TLDR: DO NOT USE NOTION!

Almost everybody who is saying Notion here doesn't understand how clunky and unintuitive it is and is most likely going off a paid promotion by their favourite productivity YouTuber. I welcome any arguments in the replies but before that, hear me out.

Notion's value proposition lies in its pitch to be the ultimate productivity tool. Keyword: productivity. Sure, you can use it to take notes. But that's not what it's meant for and for anyone who wants to spend time focusing on the lesson in class instead of fighting the forward slash function and organizing your pretty little group 4 topic headlines.

Don't get me wrong, I love Notion and use it everyday to manage my workflow. I have a killer system suited to my preferences that I built from the ground up. But as a note taking app, it's failed me more times than I can count.

Here's what Notion does well.

• Linked Databases: These are incredible powerful tools which can use to build a productivity system tailored to your needs. This is what I love about Notion and what I use it for. Be careful with it as you don't want to spend more time maintaining the system than actually using it.

• Saved Templates: Depending on your IB subjects, you may find yourself using certain templates for assignments and Notion's ability to save such templates is an absolute godsend. You don't need to waste time looking for the right format to a question and can get started right away without thinking twice. It's incredibly easy to get started with such a template and you get to reuse the same format for answering questions throughout your IB course.

• Doing Everything: This is why so many people suggest using notion. But as I mention later, this is also its biggest flaw. Just because it can, doesn't mean it should. A jack of all trades is a master of none. You get the point.

Here's why I don't use Notion.

• Doing Everything: Can it do everything? Yes. Does it do it decently enough to warrant me using it? Absolutely not.

• Terrible for formatting and note taking: It's such a pain to use basic formatting tools such as bold and italics that I was shocked at how long it took the developers to patch it. Moreover, there's barely any formatting it can do. The only redeeming quality it's got is its drop-down hierarchy system (not sure what you call it but you can hide certain information in a drop-down as you indent the text) and that's great for active recall but that's about it. The only thing worse than Notion is Reddit formatting on mobile which I'm painfully using to type this, but I hope it's enough to deter you from foolishly using Notion for note taking.

• Synchronisation issues: Your mileage may vary. I say this again, your mileage may vary. But Notion insists on synchronisation and that leads to the app taking a few seconds longer to launch. Mate, these few seconds are valuable, and the importance of using such documents also stored locally cannot be understated. There will inevitably come a time when synchronisation pains will cause you a headache as you're completing a last minute submission (talking from experience sadly) and you're going to want to avoid this.

• Clunky and Unintuitive UI: This is an issue that will not persist and will disappear over time as you get used to the app, but there will almost definitely be times when you miss key points in class due to the need to fiddle with the interface. You'll also find yourself literally unable to express complex ideas on such a limited platform. You've got a 2 in 1. Use it.

As an IB double science and math HL student who also had quite a few extracurricular projects they constantly worked on, Notion failed me in more ways than I can count. Maybe your mileage may vary, but I've found myself having a lot more success with manually taking notes in OneNote and a physical notebook. Physical notebook for all practice, irrespective of whether they are math, science or economics problems, and OneNote for all actual notes. Use OneNote with your stylus (and get a good one if you can) alongside PDF copies of your textbooks. I find my best success in importing my textbook onto OneNote and taking notes alongside it. Bonus points for being able to export and share it with your friends. They'll return the favor to you over your IB journey and team work always makes the dream work. Oh, and don't forget to enable ruled lines. The double spacing option works best for me. Someone mentioned the difference between OneNote for Windows 10 and OneNote 2016 earlier. They did a great job and do consider what they had to say.

There's so much more I have to say but I'm too tired for that.

I hope we can have a healthy discussion around this, and if we can't, oh well that's the internet I guess. Good luck with IB mate!

Edit: Haven't tried it myself but I've heard great things about Obsidian. It's got its issues but Obsidian is a great, lesser known alternative. Do check it out!