13 ms·

I love using Notion, but I think the general discussion about it does not talk enough about how it's flexibility is also a problem many times. 1. Flexibility o

by pcx 6y ago

I love using Notion, but I think the general discussion about it does not talk enough about how it's flexibility is also a problem many times. 1. Flexibility of blocks is a cognitive overhead for most folks in my team. They would rather prefer more constrained and opinionated approaches like Trello 2. Notion is currently a jack of all trades and master of none. We have tried to use it as a wiki, project tracker, issue tracker, CRM & spreadsheet. Though it's good to have one tool that can do many things, we quickly reach limits of what is possible automatically and have to spend a lot of time to manually maintain it 3. Convention over configuration creates problems for other team members to follow because conventions are not documented properly. But I see a lot of potential of it becoming a platform. If they can incentivize 3rd parties to build over their platform and build trust, I think it's gonna be the next big thing. "One platform for all my data" with specialized tools to deal with different kinds of data. I can imagine tools like Tello, Jira, Hubspot, Google spreadsheets & draw.io running over it.

Scarbutt 6y ago
Sounds like the curse of Emacs.
- pcx 6y ago
  I am a 10yr+ Emacs user, this hit too close to home than I would like! I am seeing a lot of momentum in Emacs ecosystem for last couple of years and Spacemacs rocks! So hopefully it's gonna get better :)
  - slightwinder 6y ago
    Spacemacs is still alive? I tried it some years ago and it had several problem at the time. Does not seems have solved them yet.
- prennert 6y ago
  I just started using orgmode to compliment notion. So far it feels to me as Notion is a bit like emacs / orgmode without API, and orgmode is a bit like notion without collaboration.
  - pickdenis 6y ago
    > orgmode is a bit like notion without collaboration Emacs has a number of collaborative editing solutions: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CollaborativeEditing https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CollaborativeEditing The nice thing about org-mode is that it automatically gets all the cool stuff that emacs has. (Although, I have never tried any of the solutions listed in that wiki page and I suspect even the "working" ones have issues).
  - xet7 6y ago
    There is orgmode for web: https://org-web.org https://org-web.org https://github.com/DanielDe/org-web https://github.com/DanielDe/org-web
- komali2 6y ago
  Certainly is, though slowly but surely you zero in on the "best configuration" for yourself. Whereas when I was using vscode, onenote, google keep, and a bunch of other shit to manage everything, I had "topped out" at productivity. I'm trash at vim (I use evil-mode), org mode, and org-agenda, but I'm still lightyears ahead of where I was 2 years ago before I used these tools.
  - slightwinder 6y ago
    > I had "topped out" at productivity. Did you topped out the tool or your personal ability? > but I'm still lightyears ahead of where I was 2 years ago before I used these tools. But is this because of the tools, the gain of new experiences or the 2 years difference? And how do you know whether you are really moved forward, and not just run in circles appearing busy without being more productive? Do you have some objective metric for this?
    - komali2 6y ago
      > Did you topped out the tool or your personal ability Both, I'd say. > Do you have some objective metric for this? Well my happiness, for one. My sense of accomplishment. How much more I can fit in a day. But no, I don't KPI myself.
- brlewis 6y ago
  The curse of emacs is "Jack of all trades and master of ones that don't attract new users"
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
I've tried to use Notion, but my experience mirrors yours: There's just enough flexibility to slow you down, but not enough flexibility to make it down exactly what I need without jumping through a lot of hoops. My favorite productivity tools blend into the background. I can get down to doing the work without mental overhead of managing the tool. Notion, on the other hand, feels like I'm spending half of my energy fighting with Notion, and only half of my energy doing the work I'm trying to accomplish.
- slightwinder 6y ago
  > There's just enough flexibility to slow you down, but not enough flexibility to make it down exactly what I need without jumping through a lot of hoops. This reads as if you except Notion to give you meaningful work to do, a workflow you can follow? Or do you just don't know how to implement the workflows you envision yourself?
brainzap 6y ago
I miss Trello: add task, edit, save.
- tommoor 6y ago
  Trello… still exists?
  - arkitaip 6y ago
