Community resources: Tana for Beginners (2024)
If you're just starting out in Tana, you may notice that it's different from other things you might have tried before. Here is a current list of community resources that cover Tana fundamentals and quick ways to get started. Some have shared big resource documents, others have created quick start guides based on what worked for them.
💌 Dee's guide: I got a Tana invite, now what?
Dee Todd has been a pillar in the Tana Community since she joined, and continues to lead many community efforts to share her knowledge about Tana through her work on the publicly-available Tana Community Resource Hub, and her in-depth newsletter Tana Deconstructed.
With her most recent piece, I got a Tana invite, now what?, I'm sure she's reading every new Tana user's mind. Her article is targeted at the Tana novice, gathering a plethora of content sorted by feature and showing both official and community-made resources in one place. An invaluable resource for anyone starting out in Tana and who wants to learn more from a breadth of sources.
🧵 Andre's Tana 101 threads
Andre is a wizard when it comes to creating advanced workflows and tooling for hardcore Tana users. But for the new year, he decided to double down on basics, and wrote an extensive set of 30+ threads on how to build a system like his from scratch. It is a Tana 101 if you may, based on his lessons learned and having converted many people around him to use Tana just by being an inspiring user himself.
He goes through his thought process step by step, like as if you're starting with a blank Tana account and he's walking you through how he built his core systems and habits within Tana - node by node, tag by tag.
He has graciously converted his X/Twitter treads to a single Tana Publish Page so all this wisdom can be enjoyed in one go.
🗓️ Ev's guide: The Ultimate Quickstart Guide For Getting Started With Tana
If you only have 5 minutes, continue reading.
To many, Ev was their first guide into the world of Tana. With all that experience under her belt, she has written a quick-start guide for anyone who just wants to get started—fast.
She covers a handful of the basics in Tana and presents them in a natural order that builds on the previous step.
🗓️ Andrea's guide: Unlocking the power of calendar nodes in Tana
The calendar nodes in Tana recently got an upgrade, and Andrea (creator of Tana Nodes) immediately saw the value of this and pounced at adjusting all his supertags to make use of this change.
He showcased his Year in Review dashboard during our Annual Review/Tana Team AMA event, highlighting the power of searches in calendar nodes. This was further elaborated in a Tana Jam event where he provided a detailed walk-through of his system, demonstrating its simplicity.
In this article, he has written down the principles of how to implement this powerful chronological summarization in Tana, explaining how it works and making it easy for anyone to copy his setup and make their own.
🏗️ Tana Jams: building in public
Do you wish you could watch someone build something in Tana, live?
Tana Jams are an initiative led by Navigator Andrew and other Tana friends where they open the garage door and invite the public in to build something together, collaboratively. Every session has a different theme, and you can watch all past sessions in the playlist below. To catch the next session, join the slack channel #tana-jams to know when the next one is being scheduled.
👾 Nick's playlist: Tana Bits
If you're just getting started in Tana, you might wish you had a really techsavvy friend with the patience to explain things in simple and clear terms, and who also happened to know Tana inside out.
Lucky for us, our community has Nick Silhacek.
Nick has created a playlist of short videos (<5 min long) that explain all kinds of Tana basic features and concepts.
Some videos build on others, but all cover some basic aspect of Tana. Highly recommended!
🎒 Monica's course: System Basics Tana (paid)
Wish you had a more hands-on, guided process for building out your perfect Tana system from scratch? Monica has a self-paced course that takes you through a comprehensive exercise that begins with your system goals, and takes you all the way through to implementation. From the website:
With Dr. Monica Rysavy's background in education and expertise in course design, she's distilled the learning process into an efficient and effective pathway that saves you time and effort. You'll learn not just the "how" but also the "why," enabling you to apply Tana's principles effectively in your own context.
To check it out, see the link below:
🤖 TanaFlows' article: Discover Tana AI
Want a single-stop article to get you going with AI in Tana? Tana Flows (led by community members Hoang and Cuong) have a detailed yet to-the-point article that will take you through everything you need to know about it to get started. They also go through common errors in Tana, and have additional instructions for what you need to do over at OpenAI for everything to work without a hitch.
It is a one-stop-shop if you're looking to dip your toes in Tana AI!
🗝️ Renée's course: Tana Keys (paid)
Ambassador Renée has launched a self-paced course that teaches you the fundamentals of Tana in a simple and easy to understand format. Included in the course is: Core content of videos, a workbook, a glossary, and a starter kit to get a head start on things. Perfect for beginners, PKM enthusiasts, and anyone keen on have a robust understanding of the app to implement the workflows that most to you.
🧮 Andrew's article: 10 Strategies to level up your Tana PKM game
Navigator Andrew has written up 10 practical strategies for approaching Tana if your goal is to improve how you organize and utilize knowledge. The article covers a range of topics, from adopting new mindsets and mental models, to the importance of building a personal ontology. Andrew provides a clear roadmap for anyone looking to make the most out of Tana as a PKM, a valuable read for both new and experienced users.
👀 Looking for more?
We have a very active community that has been learning from each other since the very beginning. If you're not already a member, we encourage you to join our Slack community where we explore and partake in conversations together.
Join the waiting list
Tana is currenty in invite-only early access. Would you like to help shape its future? Add your email to the waiting list to get in as soon as possible. No spam, we promise!