My Chinese Study Notion Setup: A 10-Slide Walkthrough

If you study Chinese, you already know the problem: vocabulary lives in one app, grammar notes in another, and your character practice ends up scattered across notebooks you never reopen. I rebuilt the whole thing in Notion so everything connects. Here is the same walkthrough I share as a 10-slide carousel, expanded with the setup details that don't fit on a slide.

Slide 1: The home dashboard

The top of my workspace is a single dashboard page. It holds four linked database views — Today's Reviews, New Vocab This Week, Grammar In Progress, and a streak counter — plus a callout block with my current HSK target. Nothing here is a fresh database; every block is a linked view of a database that lives deeper in the workspace. That keeps the dashboard fast to load and avoids duplicate data.

Slide 2: The Vocabulary database

This is the core. Each row is one word, with properties for Hanzi, Pinyin, English meaning, part of speech, HSK level, and an Example Sentence. I add two more that do the heavy lifting: a Status select (New / Learning / Known) and a Last Reviewed date. Those two fields drive every review view later.

Slide 3: Tagging by source

A multi-select property called Source tells me where each word came from — a textbook chapter, a drama, a conversation, a podcast. This sounds minor until you want to review only the words you mined from real input. Filtering vocab by Source = "native content" instantly surfaces the words worth prioritizing.

Slide 4: The Grammar database

Grammar gets its own database because grammar points behave differently from words. Each entry has a Pattern (for example, 把-construction or 了 for completed action), a plain-English explanation, two or three example sentences, and a Difficulty rating. I keep the explanations short — one screen, no theory dumps.

Slide 5: Connecting grammar to vocabulary

Here is where Notion earns its place. I added a relation between Vocabulary and Grammar. When a word only makes sense inside a pattern (like a resultative complement), I link it to that grammar point. Open any grammar entry and you see every linked word as a live list. This is the connection paper notebooks can never give you.

Slide 6: The Characters database

Characters are tracked separately from words because one character appears in many words. Properties: the character itself, pinyin, meaning, radical, stroke count, and a relation back to every vocabulary item that contains it. A rollup then counts how many words use each character, so I can see which characters are highest-leverage to drill.

Slide 7: Spaced review, the simple version

I don't run a full SRS algorithm inside Notion — that gets fragile. Instead I use date math. A formula property compares Last Reviewed to today and outputs a Due flag based on the word's Status: New words resurface after 1 day, Learning after 3, Known after 14. A filtered view called Due Today shows only rows where that flag is true.

The formula, roughly

if(prop("Status") == "New", dateAdd(prop("Last Reviewed"), 1, "days"),
 if(prop("Status") == "Learning", dateAdd(prop("Last Reviewed"), 3, "days"),
 dateAdd(prop("Last Reviewed"), 14, "days")))

Wrap that in a comparison to now() and you get a true/false Due column. Crude, but it never breaks and I actually trust it.

Slide 8: The daily review flow

My routine is three clicks. Open Due Today, work down the list, and for each word set Last Reviewed to today and bump Status if it stuck. Because the formula recalculates instantly, reviewed words drop off the list as I go. The view empties out, which is weirdly motivating.

Slide 9: Progress you can see

Two rollups on the dashboard keep me honest: total words at Known status, and words added this week. I added a simple gallery view grouped by HSK level so I can watch each level fill in. Visible progress is the difference between a system you keep using and one you abandon in March.

Slide 10: Keep it boring

The biggest lesson: resist the urge to over-build. I tried color-coded tone tags, audio embeds, and a points system. All of it added friction and none of it made me learn faster. The setup that survived is four databases, a few relations, one formula, and a daily view. If a feature doesn't reduce friction in your actual daily review, cut it.

How to build your own in an afternoon

1. Create the Vocabulary database with Hanzi, Pinyin, Meaning, Status, and Last Reviewed.
2. Add the Due formula and a Due Today filtered view.
3. Create Grammar and Characters databases and relate them to Vocabulary.
4. Build one dashboard page with linked views — don't duplicate data.
5. Use it for a week before adding anything else.

The goal isn't a beautiful workspace. It's a system quiet enough that the only thing you think about is the Chinese.