5 Best Notion Courses for 2024: Boost Your Productivity
Ready to improve your productivity? Whether you’re a beginner or looking to master advanced features for your task/project management system, we’ve got you covered.
My wife is a Notion freak. From managing personal finances to project planning our kitchen renovation, she uses Notion for almost everything, including, yes, even aspects of our marriage. From her experience, I can confirm that starting with a blank page in Notion — a canvas of endless possibilities — can be intimidating, even daunting. Understanding Notion’s core features and functions is essential, and their official documentation is an excellent place to start.
But, if you’re seeking expert guidance in mastering Notion, I created this Best Courses Guides (BCG). I’ve researched course reviews, YouTube comments, and Reddit discussions, along with my experience as a learner, to curate courses featuring valuable content from industry experts.
Click on the shortcuts for more details:
- Top Picks
- How We Use Notion at Class Central
- What is Notion?
- Courses Overview
- What’s Next
- Why You Should Trust Us
- How We Made Our Picks and Tested Them
Here are our top picks
Click to skip to the course details:
How We Use Notion at Class Central
At Class Central, we leverage Notion as a customizable platform to organize, manage, and share tasks and projects. For instance, we receive handy notifications of newly scheduled publications created on our Notion editorial database, directly in one of our Slack channels.
What is Notion? The Building Blocks of an Effective Workspace
Beginning your journey with Notion is like finding a Swiss Army knife of productivity—it’s a tool with endless uses. For starters, when creating a new page, you’re given the autonomy to mold it into various forms: a directory, a database, a word processor, or all at once. As productivity expert Thomas Frank describes, “Fundamentally, a page is a canvas that holds blocks, which are Notion’s basic unit. Pages can be nested within one another, and they can also exist inside of databases.”
The potential to construct visually dynamic dashboards is vast, thanks to the customizable colors, fonts, backgrounds, and the ability to incorporate a range of responsive visuals. However, the initial steps can be daunting due to this vast array of options. Personally, I have found it helpful to follow tutorials that cater to my specific needs or to start with pre-designed templates, as they provide a helpful starting point.
And don’t be fooled by all the shiny visuals – Notion isn’t just about pleasing visuals. The software’s relational databases, rollup functionality, diverse database formats, and formulas empower you to create complex workspaces that effectively monitor your progress. With personalized dashboards, these features keep your team motivated and on the right path.
Now that we’ve delved into the intricacies and potential of Notion, it’s clear that a little guidance can go a long way. Perhaps you’re contemplating how to initiate your Notion journey or maybe you’re aiming to maximize the software’s potential—either way, we’ve got you covered. The upcoming list of courses caters to a spectrum of needs. Whether you’re an absolute beginner or a seasoned user, these courses are designed to help you navigate Notion effectively, enabling you to design an efficient, aesthetic, and advanced workspace.
Courses Overview
- 1 course is free and 4 are paid
- The Notion subject is followed by 1,200 learners on Class Central
- Courses in this guide have more than 50,000 enrollments.
Best Course on Notion for Small Teams (Ali Abdaal)
Ali Abdaal’s course takes a pragmatic approach, focusing on the real-world application of Notion within a team. This course stands out for its concise and focused content that brings in Abdaal’s personal experience of leveraging Notion for team collaborations. While many courses provide a broad overview, this one is specifically designed to enable small teams to effectively implement Notion, making it an ideal pick for those looking to enhance team productivity.
| Provider | Skillshare |
| Instructor | Ali Abdaal |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 2 hours |
| Enrollments | 44K students |
| Rating | 97% positive (290 reviews) |
| Certificate | Available |
Best Resources to Master Databases and Formulas (William Nutt)
Once you have gained familiarity with creating and organizing your data using the different provided database formats, you may find yourself in need of more specific examples and practical applications for utilizing these databases. Furthermore, you might encounter challenges when it comes to automating functions, linking databases, and manipulating data within them. In such cases, acquiring in-depth knowledge of databases and formulas can greatly enhance your proficiency.
William Nutt offers a series of articles and videos that cover these topics in detail. I have provided links to the most relevant articles (arranged in order of difficulty) for mastering these subjects. However, I encourage you to explore his YouTube channel and website for additional valuable resources.
