# Notion for Beginners : Build a Life Dashboard for Personal Productivity - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/notion-for-beginners-build-a-life-dashboard-for-personal-productivity/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Productivity · Solid intro · Rated 7 /10 # Notion for Beginners : Build a Life Dashboard for Personal Productivity By Gareth B. Davies · Updated August 2026 Mike And Matty · Doctors, YouTubers, Music Producers Beginner · 107 min A doctor-turned-YouTuber's brisk, hands-on tour of Notion covers blocks through database formulas in under two hours, no fluff. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fnotion-for-beginners-build-a-life-dashboard-for-personal-productivity%2F387798434) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## A guided build, not a feature dump The course is structured around a single running project: a personal dashboard built up lesson by lesson, starting from a blank workspace. Rather than lecturing about features in the abstract, the instructor deletes the default Notion starter content on screen and rebuilds it piece by piece, adding a cover image, an icon, a motivational quote block, and eventually widgets pulled from sites like Indify and Apption. That project spine is the course's biggest structural strength. Each lesson adds one capability, from basic text blocks and the six-dot block menu, to page hierarchy and breadcrumbs, to backlinking pages with square brackets, and the dashboard visibly evolves as a result. Learners are explicitly told to pause and replicate each step in their own workspace, which turns a beginner course into something closer to a lab. The middle stretch on databases is where the course does its most substantive teaching. It walks through creating an inline database, adding properties like status, date, and select versus multi-select, and then layering on views: table, calendar, board, and others, each with their own display settings. The formula lesson is a highlight. Instead of just listing functions, the instructor builds one from an empty cell, shows how Notion autocompletes syntax when you click a property name, and demonstrates how the editor flags a stray parenthesis with a character-position error. Watching a formula error get diagnosed in real time does more for confidence than any glossary of functions would. ## Where it thins out The back half admits its own limits. Relations and rollups get a single example, using note counts rolled up into a class database, and the instructor says outright that these are advanced features beginners do not need to master. That honesty is refreshing, but it also means anyone hoping for a genuine deep dive into relational databases, nested rollup formulas, or advanced filtering logic will find only a primer here, with a nudge toward outside resources like the Notion Reddit community and Ben Smith's guide. Pacing is uneven in a different way. Early lessons on blocks and the sidebar move slowly enough to cover keyboard shortcuts most beginners would happily skip, while later lessons on templates and sharing move quickly through material that could use more detail, particularly around permission levels and workspace invites, which get only a brief warning rather than a real walkthrough. The instructor's delivery is clear and unhurried, with a habit of narrating exactly what he is clicking, which suits screen-recorded software tutorials well. There is no padding with unrelated personal stories beyond a short framing in the introduction, and the course stays on task throughout its 107 minutes. For someone who has never opened Notion, this is a legitimate on-ramp: it builds real muscle memory through repetition of the block-and-page mental model before introducing databases, and it ends with a shareable project rather than a checklist of features. It is not, however, a reference for power users. Those already comfortable with tables and filters will find little new past the formula lesson, and should look elsewhere for genuinely advanced database design. The standout The live build of a formula property from scratch, including how Notion autofills syntax and flags errors, demystifies what usually intimidates beginners most. ## What you will learn - · Building pages and nesting hierarchies with blocks, toggles, and keyboard shortcuts like Cmd/Ctrl+Option+1-3 - · Customizing a workspace with covers, icons, columns, dividers, and embedded widgets from sites like Indify - · Creating databases with multiple views (table, calendar, board) and configuring properties like status, date, and select - · Filtering, sorting, and building formula properties using Notion's function editor and syntax hints - · Setting up relations and rollups to connect databases and surface aggregate data across pages - · Sharing pages publicly or with collaborators and managing edit, comment, and duplication permissions Best for: Someone who has never opened Notion and wants a guided, project-based path to a working personal dashboard without hunting through scattered tutorials. Skip it if: Anyone who already uses Notion regularly for databases and formulas, since the advanced material stays intentionally shallow and the pace is built for total newcomers. Helpful Examples Clarity of Instruction Organization of Lessons Actionable Steps [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fnotion-for-beginners-build-a-life-dashboard-for-personal-productivity%2F387798434)