As you embark on your journey with Notion, it's essential to familiarise yourself with the platform's basics. In this chapter, we'll explore how to set up your workspace, navigate Notion's interface, and start working with some fundamental elements.
5.1 Setting up your workspace
A workspace in Notion is where all your pages, databases, and other content live. Think of it as your personal or team's space where everything related to your work or project is stored. To create a workspace, simply sign up on the Notion website, and upon confirmation, you'll be directed to your workspace.
5.2 Navigating the interface
Notion's interface is clean and minimalistic. On the left-hand side is the sidebar, which includes 'Quick Find', 'All Updates', 'Workspace', and 'Settings & Members'. The central part of the screen is your workspace, where you'll create and interact with your content.
5.3 Creating a New Page
To create a new page, click on the "+ New Page" button in the left sidebar, or press "/page" within an existing page. Each new page acts as a blank canvas for you to fill with text, images, embedded videos, links, and other types of blocks.
5.4 Working with Blocks
In Notion, everything you add to a page — whether it's text, image, to-do lists, or databases — is a block. You can move, nest, and format these blocks to organise your content.
5.5 Basic Formatting
You can format the blocks using the formatting toolbar that appears when you hover over a block. This allows you to adjust the text style (bold, italic, underline), colour, and background, add a link, mention a page or a person, add comments, and more.
5.6 Keyboard Shortcuts
Notion provides a variety of keyboard shortcuts to help you work faster. For example, typing "/" brings up a menu of all the different types of blocks you can add.
This chapter provides a broad overview to help you get started with Notion. In the next chapters, we'll delve deeper into more advanced features like databases, templates, project management, and APIs.