- Compare and Configure Notion’s Database Formats: Tables, Lists, Galleries, Boards and Timelines
- The NBA — in Notion: A Practical Example of Databases
- Notion VIP: The Grouping Guide
- Notion VIP: The Power of Relations and Rollups
- Meet Notion’s Formula Property
- Notion Stakeholder Series — Intro to Formulas
- Notion Stakeholder Series — Frequent Functions
- Notion VIP: Simple, Useful Formula Examples
- Notion’s Essential Date Functions
- Notion VIP: Formulas for Work: Part 1
- Notion Formulas: The Versatile if() Function
Best Course on Notion for Business (Marie Poulin)
If you’re seeking a comprehensive approach to implement Notion throughout your entire company, the most advanced online course available is Notion Mastery by Marie Poulin. Tailored specifically for teams, this course explores the intricacies of leveraging databases while keeping the bigger picture in mind—implementing functional systems throughout the organization.
Implementing Notion within your team or organization requires a thoughtful approach that goes beyond simply transferring your existing dysfunctional system to a new platform. This course aims to guide you in establishing a functional system that effectively addresses the most significant challenges faced by teams and individuals dealing with scattered information overload. By condensing the best practices and essential workflows, this course equips you with the tools to escape the chaos. Additionally, you’ll benefit from a supportive community of fellow learners who are there to assist you throughout your learning journey.
The course offers a comprehensive curriculum that caters to learners of all levels, from beginners to advanced users. Beyond the course material, you’ll also gain access to live training sessions, events, and workshops. Furthermore, the private office hours, held twice a month, provide you with opportunities to seek guidance and clarification. Additionally, you’ll receive 12 months of free updates, ensuring you stay on top of new features and real-world case studies.
Best Course to Beautify Your Creative Projects (Frances Odera)
Notion is undoubtedly a powerful project management tool, but if you want to go beyond traditional dashboards and use its full creative potential, I recommend taking the course Introduction to Notion for Creative Projects by Frances Odera Matthews. Frances is a respected figure in the Notion community, a certified Notion Consultant, and the creator of The Notion Bar YouTube channel. This course equips you with the skills to craft visually stunning designs that align with your objectives. Its motto is “build pages with function, style, and heart.”
| Provider | Domestika |
| Instructor | Frances Odera Matthews |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 3 hours |
| Enrollments | 6.4K students |
| Rating | 98% positive (122 reviews) |
| Certificate | Available |
Get Ready for Notion Specialist Certification (Willian Nutt)
For those serious about turning Notion proficiency into a career, William Nutt’s course is the go-to choice. William has had a close collaboration with Notion in the development of their certification program, and he is also the mastermind behind Notion Vip.
In this comprehensive program, you will delve into the fundamental functions of Notion, learn strategic approaches for their implementation, and gain insights into the intricacies of workspace administration. Starting with the basics, you will progress towards exploring advanced database features and integrations that empower the creation of highly robust Notion workspaces.
What’s Next
We’ve highlighted some standout Notion courses, but there’s always more to discover.
- r/Notion is the largest open community dedicated to Notion. This is a great place to learn new techniques, share your progress, and find people passionate about Notion
- Marie Poulin and William Nutt’s YouTube channels are two great resources for learning with tutorials, study cases, and getting the latest updates from experts
- Notion official YouTube channel is perfect for short sessions of learning and a few interesting tutorials.
There are hundreds of YouTube tutorials and other valuable resources online, if you’ve found anything you would like to see here, we invite you to share them in the comments. Your insights could be the key to helping others enhance their productivity with Notion.
Why You Should Trust Us
Class Central, a Tripadvisor for online education, has helped 60 million learners find their next course. We’ve been combing through online education for more than a decade to aggregate a catalog of 200,000 online courses and 200,000 reviews written by our users. And we’re online learners ourselves: combined, the Class Central team has completed over 400 online courses, including online degrees.
How We Made Our Picks and Tested Them
Trying to find “the best” can be daunting, even for those of us who live and breathe online courses. Here’s how I approached this task.
First, I combed through Class Central’s Catalog and the internet to find a variety of free and paid open courses, some with certificates. You don’t need to enroll in a university to learn about Notion.
When choosing courses, I considered the following factors:
- Renowned Institutions: I looked for recognized institutions in Notion
- Instructor experience: I sought instructors with extensive experience in Notion and engaging presentation styles
- Popularity: I checked numbers of enrollments and views to find popular courses
- Course content: I examined courses that covered a range of topics and presentation styles, including the basics and more advanced topics. I watched some course videos to sample courses I hadn’t already taken
- Learner reviews: I read learner reviews (when available) to get a sense of the quality of each course, leveraging the Class Central database with its thousands of course ratings and reviews written by our users as well as available course provider reviews.
Then, I defined the scope for these recommendations. A Notion course can cover various topics, so I chose the best courses from a variety of already great courses.
Ultimately, I used a combination of data and my own judgment to make these picks. I’m confident these recommendations will be a reliable way to learn about Notion.
