Notion Productivity Tool | Widgets and Plug-Ins to Make your Notion Cute

Notion has become a work from home and study from home essential in 2021! Although Notion has a lot of productivity features, my favorite part is that can be much cuter than its competitors like Trello. Today I’m here to share my favorite widgets and plug-ins to customize your Notion homepages. If you're a brand new user I also recommend you check out my other post "Notion Productivity Tool | Tips and Tricks" for more ideas.

EMBED GOOGLE CALENDAR

Notion has a calendar option but it’s much more practical to sync your Google Calendar which automatically updates when you get event invites instead of spending additional time inputting events. The first step to adding your Google Calendar is making sure that your calendar is public. On the left side of Google Calendar, you will see a list of your calendars. Hover over the name of the calendar and you will see three dots. Click on the three dots, and you will see an option for Display this only and Settings and Sharing. Select Settings and Sharing. In the Access Permissions setting of the menu, select the checkbox to make your schedule available to the public. It seems scary to think that the schedule will be fully public, but Google Calendar won’t actually display the full details of the events if someone happens to look up your calendar. They will only see the times you have events with the title Busy. Now that your Google Calendars are public scroll down the same settings page and look for Integrate Calendar. Copy the URL and paste it into Notion. After pasting the link, you will have three options pop up, make sure to click embed and you're all set!

WEATHER WIDGET 

Click here to visit the page that allows you to create a weather widget to your liking and location. 

how to embed the weather widget? 

When you finish customizing the widget, select get code and copy the code. Open the Notion page you want to add the weather widget to and look for ‘Integrated Calendar’. Copy the link to the public URL. In Notion, type /embed and paste the link. Your Google Calendar widget should appear and you will be able to move and resize the calendar to your liking. 

 where to get more widgets? 

Indify is another great source for Notion widgets. Options include Google Calendar, Weather, and even progress tracking bars. I have yet to try Indify but have seen many good reviews on Youtube. Below is a video explaining how to use Indify. 

here

MINIMALIST ICONS 

Click here to visit the page that allows you to create a weather widget to your liking and location. 

Scroll through the options and select one that best suits the section of your page. Copy the link to the widget, then, click on the add icon section of your page or on the icon itself, and a screen like an image below will appear. 

Click on the link option and paste the link from earlier.  

HOW TO MAKE COLUMNS

Now, this isn’t an additional feature, but knowing how to make additional columns totally changes customization possibilities. It took me almost three months to figure out how to make the different columns, so below are the step by step instructions on how to do that: 

If you want to replicate something similar to the picture above, start by changing the width of the Notion page. In the top right corner of the page, you will see dots. When you click on these dots you a dropdown menu will appear. Click on full-width to increase your workspace on your Notion page. 

To make columns create two lines of text, it can be random, and you can add the actual information you want later on. After you have added some text, hover over the second line of text, and you will see six dots appear like in the image below. Use can use these to drag the text to the left or right of the first line of text. Continue dragging the text until you see a blue line appear like in the image below. 

Once you see this line, release and you have two columns. I believe you can repeat this process to create a maximum of 5 columns. If you want to make column headers stand out, just transform the line of text into a callout and customize the color to your liking. 

Because I am a visual learner, I know sometimes it can be hard to understand written instructions. Below is a Youtube tutorial to make columns in Notion. 

here 

NOTION HOMEPAGE INSPO

Having a hard time figuring out how you want to set up your homepage? Check out Pinterest for a ton of options and users that upload tips and tricks.

I actually found this amazing Notion home base with minimalist templates for students. Check it out here! This notion user even compiled a list of Notion templates from other users. Check it out here! Both lists are pretty extensive, so I add direct links to my personal favorites below. If you liked my notion set up in my last Notion post, I think you'll like these too!

other template links: 

https://www.notion.so/Home-Sage-Green-Template-f33d82f582654b55af115eccfac54683

https://www.notion.so/isabella-s-notion-hub-4ff7adb107a24dbd95ffaef6c790bf8a

Kristy Lin on Youtube also has a great template and Youtube video. I linked both resources below. 

here

Template mentioned in the video:  https://www.notion.so/2020-Template-bcda95b019fc400bbce91155eb7d9a46

Thanks for staying all the way to the end! Hope the instructions are clear, if you have any questions about setting up a Notion I would love to help.