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People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

technologyreview.com

131–140 of 416 posts

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#131

I built minimal.app as the antithesis of over-planning, over-documenting, over-organizing, and over-thinking. The feature that keeps the mind open is the Note Lifetime, whereby notes die when you don’t engage with them [1]. This is in contrast to notion, evernote, et al where writers collect stuff and live in these information silos, trapped by the confines of their tools. Of course many (most?) thoughtful people can…

> notes die when you don’t engage with them

That is an interesting idea, but not something I would ever want in a notes app. A note may be important but never opened.

For example, I have a note in Craft with my bike serial number and a picture of me standing next to it. If my bike is ever stolen and recovered, this note is proof of ownership. I have not opened this note since creating it, because my bike has not been stolen, but I would obviously hate to lose it.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#134
post #131

I built minimal.app as the antithesis of over-planning, over-documenting, over-organizing, and over-thinking. The feature that keeps the mind open is the Note Lifetime, whereby notes die when you don’t engage with them [1]. This is in contrast to notion, evernote, et al where writers collect stuff and live in these information silos, trapped by the confines of their tools. Of course many (most?) thoughtful people can…

> notes die when you don’t engage with them That is an interesting idea, but not something I would ever want in a notes app. A note may be important but never opened. For example, I have a note in Craft with my bike serial number and a picture of me standing next to it. If my bike is ever stolen and recovered, this note is proof of ownership. I have not opened this note since creating it, because my bike has not been…

That's an interesting use case.

Why not just include a photo of the receipt as proof of ownership?

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#135
post #134
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> notes die when you don’t engage with them That is an interesting idea, but not something I would ever want in a notes app. A note may be important but never opened. For example, I have a note in Craft with my bike serial number and a picture of me standing next to it. If my bike is ever stolen and recovered, this note is proof of ownership. I have not opened this note since creating it, because my bike has not been…

That's an interesting use case. Why not just include a photo of the receipt as proof of ownership?

Because it's hard to match a visual depiction of the bike and owner to a printed receipt.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#136

I built minimal.app as the antithesis of over-planning, over-documenting, over-organizing, and over-thinking. The feature that keeps the mind open is the Note Lifetime, whereby notes die when you don’t engage with them [1]. This is in contrast to notion, evernote, et al where writers collect stuff and live in these information silos, trapped by the confines of their tools. Of course many (most?) thoughtful people can…

Dying notes are a fascinating thought, and relate to some of the cruft aspects I've seen with any sort of task-tracking. That said, in my usual note-taking app, I have things like recipes I might make once in a blue moon, and I'd be very annoyed if I lost my late grandma's lasagna recipe.

Based on the site, it looks like it moves them to a “deleted notes” folder rather than actually completely destroying them.

I’m not sure if it is locally hosted or a cloud thing. If it is a cloud thing, having noted eventually degrade might be a nice reminder that like any cloud thing it could just up and vanish at some point. That recipe is probably due for long term storage.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#138

I built minimal.app as the antithesis of over-planning, over-documenting, over-organizing, and over-thinking. The feature that keeps the mind open is the Note Lifetime, whereby notes die when you don’t engage with them [1]. This is in contrast to notion, evernote, et al where writers collect stuff and live in these information silos, trapped by the confines of their tools. Of course many (most?) thoughtful people can…

I just use Sublime and a notes folder containing text files groups in folders by topic. The search function is excellent, and I don't need anything more.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#139
post #131

I built minimal.app as the antithesis of over-planning, over-documenting, over-organizing, and over-thinking. The feature that keeps the mind open is the Note Lifetime, whereby notes die when you don’t engage with them [1]. This is in contrast to notion, evernote, et al where writers collect stuff and live in these information silos, trapped by the confines of their tools. Of course many (most?) thoughtful people can…

> notes die when you don’t engage with them That is an interesting idea, but not something I would ever want in a notes app. A note may be important but never opened. For example, I have a note in Craft with my bike serial number and a picture of me standing next to it. If my bike is ever stolen and recovered, this note is proof of ownership. I have not opened this note since creating it, because my bike has not been…

Looking at the site, I guess the dead notes might just be hidden in a “delete” folder instead of actually gone forever, which seems like a reasonable compromise.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#140
post #131

I built minimal.app as the antithesis of over-planning, over-documenting, over-organizing, and over-thinking. The feature that keeps the mind open is the Note Lifetime, whereby notes die when you don’t engage with them [1]. This is in contrast to notion, evernote, et al where writers collect stuff and live in these information silos, trapped by the confines of their tools. Of course many (most?) thoughtful people can…

> notes die when you don’t engage with them That is an interesting idea, but not something I would ever want in a notes app. A note may be important but never opened. For example, I have a note in Craft with my bike serial number and a picture of me standing next to it. If my bike is ever stolen and recovered, this note is proof of ownership. I have not opened this note since creating it, because my bike has not been…

The "note lifetime" image on their page mentions pinning notes to keep them from being deleted, but if that keeps it persistently at the top of the list it's probably not what you'd want either.
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