    Only on HN can people question the existence of an app which has 50M users. Trello might not be this month's flavor but I'll be damned if it's not one of the most useful planning tools out there.
    - mynegation 6y ago
      I think tommoor is aware that Trello still exists, I read it as them questioning parent comment's phrasing "miss Trello"
    - asaddhamani 6y ago
      I don't know how Trello has 50M users, and how so many people and companies can use it for project management. For anything more than a single board, I find it terribly lacking in functionality. Can't even see all your cards across boards without scrolling 50 times.
      - OOPMan 6y ago
        Using Trello well requires you to ruthlessly process cards. Once they start to "overflow" it becomes a nightmare
      - jtth 6y ago
        Lots of folks would argue that's a feature that exposes a problem in the conceptualization and modeling of a domain.
      - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
jdhornby 6y ago
I’ve had a similar experience with Notion. “Jack of all trades and master of none” resonates strongly with me. This lead me to my latest startup https://froosthq.com/ https://froosthq.com/ which is Notion inspired and aimed solely at software teams.
- martijn9612 6y ago
  Hey, just noticed a small mistake, or it was just unclear from my side. Looks like the "pricing" link links to "learn" in the url, while there being nothing about pricing in the page itself.
- drcongo 6y ago
  That looks pretty nice. I've put my email in your signup as this is something that I've built half of about 5 times now.
  - 1cvmask 6y ago
    What are the five apps called?
    - mkl 6y ago
      Not OP, but if they were only half built (and presumably therefore not released), what use is knowing the working titles?
- codegeek 6y ago
  I would rephrase "all in one tool" to more specific like "project management tool". All in one for software teams makes me think that you also offer things like version control etc. All-in-one is a very loaded phrase. Just my 2 cents.
- pcx 6y ago
  Looks great, signed up!
- ultrasandwich 6y ago
munchbunny 6y ago
Yup, Notion and OneNote occupy similar scenarios for me. It's where I can gather my compiled thoughts and notes, but I've had trouble implementing any team processes on it due to it not being constrained enough in its UI. I don't think there's any easy answer here. I respect the Notion team a lot for making a tool that is so flexible, but it's also a curse in some key scenarios.
- pcx 6y ago
  Yeah. I see that it works great for some scenarios, like when I and my co-founder are collaborating. But if I try to teach it to a sales guy, I can see he just hates it :(
- nso95 6y ago
  Perhaps a wiki or internal QA site would be a good solution.
- mywacaday 6y ago
  Onenote is so close as a perfect system for me but what it leaves out really hurts. -No task Hierarchy -No alerts for due dates (Yes you can add outlook tasks but its flakey) -No automatic reporting
  - 0x49d1 6y ago
    No page sharing Not standard markup of the notes (not possible to export)
fermienrico 6y ago
Also, the whole Emoji's thing is distracting to me. I just want to see plain text in simple san-serif fonts, with borders (which are apparently outdated in favor of massive emptiness of negative space). Visual cognitive load is ok as far as the brain can process blocks of information. Such as a table with borders. When you have emojis, colors, effects, etc without clarity of separation, you get something that becomes tiring after a little while to look at.
- kixiQu 6y ago
  That's funny, because to me, the emoji seem like a nice visual differentiator and borders seem hideous.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Borders are timeless, they've been around before the internet and to be around forever. Literally a line in the whitespace that allows your eye balls to know that hey! that's block A and that's block B and there is a fricking line in the middle!
- drannex 6y ago
  +1 on that, I have an unreal disinterest in emojis in all forms.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- karmakaze 6y ago
  That's funny. One time while converting a prototype to less of a prototype, I created like 40 PRs in 40 working days. There were so many in-flight at one time that I couldn't really use normal issue trackers. Instead I created one GitHub issue with a table of items. Each item had an emoji in the first column that indicated its current status. The gear was 'in-progress', 'eyes' review, 'ship' deploying, and green check for done. I didn't know how many lines there would be, I started out with about 6 and it worked exceedingly well. If anyone ever asked me what I was working on or where I was with it, I just sent them the one issue link and they had the whole history and the near future listed. I called it Emoji-Driven-Development.
michaelbuckbee 6y ago
