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

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#251

Post by jdgoesmarching » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:28 PM UTC

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #224

I don't get the notion hype, I just don't like it. Even worse, is you go on product hunt and there are nonstop 'product' launches which are just notion templates named 'operating systems' being sold at crazy prices for what they are. I don't get what I am missing. I personally love and use Trello, because it's basically just a bunch of lists that I can drag and drop too, i have a boards named 'spark board, where i ke…

Weird that nobody’s mentioned it yet, but the main value proposition of Notion is that is uses mini-relational databases instead of tables. It’s like Airtable baked inside of a note app.

It has a ton of downsides like being slow, not having offline access, and no E2E encryption, but there are few tools that execute well on the approachable database concept. I wish there were more, because the standard approach of doing bizarre spreadsheet hacks to achieve the same functionality is much less intuitive to me.

The reason there’s an entire weird industry around Notion is not surprising to most people here: relational databases are useful. Unfortunately, most database tools are too unapproachable or cumbersome for most. Notion and Airtable wrapped a good UX around creating semi-primitive rdbs and here we are.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#252

Post by pbowyer » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:32 PM UTC

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #76

Workflowy is what I have been using for almost a decade. I think the reason it works so well is because it is simple. Anti features are so powerful in an app like this otherwise you can spend all your time tweaking and coming up with the perfect system.

Have they added any way to have multiple root nodes? After using Workflowy for a decade on and off my tree is cluttered with notes and I want to start afresh but not lose them all. Keeping 1500+ nodes hanging around also slows the app down.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#253

Post by asherah » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #206

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing happens in the workplace, too. My last two jobs have had groups that adopted Notion and tried to use heaps of rules and templates and emojis that they wanted everyone to use to structure and document everything in Notion. It turns into an exercise where the Notion document becomes the goal, rather than a tool to help get work done. The Product Management group at my last company was the worst at this.…

That's why you have someone whose job is to make that Notion/Confluence/Dokku who is part designer, part technical writer. They're sometimes called company historians. It is the only solution I've ever seen for the "documentation always gets cut" problem with SWE. Someone's whole work stream is thorough documentation and knowing everything. How features work, what customers requested them, what technical trade-offs w…

i hadn't ever heard of this but this sounds immensely helpful. i wish this were a more common practice!

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#254

Post by samueldurante » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:44 PM UTC

shafyy wrote: post #249

jitl wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work for Notion) Notion is also "basically just a bunch of lists", plus titles. Pages in Notion are a title, and a list of blocks. Text blocks are a title (the text of the block) and a list, it's indented children. We also have boards like Trello, and you can drag and drop list items between boards, pages, paragraphs, everywhere. Maybe you could see it as everything you like about Trello, but applied to more modal…

What are you talking about? Notion is clearly not just a bunch of lists like Trello is.

The implementation of the Notion can be bunch of lists, like Trello. However Notion's UI doesn't pass this feeling.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#255

Post by shagie » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:48 PM UTC

IceWreck wrote: post #233

I am quite obsessed with keeping a personal wiki, like some of these people described in the article. However, I simply cannot imagine doing that in an application that isn't controlled by me or doesn't work completely offline. I dont want my life to be organized around an application that charges a subscription and my workflow is at the whim of a corporation. I went from Zim to Dokuwiki to Bookstack (where I've been…

Have you ever looked at task warrior? https://taskwarrior.org (and you could host it online yourself (I believe) with inthe.am - https://github.com/coddingtonbear/inthe.am if you aren't comfortable with the existing version)

It's well documented ( https://taskwarrior.org/docs/ ) had enables a number of different workflows and export and import options (I've dabbled with jira imports to task warrior for my own sorting views).

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#256

Post by eropple » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:49 PM UTC

shafyy wrote: post #249

jitl wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work for Notion) Notion is also "basically just a bunch of lists", plus titles. Pages in Notion are a title, and a list of blocks. Text blocks are a title (the text of the block) and a list, it's indented children. We also have boards like Trello, and you can drag and drop list items between boards, pages, paragraphs, everywhere. Maybe you could see it as everything you like about Trello, but applied to more modal…

What are you talking about? Notion is clearly not just a bunch of lists like Trello is.

It can be, if you want it to be.

https://www.notion.so/templates/kanban-board

I use this all the time, alongside my other personal databases and such. I wish there was an open source or self-hostable gizmo that was as flexible as Notion is.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#257

Post by Gbox4 » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:49 PM UTC

bckr wrote: post #202

snissn wrote: post #182

yesterday i started using gpt4 as a todo list manager and it's pretty amazing. I can brain dump thoughts and tasks into it and it automatically prioritizes things and will let me be conversational around my tasks... i used a super basic prompt that could be improved, but so far it's really nice: Hi! you are my secretary and todolist manager! I will generally ask you to add things to my todo list, organize the todo li…

Now imagine it has access to unlimited indexable storage as well as your messaging, email, browser…

There's some people working on something like that: https://klu.so (not affiliated, just thought it was cool)

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#258

Post by bad_username » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:50 PM UTC

charles_f wrote: post #227

protortyp wrote: post #121

To me, Obsidian really became the killer app overall. I used Notion and Foam before and while the interface there is much more beautiful, I like having my files locally (synced via Syncthing) and being able to write my own plugins easily. The existing plugin ecosystem with instances like Dataview or Templater makes Obsidian such a great solution for personal and work planning, and as a knowledge base. The only thing…

Can't you just use a file share as your common vault for the team to use?

It inevitably gets ugly when notes are edited by a few people simultaneously. Unless there is specific logic for automatic conflict resolution or concurrent editing, it devolves into chaos. File sharing tools typically do not have that, besides creating endless "conflict files" that require manual merging. The friction is just too high.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#259

Post by paczki » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:51 PM UTC

Absolutely love Notion, but that time it went down for a while a few years ago was the last time I've used it. The fact they still don't have an offline version is baffling to me cause I'd love to throw money at them for the product but here we are.

Obsidian is my main alternative as it mostly does what I want and does it locally. Not affiliated, I just think it's an incredible tool and the extensions you can get can turn it into something else entirely. For example, Joshua Plunkett turned it into an incredible RPG manager: https://www.patreon.com/posts/67310539

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#260

Post by eitland » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 7:53 PM UTC

creamyhorror wrote: post #232

eitland wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any extension that gives you a hierarchical sidebar on the left. The right side however has a built in "Contents" page - which tells you what it is for - only as far as I know one has to fill it out oneselves. That said, my goal was not to convert you or anyone. I am a NetBeans user myself so I know a bit or two about others telling me why I should switch to "clearly superior alternatives" and I don'…

Hah, appreciate it. Although I actually do like finding out about better alternatives and weigh the benefits of switching. It's good to know what people are happy about, even if it isn't quite for oneself. Sounds like Obsidian fits me better than Logseq for now (for the inherent hierarchical organisation). Though one of these days I'll try running Logseq on the same files just for a different view and to try out jour…

You maybe already know, but I write it anyway in case you or someone else find it interesting:

AFAIK Logseq docs encourage new users to put everything under Journal and just tag the relevant blocks. Multiple hierarchical tags are possible, as are aliases, which comes in handy, e.g. I have examples of good ux nested three steps down from root, but in practice I write [[Good UX]] and paste the screenshot and I am done, it shows up at the right place, but is a lot more readable in my journal. BTW, that alias could have been #GoodUX as well and I would have gotten away with hashtag notation.)