notion templates for thesis

• Sep 29, 2020
• 10 min read

How I Use Notion as a PhD Student (With Template)

Updated: Dec 12, 2023

For the most up-to-date version of this template, click the button to head to my new website

Or check out my other PhD template – the Ultimate PhD Notion Template

Here's the YouTube video I made about this Notion setup:

I discovered Notion about a month ago, and it has honestly changed my life, both at my PhD and personally. If you don't know what Notion is, it's self-described as an "all-in-one workspace", but is basically a program / app where you create databases and pages to store any and all kinds of information. Personally, I use it to track the books I'm reading, my recipes, and I've even set up my Christmas planning in there. I also use it for organising my Instagram and blog, and keeping track of my overall career progress.

But most importantly, I now use Notion on a daily basis for my PhD. So if you're interested in how I use Notion in my PhD, then keep on reading! And if you're just interested in my template at the end, then scroll down to the bottom where I'll leave a link to it.

(For the purposes of this post I'm going to talk you through the PhD template I made instead of my own actual PhD pages, as they contain unpublished information and cannot actually be shared. However, it's important that you know they are identical to each other, just the template has the sensitive information removed!)

In a PhD, there is a lot to keep track of. Things to do and things you've done, papers to read and papers to write up. So it helps to have a space to keep track of all these things. I originally had a million and one excel spreadsheets and word documents, but once I discovered Notion, I realised how much easier it was to have it all stored in the one place! And one of the best things about Notion is it's free for students!

I start my overarching PhD page with a header of a brain, because as you all probably know, I'm studying neuroscience. Then my little emoji of choice for the page is a graduation cap. One of the things I love about Notion is the widespread use of emojis, where every page can be assigned an emoji. I then have a quote about doing a PhD which I found to be quite funny, alongside a countdown to my PhD submission date. I made this countdown using this website I found called Indify, which specialises in making free Notion widgets that you can embed into your page. I've left my countdown in the template, but if you want to use this template for yourself, you can either remove the countdown entirely, or go to Indify and create your own!

As you scroll down, I have my list of different pages, which I'll go through with you all in just a moment. But they basically cover everything you need to know or keep track of.

Scrolling down further, you reach my tasks planner. I use Google Calendar for my overall diary but I do like to just have a space for planning out my PhD tasks. First up on my tasks section is the Calendar View, where I can see everything laid out for each day. For illustrative purposes, I've put in a few example tasks that I may need to do for my PhD in the month of September so you can see what it would look like.

Next we have the "Task Inbox", which was inspired by a YouTube video I watched on creating a "Getting Things Done" (GTD) Dashboard! I did modify this a little bit from the video, but if you're interested in the original source of the idea, here's the link!

But basically, when you need to add a new task in, you click for a new item in the inbox. You then enter all the information you need in, including the due date and whether it's a high priority task, and once you assign it to a specific project in the last column, it disappears from the inbox. You won't then see that task again unless you look forward on the calendar or unless it's due that week in which case it'll show up in the "Tasks Due This Week" table.

I've added some example tasks to the week to show what it may look like when you have some tasks in your "Tasks Due This Week" section. Notice "random task 2" is missing? That's because I've ticked it as "Done", at which point it automatically removes it from the table. That way, I only see my to do list for the week with items that haven't been done yet!

At the very bottom of this front page, is a link to the master list page for the tasks, in case you want to view all the tasks you've created, past, present and future.

And that just about covers my main dashboard for my PhD template! Now onto the individual specific pages from further up the page.

First up we have "Meetings / Seminar Notes". This is a pretty self explanatory one. Every time I have an important meeting, I type up my meeting notes that I took on my iPad into Notion. I can then tag for specific meetings, the meeting date and who was in attendance. This last feature is particularly great, because I could then say for example filter for all meetings where my supervisor was or was not present.

If you go into each meeting's page, you can then take or type up your notes. I've created a few different templates for different types of meetings / seminars, but you can take this one step further. If you know a particular set of people are always in your team meeting for example, you can edit the "Team Meeting" template so that it automatically lists those people as being in attendance when you use that template.

I also need to shout out to Jacqueline Beaulieu's Youtube channel , which has talked about using Notion as a student multiple times. In particular, I want to mention the video I've linked below, which was the genius behind some of the templates in this part of my PhD workspace.

The next page is pretty self-explanatory too, in that it's where I store my various protocols. As scientists, we can use a lot of different techniques, and it's easy to lose track of the protocols for it. So I use this section to make a page per protocol, and write it up so I have them stored in one place!

Next up is the "New Papers to Read" page. I use this as a dashboard to put in new papers that have come out that I'm yet to read but need to read. I've left in two papers from my HUGE reading list, one research and one review, so that you can see what it would look like with papers inputted in. At the very end of the table is a spot for the URL, so you can easily link, but you could also make a file heading and upload the PDF instead so you already have that ready to go for later.

Following on from this is a "Publication Record" page to store all of your publications. Simply write up each citation and embed the papers beneath, and voilà , you have an easy place to find all the papers you've published! This may seem like overkill, but you don't know how many times I've searched for my own publications in Google Scholar because I needed to find something out from them...

Next is the "Thesis Figures Tracker". This might be my favourite page of the whole thing! Basically, I use this page to keep track of my figures in my thesis within each chapter. The headings for this table are: "Finished?", "Chapter", "Figure Title", "Image" (which is basically a place to upload your figure), "Data or Schematic?", "Created on?", "Date Started", "Date Completed", "Based on..." (for if you've based your figure on another papers and need to cite), "Figure Legend" (yes/no), "Scale Bar" (yes/no), and "Comments". This may sound a lot, but it really helps you keep track of what stage your figures are up to.

But the pièce de résistance is when you view the figures tracker in "Board View" rather than "Table View". This allows you to actually visualise all of your figures, as the figure images you upload become the display pictures, and you can see all the information you need beneath!

The last main page is "Literature Notes", which is exactly what it sounds like, a place to make notes on the literature. I've put in an example article so you can see what it looks like, but basically the headers are "Title", "Authors", "Year", "Journal", "Type of Article", "In vitro or in vivo", "Species", "Tissue", and "File" (so you can upload the PDF if you want to).

If you actually go into the article's page, there is a template to use, with headers for summarising the paper, noting what the key findings were, and writing down your critiques of the paper. Overall, this part of the template is great for new PhD students, but if you're already established and have written the bulk of your lit review, it may not be of much use!

Finally, we have the pages for specific papers. These are all the same as each other, so I'll just go through one of them.

Within each paper, you have a space to write the paper title, and the core aims / hypotheses. Then there are two pages within, a figures tracker and an experiments tracker.

The figures tracker is much the same as the thesis figures tracker, with the same headings and the same "Board View" effect option. This is just a way for you to keep track of the figures for each paper, so that you don't lose track.

Last but not least is the experiments tracker, which is useful for keeping track of experiments. You can go into each experiment's page and write down the information about the experiment you need, such as antibody concentrations or suppliers / manufacturers. Then when you come to write up the paper, you have all that information at hand.

My favourite thing to do is view this database in "Board View" again, so that I can just glance at it and see which experiments are at which stage in the experimental process. I've made the tags so they're applicable to my immunohistochemistry experiments, but you could change them to be whatever you need them to be!

UPDATE 16/1/21

I've now added a "word count" page to my Notion template! It's really easy to use, and it's just a way to keep yourself accountable for how much writing you've achieved each day. You can find it under the main "pages" section on the template, and it's really simple to fill out. My goal is to write 500 words a day over the rest of my PhD, as I'm now in my final year and need to be making daily progress on writing up.

In the template, I've added some example days of writing so you can see how to use the template. Basically, you put the word count for each of your papers / chapters in for each day. For example, on day 1 you had only written 100 words of your first PhD paper, but on day 2 you had a total word count of 200. Don't add in these columns the amount of words you wrote each day, just the total word count you can see for each document.

Then, at the end of the table, it will tally up your total word count across all your documents. In the next column, just write in what the word count was the day before, and then in the next column it will automatically calculate how much you've written specifically that day. Since my goal is to write 500 words a day, I've included a formula checkbox that ticks itself when I've hit my writing target.

It's important to note however that you can change that word goal if you'd like. Just go in to edit the formula, and change the "500" value to be whatever you'd like your word goal to be. Then it'll automatically tick the box when you've hit your daily target!

UPDATE 1/3/22

I've now also added two professional development pages to my Notion template - "Opportunities" and "Professional Contacts"! These pages are there to simply make your life easier when trying to optimise your CV and network connections ready for applying for work when you graduate from your postgraduate degree. Let's start by looking at the "Opportunities" page...

This page is great because it is a place for you to store all professional opportunities you encounter. I've made it to encompass volunteering and internships, although you can edit the tags to include any other opportunity types that are applicable. The opportunities are grouped into two sections, "Apply Now" and "Future Opportunity". This means that not only do you have somewhere to store opportunities that you want to actively apply for, but if you also stumble across something that would be great maybe more towards the end of your degree that you don't want to forget about, then that can also be housed here!

