11 ms·

How I Use Notion

217 points by do_anh_tu 5y ago

smitty1e 5y ago
The article concerns => https://www.notion.so/ https://www.notion.so/
geniium 5y ago
I hope OP has kept his Uranium related shares, the market went strongly up in the last months
- clavicat 5y ago
  Seems like literally everything went up strongly.
  - caffeine 5y ago
    You are correct. What is happening is USD has gone down strongly relative to all non-printable assets.
extr 5y ago
Interesting to see this super sophisticated setup. I have basically given up trying to track my life like this, it always ends up that I spend more time fooling around getting "organized' than actually doing the work I'm tracking. Doesn't seem like a problem the author here has. Tracking personal projects, blog posts, collaboration, media store, etc. I'd be happy if I could consistently do one of those things lol
- ycumbinator 5y ago
  Agreed. I just tell myself that we sent a man to the moon using computers less powerful than the average smartphone. Sometimes having constraints isn't always a bad thing. But to each their own.
- kerabatsos 5y ago
  This person is extraordinarily motivated. Seems like it works for them - but it would be quite a commitment to do it even half as much.
  - jb1991 5y ago
    Indeed, and then your entire commitment is tied to a single company.
    - IceWreck 5y ago
      This is why you use something like bookstack. My personal wiki resembles the one in the article. I used to use Dokuwiki, but then I switched to Bookstack. Making an export/import script was easy. Everything is selfhosted so you don't have to depend on a third party company. And I take daily automated backups ofc.
  - codazoda 5y ago
    It doesn’t have to be hard. I started by writing down one thing that I had learned and that I might need to do again, but not soon enough that I was likely to remember. I think my first document was a bulleted list of 5 items or so. That first page or two is often the hardest to get started on. Then I added another page, and another. Now I have hundreds of documents in my own notes and hundreds more in my notes at work. I do similar things using Trello (for todo’s), Markdown files (for more complete info), Ponder (my own browser based scratch pad), and a notebook for Stray Thoughts (for capturing thoughts at bedtime or throughout the day).
- focom 5y ago
  Yes I agree. I often time result to using a single .txt file with vim. And keep track of article in bookmarks folders.
- noir_lord 5y ago
  I've tried a bunch of these and the one thing that has stuck (ironically since I've had the device for years and barely used it) is Notability and an ipad/pencil. Having infinite digital paper - maps the one thing that worked for me A4 5mm Square Paper and a pen.
  - matwood 5y ago
    I've settled on something similar and just use Apple Notes. I find note taking to be a lot like a camera, use the thing you have on you. For me this means it must be easy to take a note from any device at any time. I know it's locked into Apple, etc..., but being able to draw notes on the iPad, quick type notes from my iPhone, or type (and search) across all of those from my Mac is what finally made it 'stick' for me. Notion looks interesting, but too flexible can often be a problem. The danger is it's easy to slip into the thought that organizing equates to getting things done.
    - noir_lord 5y ago
      Nice thing is the iPad has thumb recognition on the home button, so I just placing thumb turns it on and notability is already on screen. It’s really close to the utility of paper with few of the downsides, the one thing I miss is resistance when using the pencil, I keep thinking about a remarkable 2 because they apparently have a closer to paper feeling but they cost as much as a new iPad does and the iPad is a more capable device generally.
- DerekBickerton 5y ago
  > I spend more time fooling around getting "organized' than actually doing the work Some people like an 'exobrain' that they can browse when feeling creative. Many productive people have some sort of journaling system, whether it's post-it notes stuck to their fridge, or even a basic TODO list on their phone. I would be lost without the Notes app on iOS. Typically I write notes when I'm falling asleep and my mind races. For some reason my best ideas happen at night, not when I've had my coffee in the morning when apparently people are at their 'peak'. But then I can execute on those notes I wrote last night when I'm full of energy so it's a win.
- tlogan 5y ago
  Yes! The problem with all these systems that certain people lose focus by using them. And focus is the key to success. Yes, some successful people use these systems. But there is a single variable that is common for all successful people: focus. When I was using Evernote I was not able to finish a single thing... blog posts, call for coffee, read something, etc.
- false-mirror 5y ago
  The productive write the most about productivity, it turns out. I'll say that for me, I hopped across note and productivity apps until I switched to emacs/org-mode. It has not made me wildly more productive, but it has (or can have) any feature other programs offer, so there is no productivity FOMO when I learn about new programs.
  - curiousgal 5y ago
    See, in my opinion, the issue with every org-mode suggestion is that it assumes productivity is only tied to being sitting down on your computer. Would I really need to grab my laptop to note that I did grocery or cleaned my house?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
abhayhegde 5y ago
It is great how author is making the most of Notion. I have tried various such systems in vain to keep up with ever increasing efforts required to organize them neatly. I stick to simple .txt/.md files fired up by two keystrokes (mapped "<leader>n" for new text file created in a specific folder) all of which are saved in a Dropbox folder which can be accessed from any of my devices. Wish I could be as proficient in using Notion, seems like a wonderful tool.
- 0xBADA55 5y ago
  I am doing the same. Dropbox plus a bunch of md files. Edit them in either Typora. Very productive.
- aidos 5y ago
  As a vim user, you’d probably just find notion frustrating. As you point out, you can tailor vim to be streamlined to your workflow. Notion is in the opposite direction where everything is pretty slow going (and as I’m sure people will pile in here about how the performance sucks).
  - spectaclepiece 5y ago
    I'm a heavy vim user but I think Notion is better suited for organising ideas and general life admin. While I'm sure it's possible to set up vim to act similar (vimwiki looks interesting) it wouldn't enable easy and nice viewing, editing and syncing across mobile devices. It's very keyboard-centric on desktop but manages to translate the interface rather elegantly to touch devices.
toolslive 5y ago
The company I worked for uses Notion, so I use it quite a lot. Howver, I still haven't reached the point where I look at it as a "org mode for the emacs challenged". I'm probably just having some kind of Stockholm syndrome.
- pimeys 5y ago
