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College life is nuts. We juggle the hardest classes we’ve ever taken with time-intensive extracurriculars, wild nights out, career crises, romantic drama, interpersonal tea, existentialism, and more.

How do we make sure we don’t go insane?

Notion is where I’ve decided to work through the torrential tempest of college crises. It’s lightweight, centralized, easy to organize, and the ideal blank canvas for my whirlwind thoughts.

Here’s my reflection setup & my argument for why Notion might just be your best friend when college life rocks the boat 🙂

My beliefs about coping

Philosophies I hold about reflection that guide my systems (so please take these with a grain of salt!):

• Writing things down is one of the fastest ways to draw reason & self-kindness from intense emotion. Translating from abstract thought to concrete language requires one to confront gaps in her frenzied logic. It’s also incredibly **cathartic to rant-type into the void 🤡
• The core of reflection, processing, and creative reframing takes place in your head. Digital tools can catalyze (but not replace) this.
  • Importantly, written reflections and processing don’t have to be perfect—in fact, they shouldn’t be. The messier your initial written thoughts, the rawer they are, and the easier it is to then be honest with yourself.
• Your reflection & processing systems shouldn’t be overly-complex! The simpler your systems, the easier to focus on your insights, especially for immediate thoughts.
• Both regular and irregular check-in cadences are critical. Tracking your responses to the same prompts over time helps concretize growth, but life’s too unpredictable—especially in college!—to only reflect every [x] period of time.

Reflecting in Notion

There are 3 systems I use to process and reflect in Notion.

They’re organized below in order of “scale” of life significance needed to trigger their usage.

In-the-moment entries

<aside> 📌 Notion feature: Tagged databases.

Purpose: Irregular, informal, in-the-moment processing whenever needed.

</aside>

I often found myself needing to dump my immediate, raging thoughts somewhere before reaching out to friends for advice or moving on with my day.

My Notion database called “Surfaced Thought” captures that exactly.

Liya’s journaling database. Super easy to add tags for emotions. Date automatically recorded. In my “Musings, Brain Bloom” database

• I hit the “New” button whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed, devastated, ridiculously happy, or even just like writing something down. It instantly creates a new page in the database (date-tracked!), where I start writing & ranting away.
• I track common emotions I feel (”++” and “--” for “positive”/”negative” feelings) with colored tags. Naming them helps me process them in the moment, and I can get a bird’s eye view of how I’ve been feeling recently when I scroll down the database.
• Dates are automatically tracked and shown in the database whenever you start a new entry.
• You can also create templates for new entries: I didn’t (since mine are usually irregular & chaotic, as is my mind) but you’re free to with the dropdown arrow to the right of the blue “New” button.

<aside> 📗 Here’s a template for surfaced thoughts:

Surfaced Thought

</aside>

iPhone access to entries

Like most of us, I’m also chronically on my iPhone: instant mobile access to this database has saved my life on multiple occasions. Thankfully, Apple has a Notion widget for your home screen! (See screen recording and screenshot below.)

Tapping on the “Surfaced Thought” row in the widget directly opens the database, where a single click on the “New” button starts a new entry.

Video on how to add the Notion widget to your iPhone

Video on how to add the Notion widget to your iPhone

Liya’s iPhone widget for immediate access. Can click directly into Surfaced Thought to journal from your phone anytime!

Semi-annuals

<aside> 📌 Notion feature: Template buttons!

Purpose: Regular, templated, life-level check-ins every 6 months.

</aside>

After a year in school, I found myself craving a more regular check-in cadence. I, my role models, and my values matured rapidly over the course of college: keeping track of how my life model has evolved provided staggering perspective on I am today.

My semi-annual reflections also line up well with semester ends/beginnings! Added bonus if you have a summer birthday (mine’s July 27) or a deep winter one: it’s a lovely way to celebrate yearly growth!

A snapshot of my simple semi-annual reflection database.

The questions I ask myself every 6 months!

Inside the template button, I made a simple list of questions to ask myself regularly. Mine are pretty headass (and pulled from a Julie Zhou Twitter thread I can no longer find): see the screenshot on the right, above. You can do whatever you want!

<aside> 📗 Here’s a template for semi-annuals:

Semi-Annuals

</aside>

Bigger retrospectives

<aside> 📌 Notion feature: Just pages! :) And whatever else floats your ⛵ || 🐐

Purpose: Irregular, un-templated, high-level retrospectives after big events.

</aside>

Sometimes, mans just needs a huge retrospective—and a huger, blank page on which to execute it. I’ve done retrospectives after disappointments in academics or career, big falling outs or breakups, the ends of looong years/semesters/jobs, and particularly tumultuous eras of my life.

I give each big retrospective its own page, organized by year (see leftmost screenshot below). Usually, I organize my thoughts with #headers so I can use the Table of contents feature (/ + type table of contents) to get a bird’s eye view of each page. (See rightmost screenshot below!)

For me, these “retros” provide a space in which to dig into the whys, the meta reflections, the learnings, and the ways these significant life events shape you. Additionally, looking at your Retros page is always a reminder that if you made it through those days, you can make it through these :)

Certain titles redacted for privacy :)

An example table of contents from one semester reflection

<aside> 📗 Here’s a template for retros:

Retros

</aside>

Conclusion

Processing life in college can feel insurmountable. No one tool solves stress, anxiety, or the slurry of unexpected events or obstacles you might struggle with, nor are digital tools replacements for the right mental health treatment.

But tools like Notion can alleviate the pressure. I’ve found that “Surface Thought” grounds my runaway thoughts and stops negative feedback loops. “Semi-annuals” keep me self-aware while letting me trace the evolution of my values over time. “Retros” makes space for self-confrontation and healing after tumultuous periods of your life (or of just college & colleging).

Everything in this article is meant to be taken as just an example, and all (again) with a grain of salt. I hope to have convinced you though, dear student, that flexible reflection systems are (1) incredibly easy to build on Notion, and (2) can be used by anyone to create those extra few moments to breathe, no matter how crazy college gets.

Thanks for reading! Take care of yourself, and don’t forget to drink water :)