People who use Notion to plan their whole lives • Hacker News Board

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#21

Post by Barrin92 » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 11:16 AM UTC

>Many users find it’s just as useful for managing their free time.[...] "“You don’t have to change your habits to how rigid software is. The software will change how your mind works,” says Akshay Kothari, Notion’s cofounder and chief operating officer"

Stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you? "What did you do this weekend?, Well nothing special really, but I got a 3000 line Notion document mapping every step of it". Can we stop attempting to export every workplace fad into personal lives?

Just enjoy your free time, focus on free, not on time. Compulsive busywork is not a replacement for spontaneity.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#22

Post by sligor » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 11:18 AM UTC

mtsolitary wrote: post #4

Are these people not worried about storing their entire lives in some SaaS company's proprietary format on their cloud servers?

you can export and backup your entire workspace in usable format ( markdown for pages + csv for databases + attachments).

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#23

Post by doubleg72 » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 11:24 AM UTC

anonzzzies wrote: post #18

have_faith wrote: post #13

I started doing this for a while but quickly switched to Obsidian. Obviously it doesn't have the same features but it serves the same purpose for me at least. The data format is much simpler and portable too, I just store the vault in iCloud and sync it to my phone.

I similarly moved from Notion to Joplin. My data, my server etc. For me the move was triggered by Notion being very slow, but later on, with the amounts of data I had in Notion, I started to worry about privacy etc as well.

I am in the process of moving to obsidian from Joplin. I like Joplin but the screen real estate is a bit much on smaller screens.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#24

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 11:29 AM UTC

This just seems like so much work. The obsessive tracking of ever little thing. Does anyone really use this data in any meaningful way other that just admire its detail? What happens if you miss period, does this cause anxiety?

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#25

Post by spondylosaurus » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 11:38 AM UTC

karles wrote: post #2

As a Notion-user, this just seems excessive to me. I love Notion because it gives me the ability to make "lightweight" notes/pads fast. I've since learned to utilize the linked database features which makes it easier to organize notes, tasks and projects. At some point however, it feels like it just becomes busy-work to make new boxes to check, new links, relations and what-not. To me the beauty is in the simplicity,…

Same and same. My most effective Motion pages are the big ugly bullet point lists to quickly jot down to-do tasks or grocery lists or writing ideas or albums I want to listen to; what makes it all work is the ability to offload my brain into an external source as quickly as possible (and retrieve it later when I need it).

Some of these really fancy setups look nice, but they strike me as adding too much friction to the whole process.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#26

Post by dividedbyzero » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 11:39 AM UTC

quaintdev wrote: post #7

mtsolitary wrote: post #4

Are these people not worried about storing their entire lives in some SaaS company's proprietary format on their cloud servers?

They probably don't care or think they have nothing to hide or probably never stumbled across numerous self hosted alternatives https://selfhosting.quest/search?q=wiki

Self-hosting also means you'll have to make sure it's up and secure at all times. I used to self-host a ton of things, but keeping a decent security posture has become so much effort it's just no longer feasible for me, and no longer fun, so I try to use SaaS with a good track record and a backup/export option for anything critical these days.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#27

Post by figassis » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 11:44 AM UTC

I think after using so many of these organization apps, I used plaintext note taking apps, sublime text, trello, more structured note taking apps (evernote, Agenda for Mac, etc), Todo apps (so many of them, incl pomodoro style), then went back to trello and I think I'm staying there.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#28

Post by prmoustache » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 11:46 AM UTC

dt3ft wrote: post #17

Isn’t this entire article just marketing? Why mention specific app/saas provider?

I was about to say that. It is just a badly disguised paid ad.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#29

Post by bayindirh » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 11:50 AM UTC

figassis wrote: post #27

I think after using so many of these organization apps, I used plaintext note taking apps, sublime text, trello, more structured note taking apps (evernote, Agenda for Mac, etc), Todo apps (so many of them, incl pomodoro style), then went back to trello and I think I'm staying there.

Everybody is different, and Trello is a great application (I use it for longer-term planning with my partner), but after starting to use Pagico, I'm completely sold. Being able to plan things as projects, and putting them to a unified or independent gantt charts is a great way to visualize daily and long term load.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#30

Post by Jackevansevo » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 11:52 AM UTC

The 23 minute video linked on the "ultimate notion setup for 2023" sounds like a great trap to fall into to not actually get anything done. I get the impression some people spend more time configuring these productivity tools instead of actually being productive.

Although I admit I've been guilty the same thing, perfecting my .vimrc instead of actually working on projects. Messing around with static site blog generators when I should actually just be writing content.