Bi-directional Linking in Notion

Shared: @September 17, 2020

If you haven't heard the news...Notion just dropped actual bi-directional linking! 😱Here's my breakdown and take on this awesome new feature. Two weeks ago, we got a pretty lit little teaser when backlinks started showing up in Notion pages and for #productivity nerds like myself this is basically equivalent to Christmas

But if you're unfamiliar, a bi-directionally linked page, as explained by Maggie Appleton "has social awareness - it knows about other pages or 'nodes' that point to it, and can make them visible to people. This means we get a two-way conversation flowing between our web locations." This is the opposite of mono-directional linking or "one-way pointers we follow in a linear sequence."

Previously in Notion, you could tag pages int two ways:

However, both of those ways created a one way ticket from a page to another. In other words, if you referenced a page called "Ted Mosby" or less obvious "Slapsgiving" or even more obscure "Red Dragon" because during the episode "The Pineapple Incident", that's the red mixed shot that Carl the bartender whips for Ted....on say a page about "How I Met Your Mother", you wouldn't be able to create and act on any of those relationships outside of creating a few databases, making those pages records and building relations.

Type [[ in text blocks, titles, text properties to:

Once created the pages will be linked together and viola! (inked pages show up as "backlinks" at the top)

The existence of this feature is AWESOME!

I'm now moving my writing from obsidian.md back to Notion due to this. that said, Notion continues to build for width of features as opposed to depth, so this iteration is very limited. There are no powerful blocks and refs like in roamresearch.com.

If you're a power Roam user, don't even consider switching because:

If, on other hand, you have not committed to any bi-directional software and you're considering to give Notion a whirl, now is the time!