and much more. It also has the option of adding navigation filters to find everything quickly, because the most normal thing is that we do not find the web page or the product that we have been looking at five minutes ago. Too much information on our device. And too much dispersion around us.
Notion knows that there are many people interested in putting some order in their routine and being more productive once and for all. “Do you want a to-do list? A product roadmap? A design repository? Now they are all in one place. You can even customize your own workspace with dozens of LEGO-style building blocks. Solve your problems in your own way, limited only by your imagination, ”he assures on his website.
“This is what makes it so attractive to people who want to use it as a work tool, because you can have something customized for the specific needs of your business (or those of an entire organization). Also for the people who are dedicated to designing these spaces, because it allows us to create functionality in pages and documents and build really complex things without the need to know code”, concludes Madrigal.