Inside each page, you can then also include any extra things you need to know, such as any eligibility requirements or anything you may need to apply for the opportunity, eg. your resume, cover letter, academic transcripts, etc. There is also a place to directly link to where the opportunity is being advertised, as well as attach a relevant file, eg. an advertising flyer.

The other new page in this template is the "Professional Contacts" page. This is the place to collect and store information about all of the important professional contacts you meet during your studies and beyond. This includes their name, their association, their field of work, their relationship to you, and two emails (in case you have both a professional and a personal email for certain people). There is also a checkbox that you can tick if you have connected with them on LinkedIn, as well as a checkbox that you can tick if you believe they would make a good referee for you on future job applications. Finally, there's a place to record the last date you contacted each person to ensure you don't leave it too long before reaching out, as well as a place to write a brief update from the last time you spoke.

So that's it for my Notion PhD Dashboard. I hope that me stepping through my Notion was of some use to you all! If you have any questions, or any improvements you want to suggest, definitely reach out to me! I'm always happy to talk all things Notion.

And now for the moment you've all been waiting for, the template download! When you access the template, just go to the top right hand corner and click "Duplicate" to copy it into your own Notion account!

To access the most up-to-date version of this template, head over to my new website at:

2 bình luận

Amazing explanation of Notion and such a helpful template to get me started. Thanks so much, Lily. ☺️

Thank you sooooo much for this. I am just starting my PhD and this is just brilliant. Well done you and thank you again.

Doing a literature review using digital tools (with Notion template)

I’ve recently revamped my literature review workflow since discovering Notion . Notion is an organization application that allows you to make various pages and databases. It’s kind of like your own personal wiki- you can link your pages and embed databases into another page, adding filters and sorting them using user-set properties. The databases are what I use the most. I’ve essentially transferred all of my excel sheets into Notion databases and find it much easier to filter and sort things now. In this post, I’ll go through how I do my literature review and share a Notion template that you can use.

I like to organize my literature review using various literature review tools along with two relational Notion databases: a ‘literature tracker’ and a ‘literature notes’ matrix. You can see a flow chart of my literature review process below (it’s inspired by this post by Jenn’s Studious Life and the three pass method for reading papers which I wrote about last week in this post ):

As you can see, this process involves a couple of decision points which helps me focus on the most important papers. This is an iterative process that keeps me up to date on relevant research in my field as I am getting new paper alerts in my inbox most days. I used this method quite successfully to write the literature review for my confirmation report and regularly add to it for the expanded version that will become part of my PhD thesis. In this post, I’ll break down how this works for me and how I implement my Notion databases to synthesise the literature I read into a coherent argument.

You can click on the links below to navigate to a particular section of this article:

The literature search

The literature tracker, the literature synthesis matrix, writing your literature review, iterating your literature review, my literature review notion template, some useful resources.

This is always the first step in building your literature review. There are plenty of resources online all about how to start with your search- I find a mixture of database search tools works for me.

The first thing to do when starting your literature review is to identify some keywords to use in your initial searches. It might be worth chatting to your supervisor to make a list of these and then add or remove terms to it as you go down different research routes. You can use keyword searches relevant to your research questions as well tools that find ‘similar’ papers and look at citation links. I also find that just looking through the bibliographies of literature in your field and seeing which papers are regularly cited gives you a good idea of the core papers in your area (you’ll start recognising the key ones after a while). Another method for finding literature is the snowballing method which is particularly useful for conducting a systematic review.

Here are some digital tools I use to help me find literature relevant to my research questions:

Library building and suggestions

Mendeley was my research management tool of choice prior to when I started using Notion to organize all of my literature and create my synthesis matrix. I still use Mendeley as a library just in case anything happens to my Notion. It’s easy to add new papers to your library using the browser extension with just one click. I like that Mendeley allows you to share your folders with colleagues and that I can export bib.tex files straight from my library into overleaf documents where I’m writing up papers and my thesis. You do need to make sure that all of the details are correct before you export the bib.tex files though as this is taken straight from the information plane. I also like to use the tag function in Mendeley to add more specific identifiers than my folders.

Mendeley is also useful for finding literature related to those in your library- I’ve found quite a few interesting papers through the email updates they send out each week with ‘suggested papers’. You can also browse these suggestions from within Mendeley and use its interface to do initial keyword searches. The key is to just scan the titles and then decide whether it’s worth your time reading the abstract and then the rest of it. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of papers being published every day so being picky in what you read is important (and something I need to work on more!).

Some similar tools that allow you to build a library and get literature recommendations include Zotero , Researcher , Academia , and ResearchGate . It’s up to you which one you use for your own purposes. One big factor for me when choosing Mendeley was that my supervisor and colleagues use it so it makes it much easier to share libraries with them, so maybe ask your colleagues what they use before settling on one.

Literature databases and keyword alerts

There are a variety of databases out there for finding literature. My go-to is Web of Science as it shows you citation data and has a nice interface. I used this to begin my initial literature search using my keywords.

The other thing you can do with these kinds of tools is set up email alerts to get a list of recent work that has just been published with any keywords you set. These alerts are usually where I find papers to read during journal club with my supervisor. You can customize these emails to what suits you- mine are set to the top 10 most relevant new papers for each keyword weekly and I track around 5 words/phrases. This allows me to stay on top of the most recent literature in my field- I have alerts set up on a variety of services to ensure that I don’t miss anything crucial (and alerts from the ArXiv mean I see preprints too). Again, you need to be picky about what you read from these to ensure that they are very relevant to your research. At this stage, it’s important to spend as little time as possible scanning titles as this can easily become a time suck.

Some of the other tools I have keyword (and author) email alerts set up on are: Scopus , Google Scholar , Dimensions , and ArXiv alerts . I set 10 minutes maximum aside per day to scan through any new email alerts and save anything relevant to me into my literature tracker (which I’ll come to more later).

Literature mapping tools

There are loads of these kinds of tools out there. Literature mapping can be helpful for finding what the seminal papers are in your field and seeing how literature connects. It’s like a huge web and I find these visual interfaces make it much easier to get my head around the relationships between papers. I use two of these tools during the literature search phase of the flowchart: Citation Gecko and Connected Papers .

Citation Gecko builds you a citation tree using ‘seed papers’. You can import these from various reference management software (like Mendeley), bib.tex files or manually search for papers. This is particularly useful if your supervisor has provided you with some core papers to start off with, or you can use the key papers you identified through scanning the bibliographies of literature you read. My project is split into fairly clear ‘subprojects’ so these tools help me see connections between the various things I’m working on (or a lack of them which is good in some ways as it shows I’ve found a clear research gap!).

You can switch between different views and add connecting papers as new seed papers to expand your network. I use this tool from time to time with various different papers associated with my subprojects. It’s helped me make sure I haven’t missed any key papers when doing my literature review and I’ve found it to be fairly accurate, although sometimes more recent papers don’t have any citation data on it so that’s something to bear in mind.

Connected Papers uses a ‘similarity’ algorithm to show paper relationships. This isn’t a citation tree like Citation Gecko but it does also give you prior and derivative works if you want to look at them. All you do is put one of your key papers into the search box and ‘build a graph’. It will then show you related papers, including those which don’t have direct citation links to the key paper. I think this is great for ensuring that you’re not staying inside an insular bubble of the people who all cite each other. It also allows me to see some of the research which is perhaps a bit more tangential to my project and get an overview of where my work sits within the field more broadly.

I like Connected Paper’s key for the generated tree and that it shows where related papers connect between themselves. Again, it’s helpful for ensuring that you haven’t missed a really important work when compiling your literature review and doesn’t just rely on citation links between papers.

This is where I record the details of any paper I come across that I think might be relevant to my PhD. In some ways, it’s very similar to Mendeley but it’s a version that sits within Notion so I have some more customised filtering categories set up, like my ‘status’ field where I track which pass I am on.

Here’s what my literature tracker looks like:

The beauty of Notion is that you can decide which properties you want to record in your database and customize it to your needs. You can sort and filter using these properties including making nested filters and using multiple filters at once. This makes it really easy to find what you’re looking for. For example, say I’m doing my literature review for my ‘FIB etching’ subproject and want to see all of the papers that I marked as relevant to my PhD but haven’t started reading yet. All I need to do is add a couple of filters:

And it filters everything so that I’m just looking at the papers I want to check out. It’s this flexibility that I think really gives Notion the edge when it comes to my literature review process.

The other thing I really like about using Notion rather than excel is that I can add different database views. I especially like using the kanban board view to see where I’m at with my reading workflow:

When I add something to the literature tracker database, I scan the abstract for keywords to add and categorize it in terms of relevant topics. It’s essentially the first pass of the paper, so that involves reading the title, abstract, introduction, section headings, conclusions, and checking the references for anything you recognise. After this is done, I decide whether it’s relevant enough to my PhD to proceed to do a second pass of the paper, at which point I will progress to populating my literature notes database.

