How to Use Notion Al: A Crash Course

After a lengthy beta leaving us on the edge of our seats, Notion AI is available for public consumption. But the massive amount of features on offer can leave even the most seasoned AI veteran overwhelmed and desperate for help.

And it’s no sweat—I’m here to save you. In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about leveraging Notion AI to its full potential.

But first, a little foundational teaching.

What is Notion AI, Exactly?

Before we dive in, it’s essential to understand what Notion AI is exactly. Rather than being a sandbox like ChatGPT, it’s focused on helping you with Notion tasks.

And help you it does.

Notion AI represents a total paradigm shift in Notion’s practicality. If you thought Notion was a productivity powerhouse before, just wait until you see what comes next.

Notion AI cover

Writing

Notion AI writes for … pretty much everything.

Entering a prompt into Notion AI

Here’s what I got when I entered “brainstorm ideas on business development.”

Notion AI creates a list of action items

It does blog writing, too. Here’s what I got when I entered “write a blog post about why Inception is the best Inception movie.”

Next, I asked it to “write an outline about Hegelian dialectics.”

notion AI writing an outline about hegel's philosophy

Looks pretty accurate, right? Now let’s do “write a social media post about a subscription-based, monthly Japanese snack box.

Now let’s do a press release. I prompted “write a press release about the release of Among Us 2.”

Next, I’ll have it write a story. I entered “write a creative story about the Knights of the Round Table.”

While Notion AI isn’t a total sandbox, it’s definitely a writing sandbox. I showed you some great examples, but you can do anything you want with it.

All you do is tell it what you want it do to. You can be as specific as you want, too (though it won’t always listen).

Automation

With Notion AI, you can automate all the tedious tasks you used to resent.

Let me illustrate. Here’s some notes I asked Notion AI to create:

…which I’ll now ask to summarize:

Now I’ll turn the statistics of one of my articles on my other site into a table:

Next, let’s change the tone of a passage of text:

And can Notion AI translate a passage of text? Yes!

It can turn meeting transcripts into action items:

It can also explain them:

Prompting

We’ve covered all the flagship features shipped with Notion AI. But by using specific prompts, you can get even more out of it.

Next, we’ll run though examples. First up, creating a CRM template.

My prompt will be “Create a CRM template with four slots: client name, company, services purchased, and additional notes. Fill it with example information.”

Nice! Now let’s summarize a speech. The prompt will be “Summarize Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement address.”

Sweet. Now we’ll create a to-do list with “Create a 10-point to-do list of daily household tasks (with appropriate emojis appended to each entry).”

Lastly, let’s create a wiki. Our prompt will be “Compile a list of poodle hybrid breeds (AKA “doodles”) into a wiki, with subheadings and descriptions of each.”

Limitations

Notion AI can’t do everything you can do manually. To see what I mean, it’s easier just to show you.

I couldn’t get it to create advanced headings like this:

Or advanced tables like this:

It also likes to make stuff up, as Notion itself warns here:

So fact-check any information it gives you. But besides that stuff, Notion AI’s awesome—enjoy!

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It’s free, and we’d love to have you. See you there!

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