I've found Notion really worthwhile, but the fact it's so flexible means you need to go in with a plan so that you can really take advantage of it. I really like how Marie Poulin's sets up her Notion process, here's a good example of how to make contextual dashboards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX2AJD4kx80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX2AJD4kx80 but there's a bunch more, just massive productivity boosts from not having to jump between so many different apps/services.
tablet 6y ago
Good points. It seems you might enjoy Fibery[1], it addresses most of these problems (and has internal whiteboard as draw.io replacement as well). But I’m biased as a Fibery founder. [1] https://fibery.io https://fibery.io
- mingabunga 6y ago
  This looks amazing. Just reading over the docs before I dive in.
- riquito 6y ago
  It's customary to mention any involvement when suggesting a product
  - tablet 6y ago
    Thanks for advice, I’ll improve!
- pier25 6y ago
  That button "I don't get it..." at the bottom right is genius.
- aloer 6y ago
  your site looks amazing and the I don't get it button is really great. But... even after looking at all the four separate landing pages I have no idea what exactly fibery could do for me
  - omniscient_oce 6y ago
    Same. I wish everything wasn't so zoomed in so I didn't have to read heaps of large headers and scroll for ages to figure out what exactly it does.
  - tablet 6y ago
    We'll re-do the product page with the Fibery 2.0 release somewhere in July. Thanks for the feedback!
j45 6y ago
A meaningful and working integration with Airtable will help both products leap forward. Each is good at what they do.
treebornfrog 6y ago
Regarding your first point, totally agree 100%. I want to use notion, it's such a nice UI/UX. Problem is, it's just too complicated. Trello is basic, but gets the job done.
kmfrk 6y ago
I really need a better index of all my notes, right now it's just too overwhelming without a better way of organizing everything, especially since it automatically collapses all my workspace trees when I close the app. Really gets in the way of using it beyond a handful of pages.
jerrygoyal 6y ago
long time notion user here. I was using notion for my personal life and it was serving the purpose but when I started using it as a project management tool for my dev team I realised how crippled it is (no dependent tasks, gantt view etc). maybe I'm wrong and notion is not built for this but then again why would i use it just for wiki? recently started looking for task management+wiki tool.. reviewed more than 10+ tools and finally picked an extremely powerful but a less known tool clickup.com
- presspot 6y ago
  ClickUp is totally badass, and their feature velocity is breathtaking.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  I’m starting to be quite sad about all these nice things that I’ll never get to use in my huge enterprise :/
pagade 6y ago
I am really surprised no one has mentioned https://zenkit.com/ https://zenkit.com/. Kanban - Wiki - Calendar - List - Mindmap - Hierarchy etc. It does those things very well.
- biosed 6y ago
  Is data removable, do you use?
  - pagade 6y ago
    I use it for personal purpose. By data removable, I guess you mean right to be forgotten. Their https://zenkit.com/en/gdpr/ https://zenkit.com/en/gdpr/ page provides the details.
- sirusdas 6y ago
  I really liked it first impression UI lets see how it goes. Thanks for the share.
- slightwinder 6y ago
  Probably because it seems to be less known than Notion. IIRC it's a bit more expensive and more constrainend than notion, more targeted at teams than single users.
qrt 6y ago
“One platform for all my data with specialized tools to deal with different kinds of data. I can imagine tools like Tello, Jira, Hubspot, Google spreadsheets & draw.io running over it.” -> https://qatalog.com https://qatalog.com
- gemmtree 6y ago
  that is really neat! but what apps can I connect to it? It says 9 providers but can’t see what they are
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
manigandham 6y ago
This was exactly our issue. Not good at any one thing and the interface is very touch. A single mis-click and you can mess things up which reminds me Asana. What all these platforms really need is solid APIs and interoperability so we can use the right tool while keeping everything in one place (ideally email or slack).
bradgessler 6y ago
I feel like Dropbox Paper strikes a great balance. If you drop certain links in a Paper doc, like a Figma or Google Docs Spreadsheet, it will show either an iframe or screenshot read-only representation of the current content with a link to it. My only beef with Dropbox Paper is their iOS apps are buggy as hell and have been for a few years. I really wish they’d invest more in their native apps.
- b0tch7 6y ago
  +1 for Dropbox Paper. I am weirdly addicted to it for all my internal documentation and writeups. When you get used to (and expect) the guardrails, it's so fast to quick create a doc with multi-media. My only pain point is the damn file system