Once I’ve decided that I want to do a second pass on a paper, I then add it to the ‘literature notes’ database. This is part of the beauty of Notion: relational databases. I have ‘rollup’ properties set in the literature notes database which shows all of the things I added during my first pass and allows me to filter the matrix using them. You can watch the video below to see exactly how to add a new paper to the ‘notes’ database from the ‘tracker’ database:

During the second pass, I populate the new fields in the ‘notes’ database. These are:

Summary | Objective of study | Key Results | Theory | Materials | Methods | Conclusions | Future work suggested | Critiques | Key connected papers.

I also have various themes/questions/ideas as properties which I add a few notes on for each relevant paper. I then complete my ‘questions for critical engagement’ which are on the entry’s ‘Notes’ page and are stored in the ‘Article Template’. If you want to read more about this process, check out my ‘how to read a scientific paper’ post .

By, doing this I create a synthesis matrix where I can see a breakdown of the key aspects of each paper and can scan down a column to get an overview of all of the papers I have read. For example, if I wanted to see all of the papers about Quantum Point Contacts to get an idea of what previous work has been done so that I can identify my research gap, I can filter using the tag property and can then see the notes I wrote for each entry, broken down by section. I also have tags for my research questions or themes, materials used, experimental techniques, fabrication techniques, and anything else that comes to mind really! The more tags I have for a paper, the easier it is to filter when I want to find a specific thing.

The other property I have included in the literature notes database is ‘Key connected papers’. This is a relation but is within the database itself. So it means that I can link to the page of other papers in the literature matrix. I’ve found this to be useful for connecting to what I call ‘core’ papers. I can also filter using this property, allowing me to see my notes on all of the papers I’ve read that are related to a certain ‘core’ paper. This helps with synthesising all of the information and forming my argument.

For those papers most relevant to my research (the ‘core’ papers) I’ll also do a third pass which involves reimplementing the paper in my own words. This is quite a time-consuming task so not many papers reach this stage, but those which I have done a third pass on are the ones I know really well. My hope is that this will stand me in good stead for my viva. This process also helps me refine my research questions further as I gain a deeper understanding of the field.

I find that writing up a review is extremely intimidating, but having the literature matrix makes this process that bit easier. I won’t go into too many details as there are already loads of resources out there going into the details of writing up a review, but here’s a brief overview of my own process:

Identify your research themes

Using your literature matrix, review each research theme or question and decide which ones you are going to focus on. These will form the different sections of your literature review and help you write your thesis statement(s). You can also think about how your questions link to ensure that you’re telling a coherent story with your review.

Choose and summarize literature related to each theme

For each section, gather up the most important related literature and summarize the key points of each source. A good literature review doesn’t need to cover all the literature out there, just the most significant sources. I try to stick to around 10 or fewer key sources per section.

Critical evaluation of sources

This is where you utilize the ‘questions for critical engagement’. Make sure you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the studies you’re writing about. By doing this, you can establish where our knowledge is lacking which will come in helpful later when establishing a research gap.

Analyse each source in relation to other literature

Try to make sure that you are telling a coherent story by linking between your sources. You can go back to the literature matrix here and use it to group similar studies to compare and contrast them. You should also discuss the relevance of the source’s findings in relation to the broader field and core papers.

Situate your research in a research gap

This is where you justify your own research. Using what you have laid out in the rest of the review, show that there is a research gap that you plan to fill and explain how you are going to do that. This should mean that your thesis flows nicely into the next section where you’ll cover the materials and methods you used in your research project.

In some ways, a literature review never really ends. As you can see in the flowchart at the beginning of this post, I regularly update and revise my literature review as well as refining my research questions. At this point in my PhD, I think that most of my research questions are quite well defined, so I’m mostly just adding any newly published work into my review. I don’t spend much time reading literature at the moment but I’m sure I’ll return to it more regularly when I’m in the write-up phase of my PhD. There is a balance to be had between reading and writing for your literature review and actually getting on with your own research!

Here’s the link to my Notion Literature Review Template . You can duplicate it and adapt it however you want, but this should save you some time setting up the initial databases if you’d like to use my method for organizing your own literature review.

Here are some resources on how to do a literature review that I’ve found useful during my PhD:

• The Literature Review: Step-by-Step Guide for Students
• 3 Steps to Save You From Drowning in Your Literature Review
• How to write a literature review
• How to become a literature searching ninja
• Mind the gap
• 7 Secrets to Write a PhD Literature Review The Right Way

If you like my work, I’d love your support!

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11 thoughts on “Doing a literature review using digital tools (with Notion template)”

Thank you so much for your insight and structured process. This will help me a lot kicking off my Master Thesis.

The perfect method to organize the literature that I have read and will read in the future. I am so glad to have found your website, this will save me from thrashing around in the swamp of literature. I was already feeling the limits of my memory when I was doing my master thesis and this will be so helpful during my PhD.

Thank you so much for this detailed post! Lily 🙂

Thank you very much for this. I’m doing my undergrad atm and reading a lot of papers. This seems like an excellent way of tracking everything.

Thank you, you made my beginning less stressful. I like your system and i helped me a lot. I have one question (more might come later), What do you mean by " journal club with my supervisor."

This piece is really really helpful! I started from this one and went through the rest blog writings. I agree on many points with Daisy. I had an unhappy experience of PhD two years ago and now just started a new one in another country. I will take it as an adventure and enjoy it.

This is an AMAZING template. I've found this so helpful for my own workflow. Thank you so much!

I found this post really helpful. Thank you.

thank you very much!

Hi! Thank you very much for posting this guide and sharing your notion template! I do have a question—do you manually enter the references into Notion, or is there any way to speed up the process? Ta x

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Notion for Academic Research & Note-Taking

I have to write a literature review for my master’s thesis. When I wanted to start, I didn’t know how to create a list of scientific papers to read and how to manage this growing list of literature. How do I keep track of all open tabs on my browser? How to find a paper X which used such a method? How to order and classify scientific papers?

There are Mendeley and Zotero , two well-known tools for saving articles and generating bibliographies, but these are only useful for keeping a list of papers. There is little customization possible at the folder or tag level. In any case, they never met my needs. Zotero only serves me as a bank of scientific articles, nothing more.

If you want to build yourself a real list of scientific articles classified according to your needs, as in the image below, continue reading this article to discover my method!

Why use Notion for academic research?

I was looking for a tool that would allow me to create my own fields to filter out articles that I found during my literature search.

For example:

• Rating to say how interesting the article is for my research
• Reading priority
• The main subject
• Reading status: to read/read

What sets Notion apart from all competitors is that this note-taking tool offers the possibility of personalizing everything from A to Z, which allowed me to customize the tool exactly for my needs and what I needed for my literature review.

Of course, the main disadvantage of Notion is that since it is a very customizable tool, the learning curve is quite steep: it is difficult to understand how Notion works when you start.

I started using Notion with the current project I’m going to explain in this blog post, so if you have never used Notion before, you should be able to get started with this project!

Related | 14 Ways to Get Motivation to Study NOW!

How to use notion to manage literature for graduate students, first steps on notion & creating the database.

Start by creating an account on Notion . From the left menu, create a new page. Enter a title, and you can also choose an icon to represent the page! Then, select “Table” under “Database” to create a new database to start entering your scientific papers.

Now that the database is created, we need to fill it up! To do so, I used the Google Chrome extension from Notion . 

Add scientific papers with the Notion Chrome Extension

When I’m on the website with the paper or PDF, I click on Notion’s Chrome extension and then select the database I want to add the new article. That’s it! The article is then automatically added to the database with a direct link to the web page.

Then, you can delete the 3 empty rows that were entered in the database automatically.

So, after adding a few papers, you get a database in which ALL of your papers are referenced, regardless of their research subject or methodology. Later, we’ll see how to create different “views” to sort through the papers.

Adding a paper using the Notion Chrome extension is very easy!

How to get the reference of the papers in the Notion database?

I use the Google Scholar Chrome extension to get the BibTex entry for that paper. All that I need to do is to select the title of the paper before clicking on the Google Scholar icon. 

Add properties to the research papers

Now that you’ve learned how to add papers to the database, the next step is to customize the properties you want for the papers! Properties are certain fields we can create to describe the papers in the database. There are many different kinds of properties one can create:

• Select (1 choice only), Multi-Select (Multiple choices)
• Dates (Custom date, Created date, Last Updated Date)
• Files & Media 
• Tag a Person 

Now that you know what a property is, it’s time to create some! To do this, click on a paper’s title to open the page. Then click on “Add a Property” and add the properties you want. Every property you add will be added to the complete database. You can start with just a few properties that you think will be useful to you, and you can always add more later as you learn to use Notion and discover new ideas for sorting your academic literature!

Here are some ideas of properties: 

• Status: To Read, Currently Reading, Finished Reading, which is a Select
• Interesting? : 1 to 3 stars rating, using Select
• Link to the article, using an URL property
• The date that you read the article, using a Date property 

Then you can add properties that are directly related to your search. For example, as I’m working on three specific Parkinson’s disease symptoms, I added a “selection” property that lists the symptoms the paper discusses.

