How to Randomly Sort a Table in Notion

I've been playing around with building a knowledge garden for myself now that I've moved back to Notion. It's a mix of the Zettelkasten and Digital Garden note taking methods.

I wanted a way to bubble up a random note to review semi-regularly and couldn't find a simple formula I like so here's the one I went with.

What I want in a random sort

For my sort needs, I want something where:

• Each page gets a unique value - So I can sort them against each other in a database.
• Different values on each load - So each time I visit it the order is randomized.
• The sort has no (discernible) patterns - so it's randomized enough for my purposes.

Notion Table Random Sort

To randomly sort a database in Notion, I created a Random property with a formula that computes a random number based on the current time and page.

• Each page gets a unique value - We use pageId to get this. I've also added in last edited time to add a bit more entropy here for each page as it can change over time.
• Different value on each load - We use the current timestamp to get this. It only updates each minute but that's fast enough for my usecases (Notion only provides time up to minute granularity).
• The sort has no (discernible) patterns - We mix the factors along with some prime numbers and a modulo to get this.

Formula:

/* Create a pseudo-random number that changes on each page load (minute granularity) */
lets(
    /* Get the page ID as a stable seed */
    pageId, id(),
    /* Create a numeric value from page ID */
    idValue, toNumber(replaceAll(id(), "[a-f]", "")),
    /* Current ms - minute granularity */
    nowMs, toNumber(now()),
    /* Get the last edited time ms - minute granularity*/
    lastEditedTime, toNumber(formatDate(prop("Last Updated"), "X")),
    /* Mix the values together for pseudo-randomness */
    seedValue, (idValue * 9973) + (nowMs * 7919) + (lastEditedTime * 6421),
    /* Generate a number between 0-9999 */
    abs(seedValue % 10000)
)

The code is well commented but I'll describe it here anyway:

• Use a lets block which allows a series of variables to be set with the final element being the return value
• Transforms the pageId from a Hex value to a number by stripping all the letters
• Gets the current timestamp in ms (minute granularity)
• Gets the last edited time in ms (minute granularity)
• Mixes the values together using primes to get a better distribution across the number space
• Modulo 10k to pull off the least significant digits for comparison - this could be higher if you have a really big db but at that point you'll prob be running into scalability issues w Notion databases.

Next

This is a pseudo-random so I wouldn't use this in production code but it works well enough for my purposes so I'm sticking w it.

If you liked this post, you might also like:

• Why I'm Moving Back to Notion from Obsidian for Personal Notes
• Notion + Data Loss / Privacy - Should you be worried about losing or leaking your notes?
• My Simple Daily Todolist as a Software Engineer - Maximize Productivity, Minimize Waste