Table of Contents
- The UX designer who has it together (except they don't)
- 3 common Notion pitfalls UX designers fall into
- 1. Building what Notion can do instead of what you need
- 2. Introducing automations before understanding the system
- 3. Procrastinating behind productivity
- How to build a Notion structure that doesn't fall apart in week two
- Setting up Notion for team collaboration without a meltdown
- How to capture ideas in Notion without creating another mess
- What your Notion sidebar should look like
- The real reason your UX career growth depends on getting this right
Do not index
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The UX designer who has it together (except they don't)
Hey UX designer, is this the problem you’re facing?
On the surface, everything looks sharp. Your Figma layers are perfectly named. Your component library is clean. Your design system is documented down to hover states and spacing tokens.
But your day-to-day work tells a different story.
Client feedback lives in scattered Slack threads. Tasks are split between Notion, random notes, sticky notes, and late-night voice memos you never replay. Your to-do list grows faster than you can clear it.
Here's the thing: the tools don't fix the problem. The problem is that nobody ever taught us how to manage our own output.
In a livestream, Chris chatted with Jenny (an ex-agency designer turned Notion consultant, who's helped teams at Pentagram, Spotify, and Strava build systems) on how to help UX designers use Notion well.
Let’s dive into it!
👉 The insight in this blog traces back to a thoughtful conversation with Jenny — here’s the full discussion:
3 common Notion pitfalls UX designers fall into
Notion is not the solution to a disorganized mind. It's a mirror. Build chaos in, get chaos out.
Jenny has seen this pattern with enough clients that she's stopped being surprised by it. Designers subscribe to Notion, get excited about automations and AI features, build something they don't understand, and then watch it silently fill up with data they didn't ask for.
"You don't have to be a Notion consultant. It's a whole other thing. Just focus on what you need to accomplish."
Here’s 3 pitfalls Jenny sees constantly with UX designers specifically:
1. Building what Notion can do instead of what you need
This is the classic “ooh shiny feature” trap.
What it looks like:
- Creating 12 databases: Ideas, Backlog, Experiments, Research Snippets, Insights, Hypotheses, Growth, Metrics, Mood, Weekly Reviews…
- Building relations and rollups before you even have 5 real projects.
- Designing a dashboard that looks like a SaaS product homepage.
Meanwhile…you only have 3 active projects.
2. Introducing automations before understanding the system
Automations feel powerful. They’re also dangerous if you don’t understand the flow.
What it looks like:
- “When task is done → create archive page”
- “When checkbox is clicked → duplicate template”
- “When project is created → auto-generate 6 subpages”
Three weeks later: you have 25 empty pages, half your tasks are in random databases. You don’t remember what triggers what.
3. Procrastinating behind productivity
This one hurts. Designers love systems. Structure feels like control. But sometimes “improving the system” is just high-level avoidance.
What it looks like:
- Color-coding priorities instead of doing the highest-priority task.
- Reorganizing your task manager instead of finishing that case study.
- Designing the perfect weekly review template instead of actually reviewing your week.
How to build a Notion structure that doesn't fall apart in week two
Here's where most UX designers mess up.
They open Notion, get excited about what it can do, and start building something complex. Linked databases, automations, filtered views, rollups. A week later they've built an impressive architecture they never use.
Jenny's approach is the same one we use in UX work: start with the MVP.
"What is the minimum viable product of this system? Focus on what you need to accomplish, and start building complexity once you feel confident."
Her practical framework before touching Notion at all: map your databases visually in FigJam first. Think about what properties you absolutely need. For a task management system, that's usually just a deadline, a status, and a relation to a project. Everything else is optional until you feel the need for it.
The question to ask: what do I need to do my job right now? Not "what could this system eventually become?"
One tip Jenny shares that most Notion users miss: use section groups inside the "Customize Layout" option (it's a hidden button, hover at the top of your database properties to find it).
You can separate active properties from archived ones. Instead of deleting properties you're not sure about, push them to an archive section. Let active properties float to the top naturally as you use them.
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Setting up Notion for team collaboration without a meltdown
Here's a scenario every UX designer knows.
You've spent hours building something in a shared file. Someone with editing access wanders in, moves something, changes a property, doesn't mention it. Now you're debugging your own system at 9pm wondering what happened.
Jenny's rule: share as view-only first. Always.
"Think about when you welcome people into your home, how do you want to make that experience enjoyable? Treat your Notion pages the same way."
The practical approach for collaborating in Notion as a UX designer:
Share pages as view-only before granting edit access. Most collaborators don't need to edit — they need to see. Give them visibility first, access later.
Use the "filter by me" option in Notion so each team member only sees tasks assigned to them. You can lock filters so nobody accidentally changes the view. One database, multiple personalized perspectives.
Encourage team members to build their own private dashboards inside the shared workspace. They can create filtered views of things they already have access to, without touching the main system. It gives people ownership and reduces anxiety about "breaking something."
How to capture ideas in Notion without creating another mess
Every UX designer has tried an inbox in Notion. Most have abandoned it.
Jenny tried it too. Never went back to review it. It became a graveyard of half-formed thoughts.
What works for her: use Command + P to quickly navigate to the right page and drop notes directly above the fold of wherever that idea belongs. Add the
@today tag so there's a timestamp. Give future-you a screenshot or two sentences of context."Any context that you can give future you will allow you to take quicker action in the future."
For the bigger organizational structure, Jenny uses the PARA method from Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain:
- Projects are active, time-bound work with a clear finish line.
- Areas are ongoing responsibilities with no deadline — your health, your team, your content strategy.
- Resources are curiosity-driven reference material (Jenny currently has a curly hair care journey living in hers).
- Archives are anything finished, dormant, or dead.
The beauty for UX designers is that it maps naturally to how we already think about work. Projects ship. Areas are maintained. Resources are your research library. Archives are your case study bank.
You don't need a complex capture system. You need a clear home for everything.
What your Notion sidebar should look like
Four pages. That's it.
Jenny's entire private Notion workspace starts from four main pages: Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives. Favorites are reserved for things she's actively working on right now, not everything she's ever touched.
The Notion sidebar is getting crowded with features: Home, Inbox, Meetings, Notion AI, upcoming Agents, team spaces, guest pages. The antidote is a simple starting point you trust enough to use every day.
Jenny on complexity creep:
"By having something that's so simple at the starting point, it's easier to know exactly where things go, and how to track it against what your big goals are."
Pro tip: Do the “Top-Level Purge.”
- Create 4 pages: Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives.
- Drag every single top-level page into one of those four. No exceptions.
- If it doesn’t have a deadline + clear outcome → it’s not a Project.
- Limit Active Projects to 5 max.
- Favorites = only what you’re working on this week (max 7 items).
If your sidebar still feels busy, you didn’t cut enough.
The real reason your UX career growth depends on getting this right
Here's where most articles about Notion stop, at the tips and the screenshots.
This one doesn't.
Your UX career growth is not just about the quality of your design work. It's about whether the people around you can count on you to show up prepared, remember the context from three weeks ago, communicate clearly, and ship on time.
Jenny spent 8 years watching designers with brilliant ideas get overlooked because they couldn't manage their own output. She watched others, with average talent but exceptional organization,move up faster because they were simply easier to work with
Jenny summed it up better than most productivity books ever have:
"You're allowing yourself to take care of future you by assigning those properties on when things need to get done. And you can trust that system."
Start with PARA. Add one database. Use it for a week before you add anything else. Don't try to import your whole life on day one.
Past you built the chaos. Future you, the one who gets promoted, wins the clients, and ships the work, will thank you for cleaning it up.
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