The following image shows the properties that I created in my main database to give you some ideas and inspire you. I have a lot ! You don’t have to create that many properties. For me, my database grew from week to week, and I added more and more properties that I found interesting for my research.

Add different views to sort your papers 

The next step is to create different views to visualize the papers. A view is a way of filtering your main database and saving the filter with a specific name so that you can return to it later. You can filter the papers according to the properties we just created. For example, I created a view that will only show me the papers that I added the tag “To-Read”:

For example, the image below shows all of the different “views” I have of my main database.

• All: The main database that will show all the papers with no filter 
• Comparison Table: A view that shows certain properties that I have selected. It’s a little bit like an Excel table for me. I use this view to compare the papers for my literature review.
• To Read:  List of papers that I identified as a priority to read for my research.
• Read: List of papers that I finished reading.
• Symptoms: 3 different views showing only papers that are related to a specific Parkinson’s Disease symptom
• Uncontrolled Env: List of studies that were done in controlled laboratory environments  
• Scripted Tasks: Again, this view is for my research, but it’s a distinction between different ways to evaluate the disease with smartwatches 

Finally, here is an example of what my Reading List looks like, listing papers I identified as absolutely wanting to read:  

And here is a screenshot of my “Comparison table” view that I use very often: 

Related | My Research Internship at Johns Hopkins University

Conclusion .

I hope this article has been useful for you and helps you build the basics of your own Notion system for managing your scientific papers! Adapt this method to your needs, and don’t hesitate to share your projects with me. I’m curious to know what you will come up with!

Marie likes to push her limits and always keep learning new things. She shares her weekly learnings because "if you can't explain it simply, it means you didn't understand it well enough".

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Thanks for this post Marie ! I recently discovered it and I am using your template to manage the papers of my Master thesis. I never truly benefited from using Zotero and because I am using Notion for everything else, it seemed like the right decision to use it too for my research.

Hello Irene! Thank you so much for your comment. I’m happy to know this was helpful! Marie

Hi I am a PhD student and working on climate change. I also work a lot with big data and just started stepping on ML too. This blog post is very useful and what I have been looking for. Thank you so much for sharing it.

Hello Kyoung, Thank you so much for your comment! 🙂 Very happy to know my post was helpful! Marie

Thank you for your helpful article! I did have a question because I tried using your template and wasn’t sure how to get it to work the way you demonstrated. When I’ve tried using the Google Chrome extension to add articles, I’ve only been able to add them as a separate page, not as an entry into the database.

Hello! Yes, that is possible. When that happens, I actually drag and drop the item afterward in the database. Best, Marie

Oh my gosh, this is one of the most helpful articles I’ve found. Why didn’t I know about this before? It makes it easier to navigate and research. Thank you so much for these tips.

Hello Miranda, I’m so glad I was able to help 🙂 Marie

Thanks for this very informative blog-post.

I have been doing some google searching and I found an idea of have two linked tables. https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/gs0f6l/template_workspace_for_machine_learning/ it says for Machine learning but it is applicable to all fields.

Just wondering if you have worked with two linked tables and if you find this idea useful ?

The only time I used a linked database is to keep some important citations. I created a “citations” database, and when I wanted to keep an argument that might be useful for my thesis, I would add it to the citations database and link it to the actual paper in my Reading List database.

But for sure, the dashboard that I’m sharing in this blog post can definitely be pushed further!

Best, Marie

Hi Marie! This is super helpful, and exactly what I was looking for. Such a sophisticated and useful way of storing research notes. I just wondered how you capture all of the details of the academic paper? Do you manually copy and paste author name, year, journal etc? I didn’t really understand the BibTex google scholar extension part? Thank you for the template! Emma

Hello Emma! I’m glad I was able to help!

Yes, at the moment, I manually copu and paste the information that I want to have in my Reading List database on Notion.

Since I published this blog post, Notion has released their API, allowing some automation to be done. I haven’t looked into it yet, but you could search around that if automation is possible now for papers information 🙂

For the BibTex Google Scholar Extension part, did you see the gif I shared about that? Basically, I downloaded the Google Scholar extension for the browser Chrome. This means that I can highlight the title of a paper, and then, when I click on the extension, I can directly get all the BibTex information.

Hope this helps! Marie

Can we make the thesis report or write a research article in notion? Many prefer latex. Can we do it in Notion?

I don’t think I would suggest writing a research article on Notion. I prefer to use Overleaf, as it supports LaTeX, version history, collaboration, comments, etc.

Notion is better for Markdown!

Hi, I was wondering is it possible to import Mendeley’s library to notion? I have a 1000+ library and I would love to use my attention pdf. How are you dealing with the annotation of pdf? Are you using any pdf file or just doi with your own annotations for the paper within notion?

Hello! I am basically using this as a way to write notes instead of annotating a PDF on my iPad most of the times. I haven’t done a workflow that does both. Since your comment, Notion has released their API, so it might be possible to import your articles from Mendeley to Notion with such a tool: https://tray.io/connectors/mendeley-notion-integrations

But I haven’t tried it! Marie

I am considering adopting Notion and your post (forwarded to me by a dear colleague) is very useful! I have a quick question to help me appreciate better the power of Notion: what would be the difference between the Notion database of articles and a spredsheet (Google sheets, Excel, OO)? Thanks!

Hello Patricia! Glad to know people are sharing my blog posts! 🙂

I would say that Notion can be like a Google Sheet, but the opposite isn’t true. In a way, Notion can be more powerful. The interface is also prettier to work with, at least in my opinion, and more instinctive!

It also allows to add “properties” to each paper, which you can’t really do on Google sheets (or would be more complicated to implement), it would mostly just be columns and rows. In Notion you can do that, but also have more information and see it from different views.

Hope that helps! Marie

OMG, this is crazy <3 , exactly what I am looking for! Thank you so much!

Glad to hear that!

Hi Marie, have you made any updates to the template?

Hello, I have not!

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15 Free Notion Templates for Students

Being a student isn’t easy. Along with attending classes, completing assignments, and taking exams, there is research, review, and studying to do. To help you organize everything you need, check out these free Notion templates for students.

Getting the Notion Templates

1. student dashboard, 2. student dashboard with a pomodoro timer, 3. aesthetic dashboard, 4. life and school management for students, 5. a+ student planner, 6. course schedule, 7. assignments board, 8. spaced repetition for students, 9. spaced repetition flashcards, 10. class notes, 11. cornell notes system, 12. grade calculator, 13. thesis template, 14. student group assignment, 15. student hyperconnected space, free student templates for other applications.

Before you review the list of templates, take a quick peek at how easy it is to grab the one you want.

Notion Templates

If you select a Notion template , open the sidebar on the left of your workspace, and select Templates . In the next screen, choose the template name in the appropriate section, and click Get template . You’ll find the template in your Notion sidebar.

Notion Gallery Templates

If you choose a Notion Gallery template, access the template page with the link below. Select your Notion workspace name, and click Duplicate template . You’ll see the template in your workspace sidebar.

Third-Party Notion Templates

If you choose a template from a third-party website, use its link to access the template, then follow the on-screen instructions to add the template to your Notion workspace.

For example, to get a template from Prototion, access the template page with the link below. Optionally, donate a dollar amount, and select I Want This . Select View Template , click Duplicate at the top, and sign in to your Notion account when prompted.

One of the most useful free Notion templates for college life is the Student Dashboard . You can manage everything from classes and clubs to personal projects and to-dos. There’s even a weather section.

You’ll see a few sample courses set up to review. Select New to add a class of your own, with details like course code, professor, and year. You can also add assignments and link directly to them for the statuses, due dates, and types.

Highlights:

• To-do’s area for a list of assignments per course by status
• Clubs area for upcoming meeting details
• Personal Projects area for to-dos outside of school

If you like the idea of a dashboard but are looking for one with a bit more, look at this Student Dashboard template from the Notion Template Gallery. It gives you a handy Pomodoro timer with both short and long breaks, which is ideal for focusing.

• Subjects or classes in a gallery or table view
• Weekly Schedule with adjustable time slots
• Timeline View for upcoming assignments organized by due date (day, week, month, or quarter)
• Upcoming Quizzes and Exams on a calendar for test dates at a glance

For one more student dashboard, you have to check out Aesthetic . This one goes even further than the two above, with courses, calendar, to-do list, notes, built-in dashboard sections, and a task list. It makes it one of the best free Notion templates for students. These options serve as the navigation at the top, and each section is complete with a colorful animated image to add a little pizzazz.

• Calendar for a weekly schedule and due dates
• To-Do List for tasks by day or week along with a work schedule
• Task List for assignments sorted by To Do, Doing, and Done
• Two dashboard sections: one with courses and assignments and the other with a reading list and Pomodoro study session

You may be a student, but school isn’t your whole life, right? With the Life and School Management for Students template , you can be the boss of both. The template has cute animations, inspiring quotes, a weather widget, and a built-in Spotify playlist for focus.