  We also use Notion in my company. The editor is horrendous. It's absolutely crazy how bad it is for my use of writing documentation. I'm also biased, I do love emacs with evil and markdown modes, and I use neovim as my main editor again nowadays. Notion just gets in your way, and I also prefer the classic 80 characters a row, clean RFC format over whatever notion gives with emojis and colors. Some things I really don't like with Notion: - Markdown import has been broken the whole two years I needed to store stuff in Notion. I prefer writing in emacs and importing to Notion. Always problems with that. - The editor is just always having some problems when you use `code` blocks or other formatting. - The search is unusable. - It is slow and I either need to install an Electron app or use it from browser. How I cope with it nowadays is I just write my text in emacs using markdown mode, then paste it to Notion in one code block to keep at least some of my formatting and forget my text into the black hole of Notion where I cannot find anything after a few weeks. Edit: What would be cool is an API that plugs into the editor, such as vim or emacs, that allows me to organize my texts in the editor and upload from there to the Notion server without me needing to open their app. I could see all my documents from this mode, edit them and so on...
leodriesch 5y ago
Notion is such a great tool and the UX is very nice, apart from some performance improvements that could be done. My only 2 problems with Notion is the limited offline functionality and data ownership/privacy. For a PKM-system, some might say “second brain”, encryption at rest is not enough IMO. You should be comfortable to release any thoughts of your real brain into your digital one and the thought that any employee of Notion or some government agency could read them makes me uncomfortable. It seems like Notion wants to become more of a project management and company wiki application anyways, so I guess I’ll just search on for the perfect “second brain”.
nik5 5y ago
I think with time things settle down. I used obsidian for notes earlier, now I use vim and text file suits me well.
schleck8 5y ago
Can someone explain the notion hype to me? On producthunt atleast one notion-related product makes it to the frontpage each day. I tried it out multiple times and to me it looked like a markdown editor with templates and sharing. Is that really such a breakthrough? Don't evernote etc. do the same?
- submeta 5y ago
  My guess is they spend a ton of money to promote their product. Many influencers on Youtube (adressing students) make several promoted videos a month (!) about how to use Notion. They have a ton of money to spend. Their latest valuation was ten billions, and they raised > 100m money. I also feel like they have a ton of (paid) ambassadors promoting the product aggressively on Reddit, Twitter and other platforms. It‘s a decent product, reminds me of Confluence, but with easy setup. Search is their biggest problem. You hit Command+P, open the universal search window, type something and wait literally seconds before something shows up.
  - polote 5y ago
    I would be surprised they pay people when so many people are willing to talk about Notion for free. So yeah they started hiring Notion ambassadors (and paying them) recently, but much of the growth they had was without paying. I think they never paid for an ad, they only have a handful of people working in marketing, about 5 according to Linkedin. The reality is people who love Notion want to shout it everywhere and as a result you see content about Notion everywhere
- OJFord 5y ago
  I'm not going to claim it's revolutionary (and I don't know how much 'hype' there is because I don't follow stuff like ProductHunt) but it is more than that - it's a sort of recursive database table where every page is an entry, and you can view the page itself or various views (literally a table, or kanban for example, filtered, sorted) on the table. Or make a page containing a view on the table. Markdown editor is roughly what you get for free, but then there's the flexibility to build within it: kanban system with custom fields, CMS for a blog, etc. It's part of 'no-code' (although you can script formulaic fields derived from others) hype I suppose. Edit: I've just seen logseq.github.io via another comment, which looks great and probably clearer (to an HN user) why it's good and what you can do with it. Notion then is like a closed-source proprietary-format logseq, that's easier to use for, and targetting, a broader audience.
NalNezumi 5y ago
The thing that stops me from moving to Notion seems to be tied to their business limit and technical limit: offline mode and latency. Any note taking/knowledge base platform needs to be able to open quickly. The UI taking a couple of seconds to load when VIM or <insert ANY editor> is only constrained by how fast you can click Alt+Tab. That small annoyance can be enough to kill whatever idea/flow in the meeting. Offline mode. Notion have so far went down twice, longer than 8h. Loosing ALL your notes and knowledge bits with 0 backup plan, all in the mercy of a small company was the first true moment I realized how much "put stuff in the cloud" was a stupid idea unless it's on a too big to fail platform (Google/Apple) Bugs my mind why their reactions to above often complained features have been "meh". All I can deduce is that their business model relies on keeping it online / central and how the tech is set up, it's not trivial to do it offline
- spiderice 5y ago
  Regarding latency, when is the last time you tried notion? I used it a couple years ago, but stopped because I found it too slow. Recently I read a blog post from them about how they have been addressing the latency issues so I tried it out again. It feels significantly faster. Pages open up instantly for me now. Might be worth trying it out again, unless the offline issues are a deal breaker for you
  - jerrre 5y ago
    Perhaps it depends on your frame of reference. For me speed is still a detracting factor. I'm using the mac standalone app, just clicked around a bit, and many pages (with nothing more than 1 page of text) still get a loading spinner. Typing 3 letters in search also takes ~1s to see the first result. I suspect actually this is the same issue as the offline thing: every interaction has networking.
  - tomComb 5y ago
    I'm using it (in a browser tab) and I still find it very slow. This is the reason that I don't enjoy using it and have not expanded my use of it.
- 5y ago
steveharman 5y ago
I really enjoy Notion. But for anyone concerned about lack of offline, latency issues and "my data in a great big silo" concerns I can recommend keeping an eye on https://anytype.io/en/ https://anytype.io/en/
- OJFord 5y ago
  Ironically that website has a loading screen(!)..
IceWreck 5y ago
I'm wondering why every notion related article has screenshots full of emojis. Does notion automatically add those ? Or does it provide some sort of layout to make them easy ? Personally I'd never find the time to open up my OS's character selector, copy-paste the emoji and continue.
- pests 5y ago
  Windows Key + . on Windows 10+ to open a mobile style emoji selector.
- manish_gill 5y ago
  Yak Shaving, probably.
- 35mm 5y ago
  It automatically adds them to new pages. As far as I can tell it randomly assigns them.
  - pps 5y ago
    It never happened to me, there's always default page icon unless I click at this icon to change it. I write in polish, maybe they're trying to deduce from the title what the note is about and this works only for english?
- jitl 5y ago
  (I work on Notion) Pages in Notion have an icon you can set. The icon for a new, empty page is a blank piece of paper, and the icon for a page with content is a paper with line on it. We also allow setting an emoji as a page icon (using our emoji picker menu), or uploading or linking to an image file like an SVG. There’s a button to apply a random emoji as a page icon but it’s not a default behavior.
