Best Notion Templates to Use in 2023: Work & Personal

Take a look at our picks of best Notion templates for 2023 including the likes of the Second Brain Notion templates and templates great for professionals and freelancers alike.

What Are Notion Templates?

Notion templates have been widely popular recently. Notion templates are pages or groups of pages that you can duplicate and add to your own Notion workspace.

People like to use Notion templates because it saves time having to learn the ins and outs of the application. You can see which templates others in your industry are using, or be inspired by people on YouTube to choose the best notion templates for your space.

Templates can be anything from a single page to help make note-taking easier, or a whole workspace for managing a project, including databases, lists, documents and more.

Once you have learnt more about Notion, you can also create your own templates to share with others, or even sell templates.

The Benefits of Using Notion Templates

The benefit of using Notion templates is you can get started with using Notion right away, and begin working on projects, plans notes and much more.

Notion is a complex application, but one loved by many for its endless abilities and customisation. The only downside is, Notion does take some time to get used to. It has a lot of features and can feel overwhelming when you meet with the first blank page.

Here are some benefits of using Notion Templates

• Get started on projects straight away.
• Use tried and tested templates from within your industry.
• Save time trying to figure out how to use Notion.
• Create a workspace for you and your team almost instantly.
• Save time figuring out what workspace you need, learn from the template as you go.
• Less learning is needed overall - all you need will be in the template you have chosen.

Best Notion Templates

Here are some of the best Notion templates available to begin using right away. A lot of the following templates can be used as a Second Brain, for both personal use, and for teams.

1. Thomas Frank: Ultimate Brain

Thomas Frank has created an ultimate second brain Notion template to help bring together all your notes, projects, plans and more.

Here's how The Ultimate Brain by Thomas Frank works:

• Quick Capture - Quickly capture ideas, notes and tasks fast inside this template, they will then be sent to the process dashboard. You can also create something called 'fleeting notes' that archive themselves after one month.

• My Day - Provides you will a clear dashboard so you can plan your day. Includes a self-care checklist to emphasise importance, and a daily journal area for morning notes.

• Projects - This feature uses Notions databases to turn projects you input into their own hub for organising and managing notes and tasks. You can use Ultimate Brain's special feature "Pulls" to pull in notes from other workspaces.

Overall, Ultimate Brain is a really good, but very in-depth Notion template to get started with. Mostly best suited for those who have a lot of things to organise. This template also uses the PARA method we talk about here in our Beginners Guide to Second Brain.

2. Easlo: Second Brain

Easlo may be the most commonly known for creating Notion Templates. They are mostly all no fluff and great to get started with. You can also find a whole library of useful Notion Tutorials on Easlo's Youtube Channel.

Easlo's Second Brain template is based on the PARA method for organising notes and tasks, created by Tiago Forte.

Here are a few key things you can do with this Notion Template.

• Tasks - Drag and drop tasks inside the easy-to-use Notion template to manage tasks.

• Weekly Review - The Weekly Review shows you everything you need to get done so you can properly plan and organise your time.

• Customisation - Add more pre-built components and templates to your Second Brain workspace like habit trackers, journals and more to truly create a workspace suited to your needs.

Ealso's Second Brain Notion Template is great for Notion users because you can easily build and expand to create a workspace dedicated to your own needs.

Notion Alternatives using Second Brain

Before using a Second Brain template like Easlo's or Thomas Franks, let's quickly dive into what a second brain is and whether there are more or alternative Second Brain apps.

Second Brain is a concept created by Tiago Forte to give people a place to store all ideas, thoughts and knowledge. This is to reduce the stress of forgetting something important and to unlock a whole new world of possibilities from the things you learn and use.

Using a second brain app helps to store and organise all of these things in a way that makes sense. You can pull these notes back, use them to create and explore ideas and share them with others. Here are some good choices for second-brain apps:

Notion for Second Brain

Notion

An all-in-one workspaces for notes, projects, tasks, documents & lots more.

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Best For

Passionate All-In-One

Availability

Web

iOS

Android

Windows

Mac

Chrome Extension

Pricing

$

Type of Tool

All-In-One Productivity ToolsProject Management SoftwareAI Productivity Tools

Obsidian for Second Brain

Obsidian

Locally stored tool for managing notes, ideas and thoughts - a fan favourite.

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Best For

Linking Notes

Availability

iOS

Windows

Linux

Mac

Android

Pricing

$

Type of Tool

Note Taking AppsPersonal Knowledge Management Apps

Logseq for Second Brain

Logseq

Logseq is a networked thought notes app with graph, backlinks & more.

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Best For

Advanced PKM note-takers

Availability

Mac

Linux

Windows

Android

iOS

Pricing

$

$

Type of Tool

Note Taking Apps

To see more, take a look at our Best Second Brain Note-Taking Applications for 2023.

3. William Nutt: Bulletproof 2.0

The Bulletproof 2.0 Notion Template is best suited for professionals and small teams, mostly because it includes features individuals and personal use doesn't really require.

The video below goes in-depth into how the Bulletproof 2.0 template works.

Bulletproof 2.0 is built on the principle of centralising information within contextual dashboards. This essentially means managing information, notes, ideas and thoughts inside high-quality areas. William Nutt has created something called the Vault, which holds Buckets, Bolts and Bytes...

• Vault - The Vault is the top-level page inside this template. Here you can see a very brief outline of your databases. This is the page you come to click through to different areas.

• Buckets - Buckets are basically databases for high-level categories within your business or team. Think of Buckets like 'Areas' when using the PARA method. Buckets include information and are useful for internal departments like accounting and marketing.

• Bolts - Inside the Bolts section of this Notion template, you can use databases to demonstrate and measure progress. You will gain more bolts as projects move forwards and these can include any projects, tasks and events.

• Bytes - This is where you hold databases including information that support your work. So for example, you can find project briefs, HR documents, contact details, training materials and so on, inside the Bytes section.

Notion Templates and Courses: Key Differences

Templates and courses are entirely different things but powerful for optimising Notion. One helps you get started immediately with the Notion app, the other teaches you how to use the app and how to create your own workspace with all its features.

Templates

Templates are readily available to download and get started with Notion right away.

• A ready-made workspace that can also be customisable.
• Download and use in one click.
• Templates for almost every possibility from blog posts to holiday plans.
• Get started right away with templates.
• No learning really needed. It's all there ready for you.

Courses

Courses may take some time to get through, some courses last a couple of days, and others can last a few weeks to months.

• Either paid or free, either way, you have to spend an amount of time learning.
• Used to learn the basics and in-depth features of Notion.
• Create your own templates after learning through a course.
• Guided through the steps of using Notion as a whole workspace.
• Takes longer to get started, but you'll know exactly how the space works.