• Spot on main page for what you’re currently listening to, reading, playing, and watching
• Quick Tasks area for important to-dos
• Week view with both a monthly calendar and cards for each day
• University section to enter all courses and extracurricular activities
• Library section to list favorite or wish-list books
• Extras section for links to wish-list items or an expense tracker

Note: as a student, you might also benefit from keeping a budget with this Notion template .

The A+ Student Planner template is one of the top Notion templates for students that will organize assignments, exams, grades, and a contact list. You can also list your courses, to-dos, homework, and class schedule, for a complete package.

• Grades Tracker to log grades by class, term, and semester with average
• Assignments + Exams section for homework by course with statuses, due dates, and notes
• Contacts area for professors, classmates, and study group participants

For keeping track of homework, assignments, and tests, the Course Schedule template from Notion gives you exactly what you need. The detailed views are what sets this template apart from the others. Take advantage of the impressive organization to stay on track all semester.

• Spots for the basics, like name, due date, type, and topic
• Schedule views by type, lessons, assignments, exams, and calendar
• Course details area for topic or activity, prep work, and assignments

Similar to Course Schedule, the Assignments Board template includes statuses for not started, in progress, and done for a quick way to see the stage of each assignment. Add in new assignments with relevant details so you never miss a due date again.

• Statuses with their assignments listed at the top for a snapshot of progress
• Quick Links on the top left for research sites, reading material, and sources
• Table for assignments, with week, month, and course views

To use the spaced repetition method of study, look at this next template made with the method in mind. With Spaced Repetition for Students from Prototion, enter the lecture (or assignment), class, type, and review date, which is one day after the lecture.

• Active Recall Question with a toggle to hide and show the Active Recall Answer
• Checkboxes for each review stage
• Next Review date automatically calculates after each review is marked
• Review Tracker to see your Next Review dates on a monthly calendar

For another Notion student template that concentrates on your study method, look at the Spaced Repetition Flashcards template . Set up flashcards with the topic, add the answer, and optionally, include a resource or audio file. When you’re ready to review, open the card, guess the answer, then expand the Answer toggle to see if you’re correct.

• Easy, Good, and Hard tags to track memory difficulty
• Last Review date field
• Next Review date automatically updates based on the Last Review date
• Notes spot for additional details
• Archive completed flashcards

If you want a place to organize all your notes, this Class Notes template from Notion works like a dream. You can log and review notes for lectures, sessions, and study groups.

• Ability to add notes for each course and type, such as a reading or lecture
• Spots for links to resources or materials
• Checkboxes for completed reviews

If you appreciate the Cornell Note Taking System , you can add the topic, recall, notes, and summary, with the easy-to-use Cornell Notes System template from Notion. Even if you’ve never tried this method before, it’s one of the best free Notion templates for students to learn and take advantage of this system.

• Familiar structure of the Cornell Note Taking System
• Instructions for adding additional notes using columns and a callout
• Create new notes with a button click

Keeping track of your grades is key to meeting that GPA goal, and with the Grade Calculator from Notion, you can. You can also duplicate the template using the three dots on the top right to track grades in additional classes. It even takes into account penalties for late assignments.

• Spots for each assignment, due date, and when you submitted it
• Raw Score field for the grade you earned
• Log for the number of days you were late turning in an assignment
• Final Grade column automatically calculates the Raw Score with the Late Penalty
• Excused checkbox that doesn’t account for the Late Penalty
• Weighting percentage and Weighted Grade columns with averages and totals at the bottom

For college students working on their thesis, one of the top free Notion templates for students is the Thesis Template . Quickly lay out a theme, outline, and supporting ideas. You can even post a weekly update to track your progress. All students can use this template for school writing projects, such as term and research papers.

• Gather all thesis research in one place
• Track notes from your professor
• Set up a timeline to stay on track

Never sure what needs to get done in a group assignment? Just use Student Group Assignment . This free Notion template lets you input your assignment details, list everyone involved (including contact details), and assign everyone different tasks.

• Schedule meetings with other group members
• Add a playlist to stay focused
• Check out which tasks have been completed

Student Hyperconnected Space gives you an overview of all your classes, teachers (easily rate your teachers online ), and credits for your entire school career. While it was made for college students, it’s adaptable for any age student. Everything is divided by year. Click a year to add even more details.

• Special section for school login and research links
• Set up class schedules for each semester
• Includes a spaced repetition table and a word memorization table

If you’re looking for free student templates for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides, Vertex42 offers templates for homework planning, class schedules, college budgets, and more. Template.net has templates for timelines, study schedules, planners, budget worksheets, and more. Note that some templates are paid options at Template.net. Looking for free resume templates for students ? Check out these options.

Image credit: Unsplash . All screenshots by Crystal Crowder.

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Crystal Crowder has spent over 15 years working in the tech industry, first as an IT technician and then as a writer. She works to help teach others how to get the most from their devices, systems, and apps. She stays on top of the latest trends and is always finding solutions to common tech problems.

Thesis Writing for Masters and PhD

Unlock Your Academic Success with this All-in-One Thesis Writing Template for Master's and PhD Students!

🌟 Key Features:

📝 Thesis Writeup Section: Streamline your thesis writing process with a dedicated workspace for drafting and editing your masterpiece.

📖 Research Articles: Organize and access research articles, making citations and references a breeze.

📑 Research Proposal: Craft a well-structured research proposal that stands out with ease.

📚 Literature Review: Stay on top of your sources and literature review with an intuitive layout.

📊 Data Collection: Manage your data collection process, ensuring your research is on track.

🔍 Advisor Review: Collaborate seamlessly with your advisors, receive feedback, and keep everything in one place.

📆 Writing Habit: Foster a productive writing habit with built-in tracking tools for your daily progress.

📚 Resources: Centralize your research resources, saving you time and stress.

🎯 Study Goals: Set and achieve your academic goals, all directly connected to your thesis writing journey.

This Notion template is your academic companion, designed to simplify your thesis writing journey and help you stay organized, focused, and successful.

Achieve your goals with Notion Habit Tracker.

The Ultimate Search Planner to organize and streamline ChatGPT searches, prompts and resources in one place

Organize and manage your tasks in Notion so you can stop procrastinating and get more done

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Crypto OS provides a single Notion Dashboard, for all your crypto needs. Saving you Time and hassle Navigating the Complex Crypto World.

This mini-course is structured to guide you through a step-by-step process of developing a successful business from scratch. With 10 actionable tips for each step for you to complete.

Academic Writing in Notion (with Template)

You’ve got that paper to write but no idea where to start? You are drowning in literature that’s scattered all over the place? And you just don’t have a system to turn all your research into some tangible results? Whenever I had some sort of Academic Writing to tackle, it usually started with the feeling of being overwhelmed. So much literature to go through. No structure in place to sort what I’ve found. And certainly no time to take a deep breath and look for a good system to do it all. I usually ended up writing notes in Word while copypasting links to sources in a frantic attempt to organise all my readings. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very effective approach. Luckily, Notion is absolutely amazing at organising any Academic Writing project. And with this Academic Writing in Notion Template, you can easily master your reading list, set your writing project up for success and start connecting the dots .

Read on for more explanations or jump to the bottom of the page to get this ( free ) Academic Writing in Notion Template

Your Academic Writing Hub in Notion

The main page of the template is designed to be the command center of your writing projects.

Up top, you’ll find the the Navigation Bar that will let you jump quickly between sections.

You can customise your Quick Links section according to your most used resources. Quick Notes lets you create a new note without interrupting your workflow. And with Active Writings , you never lose track of what you’re working on.

Next, you’ll find your Inbox that will keep track of all new readings that you’ve collected.

Tip: Use the Save to Notion Webclipper instead of Notion’s native clipper to customise how you import your sources.

And directly below, there’s your reading list, sorted by priority, so that you always know what to work on next.

Your Readings List in Notion

If you’ve ever struggled to organise your readings list or deal with all the material you’ve already worked through, then this is the section for you.

Your Readings shows you various views of your sources, so that you can focus on what really matters: working through the list and using your insights for your writing projects.

It contains an Inbox for new material that needs to be sorted and a Reading List that shows you what you should read next.

Further down the page, you’ll see your Most Used Readings . If you write a lot of articles, then this will become a treasure trove of your most useful resources so that you don’t have to sort through piles of documents to find that one article that you keep referencing everywhere.

See where you stand at a glance with the Status View. What are you currently reading? Which articles need to be summarised? Track your progress and make sure that nothing falls through the cracks

Lastly, the Master Table provides you with a comprehensive overview. Add the correct citation so that you can easily export your readings list to your literature cataloguing software of choice. Add a short summary and the relevance of this reading to sort through them quickly at a later time.

Think of your Readings section as your own personal knowledge management system , dedicated to a specific purpose: producing great writing.

Most importantly, add the Topics of the Reading to make some magic in Notion happen. How? We’ll get to that in a moment.

Your Topics in Notion

Topics are one of the coolest features of this Academic Writing for Notion Template.

Everyone who’s ever written an academic paper knows the struggle: how do you best match your readings to the content that you want to write? Your sources rarely only cover one aspect. Most of the times, a reading is relevant for several parts of your paper and on top of that, it might be useful for a different writing project too.