jarenmf 5y ago
Notion is great, I particularly like the database concept with multiple views and how easy it is to to embed different views on different pages. I also like the rich formatting options that make it easy to create aesthetically pleasing pages. However, I miss the flexibility that a text only system like vimwiki (offline use, speed, interoperability) gives which is keeping me away from switching completely to notion.
sAbakumoff 5y ago
I mean... life is to short to spend time in notion. F*ck it.
Kiro 5y ago
I feel like I'm the only one still using Evernote. I've tried all these newer apps but in the end I just want a bunch of notes with plain text. Everything else feels like fluff that I will never use.
- pqs 5y ago
  Evernote is a great tool and a lot of people use it daily, like you and me. But it is not fashionable anymore, so people don't talk about it, they just use it and pay every month.
alvarlagerlof 5y ago
I tired to use it, but the apps are far too slow.
noisy_boy 5y ago
I use Obsidian similar to how author wrote the summary except I write complete notes for each chapter focusing on the bits that I want to remember (e.g. for the Docker book I'm reading, I add example commands and explanations). That helps me to stop at a given point and before I resume (which could be weeks later), I don't need to read the previous chapter in the book - I just revise my concise notes and then resume the book. Edit: I thought Obsidian didn't have a Kanban board plugin but then found this[0]. Seems to be working well except when I open the board in "Preview" mode, it shows it as a nested list instead of a Kanban board (opening the node directly opens it correctly). [0]: https://github.com/mgmeyers/obsidian-kanban https://github.com/mgmeyers/obsidian-kanban
- crucialfelix 5y ago
  There is also a dataview plugin, though I haven't gotten into it yet. I would live notion style database tables in Obsidian. Something using SQLite seems possible and open for all PKM
georgejustin22 5y ago
I've been using both Google docs and notion for documentation. Personally, Notion has more UX in terms of formatting.
bilalq 5y ago
My biggest gripe with Notion for business usage is that *basic* security features are gated behind their enterprise tier and the business tier is basically an accident waiting to happen. I mean, just look at this list of "Enterprise" only features: --- > Prevent members from sharing pages publicly > This will disable the Share to web option in the Share menu on every page in this workspace. > > Prevent members from changing the Workspace section > This disables the ability for members to create, move, reorder, and delete top-level Workspace pages. > > Disable guests > This prevents anyone from inviting people outside the workspace to any page. > > Disable moving or duplicating pages to other workspaces > This prevents anyone from moving or duplicating pages to other workspaces via the Move To or Duplicate To action. > > Disable export > This prevents anyone from exporting as Markdown, CSV, or PDF. > > Prevent members from installing new third party integrations > This prevents any members from installing new third party integrations on this workspace with their Notion account. Admins can always remove existing integrations in the Integrations section. --- For context, team pricing is $10/user/month while enterprise is $25/user/month
account-5 5y ago
My personal knowledge base is zim wiki. Completely offline and text based. Excellent search and simple syntax, brilliant plugins. I'm yet to be convinced with any online solutions.
- amphitheatre 5y ago
  Maybe you could write a similar article, or point us to similar? I've tried using Zim wiki on a few occasions, and it just hasn't stuck for me. The plugins and offline nature really appeal to me.
  - account-5 5y ago
    I've pretty simple requirements. I would be using vimwiki if it displayed images. I'm also paranoid and don't want random companies controlling my data. I'm more interested in functionality than pretty displays. I was like that when I found bullet journal. I'm also in agreement with others here, I don't want to spend more time on the tool than I do on the job. No one would read anything I wrote about my workflow!
furgooswft13 5y ago
Still think Not-ion whenever I see "Notion" and keep thinking, "There still are dozens of us!" alas...
mkl 5y ago
This looks neat, but having such important work locked into proprietary systems seems like a really bad idea. Are there any open source systems this good? I know about org mode, Joplin, and some others, but this seems nicer and more capable.
- MattRix 5y ago
  As long as you’re doing regular backups/exports I don’t see the proprietary nature as a problem. It wouldn’t be too hard to convert the data to some other format if the need arose.
- adambatkin 5y ago
  I recently started using Obsidian for exactly this reason. Although the software is non-Free, it's just a fancy Markdown editor (but more than that). Since all the data is Markdown - and most importantly, stored on the filesystem _as_ Markdown files - there is no proprietary database. I back everything with Git (and my personal Git server - unrelated to Obsidian - gives my nice Markdown previews and includes a web-based editor). Sometimes I find myself without a GUI and naturally the files all load nicely with vim (and works well with vimwiki). And on mobile I use GitJournal (Android) which is nowhere near as powerful as Obsidian, but for mostly reads and occasional writes, it's seamless Git sync really makes it easy to handle. And if some day something happens to Obsidian, I'll just go back to Vimwiki. After all, my conversion process moving to Obsidian consisted of the single step of opening my existing Vimwiki directory structure with Obsidian...
  - vhanda 5y ago
    Sweet. GitJournal author here. If you had to pick one change which would improve your GitJournal experience, what would it be?
    - adambatkin 5y ago
      GitJournal is pretty great. The automagical git sync Just Works, so everything is right where I need it, when I need it. I spend 90% of my time on my "daily" notes, so (selfishly) that's where I would focus. My challenges there are: 1. My date format is "YYYY/MM - MMMM/YYYY-MM-DD" in a folder called Daily, which means the files have names like "Daily/11 - November/2021-11-18.md" (and surprisingly, Obsidian accepts that date format and manages the intermediate directories just fine). That crazy date/filename format would need to be configurable and supported for (I think) the Journal feature to work well 2. I don't include a heading with the date at the top of my Daily files (actually, _any_ files), so finding the right note (when I see a bunch of cards that all look pretty similar) can be challenging - at least my directory structure means I can narrow down to the month very fast by looking at the folder names 3. Bonus points for a calendar view to make #1 and #2 easier? I think if I had to pick the biggest challenge, it's #2 because I end up with a big soup of files that all look the same, where the important thing to discriminate between them is the filename. I also love the commercial model - I love Open Source, but I don't mind paying for quality, so I get the best of both worlds here. And more importantly, I don't have to spend a huge amount of money just to trial the software for a couple months - I can pay the (small) monthly fee, and if I like it, either pay the "full" fee or just keep paying monthly.
