- Well, hello there.
Welcome back to Thomas Frank Explains.
In this Notion fundamentals video,
we are talking about the basics of blocks inside of Notion,
how to create them, how to manipulate them,
how to change them
and use them to bend Notion to your will.
What are blocks?
Well, blocks are pretty much everything you see
inside of Notion,
except for the sidebar and some of the top menus
and things like that.
But all the content that you create, and see, and work with
inside of Notion is built out of blocks
and blocks come together to form things
inside of Notion that are greater
than the sum of their parts.
Think of blocks as a container for data
that can take different shapes.
A blob of text is a block.
An image is a block.
An embedded YouTube video will be a block
and even databases and pages themselves are blocks.
A page, in fact, is a block that contains other blocks.
And you can prove this to yourself,
by taking a page that has some content inside of it
and turning it into another type of block, like a toggle.
You're going to see all that content inside the new toggle.
So in this video,
you're going to start down the path
towards becoming an expert at using blocks inside of Notion.
We're going to talk about how to create them
in multiple ways,
how to change their settings and how to move them around
in preparation for our next video
on creating complex, multi-column layouts inside of Notion.
And starting with this video,
we are going to start an example project
that we're going to be carrying
throughout the entire rest of this course,
which is going to demonstrate
pretty much everything we're going to talk about
and all of the basics of Notion itself.
And that is going to be the creation
of this personal dashboard,
which will serve as sort of a home base
for your Notion workspace, if you want.
In fact,
if you've been to the courses homepage over at
thomasjfrank.com/fundamentals,
you might've seen at the top of the page,
a picture of my personal dashboard.
I use this to get to my task area, my note taking system.
It is pretty much my home base within my Notion workspace.
And by the end of Notion fundamentals,
you're going to be capable
of creating something very similar for yourself.
You're going to be able to create this.
And in this video,
we're going to take the first baby steps
toward getting to it.
If you look at a personal dashboard,
we have many different types of blocks
that are all working in concert
to create something that is very, very useful.
So, how do we get all these blocks on the page
and what blocks do we have available to us?
That is what we're going to start covering right now.
As always, you can go over to
thomasjfrank.com/fundamentals,
linked in the description down below
to get all the example files
and written versions of every lesson inside of this course
with lots of extra cool reference materials.
So check that out, if you are curious,
otherwise, let's roll that intro.
(upbeat music)
Okay, here I am once again,
being in a circle on your screen.
So like I said earlier,
we're going to be creating this personal dashboard
inside of Notion.
And this is composed of many different types of blocks
in a multi-column layout.
So, like I said before,
a block is basically just a unit of data inside of Notion.
It can contain images. It can contain embedded content.
It can contain pages. All kinds of interesting things.
And to create a block,
all you need to do is type our slash commands.
So what I'm going to do is go over to a blank page
and we're going to start
getting some of the content on the screen
that we need to build this dashboard.
So here in my blank page,
I'm just going to call it Personal Dashboard
and to add our first block, the page here,
all you need to do is type the slash command,
like it says on the screen,
and we're going to get this list
of all the different types of blocks inside of Notion.
We can scroll through here and we can choose one
by scrolling and searching,
or we can simply start typing to add something.
So if I want maybe a heading, I can start typing heading.
And if I want heading two,
I can do an H two and I'll have that right there.
I can either click it or I can hit enter,
and I've gotten myself a heading two.
So let's just call this heading two tasks.
Cause that is one of the headings on our personal dashboard.
And boom, I have put my first block on the page.
Now, another thing you're going to notice about blocks
is there's this little six dot icon
to the left of every block,
which is the block menu.
And if I open it up by clicking,
I have a lot of different options
that I'm going to go through in a little bit,
but I just want you to know that you can basically
do whatever you want to do to this block
by opening up this block menu.
Now, before we go forward
and start creating the rest of the blocks on this page,
I want to let you know about the Notion block reference
that I've created inside of the course materials
for this course.
So once again,
thomasjfrank.com/fundamentals,
you can get all the supplemental materials.
And this has a listing and example of every single block
that you're gonna find inside of Notion.
We've got a table of contents at the top here,
so you can see all the basic blocks.
Things like to-do lists and toggles
and bullet lists, numbered lists,
all kinds of stuff like that.
We have inline blocks, which are inline links,
and there are dates and reminders
and mentions the people on your team.
Along with inline formulas,
we have different types of databases.
There's an example of each different view
of a database inside of all these toggles here.