Enter Topics .

Simply tag each writing with the topics covered in it. Go as granular as you need – you can always delete topics later or add more, but try to get the gist of them.

This has three major benefits over the traditional let’s-take-notes-in-word-and-hope-we-find-it-again-later-when-we-need-it-approach.

First, you can open the My Topics to sort through your Topics and see recurring themes immediately. What topics keep popping up? It’s the first step to start connecting the dots.

Second, you can use a Topic to write so called Evergreen Notes . Evergreen Notes are notes that – like evergreen songs – are timeless and can be reused in a variety of ways. If you keep referencing certain concepts in your articles, then you can simply use your Evergreen Notes on that topic to quickly insert text snippets instead of having to start from 0 every single time.

Each Topic comes with it’s own dashboard to show you every single reading, writing or note that you’ve ever created for this topic. That way, creating your Evergreen Notes is a breeze.

The underlying concept for this part of the Academic Writing in Notion template is called Global Tags in Notio n and it’s super powerful.

The third thing is the magic we’ve talked about above and you’ll find it in the next step.

Your Writings in Notion

Now to the heart of the template, your personal Writing HQ.

First of, you have a general dashboard to keep track of all your writing projects.

Use the Master Table to add information to your projects. You can both create standalone Articles as well as Books and their respective Chapters for longer projects.

The Status View is your personal project management tool. Never forget an idea for a writing project again. And simply drag & drop a project into a different status once you’re ready to take the next step.

What’s even better though is the specific dashboard for each writing project. Any time you add a new project in your Academic Writing in Notion Template, the system will create it automatically.

Once you pick all related Topics for a writing project, it will automatically pull in all the relevant information that you’ve ever collected. Never dig through your notes again or frantically try to remember where you saved that paper that could come in handy now. They will all resurface on their own.

Like Magic.

( speaking of magic: have you tried my method to replace Siri with ChatGPT ? )

Your Notes in Notion

Lastly, no template would be complete without a dedicated section for Notes .

The Academic Writing in Notion Template comes pre-loaded with two types of notes:

• Meeting Notes to keep track of talks with your supervisor or colleagues, so that you always have their input within arms reach
• Brainstorming Notes to quickly jot down some thoughts that can be sorted later

Just remember to assign a Topic or Related Writing and your notes will automatically appear in the right context, wherever you need them.

Don’t forget to use the Quick Note feature on the main page of the template to make a quick note without interrupting your workflow.

Tip: You could easily integrate this part of the Academic Writing in Notion Setup with another template of mine: Zettelkasten for Notion , a simple tool for networked thoughts. If you need help setting this up, just tweet me @mfreihaendig .

Get Your Free Academic Writing In Notion Template Now

Streamline your workflow and start connecting the dots with my (free) Academic Writing in Notion Template:

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• Setups & Tech
• iOS & Mac

The 75 Best & Free Notion Templates You Need [2024]

DIYing a Notion setup that has all the features you need can be tricky, especially if you’re a Notion newb. But with a prefab Notion template, you can get a jump start on increasing your productivity, organizing your life, journaling your thoughts, and so much more — all under one roof!

Creators in the Notion community have shared countless free Notion templates for just about any use case you could possibly dream up. From work, productivity, and travel to health, home, and finances, we’ve curated the best free Notion templates for every area of life!

Table of Contents

• Free Aesthetic Templates
• Free Student Templates
• Free Productivity Templates
• Free Templates for Entertainment
• Free Templates for Home

Free Notion Travel Templates

• Free Health & Wellness Templates
• Free Business Templates
• Free Finances Templates
• Free Work & Career Templates
• Free Notion Content Calendar Templates
• Other Free Templates

Looking for more productivity tips and tools? Subscribe to The Flow — our quick, snappy, value-packed focus and recharge newsletter. Also, don’t miss our several other  Notion template round-ups and guides !

• First Name First

Free Aesthetic Notion Templates

Notion’s customization options make it the perfect place to design a workspace that matches your personal aesthetic. You’ll find a ton of pre-fab themed templates out there, but here are a few of our faves. (Want more? Don’t miss our full round-up of the best aesthetic Notion templates !)

Looking for templates that fit a specific aesthetic or vibe? Find them in our related posts:

• Best Notion Anime Aesthetic Templates
• Best Minimalist Notion Templates
• Best Light & Dark Academia Notion Templates
• Best Notion Cottagecore Templates
• Best Notion “That Girl” Templates

(And for more tips and tricks, check out our full walkthrough on how to make your Notion aesthetic !)

1. Free Aesthetic Habit Tracker Dashboard

A chill pastel color scheme and a squeaky clean layout make this one of our favorite free Notion dashboards. Import your monthly calendar, cross off your milestones, and reflect on your day-to-day — habit tracking has never been simpler!

Template Available Here

2. Cute & Colorful Notion Homepage Dashboard

We’re lovin’ the warm, cozy vibes of this aesthetic template — complete with cute GIFs and a Spotify widget with a curated playlist built in! Perfect for fans of all things anime and kawaii.

3. Sticky Notes Dashboard

While Notion doesn’t currently have its own sticky note blocks, you can DIY them with colored callout blocks! This unique template also includes a tasks database for seamlessly managing your to-dos.

4. Pastel Aesthetic Semester Planner for Students

Ahh, how soothing is this planner to look at? Hopefully the soft pastel designs throughout will help you feel a little more relaxed about your coursework!

5. Yearly Planner and Organizer

We absolutely adore this anime-themed organizer template. Set your weekly schedule, take notes, plan creative projects, and even track your beauty regimen, with kawaii GIFs and pics of Molang for an extra personalized touch.

6. Pastel Aesthetic Life Notion Dashboard

If you’re the type of person who color-codes everything , you’ll definitely vibe with this template — complete with pages for your tasks, projects, family matters, and more.

7. Aesthetic Life Wiki

Custom page covers and icons with lots bubblegum pinks and baby blues make this free aesthetic life OS template a lot of fun. Prioritize your tasks, set and smash goals, outline your routines — these are just a few of the things you can do in this stunning setup!

8. Colorful Notion Dashboard

Make your days a little more vibrant with this bright and bubbly Notion dashboard template ! Customize the Notion widgets (including weather, progress bars, motivational quotes , and more) with your favorite colors for the ultimate aesthetic dashboard that’s uniquely you .

Get the all-in-one Life OS template , the only Notion template you’ll ever need — with over 25 integrated templates built in.

Free Notion Templates for Students

Bring all of your notes, assignments, academic plans, semester goals, and more into one place with a dedicated Notion workspace designed for students! Use these free Notion templates for students to organize your academic life and keep tabs on your deadlines.

Looking for more robust options to organize your academic life? Don’t miss our full round-up of the best Notion templates for students . And check out our related posts if you’re looking for something a little different:

• Best Notion Assignment Tracker Templates
• Best Notion Note-Taking Templates
• Best Notion Pomodoro Templates
• Best Notion Medical School Templates
• Best Language Learning & Vocab Templates

9. School Dashboard

School Dashboard is a no-frills free notion template for students, complete with sections for your timetable, class notes, different subjects, and more!

10. Pomodoro Study Template

Interested in being productive with Pomodoros? The Pomodoro Study Template is a good starting point with a built-in timer widget , daily summaries, and auto productivity ratings.

11. Aesthetic Student Life Dashboard

Aesthetic Student Life Dashboard is one of the top free Notion templates for students with pages for managing your uni work, reading lists, and to-dos — all from your lush, cozy dash!

12. Study OS

Whether you’re in high school or finishing up your master’s, Study OS can help you prepare for success. Create study zones for each subject, devise your schedule, and add essential deadlines. Use ChatGPT to make prompts for active recall to ensure you’re ready for your next big exam!

13. Your Student Dashboard

As well as the usual spaces for your assignments, deadlines, to-dos, etc., Your Student Dashboard features a few fun extras like a retro clock, weather widget , and study playlist library!

14. Colorful School Hub

A vibrant layout and spaces for GTD, assignments, homework, and events make the Colorful School Hub ideal for testing out Notion for the upcoming semester.

15. Master Task Tracker for Students

View all your tasks in grid, calendar, and list view, and filter them by deadline and status — great if you’re learning the ropes of how to work Notion!

16. Aesthetic Student Planner

With an aesthetic, customizable timetable and spaces for tracking your study sessions, semester, reading list, and assignments, the Aesthetic Student Planner is perfect for figuring out your ultimate Notion setup and style.

17. Note-Taking Template

Get to grips with Notion note-taking thanks to this excellent free template from Thomas Frank. Different notebooks, a status dash, and an inbox provide the basics of managing all your important thoughts and ideas.

18. Total Recall – Dynamic Spaced Repetition Learning

Keeping your memory sharp is essential, and the Total Recall template can help when it’s time to cram for exams. Generate flashcards, quiz yourself, and prioritize topics you can’t recall!

