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Notion for everyone

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Re: Notion for everyone

#11

Post by jotson »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #7

Anyone mind giving me a TL;DR on the value proposition/use case of Notion? I have a friend that works at a small company who is absolutely nuts about it (every single one of his tweets is about it), but I also have seen other people say it's a convoluted mess once you get above a certain size and they regret ever going down that path. Also curious if anyone has comments on how it compares to similar apps like Dropbox…

It's a nice wiki with some interesting database features (a la airtable). Writing in it is pretty nice because it's basically markdown.

I'd stopped using it because it was too easy to outgrow the free plan. Now with unlimited pages I'll give it another shot but I'm still not sold on its benefits vs storing all my notes locally in plain markdown files.

Re: Notion for everyone

#12

Post by txcwpalpha »

ebg13 wrote: post #9
txcwpalpha wrote: post #7

Anyone mind giving me a TL;DR on the value proposition/use case of Notion? I have a friend that works at a small company who is absolutely nuts about it (every single one of his tweets is about it), but I also have seen other people say it's a convoluted mess once you get above a certain size and they regret ever going down that path. Also curious if anyone has comments on how it compares to similar apps like Dropbox…

> Anyone mind giving me a TL;DR on the value proposition/use case of Notion? Have you ever used Confluence? If not, have you ever used any Atlassian products? Atlassian is all over corp structures, and everything they make is painful to use without a training course or the desire to immerse yourself in boring-as-shit documentation. A lot of corps jumping onto Notion are jumping off of Confluence.

>Have you ever used Confluence?

Yes. Is Notion a Confluence competitor?

I guess I'm struggling to understand it because my aforementioned friend talks about how he uses Notion for basically every possible use case under the sun (probably even some where it's not meant for that but he found some way to finagle it). Based on that knowledge, I still don't really know what Notion is meant for other than being just-another-note-taking-app-that-supports-markdown-and-embedded-pics.

Re: Notion for everyone

#13

Post by doctorbuttes »

Using Notion is awesome, but does require you to bring your own structure. Templates help, but much like any other process in your organization, it requires occasional review to keep the team on the same page to keep it tidy and useful. It helps to have a champion/steward for it.

Re: Notion for everyone

#14

Post by paulgb »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #7

Anyone mind giving me a TL;DR on the value proposition/use case of Notion? I have a friend that works at a small company who is absolutely nuts about it (every single one of his tweets is about it), but I also have seen other people say it's a convoluted mess once you get above a certain size and they regret ever going down that path. Also curious if anyone has comments on how it compares to similar apps like Dropbox…

The killer feature that made me switch from OneNote is that when you add dates you can set it to remind you before they pass. Some ways I've used this:

- Implementing GTD, when I move a task to "waiting" I add a date when I want to be reminded to check on it.

- I create a new table quarterly with a row for each week with columns for goals (e.g. practice Spanish or get out running 3x), then embed date reminders for each one so I don't forget to keep it updated.

- I keep a table of annual subscriptions I pay for, with the date the payment occurs, and a reminder a few weeks earlier. This way I can decide whether I want to renew (this alone has paid for the cost of Notion).

Re: Notion for everyone

#15

Post by muhammadusman »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #7

Anyone mind giving me a TL;DR on the value proposition/use case of Notion? I have a friend that works at a small company who is absolutely nuts about it (every single one of his tweets is about it), but I also have seen other people say it's a convoluted mess once you get above a certain size and they regret ever going down that path. Also curious if anyone has comments on how it compares to similar apps like Dropbox…

Used Dropbox Paper before Notion. Paper is great for stand-alone documents. I even made a nice presentation using it because it was quicker than using Google Slides.

I've been using Notion for 3+ years now and I've been happily paying for it. The main reason I went away from Dropbox for organizing and writing is b/c each Paper document felt like a separate piece of work. In Notion, documents are easily linked, workspaces are a starting point and there's child documents and sibling documents that can help keep things organized. I have over 200+ documents and about 3 months ago the search started to feel sluggish and they updated their search code and it now feels pretty fast again.

It's not all perfect though, with 3+ years of use, I can tell you their mobile apps have come a long way but still don't feel as native as some other writing apps (iA Writer).

My final thoughts are that if you're hearing good things about it and haven't given it a shot, try it for a 1-2 week period and see how it works for you. Some people like the way it does 90% of the things and others hate the same things ️

Re: Notion for everyone

#17

Post by clairity »

avolcano wrote: post #5

This is kinda weird, because I was happily giving them $4/month after running out of space in their trial plan, and now I absolutely have no reason to keep giving them money. Which, sure, I guess I'll take it. My $4/month isn't going to make or break their business and they probably barely give a shit about getting money for personal usage. Does remind me that my usage of their app doesn't align with their business m…

it's product as marketing: make happy individual users, in the target market, and you're likely to tell others, hopefully workmates or others like you. if you can get a workgroup using the product and happy with it, it's worth quite a bit more with their per-user subscription model for groups.

it can work well for productivity apps, slack, for example.

Re: Notion for everyone

#18

Post by kyawzazaw »

jackson1442 wrote: post #4

This changes a lot for me. I like Notion's interface, as well as the functionality included. It feels like a desktop app, which Google Docs simply can't compete with (they're also Google products, do with that what you will). The "blocks" limit always felt arbitrary on Free, so I never really got into it, but now that I can use this like I would normally use a note-taking app, I can see it being very valuable. edit:…

free for edu users since Sep 2019.

Re: Notion for everyone

#19

Post by kyawzazaw »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #12
ebg13 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone mind giving me a TL;DR on the value proposition/use case of Notion? Have you ever used Confluence? If not, have you ever used any Atlassian products? Atlassian is all over corp structures, and everything they make is painful to use without a training course or the desire to immerse yourself in boring-as-shit documentation. A lot of corps jumping onto Notion are jumping off of Confluence.

>Have you ever used Confluence? Yes. Is Notion a Confluence competitor? I guess I'm struggling to understand it because my aforementioned friend talks about how he uses Notion for basically every possible use case under the sun (probably even some where it's not meant for that but he found some way to finagle it). Based on that knowledge, I still don't really know what Notion is meant for other than being just-anothe…

It doesn't really have very good integrations as of now. Like GitHub, GitLab issues etc.

Re: Notion for everyone

#20

Post by fastball »

threatofrain wrote: post #2

I know it's a niche need but any note-taking app I use needs to support Latex and code highlighting. Unfortunately, once I throw this criteria in just about every app gets excluded, but at least VSC + sync is still very nice.

Supernotes[1] has been called "a smaller, faster notion" and supports LaTeX (both inline and block, notion only does block) and code highlighting.

Disclaimer: I built it.

1: https://supernotes.app

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