Joys of Notion and Zapier

I love the productivity that Notion and Zapier brings.

Using Notion as a second brain and a sort of “no-code frontend”, I’ve been able to store and organize information like never before. With Zapier, I can now allow that information to interact with APIs provided by various companies like Google.

For example, I can update tasks in my Notion to-do list in Google Tasks automatically.

In the example below, I used Zapier to schedule a call to Notion to look through a list of unread papers in my backlog, randomly select one for me and create a task in my Google Tasks list.

Two amazing things that I found.

1. Zapier can call arbitrary APIs via the latest App Extensions function. So if the functionality is not currently supported (like in my case where I want to filter on multi-select property fields), I used the App Extensions function to call Notion’s database query API myself.
2. You can run Python and Javascript code. This allowed me to manipulate the API response for further action.