19. Matcha Student Planner

The Matcha Student Planner will undoubtedly be your cuppa tea, complete with a daily class checklist, assignment and exam calendar, and brain dump. Set academic goals, make a semester budget, chill out to a matcha-inspired Spotify playlist, and much more!

Free Notion Templates for Productivity

No matter how proficient you are with Notion, a free template is a great place to start building your perfect productivity system.

We’ve curated a free template or two from each category in the list below — but if you want to explore more templates, hop over to our other roundups!

• Best Notion Productivity Templates
• Best Notion Life OS Templates
• Best Notion Habit Tracker Templates
• Best Notion Journal Templates
• Best Notion Planner Templates
• Best Notion Project Management Templates
• Best Notion To-Do List Templates
• Best Notion GTD Templates
• Best Notion Goal Tracking Templates
• Best Notion OKR Templates

19. Free Notion Habit Tracker Template

Our very own Simple Habit Tracker delivers exactly what it promises. Simply create a new entry each day, then check off your habits as you complete them — easy peasy! The scorecard on the right shows you a total summary of your progress to help you stay motivated.

20. Goal Designer Dashboard

Minimalist yet modern, the Goal Designer Dashboard will have you reaching for the stars. Visualize your goals with a vision board, monitor your positive habits, and tick off your quarterly goals!

21. 100-day Level Up Challenge: Habit Tracking & Bullet Journaling

Develop lasting habits with the 100-day bullet journal challenge! Build daily checklists of all your habits and manage your reading lists. Built-in countdown , word counter, and reading streak widgets can help motivate you to stay on the right track!

22. Productivity Weekly Planner

To do or not to do? The Productivity Weekly Planner is an excellent way to dip your toes into the Notion productivity pool, allowing you to sort tasks by due dates, priority, and assignee.

23. Yearly Planner Template

This dreamy pastel yearly planner keeps things clean and simple with widgets, a manifestation planner, reflection board, vision board , and more.

24. Journal Dashboard Template

How kawaii is this colorful journaling template! Aesthetic icons , widgets, and page covers are included for a seamless look, and the built-in categories for self-care, gratitude , and daily journaling are a nice touch.

25. Daily Routines and Affirmations Template

This super simple template lets you use checkboxes to track and your chores and habits quickly. Add your favorite affirmations and create your perfect routine for some extra motivation!

26. Tasks & Project Management

If you’re active in Notion circles on YouTube, you’re undoubtedly familiar with Thomas Frank, Notion whiz and template builder. His task and project management template is super easy to navigate and use right out of the box. (We especially like the quick links for tasks on deck and in the inbox!)

27. Minimalist Notion Second Brain

We’re obsessed with how sleek this second brain Notion template is! Includes setups for PARA, bookmarks, notes, and more, all laid out in a striking green theme designed for dark mode.

28. Notion Goal Tracker for Free

Looking for a no-nonsense goal tracker? This template features minimalist trackers and to-do lists, complete with progress bars for visualizing your achievements. With quick actions, easy navigation, and calendar views, Notion Goal Tracker is a great free Notion template for beginners.

29. Simple Year in Review Template

The free Year in Review Notion Template by Gridfiti (that’s us!) makes it easier than ever to plan your big goals. Get a birds-eye overview of what you’d like to try and accomplish next year, places you want to go, what you want to improve, and so much more!

You also have space to review how the previous year went — not just in terms of productivity, but in every area of your life! From your favorite movies to your favorite memories, jot it all down here. With a simple column and list layout, you can keep your eye on what matters most to you and quickly assess your progress at a glance.

Related Post: Best Notion New Year’s Resolution Templates

30. Free Time Scheduler

Spend less time managing your free time and more time enjoying it, thanks to the Free Time Scheduler. Automatically schedule time blocks for evenings and weekends for your hobbies and days out in the clear and concise calendar.

Free Notion Entertainment Templates (TV, Movies, Books & More)

Keeping up with all your favorite shows, movies, and other entertainment can be tricky if you work or attend school full-time. Stay on top of your ever-growing entertainment list with Notion!

We’ve cherry-picked our favorite free Notion entertainment templates for the categories below — check out our other roundups to see more:

• Best Notion Movie, TV & Anime Watch List Templates
• Best Notion Reading List Templates
• Best Notion Gaming Templates
• Best Notion RPG Templates (D&D, Tabletop)
• Best Notion Knowledge Management Templates
• Best Notion Bookmarks Templates

31. Watchlist Tracker Template

Notion’s powerful databases make it one of the best solutions for storing and organizing your media list. This simple watchlist template lets you organize your backlog, rate your faves, and quickly add new shows and movies with the click of a button .

32. Simple Media Manager – Movies, TV Shows & More

All your shows in movies, now in dark mode! With dedicated pages for various media types — including podcasts, books, games, and more — this minimalist template does what it says on the tin.

33. Notion Video Game Tracker Template

Whether you’re a serious gamer or just want a better way to organize your library, this Notion template has all the functionality you need. Perfect for players with lots of physical game cartridges, digital downloads, and DLCs they’ve been meaning to complete!

Bookworms and bibliophiles rejoice! With BookOS, you can build an online library of current reading and wish lists. Sort your books by category, rating, and author, and capture notes and quotes from your favorite prose!

35. Notion Bookshelf Template

Add a splash of color to your TBR list with this free aesthetic reading Notion template. There’s even space for you to jot down your favorite quotes!

36. Knowledge Vault Template

Books, articles, courses, oh my! Tracking all your resources can be a challenge — but Notion lets you store and organize things like never before. Try out this free template to discover if Notion is the right home for your digital library.

Free Notion Home Templates (Meal Planning, Cleaning & More)

Unleash your inner domestic deity with these free Notion templates for meal planning, cleaning, and other homely affairs!

Before you dive in, skim our list of related posts in case you’re looking for something specific or want to browse more of our favorites!

Notion Cooking & Cleaning Templates

• Best Notion Household Templates
• Best Notion Cleaning & Chore Templates
• Best Notion Meal Planner Templates
• Best Notion Grocery List Templates
• Best Notion Recipe & Cookbook Templates

Miscellaneous Home Templates

• Best Notion Pet Care Templates
• Best Notion Plant Care Templates
• Best Notion Outfit & Wardrobe Manager Templates
• Best Notion Relationship Templates
• Best Notion Wedding Planner Templates

37. Home Cleaning Database Template

Make your cleaning routine more aesthetic with this cute cherry-themed Notion template. Boards, calendars, and tables ensure this template works for your brain!

38. Grocery List Template

If you’re looking for a simple but aesthetically pleasing grocery list template, you’ve found it. All your grocery items are tucked away into toggles to keep things nice and neat! (We especially like the “Oh yeah, and” section, which is a great catch-all for those shopping items that don’t quite fit into any other category.)

39. Meal Planning Dashboard

Experimenting with Notion for planning meals, storing recipes, creating grocery lists, or other kitchen-related tasks? Check out this drag-and-drop meal planning dashboard to see the full potential of Notion for food planning and prep!

40. Visual Notion Recipe Template

Let’s taco ‘bout getting all your recipes organized! The Visual Notion Recipe Template lets you create your recipe cookbook, which you can sort by your favorite meals and recipes you plan to make. It also features a unit converter and the ability to auto-adjust your ingredient quantity based on the number of servings.

41. Family Home Template

Keeping up with all your family activities is tough, especially if you have young’uns. The Family Home Template features a scheduler, calendar, and to-do list for all your family needs. Plus, you’ll find sections for allergy/medication info, emergency contacts, and your fave nearby parks!

Free Notion Health & Wellness Templates

Gain a better understanding of yourself, track your habits, and fine-tune your behaviors to build a happier life — all with these free Notion health templates.

For more templates like these, explore our related curations!

• Best Notion Health & Wellness Templates
• Best Notion Workout & Gym Templates
• Best Notion Skincare Templates
• Best Notion Mood Tracker Templates

42. Minimal Notion Fitness Planner

Minimal Notion Fitness Planner can help you stay fit with no fuss. In this free template, you’ll find a workout planner, a meal planner, and a calendar for staying on top of your routine.

43. Nutrition & Fitness Dashboard

A super cute free workout Notion template, the Nutrition & Fitness Dashboard features aesthetic icons and themes to keep you motivated. Use the calendar views to track your weekly meal plans and workouts. Make recipe lists, exercise lists, mindfulness practices, and more!

44. Mood Station & Mood Tracker Template

Reflecting on your mental health and tracking your mood is a little easier thanks to the Mood Station & Mood Tracker Template. Journal and track your daily moods using a selection of aesthetic emojis.

45. Gratitude Journal

What are you grateful for today? Ponder positively about your day by creating lists of your dreams, daily highlights, and ways to be more optimistic and productive.

46. Sleep Tracker Template

See your sleep patterns through easy-to-interpret progress bars, rate the quality of your sleep, and gain personal sleep insights to improve the way you hit the hay!

47. Skincare Diary

You’ll be positively glowing with the help of this free skincare Notion template. Add products to your “beauty shelf,” rate their effectiveness, and detail your skincare journey by uploading pics on the Norton mobile app!