  - aheckler 6y ago
    Agreed. It seems especially weird that, after moving files into a folder, they still appear in the main list. That, and the fact that new files are world-readable by default. (With unguessable URLs, but still...)
lukestevens 6y ago
Notion recently published "How Notion Uses Notion" [0] which I found insightful in terms of how Notion's flexibility is put to work internally. It's interesting seeing where teams hit the limits of the tool & wish for (or move to) something else though. I wonder if "The Notion Way" will emerge at some point, which would be useful for quickly qualifying yourself in or out. [0] https://www.notion.so/How-Notion-Uses-Notion-616f41d2f5124f3185cf1c36d267c07e https://www.notion.so/How-Notion-Uses-Notion-616f41d2f5124f3...
- halfimmortal 6y ago
  This is great, thanks for sharing
omniscient_oce 6y ago
Same here. I was so overwhelmed with the million ways I could accomplish my relatively simple needs that I just gave up on it. Also everything basically bringing up a modal for a new page annoyed me. Maybe it's just my personality type but I like there just being a canonical way of doing something and then doing it, rather than spending a fair chunk of time customising and configuring the tool to do what I want.
slightwinder 6y ago
> how it's flexibility is also a problem many times. Flexibility is always a challenge, but in case of Notion IMHO the bigger challange is getting over it's aweful userexperience and interface. And flexibility is not always a problem. Excel proofs that flexibel solution can succeed with the laymen. > 1. Flexibility of blocks is a cognitive overhead for most folks in my team. They would rather prefer more constrained and opinionated approaches like Trello Is this not solved with their Template-Library? Those deliver a guided opinionated experience. Though it's not as constrained and powerful as a specialized app like Trello. > 2. Notion is currently a jack of all trades and master of none. It's a canvas-tool. You get a set of brushs and pencils and it's up on you to paint what you need. This has naturally advantage for some and disadvantages for some others. > 3. Convention over configuration creates problems for other team members to follow because conventions are not documented properly Is Notion a team-tool? Do they advertise it as such? > But I see a lot of potential of it becoming a platform. If they can incentivize 3rd parties to build over their platform and build trust, I think it's gonna be the next big thing. "One platform for all my data" with specialized tools to deal with different kinds of data. There are far better soltions around for this. I doubt this is a sane endgoal for notion.
raiyu 6y ago
Ran into the same issue. Loved the design and the demos I saw so I signed up. What I really wanted was just a simple flexible to-do list, something that I missed from Basecamp v1 and was willing to try somewhere else. But the flexibility made it a nightmare. Because what I wanted was very simple, the friction that I encountered, though probably not huge, felt much larger, because I felt, why can't this be easier? I just want a simple to do list, and I was messing with headings and all of this non-essential stuff that I didn't need. I'm sure in a business setting it could be different, especially if someone goes through the trouble of setting things up so you have some sort of system of consistency that you work inside of, but as a first time user the flexibility was a bit of hinderance.
- Mela1998 6y ago
  I can totally relate to this. I often feel that with all these "simplistic" products coming out they actually oversimplify it to the point where it actually takes longer to do. It is great to have the flexibility and all, but where do we draw the line from being too flexible or too simplified? Like you, I ran into the same issues with Notion, so I switched to Trello, but it has some lack of features that I really wanted. I've been searching the web to find team chats that particularly don't require too much integration, and is simple. Especially with task management. I've been seeing a lot of mentions about AirSend on twitter, and I checked out their website. They have a really simple to-do list that is built-in. My team and I just started using it last week, and so far I don't have too many complaints. Not sure if you are looking for a switch, but you might like them. I hope this helps! Their website is, AirSend.io
amineazariz 6y ago
Can't agree more. I was using Notion from the very beta start and loved it. Then couples of months in I strated noticing that the more Notion added features the more I was spending more time "perfecting" my workspace than doing actual work. Stopped using it and went back to old good Google Sheets, Apple Notes. Very constrained and just the right amount of "flexibility" to make it work for you workflow. No emojis encouragements.

