Notion Fundamentals
This is where everything starts. Before you build anything impressive in Notion, you need to understand how it thinks — and once you do, the whole tool just clicks.
Notion is one of those tools that feels confusing at first because it's actually way more flexible than any tool you've used before. Most apps are opinionated — a notes app is just for notes, a calendar is just for calendars. Notion doesn't care. It lets you build whatever structure makes sense for your brain.
But that flexibility is also why most people never go beyond using it as a basic notes app. This course changes that.
How this course works: Every section must be completed before you can move to the next. You'll read, interact with live demos, and pass a quiz. No skipping. No cheating the system. When you finish all 8 lessons, Course 2 unlocks back on the hub.
Notion's Mental Model
Notion is not a notes app. It's not a to-do list. It's not a spreadsheet. It's a workspace — and understanding that changes everything about how you use it.
Most tools force you into their structure. Apple Notes says "here's a list of notes." Excel says "here's a grid." Google Calendar says "here's a month." Notion says: "here's a blank canvas — you decide."
The entire app is built on three ideas that repeat everywhere:
Navigating the Sidebar
The sidebar is your command center. Everything you've ever created in Notion lives here, and learning to organize it well is the first real skill to develop.
The Notion sidebar has two main zones: system items at the top (Search, Home, Inbox) and your pages below. Pages are organized in a tree — you can nest pages inside pages to create folders without needing actual folders.
A few things to know about the sidebar:
Pages & Sub-Pages
In Notion, there are no folders. Instead, pages contain other pages. This is actually more powerful — a page can hold content and be a folder at the same time.
Think of your Notion workspace like a book. The sidebar is the table of contents. Each chapter is a page. Each chapter can have sections (sub-pages), and those sections can have sub-sub-pages. There's no limit to the depth.
To create a sub-page, just type /page anywhere inside an existing page, or drag an existing page into another page from the sidebar.
Every page can also have an emoji icon and a cover image. Click the emoji area at the top of any page to set an icon. These visual cues make navigating your workspace much faster.
Everything is a Block
This is the single most important concept in Notion. Every piece of content — every word, every image, every checkbox — is an individual block that you can move, style, and rearrange freely.
When you click into a Notion page and start typing, you're creating a text block. Press Enter to start a new block. Hover over any block and a ⠿ drag handle appears on the left — grab it to drag the block anywhere on the page.
This means the order of content on your page is totally fluid. Unlike a Google Doc where moving paragraphs around is painful, in Notion you just drag.
You can also select multiple blocks by clicking one, then Shift+clicking another. This lets you move, delete, or change the type of many blocks at once — incredibly useful for reorganizing notes.
Clicking the ⠿ handle also reveals a context menu: you can turn the block into a different type (e.g., turn a bullet into a heading), duplicate it, or delete it.
The Slash Command
Type / anywhere on a page and a menu appears with every block type available. This is how you add anything in Notion — and it's the fastest command to master.
The slash command menu is searchable. Press / then start typing what you want — "head" for a heading, "todo" for a checkbox, "call" for a callout. The more you use it, the faster you'll be.
Beyond blocks, the slash menu also lets you embed content — type /image to embed an image, /video for a video, /code for a code block with syntax highlighting, or /page to create a new sub-page inline.
Block Types Deep Dive
There are over 30 block types in Notion. You don't need all of them — but knowing the essential 10 will cover 95% of everything you'll ever do.
Here's when to use each one:
Your First Real Page
Theory is nothing without practice. Here's the exact template structure for a class notes page — the best format for any subject, any grade.
Every great class notes page in Notion has the same anatomy: a clear visual identity (emoji + title), a key takeaway (callout), organized content (headings + bullets), a vocab section (tags), and an action list (to-dos).
Course Wrap-Up & Final Quiz
You've covered Notion's mental model, the interface, pages, sub-pages, blocks, the slash command, block types, and your first real page. Let's make sure it all stuck.
1. Everything is a page — nested pages replace folders.
2. Every page is made of blocks — moveable, rearrangeable, transformable.
3. / is your best friend — the slash command inserts any block instantly.
4. Structure beats length — H1/H2/callouts make notes scannable.
5. One page per topic — link pages together rather than cramming everything in one.