EdNorris2281 5y ago
It is a huge liability to rely on virus definitions and heuristics engines. They are often too little, too late. The trend toward rapid development and advanced threats started about 15 years ago, and it has been making antimalware applications increasingly irrelevant. Ad- and script-blocking helps, but those are targeted primarily at web browsing, and that is certainly not the only attack vector. Whitelisting and mandatory access controls (e.g., SELinux) are the only truly effective measures, and they require a lot more work than antivirus. Antivirus is a simple 5-minute installation with automatic updates thereafter---and some even refuse to do that much. There is little hope that most home users will implement anything better. There are adequate solutions, but they raise the bar in terms of the expertise, expense, and effort required. Even if a company addressed the "expense" issue by releasing a consumer-priced whitelisting application for Windows, there is no clear way to eliminate the other requirements. In light of all this, I see things getting worse before they get better. It takes a lot of problems before home users pony up their time and money.
cerol 5y ago
I'm in the process of founding an educational startup with a non-technical co-founder, and we're actually using Notion as our content database. I've structured everything (categories, subcategories, quizzes, etc...) with databases, which are linked together via the Relation property, page templates to enforce some structure, page properties as "columns", and page content for more complex data. And I can have the content creation guide right next to it. Then I wrote some property validators to transform the returned data from Notion's API, wrapped the calls into a couple of Firebase functions to merge it with user data, and it's done. It was a perfect fit for our MVP, since I don't have to code an admin page (which would take as long the project itself), use a paid alternative, or expect the non-technical co-founder to be POSTing JSON data. It's a very clunky design, definitely has some considerable user latency, but it me took no time to build it, it's free, has a nice UX, and it's allowing us to iterate very quickly.
- jonnydubowsky 5y ago
  I'd be interested in reading a blog post where you dive into this process. It sounds like a really effective way to build certain kinds of apps. I'm also interested in your project. If you have an email list, I'd love to sign up.
omarhaneef 5y ago
As the writer points out, there are dozens of good note taking apps. I tend to use markdown to store notes but the strength here seems to be the ability to mix formats. In particular, the author seems to use kanban a lot as the main other style (other than plain old lists and folders). I wonder what it is that makes mixing these two styles of notes so useful. I think it’s because it kanban immediately suggests an action, and a long list suggests storage. I suspect this reduces or eliminates the time spent thinking about what to work on next but still retains the memory/archival quality of the other notes. To put it another way: you want one style of notes for doing and another style for remembering.
wslh 5y ago
> This post is a fairly comprehensive discussion of how I use Notion (a free personal knowledge management app) Is this a paid article? Notion is not free it has a very limited free tier. The paragraph is misleading. BTW, looking for a practical wiki... the old good wikis have a lot of issues (e.g. DokuWiki is almost abandoned, it does not work with Python 3 and even the Python 2 version has wrong setup instructions). Thinking about returning to Swiki in Squeak, is there a more modern version in Pharo? MediaWiki is ugly, too complex for people outside tech. Any idea?
- carnitine 5y ago
  For personal use Notion’s free tier is not very limited at all.
  - wslh 5y ago
    It seems you have not seen their pricing/feature page to be precise: https://www.notion.so/pricing https://www.notion.so/pricing
    - slipperlobster 5y ago
      Their pricing structure seems to indicate a personal, non-administrated account is free. There are a lot of missing check marks on the free tier but I'm not sure if a personal account really needs permission groups or dedicated support.
    - carnitine 5y ago
      How so? A cap on file uploads and a limit on guests are hardly the end of the world.
- splitbrain 5y ago
  DokuWiki is neither abandoned nor does it run on any Python version. It's a PHP app.
- laura2013 5y ago
  Notion used to offer a free premium account if you were a student - not sure if that's still available. The OP seems to be a student.
lvass 5y ago
So much work to structure and insert information to stay at the whim and custody of some company. What are you going to do if Notion goes under? Do you have a safe, complete, up to date backup? Can you utilize your backup without severe penalty or discomfort? Do you you have a no private data policy, or are you absolutely sure only people you authorize has access to it (i.e. encrypted with keys that verifiably never leave your machines)?
- oblak 5y ago
  It's just an ad for this software and Mac
indymike 5y ago
There are so many little apps that do one part of managing personal knowledge well. It's hard to find something that really manages it all well... the way YOU want to manage YOUR knowledge. Todo lists, messaging, calendar, notes, bookmarks all seem to fit... as does some kind of project management. So many tries over the years, and every time, some part is so bad that you end up throwing out the whole.
bdcravens 5y ago
For a long time I wanted to create a daily dev journal, but really wanted something super low friction. At one point I was just using markdown and putting in a git repo, but the process of saving was tedious. I was able to quickly import all the markdown files into Notion, and aside from giving each entry a title that has little semantic value, it's met and exceeded all my expectations.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I use obsidian + git (it has a git plugin that will let you upload to any git site, including your own). It's not as pretty as notion, but it gets the job done and my notes are in a few different places so virtually impervious to destruction :) . I just can't see not have a completely transparent and future proof note repository.
nbzso 5y ago
I stopped investing in SaaS/Cloud silos in 2015 by deleting my Dropbox. At the time markdown and folders were sufficient to organize my processes. After a while I got tired of the clutter and invested some time to familiarize myself with Emacs and Org-mode. This and Synology sync (or any self-hosted cloud solution) are adequate and future-proof way of managing, collecting and working with information. Org-mode can be simple and quick, you can export to markdown, pdf, html at any time. Org-mode can be extended and complicated. And all of this without giving a dime to SaaS bonanza.:)
- Bilal_io 5y ago
  Do you mind sharing a bit more about your Synology Sync setup, especially your cloud backups if you do that.
  - nbzso 5y ago
    I backup to another Synology station in somewhat secure location in my house, most important files are regularly burned into Blu-ray disks. You can use https://c2.synology.com/en-us https://c2.synology.com/en-us or any alternative.
adelowo 5y ago
Could you make this a template we can duplicate? :)
Solstinox 5y ago
Apple Notes is spectacular these days.
- thekaleb 5y ago
  In what ways?