And we have media blocks,
embedded things like images or web bookmarks,
or even embedded YouTube videos.
There are also other more advanced embeds like Google sheets
and tweets, and even whimsical boards,
which is a really amazing outlining tool that you can use
to create flow charts, really cool thing there.
And then there are advanced blocks.
So synced blocks, which can sync content
across multiple pages in one Notion workspace,
even across Notion workspaces, in some cases,
block equations, template buttons, breadcrumbs,
and table of contents.
All kinds of really cool stuff.
In this video, we're not going to give an example
of every single one there,
but I do want you to know that this reference exists.
And that you can see an example
of every single block within it.
So going back to our dashboard here,
I want to add a few more of the headings.
I know we had one for notes.
We had one for references
and we had one for web links.
So we're going to go ahead and get all those there.
And then one thing that I like to do,
is give these a background color,
look a little bit different
than the content underneath them.
So if we go in here,
we can change the color by going to the color menu.
And then these options here would change the text color.
So I can show you that right there,
and I'm going to control Z, so I don't have that there,
but if I go and change the background color to gray,
then I get a bit of a highlight here.
And one thing that I do when I'm building my dashboards
is also add a divider
or otherwise known as a horizontal rule
by typing the dash key three times.
And that is another tip for adding blocks.
For certain types of blocks,
there is a way to get them onto the screen
without actually opening the slash menu
and searching for it.
So for example,
with block quotes or quotes,
I can simply type a quote and hit space.
And I get a block quote there.
For bullet lists,
I can type the asterisks and get a bullet,
or I can even type the dash and hit space and get a bullet.
For number lists,
I can type one period and get a numbered list there.
And one more example, if I want to create a toggle list,
I can use this little HTML bracket here to the right,
hit space, and I get an empty toggle.
In the written version of this article,
I have some more examples of some blocks
that you can get onto the screen
using special keyboard shortcuts.
And Notion's documentation has lists
of every single one available.
They're useful to know,
especially for creating things very quickly,
but that is all I want to say on them for now.
So one more that I'm actually going to show right now
is how to create a to-do item
because I want one beneath tasks.
So let's go ahead and hit bracket on left, bracket right.
And now we have a to-do.
So I'm going to go ahead and give this a name, film video.
And now, I want to add another to-do list item
beneath this to-do here.
Now, because I already have a to-do,
I could just hit enter and I'm going to get another one,
but I do want to show you the other way
you can start to create blocks inside of Notion,
which is to hit the plus icon
to the left of every single block.
If I do that,
I'm going to get the option to create any other blocks.
So I could create a heading,
I can create whatever I want.
In this case,
I'm going to create yet another to-do item,
and I'm going to go on and fill those out now.
And I'm also going to fill out some more
basic content in here
that is not super important to talk through.
All right,
so now we have some to-do items here,
we have some toggle lists, which you've seen before.
The next block that I'm going to create, is actually a page.
And we're going to have a whole video
on creating and linking to pages,
but I'm just going to do it right here as well,
because it's very, very easy.
You just type your slash command.
You can search for page, and boom.
You have created a page inside of your page.
So let's call this page Quotes
and I'm gonna go ahead
and paste in some quotes that I had from a different page.
So now we have this cool quotes page inside of our dashboard
and going back to the dashboard,
the next thing that would I really like here
is a link to another existing page
that is outside of this dashboard, somewhere else
in my Notion workspace.
So, what I'm gonna do is actually go over
to our Notion block reference here.
I'm gonna hit command or control L
to copy the URL of this page to the clipboard.
Then I'll use control back bracket
to go back to our personal dashboard.
And I'm going to click this little plus button here
and I'm going to search for link to page.
So if I do this, I can search for lots of things.
And actually I have it right here.
So if I pasted the URL,
it would also come up after awhile
and I can select it like that.
You can also type to search for the page
if you know the name of it.
So now what I've created is a link to page block.
And one cool thing that I want to note
about link to page blocks,
is that if you open up your personal dashboard
or anything in the sidebar,
whether it's Favorited,
or if it's in the workspace area,
you're going to see the link to your external page
inside of this page, in the sidebar,
even though the page is not actually contained
within this page,
that link there is a block
and it creates a link in the sidebar.
This is very, very useful.
And as an example, I will show you,
well, number one,
I have my CIG Creator's Companion here.
This is how we manage all of our YouTube and blog content.
