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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

#91

Post by freedomben »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #53
tylergetsay wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self hosting has only got easier in the security regard thanks to solutions like tailscale

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 perfect be the enemy of good.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#93

Post by maxbaines »

Invictus0 wrote: post #81

I don't use any checklist or notebook or anything. I just know what I need to do and do it.

Yes this is what I do also - But reading this thread is perhaps making me wonder if this is an unusual approach? To me its very normal to know what I need to do, and very very rarely do I miss something, a task etc.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#94

Post by bakul »

rvense wrote: post #59
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…

When I first got into Linux it seemed like a lot of people mostly used Linux to configure desktop environments and Conky to take screenshots of. There's a Buddhist parable about someone spending their whole life building a boat to cross a small river and dying before they made it across.

Nothing wrong with spending one's life building a boat if that is what floats your boat. It is the journey, not the destination, where you spend the most time so might as well make it a happy one!

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#95

Post by creamyhorror »

dmd wrote: post #46
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…

Over the last 20 years or so I've tried: index cards, wunderlist, todo.txt, remember the milk, Asana, Any.do, Evernote, Google Notebook, Simplenote, Trello, Workflowy, Google Keep, Bear Notes, org-mode, and probably a dozen others. Three years ago I started using Apple Notes and told my wife "if you see me trying anything else at all, yell at me". I've been pretty happy with it and am much more productive just using…

I started with text files in Notepad, then learnt from a friend how to use Freemind to organise notes as hierarchical mindmaps instead. It worked great, but search was broken (DFS but only able to find results in one treepath?!). Years passed, and I needed something to take notes with on mobile, and Google Keep was the simplest fit. But Freemind and Keep were both still too inconvenient on desktop, so at some point I ended up back at text files. I skipped all other note-taking apps over the years because I was convinced by people here who said plaintext was best.

In the last two years, though, my current text file has gotten too unwieldy to use. I have to do a bunch of searching to get to sections (or remember their character-exact names). Then last week, I lost a day's research notes because Google Drive crashed and didn't sync until it was too late, overwriting my work. Clearly, I'd outgrown my setup.

This last Sunday, I researched note-taking apps that don't use proprietary formats or cloud storage: Obsidian? Foam? Dendron? Logseq? I went with Obsidian, which while closed-source, keeps everything in Markdown files, so I'll always be able to use them in the future. (Logseq's different approach also seemed promising, and it's open-source too; I'd recommend trying that too.) I set up Obsidian-git for reasonable syncing that wouldn't result my notes being overwritten by accident. It all took a few hours, not endless tinkering.

I've migrated a few note sections into it, done a few diagrams and code blocks. Works well. I think I'm set for the next 10 years.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#96

Post by SamBam »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #86
have_faith wrote: post #13

I started doing this for a while but quickly switched to Obsidian. Obviously it doesn't have the same features but it serves the same purpose for me at least. The data format is much simpler and portable too, I just store the vault in iCloud and sync it to my phone.

I just wish obsidian was better at lists, especially on the mobile client. It's really painful moving things around tab levels, reordering items, etc. I can't even manage a grocery list without it devolving into complete chaos and broken markdown. There are extensions that help but extensions on mobile are really bad (just an enormous toolbar to scroll through, no real UI... the whole mobile app feels designed to be…

Since Notion is just plain text files, it would be lovely if someone could produce a better app for mobile that could work with those files.

It could be a fraction of the features, like just text editing and good lists, and you could always switch to editing markdown if you needed to.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#97

Post by [deleted] »

freedomben wrote: post #89
winstonprivacy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, except s/notepad/vim. One big file. Easy to keep in version control (I keep it in my dot files repo), easy to search/grep, Currently has 10 years worth of stuff (well over 10,000 lines) but is still instantaneous to open and search. I've recently started trying out Logseq and there's a chance I may actually switch, but the single-text-file approach has served me very well for a long time.

[deleted]

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#98

Post by tofuahdude »

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, except that I've added Obsidian as a UI on top of it. Check in markdown, have decent visual on top.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#99

Post by Swizec »

rvense wrote: post #59
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…

When I first got into Linux it seemed like a lot of people mostly used Linux to configure desktop environments and Conky to take screenshots of. There's a Buddhist parable about someone spending their whole life building a boat to cross a small river and dying before they made it across.

I used to be a total Linux nerd throughout highschool. To the point of being a Gentoo user! On a machine that took 3 days to build KDE.

Around freshman year of college I switched to Mac. Realized I wanted my computer to be a tool, not a hobby. Some config is fine, but for the most part I stick to the defaults now and trust that people who spent years thinking about this stuff have it handled. If they don’t, it’s probably because I’m not their target user and should pick a different app or OS.

Re: People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

#100

Post by lemiffe »

Absolutely love Notion for the aspects mentioned in the article; I love how I can cluster everything together (work, life, etc.)

From short term planning (templates for my week which I copy every Sunday to start a fresh week - these templates are a 7 day todo list (in columns) with a link to my main calendar, project 'kanban' boards, and a linked "general todo" list for things that don't fit in the week and keep dragging on)

After being addicted to scheduling everything in a calendar (for about 5-6 years), and having to drag items I didn't complete to the next day every single day, working with templates (and linked lists / embedded sections) in Notion is really a game changer. I've tried many other to-do tools (like Wunderlist which I loved before it came Microsoft To-Do, which I still gave a chance but had too many bugs).

Notion is just a game changer plain and simple, I hope they never break it, this is the only tool I have come to love and trust to keep my entire life in.

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