How I Use Notion

217 points by do_anh_tu 5y ago

smitty1e 5y ago

The article concerns => https://www.notion.so/ https://www.notion.so/

geniium 5y ago

I hope OP has kept his Uranium related shares, the market went strongly up in the last months

clavicat 5y ago
Seems like literally everything went up strongly.
- caffeine 5y ago
  You are correct. What is happening is USD has gone down strongly relative to all non-printable assets.

extr 5y ago

Interesting to see this super sophisticated setup. I have basically given up trying to track my life like this, it always ends up that I spend more time fooling around getting "organized' than actually doing the work I'm tracking. Doesn't seem like a problem the author here has. Tracking personal projects, blog posts, collaboration, media store, etc. I'd be happy if I could consistently do one of those things lol

ycumbinator 5y ago
Agreed. I just tell myself that we sent a man to the moon using computers less powerful than the average smartphone. Sometimes having constraints isn't always a bad thing. But to each their own.
kerabatsos 5y ago
This person is extraordinarily motivated. Seems like it works for them - but it would be quite a commitment to do it even half as much.
- jb1991 5y ago
  Indeed, and then your entire commitment is tied to a single company.
  - IceWreck 5y ago
    This is why you use something like bookstack. My personal wiki resembles the one in the article. I used to use Dokuwiki, but then I switched to Bookstack. Making an export/import script was easy. Everything is selfhosted so you don't have to depend on a third party company. And I take daily automated backups ofc.
- codazoda 5y ago
  It doesn’t have to be hard. I started by writing down one thing that I had learned and that I might need to do again, but not soon enough that I was likely to remember. I think my first document was a bulleted list of 5 items or so. That first page or two is often the hardest to get started on. Then I added another page, and another. Now I have hundreds of documents in my own notes and hundreds more in my notes at work. I do similar things using Trello (for todo’s), Markdown files (for more complete info), Ponder (my own browser based scratch pad), and a notebook for Stray Thoughts (for capturing thoughts at bedtime or throughout the day).
focom 5y ago
Yes I agree. I often time result to using a single .txt file with vim. And keep track of article in bookmarks folders.
noir_lord 5y ago
I've tried a bunch of these and the one thing that has stuck (ironically since I've had the device for years and barely used it) is Notability and an ipad/pencil. Having infinite digital paper - maps the one thing that worked for me A4 5mm Square Paper and a pen.
- matwood 5y ago
  I've settled on something similar and just use Apple Notes. I find note taking to be a lot like a camera, use the thing you have on you. For me this means it must be easy to take a note from any device at any time. I know it's locked into Apple, etc..., but being able to draw notes on the iPad, quick type notes from my iPhone, or type (and search) across all of those from my Mac is what finally made it 'stick' for me. Notion looks interesting, but too flexible can often be a problem. The danger is it's easy to slip into the thought that organizing equates to getting things done.
  - noir_lord 5y ago
    Nice thing is the iPad has thumb recognition on the home button, so I just placing thumb turns it on and notability is already on screen. It’s really close to the utility of paper with few of the downsides, the one thing I miss is resistance when using the pencil, I keep thinking about a remarkable 2 because they apparently have a closer to paper feeling but they cost as much as a new iPad does and the iPad is a more capable device generally.
DerekBickerton 5y ago
> I spend more time fooling around getting "organized' than actually doing the work Some people like an 'exobrain' that they can browse when feeling creative. Many productive people have some sort of journaling system, whether it's post-it notes stuck to their fridge, or even a basic TODO list on their phone. I would be lost without the Notes app on iOS. Typically I write notes when I'm falling asleep and my mind races. For some reason my best ideas happen at night, not when I've had my coffee in the morning when apparently people are at their 'peak'. But then I can execute on those notes I wrote last night when I'm full of energy so it's a win.
tlogan 5y ago
Yes! The problem with all these systems that certain people lose focus by using them. And focus is the key to success. Yes, some successful people use these systems. But there is a single variable that is common for all successful people: focus. When I was using Evernote I was not able to finish a single thing... blog posts, call for coffee, read something, etc.
false-mirror 5y ago
The productive write the most about productivity, it turns out. I'll say that for me, I hopped across note and productivity apps until I switched to emacs/org-mode. It has not made me wildly more productive, but it has (or can have) any feature other programs offer, so there is no productivity FOMO when I learn about new programs.
- curiousgal 5y ago
  See, in my opinion, the issue with every org-mode suggestion is that it assumes productivity is only tied to being sitting down on your computer. Would I really need to grab my laptop to note that I did grocery or cleaned my house?

deleted 5y ago

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abhayhegde 5y ago

It is great how author is making the most of Notion. I have tried various such systems in vain to keep up with ever increasing efforts required to organize them neatly. I stick to simple .txt/.md files fired up by two keystrokes (mapped "<leader>n" for new text file created in a specific folder) all of which are saved in a Dropbox folder which can be accessed from any of my devices. Wish I could be as proficient in using Notion, seems like a wonderful tool.