And this is filled with pretty much nothing
but pages inside of Creator's Companion.
But if I go down here to my Thomas' dashboard,
you're gonna see all these items here with arrows.
These are all pages that exist outside of my dashboard.
And I simply created these link to page blocks
so I can easily access them from my sidebar
without having to favorite every single one of them.
It's very, very useful.
Okay. Back to our little dashboard here,
I'm going to create another horizontal rule.
And then I want a link to a web page here
so I can type my slash command
and I can type link and choose web bookmark.
I can paste in my URL like that and create a bookmark
if I want to.
But what I can also do,
is simply paste the URL onto the screen.
And I have the option to either create an embed,
which will literally embed the webpage inside of Notion
or create a bookmark or simply dismiss it
and have the URL on the screen.
So I'm going to also create a bookmark
because I'm creating this little web link section here
and now I've got links to both College Info Geek
and my personal website on my little dashboard here.
And if I remember correctly,
the next thing we have in the dashboard
is an image of Bruce Lee.
So if I wanted to,
I could just type slash image and I can upload
or embed with link.
But what I can also do
is if I have an image on my clipboard,
I can simply paste it,
just like I would with a piece of text.
And there's the image.
Now upload it to Notion servers and on my page.
Lastly, I'm going to add my favorite quote in the world,
which is from Bruce Lee.
So once again,
I can hit my little quote mark
and hit space to get a block quote on the page
without having to search for it in the block menu.
And I'll go ahead and type in my quote right there.
All right.
So I'm gonna go up and I'm gonna change these
to their gray background.
And one cool trick you might not know about
is if you type slash,
you're going to get the block menu inside of this text,
but if you start typing a color
and the word back,
you can actually get to this background option here.
So I can take that and make it a gray background.
Okay. Next thing I wanna do
is create a little list of quick links
that actually link me directly to the headers on this page,
in case I'm scrolling through this dashboard on my phone,
and I don't want to scroll through a ton of different stuff.
I want to zoom right, to say,
the notes section of the Web Link section.
So I want to do is go ahead and create a toggle.
And I'm going to call this Quick Links.
And what I want to do actually, is give this an emoji.
So on Windows,
it's Windows key and a semi-colon
and let's type in navigation
to get this cool little compass,
give it a space and bold, Quick Links.
And then in here inside of our toggles,
we can actually add any kind of block that we want.
So I'm going to type slash
and I'm going to search for a Table of Contents block.
And now I've got links
to all of these different headers on my page.
And because we are on a pretty big screen,
we're not going to zoom down to them, but if I click them,
you'll notice that they turn blue,
which is pretty much me linking right to them.
If I were on my phone
and the notes section in the reference section
was off of the screen,
clicking this will zoom me down to it,
which is very, very useful.
So I'll go ahead and close that.
And I'm gonna go ahead and give it another,
let's give it a green background
just to visually distinguish it.
And one more thing that I want on my dashboard,
if I get rid of that there, is a call-out block.
Now this just makes something stand out.
And something that I want at the top of my dashboard
is a little affirmation,
basically just telling me not to spend so much time working
and to live a more balanced life.
So I'm going to have that in there,
and I may want this in some other places as well.
So this is where I'm going to show you
how to use synced blocks.
So if you type slash, just like any other block,
we can search for synced block.
And this is basically an area where we can put other blocks,
which we can then copy to other locations
in our Notion workspace.
So if I go ahead and grab this,
I can actually drag it into this synced block.
And what you will notice,
is that I also drag the block around.
That's something I haven't covered yet,
but if you click and hold on this little menu here,
you can actually drag a block pretty much wherever you want.
And this blue line indicates where it's going to go.
Now for most of these blocks, we have a solid blue line,
but notice that underneath these to-do lists,
if I move it to the right a little bit,
it indicates that I'm going to get an indented block.
So if I go and do that,
now it is indented underneath the to-do list item here.
So I'm gonna go ahead and put that back there
and get rid of the space in the synced block.
And now if I want to put the synced block somewhere else,
all I need to do is hit this copy and sync button,
which will copy the synced block to my clipboard.
And let's just say,
if I want to go over to this quotes page here,
I could also add it at the top
by hitting control V to paste it.
And with synced blocks,
you can see if you click here in this editing
in one of the page,
you can see a list of all of the pages
where this synced block exists.
And you'll see a label for what this page is,
but also where the original location of the synced block is.
