In this article:
My first year of college was hard (I’m currently in my second year). Not only was I moving away from home and living on my own with a roommate, I had a hard time keeping my academic self organized. I quickly learned that not all my classes utilized Canvas, so I couldn’t just use the TikTok life hack to sync my assignment deadlines with my Google Calendar. I not only wanted one place to keep track of my assignment deadlines, but I also wanted to keep track of my progress toward that assignment. I’ve been a diehard Notion fanboy for the past couple of years, so I knew that Notion had a solution to my problem.
Last year was the first year I started using Notion for school. I previously used it for my personal life and for work. My setup for school is a lot — I have a “Home” page with a bunch of useful buttons, blocks, and, most importantly, my to-do list and assignment tracker. For this article, I’ll specifically talk about my setup for my to-do list and assignment tracker. I’ll also include a template. 😉
Depending on the person you talk to, they might have their to-do list on the notes app on their phone, the reminders app on their phone, their Google Calendar, a spreadsheet, or on Notion. I personally have mine on Notion. 😊 Even within Notion, there are multiple ways you can build your to-do list — it can be a checkbox list of things to do, or it can be set up within a database — that’s how mine is set up!
Keep in mind that depending on the person and their workflow/way they work, they might set up their to-do list differently. I personally love boards and tables, so I leverage Notion’s database features and add those views respectively.
I’ve seen people track their assignments in a spreadsheet, Notion is how I like to do it. 😎 My assignment tracker specifically links with my to-do list so I can keep track of the progress of the assignment — you can do this using relations!
to-do list
Create a new database using the /database command.
Include the following properties:
Great! You have the properties of your database setup — you’re halfway there. Now, you should create the views you like. Like I said, I love boards and tables, so I have those views. I recently got into the week view of the calendar view, so I use that, too!
Make sure you rearrange the columns of your table or the order the different properties show up on your board to your liking! I also have views by week. You can easily do that with filters.
Create filters and sorts for your to-do list.
🎉 Congrats! You have your to-do list set up! Now, whenever you edit a database item and set its status to “Done,” it’ll no longer show in your existing view, but you can still reference it in the future!
You can also customize multiple views to your liking and preference, and it’ll all live within the same database 😊
Create a new database using the /database command.
Include the following properties:
Perfect! You’ve finished the hard part now — it’s time to customize your views to the ones you like. My preference for this is a table view.
I have multiple views: one for my unfinished assignments, other views for specific classes, and an “All” view in case I need to refer back to any old assignments.
Just like before, filters and sorts are next!
You’re done! Now, when you create an assignment in your database, you’ll enter the assignment it’s for (or don’t if it’s a task not related to any particular assignment).
See my GIF below:
This is my process when creating new tasks related to a specific assignment
This is what the assignment looks like on the assignment tracker
Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.