0xBADA55 5y ago
I am doing the same. Dropbox plus a bunch of md files. Edit them in either Typora. Very productive.
aidos 5y ago
As a vim user, you’d probably just find notion frustrating. As you point out, you can tailor vim to be streamlined to your workflow. Notion is in the opposite direction where everything is pretty slow going (and as I’m sure people will pile in here about how the performance sucks).
- spectaclepiece 5y ago
  I'm a heavy vim user but I think Notion is better suited for organising ideas and general life admin. While I'm sure it's possible to set up vim to act similar (vimwiki looks interesting) it wouldn't enable easy and nice viewing, editing and syncing across mobile devices. It's very keyboard-centric on desktop but manages to translate the interface rather elegantly to touch devices.

toolslive 5y ago

The company I worked for uses Notion, so I use it quite a lot. Howver, I still haven't reached the point where I look at it as a "org mode for the emacs challenged". I'm probably just having some kind of Stockholm syndrome.

pimeys 5y ago
We also use Notion in my company. The editor is horrendous. It's absolutely crazy how bad it is for my use of writing documentation. I'm also biased, I do love emacs with evil and markdown modes, and I use neovim as my main editor again nowadays. Notion just gets in your way, and I also prefer the classic 80 characters a row, clean RFC format over whatever notion gives with emojis and colors. Some things I really don't like with Notion: - Markdown import has been broken the whole two years I needed to store stuff in Notion. I prefer writing in emacs and importing to Notion. Always problems with that. - The editor is just always having some problems when you use `code` blocks or other formatting. - The search is unusable. - It is slow and I either need to install an Electron app or use it from browser. How I cope with it nowadays is I just write my text in emacs using markdown mode, then paste it to Notion in one code block to keep at least some of my formatting and forget my text into the black hole of Notion where I cannot find anything after a few weeks. Edit: What would be cool is an API that plugs into the editor, such as vim or emacs, that allows me to organize my texts in the editor and upload from there to the Notion server without me needing to open their app. I could see all my documents from this mode, edit them and so on...

leodriesch 5y ago

Notion is such a great tool and the UX is very nice, apart from some performance improvements that could be done. My only 2 problems with Notion is the limited offline functionality and data ownership/privacy. For a PKM-system, some might say “second brain”, encryption at rest is not enough IMO. You should be comfortable to release any thoughts of your real brain into your digital one and the thought that any employee of Notion or some government agency could read them makes me uncomfortable. It seems like Notion wants to become more of a project management and company wiki application anyways, so I guess I’ll just search on for the perfect “second brain”.

nik5 5y ago

I think with time things settle down. I used obsidian for notes earlier, now I use vim and text file suits me well.

schleck8 5y ago

Can someone explain the notion hype to me? On producthunt atleast one notion-related product makes it to the frontpage each day. I tried it out multiple times and to me it looked like a markdown editor with templates and sharing. Is that really such a breakthrough? Don't evernote etc. do the same?

submeta 5y ago
My guess is they spend a ton of money to promote their product. Many influencers on Youtube (adressing students) make several promoted videos a month (!) about how to use Notion. They have a ton of money to spend. Their latest valuation was ten billions, and they raised > 100m money. I also feel like they have a ton of (paid) ambassadors promoting the product aggressively on Reddit, Twitter and other platforms. It‘s a decent product, reminds me of Confluence, but with easy setup. Search is their biggest problem. You hit Command+P, open the universal search window, type something and wait literally seconds before something shows up.
- polote 5y ago
  I would be surprised they pay people when so many people are willing to talk about Notion for free. So yeah they started hiring Notion ambassadors (and paying them) recently, but much of the growth they had was without paying. I think they never paid for an ad, they only have a handful of people working in marketing, about 5 according to Linkedin. The reality is people who love Notion want to shout it everywhere and as a result you see content about Notion everywhere
OJFord 5y ago
I'm not going to claim it's revolutionary (and I don't know how much 'hype' there is because I don't follow stuff like ProductHunt) but it is more than that - it's a sort of recursive database table where every page is an entry, and you can view the page itself or various views (literally a table, or kanban for example, filtered, sorted) on the table. Or make a page containing a view on the table. Markdown editor is roughly what you get for free, but then there's the flexibility to build within it: kanban system with custom fields, CMS for a blog, etc. It's part of 'no-code' (although you can script formulaic fields derived from others) hype I suppose. Edit: I've just seen logseq.github.io via another comment, which looks great and probably clearer (to an HN user) why it's good and what you can do with it. Notion then is like a closed-source proprietary-format logseq, that's easier to use for, and targetting, a broader audience.

NalNezumi 5y ago

The thing that stops me from moving to Notion seems to be tied to their business limit and technical limit: offline mode and latency. Any note taking/knowledge base platform needs to be able to open quickly. The UI taking a couple of seconds to load when VIM or <insert ANY editor> is only constrained by how fast you can click Alt+Tab. That small annoyance can be enough to kill whatever idea/flow in the meeting. Offline mode. Notion have so far went down twice, longer than 8h. Loosing ALL your notes and knowledge bits with 0 backup plan, all in the mercy of a small company was the first true moment I realized how much "put stuff in the cloud" was a stupid idea unless it's on a too big to fail platform (Google/Apple) Bugs my mind why their reactions to above often complained features have been "meh". All I can deduce is that their business model relies on keeping it online / central and how the tech is set up, it's not trivial to do it offline

spiderice 5y ago
Regarding latency, when is the last time you tried notion? I used it a couple years ago, but stopped because I found it too slow. Recently I read a blog post from them about how they have been addressing the latency issues so I tried it out again. It feels significantly faster. Pages open up instantly for me now. Might be worth trying it out again, unless the offline issues are a deal breaker for you
- jerrre 5y ago
  Perhaps it depends on your frame of reference. For me speed is still a detracting factor. I'm using the mac standalone app, just clicked around a bit, and many pages (with nothing more than 1 page of text) still get a loading spinner. Typing 3 letters in search also takes ~1s to see the first result. I suspect actually this is the same issue as the offline thing: every interaction has networking.
- tomComb 5y ago
  I'm using it (in a browser tab) and I still find it very slow. This is the reason that I don't enjoy using it and have not expanded my use of it.
5y ago

steveharman 5y ago

I really enjoy Notion. But for anyone concerned about lack of offline, latency issues and "my data in a great big silo" concerns I can recommend keeping an eye on https://anytype.io/en/ https://anytype.io/en/

OJFord 5y ago
Ironically that website has a loading screen(!)..

