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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

#351

Post by JenrHywy »

hu3 wrote: post #263
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 tried Joplin? It's markdown, allows copy pasting images, embeding files like PDF with preview, works offline by syncing using apple/google/microsoft/dropbox cloud storage. Has desktop and mobile app. Free and Open Source.

Joplin is excellent.

You can run your own sync server and not rely on cloud storage at all (there's a docker image - very simple to set up). It also imports and exports a hierarchy of folders/markdown files, so on- and off-boarding are simple.

For many years I used plain old markdown files and either git or syncthing to ship them around, but the editing and viewing experience was never great, and sync on iOS wasn't exactly seamless.

The other big benefit is cross-note search. Previously I had to rely on the editor I was using - which was fine on a desktop with VSCode, but nonexistent on mobile.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#352

Post by mandmandam »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #242
mandmandam wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked Workflowy a lot, but the idea of paying $60 a year for drop down lists inspires a deep, deep revulsion. I wouldn't even pay that for the full app to own for life.

It's $49 annually. If you use it for everything, it is totally worth it.

It's little triangles that fold your list.

I know how handy it is.

But I think about the simplicity of it, and it offends me to pay so much for the ability to do something which I feel ought to be a standard thing.

$49 is nothing to most here. It's doable for me. But there are countries - many - where that's a month's median wage.

$49 for a blockbuster game - sure. It's optional, there were hundreds of thousands of hours of work put into it, etc.

Little foldy triangles costing the same, and you don't even own the software? Nah.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#353

Post by Andaith »

VladimirGolovin wrote: post #328
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…

Maybe try Obsidian? It works completely offline, it's free, and its stores your data as a folder of markdown files. It should cover your personal wiki / Zettelkasten needs, plus, if you're willing to spend some time on learning the Tasks plugin, you can implement a pretty decent GTD-like system on it.

Also, if you're in the Apple ecosystem, you can store your obsidian vault in iCloud and sync between laptop & mobile. The obsidian mobile app is surprisingly good too.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#354

Post by noltncy »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #107
thiago_fm wrote: post #101

Why use this to plan your life? Just use a Calendar... and write somewhere what you need to do. Or hell, just use your brain, if you can't keep what is important in your head, it probably means it isn't important at all. Your life isn't complex like managing multiple workstreams and projects for a whole organisation of thousands of people, it's supposed to be simple. If you have too many things to keep track of, you…

I have ADHD, and if I don't write it down, it isn't happening. How that information is presented is a big deal. If you do a basic litmus test of going to a sub-Reddit that specializes in productivity, concepts like GTD, or software like Obsidian, you'll quite frequently find people with ADHD, and folks who suspect they have ADHD, but have no diagnosis, or can't access appropriate medication where they live for one re…

Several times I keep finding me switching through apps. When notion became the rage, I went to make an account to find out that I already had an account (with to do lists from months ago). I have made sincere attempts to use it as my primary tool, often spending days on setting it up and sometimes money. I always lose interest and switch to the next fancy thing.

Among Notion, amazing Marvin, ticktick, toodledo, things, Microsoft todo, several calendar apps, structured, streaks, Any do, dynalist, OneNote, trello, clickup- I finally (for now) settled on Drfats and OneNote (at work since it comes default and I can move pages around).

Drafts- can’t handle images. Also needs about 20$/year. (I have paid for majority of the above listed apps at some point, including notion for their ai. ) But on the plus side, I got into a habit of just dumping everything on my phone directly into drafts, hoping I will dirty and organize it later. So the capture part is kind of good right now. The acting on captured part is still pending.

Also recommend an app called zen diary which is a linear flow of text, like a log.

I have ADHD, refuse to acknowledge it and I use Apple devices personally and windows at work.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#357

Post by waboremo »

epolanski wrote: post #326
waboremo wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't an endorsement for Notion, I also dislike it and use other tools. I can see why some do however, it's a solid second brain organizational tool, somewhere to place things "long term" and keep them. It's a less "active" tool, which is also why for some people I think Notion is the wrong solution but for others works great. Think: internal team documents in one central place (less active) vs updating your app…

> the latter of which is not what Notion is good for at all why?

A couple reasons. It's operationally too slow, and when you're working on teams (larger than 1 per role), this makes notion a hassle to update. For devdocs, the larger developer community has already rallied around open source tools that provide easier management through github. The current sharing options are also not good enough to support that use case.

Essentially, the more you update a notion page, the more unbearable it gets.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#359

Post by Thorentis »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #331
pbueckle wrote: post #290

I've been using Notion at my new workplace and was excited at first, but having used it now for many months I came to hate it. They constantly announce new features but are completely neglecting the basics: - Copy and paste is completely broken. Good luck trying to paste a table. - The drag & drop feature is equally annoying, it just never works and doesn't select the things you intend to select or drop them in the p…

For me the thing that made me give up using Notion was the “feel” of the basic text editing. There was a latency and lagginess to the way it responded that made it so unsatisfying and, at worst, irritating to use that I couldn’t go on. Typing this, it feels weird to give up because of such a subtle thing, but there were probably a dozen more details lacking in this way that eroded all of the goodwill won by the flash…

As much as Atlassian stuff is hated on, Confluence Cloud editing feels butter smooth and very simple. The slash commands are a nice addition and it's improved quite a lot since the early days of confluence.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#360

Post by hammyhavoc »

noltncy wrote: post #354
hammyhavoc wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have ADHD, and if I don't write it down, it isn't happening. How that information is presented is a big deal. If you do a basic litmus test of going to a sub-Reddit that specializes in productivity, concepts like GTD, or software like Obsidian, you'll quite frequently find people with ADHD, and folks who suspect they have ADHD, but have no diagnosis, or can't access appropriate medication where they live for one re…

Several times I keep finding me switching through apps. When notion became the rage, I went to make an account to find out that I already had an account (with to do lists from months ago). I have made sincere attempts to use it as my primary tool, often spending days on setting it up and sometimes money. I always lose interest and switch to the next fancy thing. Among Notion, amazing Marvin, ticktick, toodledo, thing…

The game-changer for me was MyLifeOrganized. The killer feature is dependencies, so you can choose to only be shown actionable tasks at any given moment, complete with context sensitivity. The only thing missing is sharing tasks with others.

With that in mind, I've been using Active Collab since 2006 for collaborating with others. It has dependencies too, but doesn't work anywhere near as well as MLO.

I've tried most of what's available over the years, but finally happy overall. I keep the widget on my home screen with an interactive list, and can also double tap the back of my Pixel in any app and add a new task. Super cool, and works on all my other devices very well.

Re the ADHD, I was diagnosed as a child and was apparently the youngest person to ever be prescribed it in the UK, stopped taking it at about ten, and now looking to get back on it, but enduring the waiting list currently. My partner's cousin has ADHD, and seeing the difference between her medicated and unmedicated gave me the realization that my dose was wrong pre-puberty, and rather than stopping it entirely, I should have been willing to figure the dosage out instead. Highly recommend people just embrace that they probably aren't a lazy failure or disorganized mess, if the intent is there but the execution isn't, they've probably got ADHD, and there's plenty of options.

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