Notion vs. Calendar: Which Is Better for Daily Planning?

A good productivity system is essential, especially if your work involves spending a lot of time at your computer. Without one, it’s too easy to have your attention sucked into numerous areas—and for you to not progress on the goals you want to achieve.

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But which app is better for daily planning, and—in this respect—what can each offer you? Should you consider using them together, rather than picking one or the other? Let’s find out.

1. Arranging Meetings

A calendar is the better option for arranging meetings and other events. You can easily choose whether you want your events to last all day or for specific time slots, and inviting people is easy. Moreover, you can include attachments, notes, or links to useful resources. When using a calendar app, you’ll also find it easy to accept any events you’re invited to.

Notion isn’t worth ignoring completely, though. You can use templates to create calendars, giving you a full overview of your upcoming obligations.

Illustration of a Notion logo

2. Blocking Out Your Time

For many people, time-blocking is an effective way to ensure that you spend enough time on meaningful tasks. If you don’t plan your time, your day risks becoming fragmented. Moreover, you might fail to make as much progress on your big projects and goals as you’d like.

Besides arranging events, you can also use a calendar to block time for important work. You can use the same tools mentioned in the previous section to achieve this, such as choosing how much time you want to allocate. If you’retrying the Pomodoro technique, for example, your needs might differ from someone else’s.

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You could make a template in Notion that lets you plan your day, but it’s easier to use a calendar. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can tryincreasing your productivity with Google Calendar instead.

3. Additional Features for Daily Planning

Each app in your productivity system should fulfill one of your needs, but it’s always nice when you have additional features to work with. While the calendar came out on top in the previous two categories, Notion takes the prize in this section.

Notion has several features you may use to plan your day better. For example, you can summarize your most important tasks for each day of the week and add these on the same page.When using Notion, you can also download templates that let you map out your goals and track your progress toward them.

Notion project open on Macbook

you could, however, also customize a couple of things in the calendar. For example, you can decide whether you want to view your schedule based on the month as a whole—or your year, day, or week.

4. Devices You Can Use These Apps On

Notion and calendar differ quite significantly in cross-device capability. As with other Apple-developed apps, you can only use Apple Calendar within said ecosystem. If you don’t use Apple devices, you’ll need to seek an alternative.

Like Apple Calendar, Notion is available on Apple devices. You can download the official app for iOS and iPad from the App Store, and a download for Mac is available on the Notion website. If you’d rather not download the app for your Mac, you can also use Notion in your browser.

A man drinking from a coffee cup while working on his laptop

Besides Apple devices, you can also use Notion on Android. Moreover, the company has an app for Windows.

5. Setting Up Recurring Tasks

Many of us need to perform similar tasks multiple times per week; checking emails is one example. Yes, we can add these to our calendars each time—but doing so is monotonous and time-consuming in equal measure.

Apple Calendar lets you set up recurring tasks with ease. You can choose whether you want it to repeat each day, week, month, or year. Alternatively, you can decide on a custom timescale.

If you want to create recurring tasks in Notion, you could try creating daily to-do lists and simply unchecking them each time. For functions that aren’t time-sensitive, you may find thatsetting up recurring tasks with Todoistis a better alternative.

6. Creating To-Do Lists

If you want to create basic to-do lists, Notion is a better choice than Apple Calendar. All you need to do is make a new page and type/on your keyboard, before selectingTo-do listfrom theBasic blockssection. You’ll find numerous templates allowing you to make to-do lists, and you can also create your own.

7. Customization Options

The primary function of productivity apps is to help you take control of your workflow. But at the same time, it’s nice if you can customize everything to look however you want it to. Apple Calendar and Notion differ in their options in this area, but you’ve got choices for both.

Apple Calendar lets you change the colors of each calendar you add to the app. You can pick from a selection of pre-made ones, but you also have the option to choose your own if that’s easier for you. With Apple Calendar, you can also decide which calendars you want to show—and the ones that you’d rather hide from your view.

In Notion, you’ve got numerous customization options. For example, you can add emojis to each page. On top of that, you can choose from three different fonts to type on your page. Notion also provides control over your page width and text size.

8. Inviting Others to Collaborate

Collaboration is a crucial part of staying productive, especially if you work remotely or as part of a hybrid model. And in Notion and Calendar, you’ll find a selection of options. In Apple Calendar, you can share some of your calendars with others via a link. You can also decide whether you want these to be public or not.

Notion lets you invite other users to your workspace. However, the number of people you can add to one space depends on your membership. The free version allows you to invite up to 10 guests; for paid plans, the number exceeds 100.

Notion and Calendar Should Both Be Part of Your Productivity Ecosystem

Instead of looking at “Notion vs. Calendar”, thinking about how you can use the two apps together is a much wiser approach. Both complement each other, and you’ll have a much better-rounded productivity system by playing to their strengths.

A calendar is a great tool for planning specific events within your day, but it’s possible to use Notion to outline the bigger picture. Moreover, it’s handy for creating simple to-do lists.

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