my favorite IT study tool - Notion

About this video

Sponsored by Notion, though the creator says he had used it for a year beforehand, this is a walkthrough of his free IT Study Tracker template for certification study. He explains Notion’s two building blocks — pages for notes and databases for structured tracking — then duplicates the template and builds it out for the CCNA. The template has three parts: a dashboard, a Domains database (e.g. 1.0 Network Fundamentals, 2.0 Network Access) and an Exam Topics database (1.1, 1.2, etc.), with the two databases linked via a relation field. Topics should be added using the built-in ’exam topic’ template, not by typing rows directly. Each topic page carries a status (studying, review, complete), checkboxes for read / watch / flashcards / lab, note space, toggle-style flashcards (which he later transfers to Anki), and a nested Subtopics database whose items are also pages with their own statuses. The dashboard pulls it together: a filtered view of today’s scheduled study, an exam-day countdown after you set your exam date, calendar, kanban board and gallery views of the same databases, and formula-driven progress bars that update automatically as topic checkboxes are completed. He shows his real CCNP ENCOR tracker and his YouTube planning workspace as other uses, and warns the customization itself can consume a lot of time.

Key takeaways

• Structure study as two linked Notion databases — Domains and Exam Topics — so completing topics automatically rolls up into per-domain progress bars
• Add topics via the template button, not plain rows, so each topic gets the status field, task checkboxes and subtopics database pre-built
• For every topic complete four tasks — read, watch, make flashcards, and lab — then move status from studying to review to complete
• Use the dashboard daily: schedule a study date per topic to surface it in Today’s Study, and set the exam date early to create deadline pressure
• Reuse the same database in multiple views — table, calendar for scheduling, and kanban board for status — instead of maintaining separate trackers

Episode details: published March 30, 2021 · 20:56 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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