Your sidebar is the first thing you see whenever you open Notion, and for most people it is also the messiest part of the workspace. A dozen pages created in a burst of enthusiasm two years ago, three versions of the same project tracker, and an "Untitled" page you are vaguely afraid to delete. The result is a workspace you scroll through instead of using.
Fixing it takes an afternoon, not a weekend. Here is how to name, nest and hide your pages so the sidebar becomes a set of shortcuts rather than another list to triage.
Audit before you rearrange
Before you move a single page, work out what is actually live. Read your sidebar as a stranger would and ask one question about each top-level item: did I open this in the last month? If not, it belongs in one of three places — an archive, a reference area, or the bin.
Create a single page called Archive, sit it near the bottom of the sidebar, and drag anything dormant inside. Don't delete straight away. Hiding is reversible; deletion regrets are not. Come back in a month, and if you have not missed those pages, remove them properly. If you have missed one, that is useful information about how you actually work.
The most common mistake is spending an evening arranging pages you never open. If a page has no place in your routine, no amount of nesting will rescue it. Cut first, arrange second.
Naming that does the work for you
In a narrow sidebar, names are your primary navigation. A page called "Notes" could contain anything, so you open it to check, which costs you a second every time. A page called "Client notes — Northwind" tells you everything before you click.
Five rules worth keeping
- Lead with the word you would search for. "Northwind — client notes" beats "Stuff for the Northwind project".
- Add a status or date prefix for anything time-bound. "2025 Q1 planning" or "Draft — website copy" sorts itself and tells you when it matters.
- Pick one separator and stick to it. Dashes, pipes or colons all work; mixing them makes the sidebar look chaotic even when it isn't.
- Retire vague names. "Misc", "Ideas" and "Stuff" are only acceptable for a single inbox page you genuinely empty each week.
- Stay short. Three to five words is the practical limit before names start wrapping and the sidebar doubles in height.
Rename in the moment, too. If a page has quietly become something else — that "meeting notes" page now holds three months of decisions — rename it while you are there. Small edits are far easier than a big reorganisation later.
Nest, but not too deeply
Nesting lets you keep a lot of material in a small space, but every level costs a click and a moment of orientation. Two levels is comfortable for most people: a hub page with subpages beneath it. Three is fine if the third level is reference material you rarely open.
A structure that holds up well:
- Top level: broad areas — Work, Personal, Finance, Learning.
- Second level: projects or ongoing collections inside those areas.
- Third level: individual notes, meetings and drafts.
If you find yourself wanting a fourth level, you probably want a database or a search rather than more folders. There is a better option than endless nesting, anyway: a hub page with a few bulleted links to pages stored elsewhere. A short index of ten links is faster to scan than a tree of forty pages, and it keeps the sidebar shallow.
The toggle trick
A toggle heading can hold a group of related content on a single page, so related sub-pages never need to appear in the sidebar at all. It is the tidiest way to keep a long page navigable without adding clutter.
Hide what you never click
Anything at the top level of your sidebar is competing for attention, even when you have no intention of opening it. Hiding a page does not delete it, does not break links to it, and does not affect search. It simply stops it shouting at you.
Good candidates for hiding:
- Template pages and duplicates
- Old meeting notes you only reach from a project page
- Sub-pages that exist to be linked to, not browsed
The rule of thumb is simple: if you only ever arrive at a page by clicking a link inside another page, hide it. It will still be there when you need it.
Then group what remains. Sidebar sections — drag the divider to create one — let you turn a list of twenty-five items into three readable headings such as "Now", "Work" and "Reference". Fewer things to read means faster decisions.
Make Favourites earn their place
Favourites sit above everything else and are the fastest thing in the sidebar. That is exactly why the list needs to stay small: five to seven items you touch most days. Twenty starred pages defeat the whole point.
Once a fortnight, scan the list and remove anything you have not opened. Then add whatever you found yourself hunting for. Favourites should reflect this week, not this year.
A 20-minute reset you can do today
- Create an Archive page and move anything untouched for a month into it.
- Rename your ten most-used pages using the rules above.
- Group what is left into two or three sidebar sections.
- Hide anything you only reach by clicking a link.
- Trim Favourites to a maximum of seven.
- Pin your daily driver — a dashboard, inbox or today page — so it is the first thing you see.
Do not try to perfect it in one sitting. Twenty minutes now, then five minutes a week, gets you further than an obsessive weekend that you never repeat.
Keeping it tidy without thinking about it
Sidebars decay. New pages arrive at the top level by default, and within a month the tidy structure you built has three strays sitting above it. A small habit beats a big annual clean-out.
Once a week, take ten seconds before you close Notion. Anything new sitting at the top level gets either renamed and filed into a parent, or archived. Anything you have stopped opening loses its star. That is the whole routine.
Two habits make it easier. First, create new pages from inside their parent rather than from the sidebar, so they land in the right place by default. Second, keep one Inbox page at the top for loose thoughts, and empty it regularly — an untriaged page is fine as long as it is temporary.
If you share a workspace, agree a naming convention with the people you work with. Two competing systems in one sidebar is worse than no system at all, and keeping team pages separate from personal ones saves a lot of confusion.
The goal is not a beautiful sidebar. It is one you can use without thinking, where the first few items are the things you need today rather than an archaeological record of everything you have ever made. Tidy it once, then keep it tidy in small increments, and navigation stops being a chore.
Photo: websubs / Pixabay
