Dissertations are the one project where organisation is extremely essential. If you don't utilise Notion for your design project, you absolutely need to for your dissertation. Notion can work as a bookmark folder, reference list, and even rough drafts - all in one place. You can also track the progress of your dissertation, add in sub pages for printing or design and other extra aspects.
The main elements are pretty similar to what we discussed in the Archi-Student Hub and in fact, you can create a whole dashboard within the Dissertation page itself to avoid separating the two dashboards.
From experience with a dissertation, I've listed out some of the potential uses Notion could provide:
A reference system: somewhere where you can log information used in citations to keep a good track of the journals and sources you will use. This means it's always there for you to use and refer back to.
Drafts: You can write a lot in Notion*, it's very simple and easy to do and by using the comments feature or even highlighting text it can be a good process to keep rough drafts in one place.
*Note that Notion doesn't have any kind of spellchecker in place so it can be easy to make small mistakes in and Notion isn't designed to be a word processing tool in the first place so make sure drafts go through different stages of editing outside of Notion too.
Initial ideas and resources: You can collect all your thoughts and ideas as well as inspiration in one place, similar to the references or resources pages.
Project timeline and management: One thing that I would definitely recommend is to set yourself a personal deadline for things. Try to aim a day before the actual deadline to not only make it a habit for yourself but also to ensure you have extra time should you need it.
Using the calendar or timeline views, you can track the progress of your dissertation splitting into different phases that can also be overlaid with other aspects of your course and give you an overall idea of what you need to do when. This is incredibly important because the earlier you start to write, the better. The more less important aspects like the design or additional factors can come later but the writing is most crucial.
I would suggest you break down each section or chunk of progress into multiple tasks. For example, during the intial phase you will be deciding a topic. Look at this realistically. Compare it to the next deadline and figure out how much time you will need to spend on this roughly. It would involve some research, mindmaps or brainstorming some initial ideas and also coming up with an overall game plan for the rest of the project. If you start mapping these things out in the beginning using Notion, you have your Archi Brain to rely on throughout the process.
Most students often find themselves stuck at a particular stage, not knowing how to proceed or what to do next. The Archi Brain, set up as a simple dashboard page on Notion will give you an overview of the timeline and guide you to figure out the next task - making it much more achievable and realistic to manage with your other modules.If you're not sold on building these yourself, you could buy the Ultimate Archi-Student Hub template instead.
Building an Archi Brain takes time, as I've said before, it's not a quick fix. Apart from utilising Notion as a workspace tool to manage your design projects, essays and dissertations it can also be a useful tool for other aspects of student life.
Oftentimes students are thrust into a new environment, away from family and essentially begin a new chapter of their life. This can come with various new aspects one may have to learn or keep track of.
Here are some ideas of the other projects and areas you could include to your Archi Brain:
Student Finance / Legal Documents Archive
Keeping track of rent / Flatmates Hub (including rotas, messages, general info)
Starting a new hobby / course
Writing a blog, content creating or even entering competitions
The level of which you wish you utilise your Archi Brain is of course, up to you. The idea is for you to rely on these tools and organisational methods to help you along the process. It also may mean you find more time to work on projects and help you figure out how to prioritise your time best. If you can let projects simmer away in the background you'll find that over time, you will have created a strong system in which you can incrementally complete many tasks.
On a day to day basis, you will obviously focus on your most impending tasks and work to completely them efficiently. There is a certain mindset you will also need to prepare yourself for which we will talk about in the next chapter.
Brainy Actions:
Over the course of the next month, see how you go with using Notion and relying on the system you've built. This course isn't supposed to happen in just one day, it takes a lot of time - plus you need a break! Come back and refresh your mind and take another go at growing your Archi Brain.