Chris Padilla/Blog / Tech

Geeking Out Over Notion

You guys, I'm just really jazzed about a piece of software over here.

I think for anyone that codes, there's just a little bit of the person who organizes their sock drawer in us all. Organization and systems are a big part of the job. And so, our project management has that element to them too.

In that arena, Notion has just been SO pleasant to use.

Kanban Board

My primary use for it is the board view. This alone has been huge, and maybe actually, this is more of a blog about why kanban boards are the best.

Let me set the scene: Jenn and I start our big game development project together. We're excited, energy is high, and we have lots of brain-space mutually for where things are and what our individual tasks are.

Then the project gets BIG. The list of features are long, a log of bugs crop up, and we don't have a unified spot to keep notes on individual features.

Notion Board with Cards under Analysis, Development, and Awaiting Input

The beautiful thing about a board is that we can keep track of multiple features, ideas, and bugs. From a glance, we can see what's on deck for developing, researching, and giving feedback.

What's especially cool about Notion's boards is that you can open the card up into it's own document!

Say that Jenn makes a card called "Add Pizza to Inventory."

We have a comment function on the card where we can have a conversation over what toppings should the pizza have, when to add the pizza to the inventory, and so on.

Under that is space for writing on the document. Anything goes here - adding screenshots, keeping a developer todo list, keeping notes from research. So all the details around that feature is kept in one spot.

What happens often is that we'll talk about an idea, leave it for months, and then have to come back to it. With a comment thread and notes from development, it's that much easier to pick it up and work on when the time comes.

Guides and Meeting Notes

Notion is mostly marketed as one of those "everything-buckets", similar to Evernote or Google Drive.

I'm personally a believer in plain text and just using your file system for note keeping. But, collaboratively, having a hub for all things project related is unbeatable.

On top of our progress with the board, we used documents for writing meeting notes and keeping track of guides for using Sanity. We both always have the most up to date info, as Notion syncs automatically with any changes either of us makes.