CourseVerdict

Notion Masterclass: Maximise Your Productivity & Organisation vs Power BI Essential Training

Same Bayesian formula, same rubric — so the difference in scores reflects the difference in the courses, not the difference in how we evaluated them.

Skillshare · Business & Marketing

Notion Masterclass: Maximise Your Productivity & Organisation

4.1/ 5 · 38 opinions
24 positive8 neutral6 negative/ 38 total

LinkedIn Learning · Gini von Courter · Business & Marketing

Power BI Essential Training

4.0/ 5 · 40 opinions
25 positive10 neutral5 negative/ 40 total

Per-criterion

Content quality4.2 / 5

24 lessons across fundamentals, databases, relations, rollups and a LifeOS dashboard. Praised for clarity and the database section. Capped because 1h45m is brisk for a full LifeOS build and cannot match Marie Poulin's depth.

Instructor4.3 / 5

Ali Abdaal is one of the most-watched productivity instructors on YouTube and reviewers describe him as warm, clear and motivating. Critics on Hacker News flag his content as anxiety-inducing and his LifeOS as overcomplex.

Value for money4.6 / 5

Included in Skillshare's ~$14/month subscription, plus 10+ free Notion templates built exclusively for Skillshare students. Cited on HN as the canonical case of a productivity creator earning $40-60k/month from Skillshare.

Practical frameworks4.0 / 5

The LifeOS dashboard, relations-and-rollups walkthrough and weekly review structure are the most reused frameworks. Capped because the eight-database system is heavy and reviewers report copying templates verbatim.

Real-world use3.8 / 5

Notion fluency and database design transfer directly to marketing and ops roles, and Abdaal uses the same setup to run a 15-person business. Limit is overhead — several HN commenters describe abandoning Notion systems built this way.

Content quality4.0 / 5

Solid coverage of the Power BI Desktop surface — Get Data, Power Query, basic modelling, intro DAX, visuals and publishing. Depth stops short of advanced DAX, row-level security and deployment pipelines.

Instructor4.2 / 5

Gini von Courter is one of LinkedIn Learning's most prolific Microsoft instructors with 250+ courses across Office, SharePoint and Power Platform. Reviewers describe her delivery as calm, methodical and enterprise-friendly.

Value for money3.9 / 5

Included in the LinkedIn Learning subscription (~$40/month) and bundled with LinkedIn Premium. HN commenters repeatedly flag US public-library access as the cheapest path. Power BI Desktop itself is free.

Practical frameworks3.7 / 5

Coherent walkthrough of the everyday workflow — connect, shape in Power Query, model, write basic DAX, build visuals, publish. Stops short of advanced DAX, time intelligence and dataflows.

Real-world use4.0 / 5

Power BI is the dominant BI tool in Microsoft-heavy enterprises and the common next step after Excel for finance, ops and analyst roles. Maps cleanly onto what a junior analyst builds week one.

Scoring methodology applies identically to every course on the site — see the formula.