by pcx 6y ago

Scarbutt 6y ago

Sounds like the curse of Emacs.

pcx 6y ago
I am a 10yr+ Emacs user, this hit too close to home than I would like! I am seeing a lot of momentum in Emacs ecosystem for last couple of years and Spacemacs rocks! So hopefully it's gonna get better :)
- slightwinder 6y ago
  Spacemacs is still alive? I tried it some years ago and it had several problem at the time. Does not seems have solved them yet.
prennert 6y ago
I just started using orgmode to compliment notion. So far it feels to me as Notion is a bit like emacs / orgmode without API, and orgmode is a bit like notion without collaboration.
- pickdenis 6y ago
  > orgmode is a bit like notion without collaboration Emacs has a number of collaborative editing solutions: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CollaborativeEditing https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CollaborativeEditing The nice thing about org-mode is that it automatically gets all the cool stuff that emacs has. (Although, I have never tried any of the solutions listed in that wiki page and I suspect even the "working" ones have issues).
- xet7 6y ago
  There is orgmode for web: https://org-web.org https://org-web.org https://github.com/DanielDe/org-web https://github.com/DanielDe/org-web
komali2 6y ago
Certainly is, though slowly but surely you zero in on the "best configuration" for yourself. Whereas when I was using vscode, onenote, google keep, and a bunch of other shit to manage everything, I had "topped out" at productivity. I'm trash at vim (I use evil-mode), org mode, and org-agenda, but I'm still lightyears ahead of where I was 2 years ago before I used these tools.
- slightwinder 6y ago
  > I had "topped out" at productivity. Did you topped out the tool or your personal ability? > but I'm still lightyears ahead of where I was 2 years ago before I used these tools. But is this because of the tools, the gain of new experiences or the 2 years difference? And how do you know whether you are really moved forward, and not just run in circles appearing busy without being more productive? Do you have some objective metric for this?
  - komali2 6y ago
    > Did you topped out the tool or your personal ability Both, I'd say. > Do you have some objective metric for this? Well my happiness, for one. My sense of accomplishment. How much more I can fit in a day. But no, I don't KPI myself.
brlewis 6y ago
The curse of emacs is "Jack of all trades and master of ones that don't attract new users"

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

I've tried to use Notion, but my experience mirrors yours: There's just enough flexibility to slow you down, but not enough flexibility to make it down exactly what I need without jumping through a lot of hoops. My favorite productivity tools blend into the background. I can get down to doing the work without mental overhead of managing the tool. Notion, on the other hand, feels like I'm spending half of my energy fighting with Notion, and only half of my energy doing the work I'm trying to accomplish.

slightwinder 6y ago
> There's just enough flexibility to slow you down, but not enough flexibility to make it down exactly what I need without jumping through a lot of hoops. This reads as if you except Notion to give you meaningful work to do, a workflow you can follow? Or do you just don't know how to implement the workflows you envision yourself?

brainzap 6y ago

I miss Trello: add task, edit, save.

