No. 3 Five Things Friday
This week, we are talking about working with images to Notion, using Canva, Cal Newport, and a writing book called Behaving as If the God in All Life Mattered. Enjoy!
Edition No. 3: March 28, 2025
Every week, my goal with this newsletter is to provide you with five things that will help you with understanding technology & productivity, recommend something to read, watch, or listen to, and give you something to laugh or smile about!
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Tip of the Week: Working with Images in Notion
When you are working with images in Notion, you need to import them at the correct size because Notion does not have an image editor. Any basic photo editing software has a resize feature. I would suggest a width of 500 px or less. If you are a Windows user, you can use Paint, which comes free with Windows. For Mac users, you can use Preview to resize images. Or you can use Canva, a free website that I am introducing later in this newsletter, to resize your images.
Once you have your image the correct size, you need to decide how you want to use it - do you want to add it directly to a page, as a cover at the top of a page, as an icon, or in a gallery view? Each of these has different ways to add the image.
For an image that is placed directly on the page, use the /image command where you want to add it. Then click on the Upload File button to upload it. You can also choose from Unsplash, which is Notion's stash of images that you can freely use inside the app.
If you want to add it as a cover image at the top of the page, click on the Add Cover button just above the page title. This will add a default page cover image, then you need to click on the Change Cover image to add your own image. Cover sizes vary, so ideally make the image 1500 x 600 px but since it resizes based on screen size, keep the key elements of the image within the center part (960 x 280 px).
For icons, ideally you want a square image that is 280 x 280 px. If you can, use PNGs with transparent backgrounds since the icon shows up in front of other items and a white square behind doesn't always look nice. (Keep the image simple.)
For using images as the cover for a gallery view, you ideally want the image to be either 600 x 400 px (landscape). To force Notion to use your image in the card view, you need to go into the Gallery View settings and change the Card Preview to Image (or whatever the name of the field is that contains your image). You will need to have a field in your database where you upload the image for that to work. This is really the best way to add images to the Gallery View.
Save this post for later so that you know how to use images in your Notion pages! Subcribe or click the link in bio to join my newsletter, where I go into much greater details on my tech tips and tricks!
Listening to…Cal Newport
Deep Questions Ep. 343
Ep343 - The Minimal Productivity System That Could Reinvent Your Life
Let me start by saying that this is a very long podcast episode. I listened in the car over several days and the part that I want to share with you is right in the beginning. You don’t even need to take notes on it because here is the transcript.
My main takeaway is that you want your productivity system to lessen your stress, not add to it. You also want it to help you to not have things slip through the cracks. I feel like things are always slipping through the cracks, but I realized after listening to this that, although I do have a really good goal system, what I don’t do well is my task system. Particularly, I don’t capture tasks well so that they don’t get lost in the pile. I’m gonna work on that. I’ve been really good this year about having one task a week that is non-negotiable and doing it! I’m getting better all the time. Always a work in progress, right?
One of my fears in productivity, especially with the introduction of generative AI, is what will happen with the extra time saved. Who owns that time? Will I be expected to work more to fill the time (most likely, if I am working for someone else) or can I enjoy a greater sense of freedom with the time that I am saving? If I am self-employed and working smartly, hopefully I will be able to work more efficiently and get more done, leaving me more time to work ON the business instead of being lost in the daily grind. But the trick is not to save time and then add twenty more things to your plate! What he’s addressing here is that we want to consciously spend time on what is important and weed out the unnecessary tasks that drain us when we can. To address this, Cal came up with the MVPS, or the Minimally Viable Productivity System. He’s writing a new book on this, so he’s talking about his ideas on his podcast. It’s fun to be helping him to hash out his new book ideas.
A key component of his MVPS idea is being able to move the needle forward on projects that are important, but not urgent. There is a balance here. Many things are urgent during the day, but your time can get completely sucked up by those items. You have to very intentionally carve out time to get those non-urgent, important projects done. These sorts of projects are a key to feeling fulfilled in your life. They are the meat and potatoes of living a good life, so we need to place them in front of the burning non-urgent tasks once in a while.
The Deep Questions podcast is one of my favorites, even if they do go a bit long. He generally focuses on productivity and computer news, as he has written several books on productivity and deep work. Cal Newport has a fun, self-deprecating sense of humor that I enjoy. Plus he’s smart and always teaching me cool stuff. His podcast can be either watched on YouTube or listened to through your favorite podcast app.
AI / Tool of the Week - Canva
I use Canva daily - both in my job as a school librarian and as a content creator. It is one of the most vital tools in my tech toolbox for image and video creation. As an educator, we get the Pro version for free for use in our work. That means I get full access to all the AI tools, as well as all the templates and elements. If you work in a school and are not aware of Canva for your district, you can sign up for an educator account on your own using your school email address.
If you’ve never used Canva, it is basically Powerpoint on steroids - but a lot more. You can create visuals of different sizes, depending on your needs. I may use the Presentation template to create a presentation to show at a meeting, or I could use the Social Media templates to get the exact size image that I need for an Instagram post.
I used to blog 20 years ago, and images were a real challenge back then. Everything was a challenge back then! Things are so much easier now! Canva has millions of photos, graphics, elements, videos to choose from to add to your presentation or content. Any images that I create for this newsletter are most likely created in Canva.
As a school librarian, I use Canva to create a presentation that we display on a screen in the cafeteria to let staff and students know what is going on. I post photos of the kids, let them know what’s for lunch, show videos of field day events, let them know when school release days are, and tell them Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I set this up to present live from Canva from monitors that we have displayed in the office and the hall so that people can see it throughout the day. When I make changes, I only need to update the slides in Canva and they automatically update on all the monitors and in the cafeteria. Staff take photos too, so I have them upload images to an app called Photocircle, which I then use as my source for student images.
When I switched schools this Fall, my principal put me in contact with our district’s PR representative, so she created a Canva template and shared it with me that contains our school logo and fonts, plus the exact hexadecimal number for the correct colors. She also sent me a branding kit that helped me to understand more of the design elements. If you work as a librarian or teacher and are part of a larger school district, you may have this resource available!
Here are 5 Ways to Use Canva as a School Librarian…
1. Create a school-wide news presentation
2. Create content for school Instagram account
3. Create presentations for teaching
4. Create visuals for displays
5. Create infographics to highlight important concepts
What I’m Reading…Behaving as If the God in All Life Mattered by Machaelle Small Wright
This is the second time I’ve read this book. It was years ago, so I had forgotten that the entire first half of the book is an autobiographical story of her past. It’s a good story, but the meat of the book is the last half, in my opinion. I ordered a copy for a friend because it’s a great book and we were talking about Findhorn in Scotland, so I mentioned this book because there is a place in the U.S. that is like Findhorn.
If you are not familiar with Findhorn, it is a community in Scotland where they grew huge vegetables in poor sandy soil. They did this through communication with the plants and surrounding wildlife. In the U.S., the place is called Perelandra Center for Nature Research, located in Warrenton, Virginia. It is not open to the public, but they do offer workshops on communication with nature.
Daily Dose of Cuteness
Isn’t this just so cutttttee?! If I ever start knitting again, this is something I want to make!
