Building another AI Database in Notion
Databases - and how easy it it to create them inline - have gradually become one of my favorite Notion features. I use Notion as a notes app, along with Obsidian. For those of you who haven’t heard of Notion, here’s is its own elevator pitch:
Your workflow. Your way. All your projects, goals, calendars, roadmaps, and more—in one tool—personalized to how you and your team work.
The first Notion database was an AI knowledge base, based on a great template from Chantal Smith, a contributor/author at Exponential View. I have entries in it for deep dive articles on chatbot models, news about the leading players in GenAI, advances and breakthroughs, and some general industry news. It’s at almost 360 entries now. Of course I also have a large number of notes on GenAI without databases too.
The one that is already a bit more ready for prime time, and easy to add to is called AI Best Prompting Tips. The goal for this one is the same as for the prompts library, but there’s a second reason for it too. I have so many (so, so many) notes about better prompting, the best prompts ever, prompt engineering, and similar, that it makes me a little stressed to see all my sub-folders under AI for all of them. Creating this Best Prompting db lead to trimming (deleting) some older notes on prompting that are outdated and no longer good guidance. The process also helped me combine quite a few sub-folders and reduce the clutter. The AI Best Prompting Tips in the web app is in the screencap at the top of the post, here’s a look at it in the Android app:
Notion AI is great for searching through my notes (and external sources if I choose that option) and that search goes through ‘regular’ notes and my databases. I’m still very much at beginner level with Notion databases, but the value I get from them is now trending upwards all the time.
Over the last couple of weekends I’ve been working on two new AI related databases. The one that is slower going, for good reasons, is an AI Prompts Library, to track which prompts get good/bad/great/terrible results in which chatbots - with the hope and goal being that I will be able to leverage it to help get better responses consistently.
In case you’re interested, here are a few other things I’ve written about Notion, starting with my most used database:
Magical Workflow: Kindle to Readwise to Notion and Obsidian
I was talking about this little workflow with an acquaintance earlier today. I think it’s great, and feels almost worthy of the word ‘magical’ because it’s so easy to set it and forget it. And it’s a workflow that supports a great thing - learning.