tommoor 6y ago
Trello… still exists?
- arkitaip 6y ago
  Only on HN can people question the existence of an app which has 50M users. Trello might not be this month's flavor but I'll be damned if it's not one of the most useful planning tools out there.
  - mynegation 6y ago
    I think tommoor is aware that Trello still exists, I read it as them questioning parent comment's phrasing "miss Trello"
  - asaddhamani 6y ago
    I don't know how Trello has 50M users, and how so many people and companies can use it for project management. For anything more than a single board, I find it terribly lacking in functionality. Can't even see all your cards across boards without scrolling 50 times.
    - OOPMan 6y ago
      Using Trello well requires you to ruthlessly process cards. Once they start to "overflow" it becomes a nightmare
    - jtth 6y ago
      Lots of folks would argue that's a feature that exposes a problem in the conceptualization and modeling of a domain.
    - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago

jdhornby 6y ago

I’ve had a similar experience with Notion. “Jack of all trades and master of none” resonates strongly with me. This lead me to my latest startup https://froosthq.com/ https://froosthq.com/ which is Notion inspired and aimed solely at software teams.

martijn9612 6y ago
Hey, just noticed a small mistake, or it was just unclear from my side. Looks like the "pricing" link links to "learn" in the url, while there being nothing about pricing in the page itself.
drcongo 6y ago
That looks pretty nice. I've put my email in your signup as this is something that I've built half of about 5 times now.
- 1cvmask 6y ago
  What are the five apps called?
  - mkl 6y ago
    Not OP, but if they were only half built (and presumably therefore not released), what use is knowing the working titles?
codegeek 6y ago
I would rephrase "all in one tool" to more specific like "project management tool". All in one for software teams makes me think that you also offer things like version control etc. All-in-one is a very loaded phrase. Just my 2 cents.
pcx 6y ago
Looks great, signed up!
ultrasandwich 6y ago

munchbunny 6y ago

Yup, Notion and OneNote occupy similar scenarios for me. It's where I can gather my compiled thoughts and notes, but I've had trouble implementing any team processes on it due to it not being constrained enough in its UI. I don't think there's any easy answer here. I respect the Notion team a lot for making a tool that is so flexible, but it's also a curse in some key scenarios.

pcx 6y ago
Yeah. I see that it works great for some scenarios, like when I and my co-founder are collaborating. But if I try to teach it to a sales guy, I can see he just hates it :(
nso95 6y ago
Perhaps a wiki or internal QA site would be a good solution.
mywacaday 6y ago
Onenote is so close as a perfect system for me but what it leaves out really hurts. -No task Hierarchy -No alerts for due dates (Yes you can add outlook tasks but its flakey) -No automatic reporting
- 0x49d1 6y ago
  No page sharing Not standard markup of the notes (not possible to export)

fermienrico 6y ago

Also, the whole Emoji's thing is distracting to me. I just want to see plain text in simple san-serif fonts, with borders (which are apparently outdated in favor of massive emptiness of negative space). Visual cognitive load is ok as far as the brain can process blocks of information. Such as a table with borders. When you have emojis, colors, effects, etc without clarity of separation, you get something that becomes tiring after a little while to look at.

kixiQu 6y ago
That's funny, because to me, the emoji seem like a nice visual differentiator and borders seem hideous.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Borders are timeless, they've been around before the internet and to be around forever. Literally a line in the whitespace that allows your eye balls to know that hey! that's block A and that's block B and there is a fricking line in the middle!
drannex 6y ago
+1 on that, I have an unreal disinterest in emojis in all forms.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
karmakaze 6y ago
That's funny. One time while converting a prototype to less of a prototype, I created like 40 PRs in 40 working days. There were so many in-flight at one time that I couldn't really use normal issue trackers. Instead I created one GitHub issue with a table of items. Each item had an emoji in the first column that indicated its current status. The gear was 'in-progress', 'eyes' review, 'ship' deploying, and green check for done. I didn't know how many lines there would be, I started out with about 6 and it worked exceedingly well. If anyone ever asked me what I was working on or where I was with it, I just sent them the one issue link and they had the whole history and the near future listed. I called it Emoji-Driven-Development.

michaelbuckbee 6y ago

I've found Notion really worthwhile, but the fact it's so flexible means you need to go in with a plan so that you can really take advantage of it. I really like how Marie Poulin's sets up her Notion process, here's a good example of how to make contextual dashboards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX2AJD4kx80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX2AJD4kx80 but there's a bunch more, just massive productivity boosts from not having to jump between so many different apps/services.