48. Notion Period Tracker Template

Tracking your cycle is a cinch with their straightforward Noiton period tracker. With the latest 2.0 version, you can log birth control reminders, detail your fertility window, predict your yearly periods, and much more!

When you use Notion to manage your vacation itinerary, you can set off in confidence.

Looking to organize your trips in Notion? Test the waters with these free Notion travel templates! And for more options, check out our related posts:

• Best Notion Travel Templates
• Best Notion Packing List Templates

49. Notion Travel Packing Checklist

“Did I pack my passport!?” The Notion Travel Packing Checklist makes packing a little less hectic with customizable checklists for all your travel essentials, from documents to toiletries.

50. Simple Trip Planner – Minimal Notion Travel Dashboard

Minimal clutter and detailed databases make this one of the top free Notion travel templates. Access sections for packing lists, task lists, expenses, and local languages. From your dash, you can embed a custom Google Map of your destination to keep everything you need in one place.

Template Available Now

51. Yearly Travel Planner

If you’re a frequent flyer, this is the Notion template for you. Get a breakdown of all your trips throughout the year, complete with travel dates, priority, duration, and remarks. Cross each country off your list that you’ve already visited and become the ultimate global traveler!

52. The Ultimate Travel Planner

This basic travel planning kit has what you need to organize your next trip. Store your notes, brush up on the local language, organize your packing list, and create your itinerary all in this simple dash.

53. Travel Journal Template

This travel journal template is chock full of handy pages to plan your next great adventure. The map and weather widgets are especially helpful for planning your outfits and itineraries ahead of time!

Free Notion Templates for Finance & Budgeting

Keep your budget, expenses, and investments in check with one of these free Notion finance templates. Searching for something specific? Find more templates in our related posts:

• Best Notion Finance Tracker Templates
• Best Notion Budget Templates
• Best Notion Investment Templates
• Best Notion Subscription Tracker Templates
• Best Notion Wishlist Templates
• Best Notion Crypto Templates

54. 50/30/20 Budget Tracker Template

Find out if the 50/30/20 method is a good fit for your budgeting brain with this free Notion finance template. Use simple databases to track your needs, wants, and debts while allocating your money accordingly.

55. Subscription Tracker Template

Having trouble keeping up with your many monthly subscriptions? Check out the Subscription Tracker Template and create databases for your billing cycles, costs, and overall expenses.

56. Notion Investment Dashboard

Never miss an opportunity to invest thanks to the Notion Investment Dashboard. Receive live updates from the stock market including latest market moves. Plus, you can track your current holdings and profits vs. losses.

57. Simple Finance Dashboard

No need to overcomplicate your finances — use the Simple Finance Dashboard for clear views of your account statuses, income reports, recurring payments, spending wishlists, and more!

58. No More Impulse Spending: ADHD-Friendly Notion Finance Template

This free  ADHD Notion template  can help you focus on your finances by avoiding impulsive purchases and promoting mindful spending habits. Its color coding and vibrant icons assist in cutting through any digital clutter and staying on budget.

Free Notion Templates for Entrepreneurs, Freelancers & Startups

Start, scale, and organize your business with Notion. Use these templates to map out your business plans and promote your brand. Heck, you can even get paid by invoicing your customers using Notion !

For more robust templates, dig into our other posts:

• Best Notion Templates for Business
• Best Notion Templates for Startups
• Best Notion Templates for Freelancers
• Best Notion Ecommerce Templates
• Best Notion Product Management Templates

59. Side Hustle Template

Keeping up with your side hustle and main gig can be tricky. The Side Hustle Template is a great starter template for your side biz, with spaces for your weekly plan, daily to-dos, and work overview.

60. Business Model Canvas & Lean Canvas

Whether you’re a small start-up or a big business, Business Model Canvas & Lean Canvas is on hand to help. Solve your build customer relationships, store useful resources, and grow your revenue with this free Notion business template!

61. Notion Branding Kit & Mood Board Template

Try the Notion Branding Kit & Mood Board Template if you’re playing around with Notion and searching for an aesthetic for your brand. Choose your brand colors using hex codes, pick the perfect font, and create a mood board in your brand’s signature style.

62. Notion Freelance Portfolio Template

Thinking about using Notion to build your freelance portfolio? Check out this free portfolio template with a sleek layout and sections for your testimonials, bio, services, contact info, and more!

63. One-Page Marketing Strategy

With its block-based system and customizable views and graphs, Notion is ideal for devising marketing strategies. The One-Page Marketing Strategy features room for your 1-year goals, elevator pitch, core values, and target demographics to get your company moving in the right direction.

Free Notion Templates for Work & Career

Given Notion’s versatility, you can use the app to organize your life both personally and professionally. Use these free Notion work templates to manage ongoing projects at your job, beef up your portfolio and resume to apply for new jobs, and even create a dashboard to track your job applications!

Explore more templates in our full guide to the best Notion templates for work.

Related Posts:

• Best Notion Resume & CV Templates
• Best Notion Job Search & Application Templates
• Best Notion Marketing Templates
• Best Notion Sales Templates
• Best Notion HR Templates
• Best Notion Templates for Teachers

64. Resume & CV Template

Craft a slick yet straightforward online resume, complete with your work experience, certifications, testimonials, past clients , portfolios, and more!

65. Smart Notion Portfolio

Smart Notion Portfolio can be used as a portfolio, CV, or personal website. You’ll find spaces for all your professional info, from projects to skills to a “contact me” section.

66. Aesthetic CV Template

Keep things simple with this minimalist CV template. Display your technical skills as a progress bar, list your achievements, create portfolios, and more!

67. Simple Job Tracker Page

Organize the basics of your job search journey in one page — with an application tracker (complete with follow-up reminders), interview preparation and notes, and simple starter resume.

68. Notion Timesheet Template

Designed with entrepreneurs, freelancers and project managers in mind, Notion Timesheet Template can help you improve productivity and profitability through careful time management.

(Psst! For more templates like this, check out our full post on Notion time tracking and timesheet templates .)

Free Notion Content Calendar Templates (Blog, Social, Video & More)

Notion is the best platform for managing every aspect of the content production process. (Speaking from experience here — we use Notion to organize every part of our content program!)

Let’s dive into our favorite free Notion content templates, including blog, social, and YouTube.

On the hunt for something specific? Skip over to one of our related roundups:

Notion Content Planning Templates

• Best Notion Blog Templates
• Best Notion Social Media Templates
• Best Notion Twitter/X Templates
• Best Notion Newsletter Templates
• Best Notion Podcast Templates
• Best Notion YouTube & Video Content Templates

Notion Website Templates

• Best Notion Website Templates
• Best Notion Landing Page Builders

69. Basic Content Calendar

This free template from Notion HQ does what it says on the tin. This simple yet functional content planning database comes complete with calendar, board, and table views of all your content — duplicate and remix them with filters, sorts, and groups to learn your way around the app!

70. Notion Blog Planner

For a free Notion blog planner template, this one by Temply doesn’t skimp on features. Create your content calendar, set and review your posting schedule, and even track your metrics and KPIs.

71. Social Media Post Template

This social media post writing template is one of our all-time faves. This isn’t a calendar template — instead, it guides you through the post-writing process and helps you connect with your target audience on a deeper level. Identify the conflict your audience is facing, what actions you want them to take, and how you can help.

72. Ali Abdaal’s YouTube Video Template for Notion

This no-frills Notion video content template is the perfect starter template for Notion newbs. Brainstorm titles, upload your thumbnail, populate production checklists automatically, and more.

Other Free Cool & Unique Notion Templates

With Notion, you’re never limited to what templates you use and what you can use them for. The great thing about this platform is that you can fully customize it to cater to your personal needs — no matter how unique that use case is.

To give you some ideas, we’ve selected some other, maybe less expected free Notion templates for you to pick from!

73. Concert Wishlist Template

One of the best free Notion templates for gig-goers, the Concert Wishlist Template lets you keep track of who you’ve seen live, how you rated their performance, and which acts you want to see next!

74. Notion Magazine Article Layout

Read all about it! Notion Magazine Article Layout is a magazine layout that gives a jumpstart on your next big publishing adventure!

75. Coffee Tasting Log Template

Calling all coffee connoisseurs! This unique Notion template lets you track your tastings, rate your favorite blends, and even experiment with new brew methods on your quest to consume the ultimate cuppa.

Additional Notion Resources

Now that you’ve had a browse through this behemoth of a list, level up your Notion skills with some of our fave resources!

• Notion for Beginners: Everything You Need to Know (Expert Advice)
• 50+ Notion Resources to Level Up & Organize Your Life
• The Ultimate List of Notion Integrations, Tools & Add-Ons
• How to Make Notion Faster
• Notion Desktop App vs. Browser: Which is Better?
• Notion Dividers: A Full Guide to Custom Vertical & Horizontal Dividers

Which free Notion templates are you using? Do you have any other recommendations for free Notion resources for personal or business use? Let us know in the comments below!

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