Notion Office Hours: Build a Personal Wiki 📖

Notion office hours centered on a practical idea: a “personal wiki” works best when it starts as a simple landing page for the areas of life that need remembering, then grows into relational databases only where they add real leverage. Kylie Stewart’s setup shows how that evolution plays out day to day—starting from a weekly overview, then layering in specialized databases for groceries, recipes, events, and long-term planning.

Her personal workspace begins with a home screen that functions like an operational dashboard. From there, she tracks what’s coming up in the week and uses a card-based weekly view to keep the most engaging items visible. She also describes a key workflow decision: once tasks are marked done, she stopped archiving everything. Instead, she deletes completed items because Notion retains data for 30 days, and she prefers not to maintain an “archive to nowhere” that rarely gets revisited. The result is a lighter system that still preserves short-term recovery.

Groceries become the clearest example of Notion’s “small database, big payoff” approach. She keeps a grocery list where uncertain items stay near the top with question marks until she confirms what’s actually on hand. She also tracks ingredient quantities for recipes—especially when combining multiple dishes—so shopping becomes a reference-and-edit loop rather than a fresh list every time. Recipes, meanwhile, are treated as reusable knowledge: templates let her spin up new meal plans quickly, and relational structure helps her avoid re-writing instructions she already has.

For long-range planning, she uses an annual overview with archived months tucked behind toggles, including metadata like PTO hours used for events. That structure turns past activity into planning input for future vacation decisions. She also builds a “master schedule” by filtering a linked database—using categories like hiking or travel—to generate views such as “2019 hikes” with gallery covers and location details, or a week-by-week trip plan that separates high-level booked items (flights, hotels) from remaining reminders (like trains).

Ethan Lee’s team setup reframes the same concept for collaboration. A Berkeley student organization replaced a difficult-to-edit MediaWiki knowledge base with Notion because members were more willing to update documentation when editing felt approachable. A central index page makes resources discoverable, and teams create their own templates and structures over time—turning the wiki into an evolving toolkit rather than a static repository.

On the operations side, Ethan’s group uses relational databases for leadership action items, weekly filtered task views, calendar views, and meeting-specific notes. They also discuss partial Google Calendar integration via a “publish to calendar” checkbox tied to a periodic syncing service, plus short URLs (TinyURL/Bitly-style) to help members land on the right page quickly.

Across both personal and team examples, the takeaway is consistent: start with a brain dump and a few entry points (weekly planner, meeting notes, resource index), then refine into databases where relationships, filtering, and reuse matter—without locking ourselves into the first structure chosen.