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People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

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Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#291

Post by anongraddebt »

greenie_beans wrote: post #286

i've tried so many different apps like this and i consistently return to my notes app on my macbook. i'm not a fan of the UX or how it feels, but i can write notes all i want and add "keywords" or "tags" that i can search for and go through. todos, dates, important things, brainstorming, drafts, etc. for example, for a book project, i'll write the word "preacher" at the top and then write some words that were in my b…

Yeah, not sure what label we’d give to a system like this but it works. I basically do the same, but with Raindrop (the bookmark manager). I’ve tried many tools and systems, but what works (for me) is basically a personal data lake where semi-structured/incompletely-labeled stuff can be archived.

For todos and calendars, I’ve found less is more to be particularly true. I don’t see how anyone gets solid ROI for non-collaborative personal projects by using feature-filled systems. I’m quite busy, and the minimal cognitive load of pen and paper is difficult to surpass.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#292

Post by splatzone »

Jackevansevo wrote: post #30

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 generat…

Relevant: Andy Matuschak: People who write extensively about note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzX...

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#293

Post by anongraddebt »

winstonprivacy wrote: post #41
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,…

My secret weapon is a "to do" list in notepad. One list which has everything. No apps, no workflow, no SaaS fees. Works better than anything else I've tried.

Same here for todos (just with pen and paper).

I don’t see why I’d need an admin dashboard and a DBMS to effectively prioritize what I need to accomplish in 16 hours.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#294

Post by tomrod »

iamthirsty wrote: post #285
tomrod wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rare is it that I am envied. Obsidian I've enjoyed, but find it difficult to become fluent with it.

It is almost unbelievable to me that anyone who's been able to become aware of & use a niche app like Obsidian has never come across Notion. Obsidian is definitely a power-user tool, which one would usually use after considering the other options, with Notion being almost as default as a choice as Evernote once was. Additionally, a lot of apps now are even using it as their support bases. It almost feels unavoidable…

Not sure what to tell you. A sharp new developer I respect a lot pointed me towards Obsidian, and so it goes. Other than that, my recent search history shows the past few years are focused on python, pola.rs, Rust, data science, databricks, Oracle, Postgres, DuckDB, and the legal and administrative aspects of running a business, with the occasional dataset documentation search.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#295

Post by Thrymr »

freedomben wrote: post #91
dividedbyzero wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tailscale is a centralized service that your whole network is exposed to. I'm using them but if you're self-hosting for security or privacy reasons, that's probably not what you'd want as they or someone who compromises them would essentially own your network and it doesn't get much more critical than that. You can monitor and harden your infrastructure against that, but that's no longer easy. If you trust Tailscale…

Tailscale is only partially centralized (the admin portion). The actual traffic flow is not. But also, I use Headscale so I'm self-hosting my tailscale as well. As a self-hoster, I would totally recommend to the average person to self-host services on your LAN, and just use tailscale to extend your LAN beyond your house (for example on your laptop and phone) so you can get to things when you're not at home. Don't let…

I like self-hosting when I can, too, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to the "average person". Especially if they would come back to me for tech support.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#296

Post by blitzar »

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…

> I don't get the notion hype, I just don't like it.

Remember Evernote ... that was going to change your life once upon at time.

Are any of these things bad? Not really. Will any of them change your life ... almost certainly not, unless your life is making hype content on social media for these products and you manage to become a fully fledged "influencer".

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#297

Post by 015a »

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #251
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 doi…

I've put some thought into how cool it would be to have a feature similar to Notion databases within Obsidian; probably not integrated into the markdown document, but similar to their new Canvas feature, separate files next to markdown documents which map to SQLite databases with a standard schema that you can browse right within Obsidian. Feels like something an add-on could exist for, but doesn't; and/or I hope its something the Obsidian team is thinking about now that Canvases are shipped.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#298

Post by Zetobal »

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #251
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 doi…

You would have loved filemaker back in the day.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#299

Post by nonethewiser »

iamthirsty wrote: post #278
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…

> I don't get the notion hype, I just don't like it. > I don't get what I am missing. 100% agree. Notion doesn't work like my brain when it comes to documents, formatting, structuring — I ended up spending most of my time configuring systems and formatting than actually inputting information & accomplishing things. I've tried a few times to get into it, and see what others see in it. I just can't.

> I ended up spending most of my time configuring systems and formatting than actually inputting information & accomplishing things.

I end up feeling this way about a lot of “productivity” tools like notion, obsidian, and ESPECIALLY Arch browser. I don’t want to have to learn how to use a tool that I’m using to do something fundamental like visit websites or take notes. Give me the barest abstraction possible over these features.

Do not ask me to make extra decisions to do basic things like open a tab (decide between 3 levels of ephemeral and how it relates to other tabs). And don’t automatically close shit on some arbitrary schedule which can’t be disabled!

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#300

Post by PurpleRamen »

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 underlying data structure is really just a list of typed elements. But the interface is also hiding this pretty well, to the point that it becomes a bit messy on the corners, making it hard for new users. Trello in that regard is significant cleaner in its representation, but also more limited.
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