tablet 6y ago

Good points. It seems you might enjoy Fibery[1], it addresses most of these problems (and has internal whiteboard as draw.io replacement as well). But I’m biased as a Fibery founder. [1] https://fibery.io https://fibery.io

mingabunga 6y ago
This looks amazing. Just reading over the docs before I dive in.
riquito 6y ago
It's customary to mention any involvement when suggesting a product
- tablet 6y ago
  Thanks for advice, I’ll improve!
pier25 6y ago
That button "I don't get it..." at the bottom right is genius.
aloer 6y ago
your site looks amazing and the I don't get it button is really great. But... even after looking at all the four separate landing pages I have no idea what exactly fibery could do for me
- omniscient_oce 6y ago
  Same. I wish everything wasn't so zoomed in so I didn't have to read heaps of large headers and scroll for ages to figure out what exactly it does.
- tablet 6y ago
  We'll re-do the product page with the Fibery 2.0 release somewhere in July. Thanks for the feedback!

j45 6y ago

A meaningful and working integration with Airtable will help both products leap forward. Each is good at what they do.

treebornfrog 6y ago

Regarding your first point, totally agree 100%. I want to use notion, it's such a nice UI/UX. Problem is, it's just too complicated. Trello is basic, but gets the job done.

kmfrk 6y ago

I really need a better index of all my notes, right now it's just too overwhelming without a better way of organizing everything, especially since it automatically collapses all my workspace trees when I close the app. Really gets in the way of using it beyond a handful of pages.

jerrygoyal 6y ago

long time notion user here. I was using notion for my personal life and it was serving the purpose but when I started using it as a project management tool for my dev team I realised how crippled it is (no dependent tasks, gantt view etc). maybe I'm wrong and notion is not built for this but then again why would i use it just for wiki? recently started looking for task management+wiki tool.. reviewed more than 10+ tools and finally picked an extremely powerful but a less known tool clickup.com

presspot 6y ago
ClickUp is totally badass, and their feature velocity is breathtaking.
Aeolun 6y ago
I’m starting to be quite sad about all these nice things that I’ll never get to use in my huge enterprise :/

pagade 6y ago

I am really surprised no one has mentioned https://zenkit.com/ https://zenkit.com/. Kanban - Wiki - Calendar - List - Mindmap - Hierarchy etc. It does those things very well.

biosed 6y ago
Is data removable, do you use?
- pagade 6y ago
  I use it for personal purpose. By data removable, I guess you mean right to be forgotten. Their https://zenkit.com/en/gdpr/ https://zenkit.com/en/gdpr/ page provides the details.
sirusdas 6y ago
I really liked it first impression UI lets see how it goes. Thanks for the share.
slightwinder 6y ago
Probably because it seems to be less known than Notion. IIRC it's a bit more expensive and more constrainend than notion, more targeted at teams than single users.

qrt 6y ago

“One platform for all my data with specialized tools to deal with different kinds of data. I can imagine tools like Tello, Jira, Hubspot, Google spreadsheets & draw.io running over it.” -> https://qatalog.com https://qatalog.com

gemmtree 6y ago
that is really neat! but what apps can I connect to it? It says 9 providers but can’t see what they are
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

manigandham 6y ago

This was exactly our issue. Not good at any one thing and the interface is very touch. A single mis-click and you can mess things up which reminds me Asana. What all these platforms really need is solid APIs and interoperability so we can use the right tool while keeping everything in one place (ideally email or slack).

bradgessler 6y ago

I feel like Dropbox Paper strikes a great balance. If you drop certain links in a Paper doc, like a Figma or Google Docs Spreadsheet, it will show either an iframe or screenshot read-only representation of the current content with a link to it. My only beef with Dropbox Paper is their iOS apps are buggy as hell and have been for a few years. I really wish they’d invest more in their native apps.