IceWreck 5y ago

I'm wondering why every notion related article has screenshots full of emojis. Does notion automatically add those ? Or does it provide some sort of layout to make them easy ? Personally I'd never find the time to open up my OS's character selector, copy-paste the emoji and continue.

pests 5y ago
Windows Key + . on Windows 10+ to open a mobile style emoji selector.
manish_gill 5y ago
Yak Shaving, probably.
35mm 5y ago
It automatically adds them to new pages. As far as I can tell it randomly assigns them.
- pps 5y ago
  It never happened to me, there's always default page icon unless I click at this icon to change it. I write in polish, maybe they're trying to deduce from the title what the note is about and this works only for english?
jitl 5y ago
(I work on Notion) Pages in Notion have an icon you can set. The icon for a new, empty page is a blank piece of paper, and the icon for a page with content is a paper with line on it. We also allow setting an emoji as a page icon (using our emoji picker menu), or uploading or linking to an image file like an SVG. There’s a button to apply a random emoji as a page icon but it’s not a default behavior.

jarenmf 5y ago

Notion is great, I particularly like the database concept with multiple views and how easy it is to to embed different views on different pages. I also like the rich formatting options that make it easy to create aesthetically pleasing pages. However, I miss the flexibility that a text only system like vimwiki (offline use, speed, interoperability) gives which is keeping me away from switching completely to notion.

sAbakumoff 5y ago

I mean... life is to short to spend time in notion. F*ck it.

Kiro 5y ago

I feel like I'm the only one still using Evernote. I've tried all these newer apps but in the end I just want a bunch of notes with plain text. Everything else feels like fluff that I will never use.

pqs 5y ago
Evernote is a great tool and a lot of people use it daily, like you and me. But it is not fashionable anymore, so people don't talk about it, they just use it and pay every month.

alvarlagerlof 5y ago

I tired to use it, but the apps are far too slow.

noisy_boy 5y ago

I use Obsidian similar to how author wrote the summary except I write complete notes for each chapter focusing on the bits that I want to remember (e.g. for the Docker book I'm reading, I add example commands and explanations). That helps me to stop at a given point and before I resume (which could be weeks later), I don't need to read the previous chapter in the book - I just revise my concise notes and then resume the book. Edit: I thought Obsidian didn't have a Kanban board plugin but then found this[0]. Seems to be working well except when I open the board in "Preview" mode, it shows it as a nested list instead of a Kanban board (opening the node directly opens it correctly). [0]: https://github.com/mgmeyers/obsidian-kanban https://github.com/mgmeyers/obsidian-kanban

crucialfelix 5y ago
There is also a dataview plugin, though I haven't gotten into it yet. I would live notion style database tables in Obsidian. Something using SQLite seems possible and open for all PKM

georgejustin22 5y ago

I've been using both Google docs and notion for documentation. Personally, Notion has more UX in terms of formatting.

bilalq 5y ago

My biggest gripe with Notion for business usage is that *basic* security features are gated behind their enterprise tier and the business tier is basically an accident waiting to happen. I mean, just look at this list of "Enterprise" only features: --- > Prevent members from sharing pages publicly > This will disable the Share to web option in the Share menu on every page in this workspace. > > Prevent members from changing the Workspace section > This disables the ability for members to create, move, reorder, and delete top-level Workspace pages. > > Disable guests > This prevents anyone from inviting people outside the workspace to any page. > > Disable moving or duplicating pages to other workspaces > This prevents anyone from moving or duplicating pages to other workspaces via the Move To or Duplicate To action. > > Disable export > This prevents anyone from exporting as Markdown, CSV, or PDF. > > Prevent members from installing new third party integrations > This prevents any members from installing new third party integrations on this workspace with their Notion account. Admins can always remove existing integrations in the Integrations section. --- For context, team pricing is $10/user/month while enterprise is $25/user/month

account-5 5y ago

My personal knowledge base is zim wiki. Completely offline and text based. Excellent search and simple syntax, brilliant plugins. I'm yet to be convinced with any online solutions.

amphitheatre 5y ago
Maybe you could write a similar article, or point us to similar? I've tried using Zim wiki on a few occasions, and it just hasn't stuck for me. The plugins and offline nature really appeal to me.
- account-5 5y ago
  I've pretty simple requirements. I would be using vimwiki if it displayed images. I'm also paranoid and don't want random companies controlling my data. I'm more interested in functionality than pretty displays. I was like that when I found bullet journal. I'm also in agreement with others here, I don't want to spend more time on the tool than I do on the job. No one would read anything I wrote about my workflow!

furgooswft13 5y ago

Still think Not-ion whenever I see "Notion" and keep thinking, "There still are dozens of us!" alas...

mkl 5y ago

This looks neat, but having such important work locked into proprietary systems seems like a really bad idea. Are there any open source systems this good? I know about org mode, Joplin, and some others, but this seems nicer and more capable.