And if you want to learn more about synced blocks,
I have an entire couple of videos
and a huge guide over on
thomasjfrank.com
And I will link those in the description down below.
So it won't cover them too much more in this video,
but I do have a very, very in-depth resource.
So now we have a single column version
of most of the kind of content we're going to have
on that personal dashboard here.
If you look at the actual personal dashboard,
you're gonna see
that there's some different types of blocks on here.
There's some databases, more advanced things.
We're going to cover those and add them in later tutorials
in this series, so you can understand
exactly what's going on.
So right now we have basically
a rudimentary personal dashboard.
And to round this video out,
I want to show you some of the extra options you have
when it comes to blocks of all different types.
And the options are actually going to change
based on the different type of block.
For example, in the block quote down here,
if I hit the block menu,
I actually have the quote size option.
I can choose to make this default text size
or large text size.
So I think it's large by default here.
And if I go ahead and make it default,
it's actually smaller.
I like it to be large, so I'm gonna set it back to large.
And if we open the block menu for an image,
we can actually view the original.
We can make it full screen,
which will take up pretty much the entire Notion here
and make a light box.
We can download it.
We can view the original on the AWS instance
that Notion uses, we can replace it.
And we can also add a caption.
So if we wanted to, we can even, you know,
take this quote and we could've made it a caption
on the image itself like that.
So I'm going to go ahead and leave it as a block quote
and something that we can do with pretty much every block
is actually add comments to it.
So if I go ahead and hit comment right here,
I can add whatever kind of comment I want.
And something that's pretty new in Notion
is that we can actually attach files to comments,
which is pretty cool.
I'm not gonna do that here,
but check that out if you want to.
And if I go ahead and click it right there,
now we have a little comment icon and we can see,
and even maybe have a discussion
with other members of our workspace
about whatever we're talking about.
Another pretty cool thing we can do
with pretty much any block inside of Notion
is move it somewhere else.
So let's say, and maybe a group actually want to move.
Let's say I want to move this task list to somewhere else
inside of my workspace, I can actually click and drag,
just select them all and then open up the block menu
and choose, move to.
And if I type in a page, let's try Creator's Companion.
I get a list of options here,
and I'm gonna go ahead and choose this one,
which is my demo version of Creator's Companion.
And I'm gonna go over here and scroll to the bottom
and see all those blocks are now moved to this area.
Another way to move blocks is to simply select them
and drag them to pages in the sidebar.
Which we'll go ahead and do right now.
And now we've got our task list
back in our personal dashboard.
So I'm gonna drag those up and put them right there
where they used to be.
And last but not least,
I want to show you how to turn a block
into another type of block.
And the example that I'm actually going to use here
is this Quotes page we created earlier.
So if you remember clicking here,
we have all these different quotes
along with an instance of a synced block.
If I go back to our personal dashboard
and I click the block menu and hit Turn Into,
I have the opportunity
to turn it into all different kinds of blocks.
Now, with most of these kinds,
like the headings here or a to-do list or number list,
I'm going to end up with the title of the page
turning into the block that I want.
And then all of the content within that page
is simply going to be underneath it.
So let's go and do heading one as an example,
all that content is now here,
but if I undo and I turn it into say,
a toggle list,
I actually get all this content inside of this toggle list.
So if you ever have stuff inside of a page
that you would really like to have
within the page that contains that page,
you can go ahead and turn the internal page
into something else, such as a toggle list there.
I'm gonna go ahead and undo that
because I do want it to be a page.
And that pretty much covers everything
that we're going to cover in this block of basics video.
We now have a lot of what we're going to have
on our personal dashboard once it is finished,
but it is in a single column
and it's not exactly looking
like this finished personal dashboards.
So in the next lesson,
you're going to learn how to create complex,
multi-column layouts
inside of Notion.
We're going to get something that at least looks
very similar to this personal dashboard.
Once again, if you want to go over to
thomasjfrank.com/fundamentals,
you can find the written version of this lesson,
which has more details about blocks,
and you can get all the supplemental materials,
including this Notion block reference
which shows you an example of every kind of block
inside of Notion.
So check that out.
You'll also have the opportunity to sign up
for my Notion tips, email list,
where I've got lots of cool tips
coming to the people who are specifically on that list.
Check that out and as always,
thanks so much for watching.
Ask questions in the comments down below,
or follow me on Twitter over @TomFrankly.
I am very responsive over there,
probably my favorite social network,
so check that out
and thanks as always for watching and learning.
See you in the next one.