b0tch7 6y ago
+1 for Dropbox Paper. I am weirdly addicted to it for all my internal documentation and writeups. When you get used to (and expect) the guardrails, it's so fast to quick create a doc with multi-media. My only pain point is the damn file system
- aheckler 6y ago
  Agreed. It seems especially weird that, after moving files into a folder, they still appear in the main list. That, and the fact that new files are world-readable by default. (With unguessable URLs, but still...)

lukestevens 6y ago

Notion recently published "How Notion Uses Notion" [0] which I found insightful in terms of how Notion's flexibility is put to work internally. It's interesting seeing where teams hit the limits of the tool & wish for (or move to) something else though. I wonder if "The Notion Way" will emerge at some point, which would be useful for quickly qualifying yourself in or out. [0] https://www.notion.so/How-Notion-Uses-Notion-616f41d2f5124f3185cf1c36d267c07e https://www.notion.so/How-Notion-Uses-Notion-616f41d2f5124f3...

halfimmortal 6y ago
This is great, thanks for sharing

omniscient_oce 6y ago

Same here. I was so overwhelmed with the million ways I could accomplish my relatively simple needs that I just gave up on it. Also everything basically bringing up a modal for a new page annoyed me. Maybe it's just my personality type but I like there just being a canonical way of doing something and then doing it, rather than spending a fair chunk of time customising and configuring the tool to do what I want.

slightwinder 6y ago

> how it's flexibility is also a problem many times. Flexibility is always a challenge, but in case of Notion IMHO the bigger challange is getting over it's aweful userexperience and interface. And flexibility is not always a problem. Excel proofs that flexibel solution can succeed with the laymen. > 1. Flexibility of blocks is a cognitive overhead for most folks in my team. They would rather prefer more constrained and opinionated approaches like Trello Is this not solved with their Template-Library? Those deliver a guided opinionated experience. Though it's not as constrained and powerful as a specialized app like Trello. > 2. Notion is currently a jack of all trades and master of none. It's a canvas-tool. You get a set of brushs and pencils and it's up on you to paint what you need. This has naturally advantage for some and disadvantages for some others. > 3. Convention over configuration creates problems for other team members to follow because conventions are not documented properly Is Notion a team-tool? Do they advertise it as such? > But I see a lot of potential of it becoming a platform. If they can incentivize 3rd parties to build over their platform and build trust, I think it's gonna be the next big thing. "One platform for all my data" with specialized tools to deal with different kinds of data. There are far better soltions around for this. I doubt this is a sane endgoal for notion.

raiyu 6y ago

Ran into the same issue. Loved the design and the demos I saw so I signed up. What I really wanted was just a simple flexible to-do list, something that I missed from Basecamp v1 and was willing to try somewhere else. But the flexibility made it a nightmare. Because what I wanted was very simple, the friction that I encountered, though probably not huge, felt much larger, because I felt, why can't this be easier? I just want a simple to do list, and I was messing with headings and all of this non-essential stuff that I didn't need. I'm sure in a business setting it could be different, especially if someone goes through the trouble of setting things up so you have some sort of system of consistency that you work inside of, but as a first time user the flexibility was a bit of hinderance.

Mela1998 6y ago
I can totally relate to this. I often feel that with all these "simplistic" products coming out they actually oversimplify it to the point where it actually takes longer to do. It is great to have the flexibility and all, but where do we draw the line from being too flexible or too simplified? Like you, I ran into the same issues with Notion, so I switched to Trello, but it has some lack of features that I really wanted. I've been searching the web to find team chats that particularly don't require too much integration, and is simple. Especially with task management. I've been seeing a lot of mentions about AirSend on twitter, and I checked out their website. They have a really simple to-do list that is built-in. My team and I just started using it last week, and so far I don't have too many complaints. Not sure if you are looking for a switch, but you might like them. I hope this helps! Their website is, AirSend.io

amineazariz 6y ago

Can't agree more. I was using Notion from the very beta start and loved it. Then couples of months in I strated noticing that the more Notion added features the more I was spending more time "perfecting" my workspace than doing actual work. Stopped using it and went back to old good Google Sheets, Apple Notes. Very constrained and just the right amount of "flexibility" to make it work for you workflow. No emojis encouragements.