MattRix 5y ago
As long as you’re doing regular backups/exports I don’t see the proprietary nature as a problem. It wouldn’t be too hard to convert the data to some other format if the need arose.
adambatkin 5y ago
I recently started using Obsidian for exactly this reason. Although the software is non-Free, it's just a fancy Markdown editor (but more than that). Since all the data is Markdown - and most importantly, stored on the filesystem _as_ Markdown files - there is no proprietary database. I back everything with Git (and my personal Git server - unrelated to Obsidian - gives my nice Markdown previews and includes a web-based editor). Sometimes I find myself without a GUI and naturally the files all load nicely with vim (and works well with vimwiki). And on mobile I use GitJournal (Android) which is nowhere near as powerful as Obsidian, but for mostly reads and occasional writes, it's seamless Git sync really makes it easy to handle. And if some day something happens to Obsidian, I'll just go back to Vimwiki. After all, my conversion process moving to Obsidian consisted of the single step of opening my existing Vimwiki directory structure with Obsidian...
- vhanda 5y ago
  Sweet. GitJournal author here. If you had to pick one change which would improve your GitJournal experience, what would it be?
  - adambatkin 5y ago
    GitJournal is pretty great. The automagical git sync Just Works, so everything is right where I need it, when I need it. I spend 90% of my time on my "daily" notes, so (selfishly) that's where I would focus. My challenges there are: 1. My date format is "YYYY/MM - MMMM/YYYY-MM-DD" in a folder called Daily, which means the files have names like "Daily/11 - November/2021-11-18.md" (and surprisingly, Obsidian accepts that date format and manages the intermediate directories just fine). That crazy date/filename format would need to be configurable and supported for (I think) the Journal feature to work well 2. I don't include a heading with the date at the top of my Daily files (actually, _any_ files), so finding the right note (when I see a bunch of cards that all look pretty similar) can be challenging - at least my directory structure means I can narrow down to the month very fast by looking at the folder names 3. Bonus points for a calendar view to make #1 and #2 easier? I think if I had to pick the biggest challenge, it's #2 because I end up with a big soup of files that all look the same, where the important thing to discriminate between them is the filename. I also love the commercial model - I love Open Source, but I don't mind paying for quality, so I get the best of both worlds here. And more importantly, I don't have to spend a huge amount of money just to trial the software for a couple months - I can pay the (small) monthly fee, and if I like it, either pay the "full" fee or just keep paying monthly.

EdNorris2281 5y ago

It is a huge liability to rely on virus definitions and heuristics engines. They are often too little, too late. The trend toward rapid development and advanced threats started about 15 years ago, and it has been making antimalware applications increasingly irrelevant. Ad- and script-blocking helps, but those are targeted primarily at web browsing, and that is certainly not the only attack vector. Whitelisting and mandatory access controls (e.g., SELinux) are the only truly effective measures, and they require a lot more work than antivirus. Antivirus is a simple 5-minute installation with automatic updates thereafter---and some even refuse to do that much. There is little hope that most home users will implement anything better. There are adequate solutions, but they raise the bar in terms of the expertise, expense, and effort required. Even if a company addressed the "expense" issue by releasing a consumer-priced whitelisting application for Windows, there is no clear way to eliminate the other requirements. In light of all this, I see things getting worse before they get better. It takes a lot of problems before home users pony up their time and money.

cerol 5y ago

I'm in the process of founding an educational startup with a non-technical co-founder, and we're actually using Notion as our content database. I've structured everything (categories, subcategories, quizzes, etc...) with databases, which are linked together via the Relation property, page templates to enforce some structure, page properties as "columns", and page content for more complex data. And I can have the content creation guide right next to it. Then I wrote some property validators to transform the returned data from Notion's API, wrapped the calls into a couple of Firebase functions to merge it with user data, and it's done. It was a perfect fit for our MVP, since I don't have to code an admin page (which would take as long the project itself), use a paid alternative, or expect the non-technical co-founder to be POSTing JSON data. It's a very clunky design, definitely has some considerable user latency, but it me took no time to build it, it's free, has a nice UX, and it's allowing us to iterate very quickly.

jonnydubowsky 5y ago
I'd be interested in reading a blog post where you dive into this process. It sounds like a really effective way to build certain kinds of apps. I'm also interested in your project. If you have an email list, I'd love to sign up.

omarhaneef 5y ago

As the writer points out, there are dozens of good note taking apps. I tend to use markdown to store notes but the strength here seems to be the ability to mix formats. In particular, the author seems to use kanban a lot as the main other style (other than plain old lists and folders). I wonder what it is that makes mixing these two styles of notes so useful. I think it’s because it kanban immediately suggests an action, and a long list suggests storage. I suspect this reduces or eliminates the time spent thinking about what to work on next but still retains the memory/archival quality of the other notes. To put it another way: you want one style of notes for doing and another style for remembering.

wslh 5y ago

> This post is a fairly comprehensive discussion of how I use Notion (a free personal knowledge management app) Is this a paid article? Notion is not free it has a very limited free tier. The paragraph is misleading. BTW, looking for a practical wiki... the old good wikis have a lot of issues (e.g. DokuWiki is almost abandoned, it does not work with Python 3 and even the Python 2 version has wrong setup instructions). Thinking about returning to Swiki in Squeak, is there a more modern version in Pharo? MediaWiki is ugly, too complex for people outside tech. Any idea?

carnitine 5y ago
For personal use Notion’s free tier is not very limited at all.
- wslh 5y ago
  It seems you have not seen their pricing/feature page to be precise: https://www.notion.so/pricing https://www.notion.so/pricing
  - slipperlobster 5y ago
    Their pricing structure seems to indicate a personal, non-administrated account is free. There are a lot of missing check marks on the free tier but I'm not sure if a personal account really needs permission groups or dedicated support.
  - carnitine 5y ago
    How so? A cap on file uploads and a limit on guests are hardly the end of the world.
splitbrain 5y ago
DokuWiki is neither abandoned nor does it run on any Python version. It's a PHP app.
laura2013 5y ago
Notion used to offer a free premium account if you were a student - not sure if that's still available. The OP seems to be a student.

lvass 5y ago

So much work to structure and insert information to stay at the whim and custody of some company. What are you going to do if Notion goes under? Do you have a safe, complete, up to date backup? Can you utilize your backup without severe penalty or discomfort? Do you you have a no private data policy, or are you absolutely sure only people you authorize has access to it (i.e. encrypted with keys that verifiably never leave your machines)?

oblak 5y ago
It's just an ad for this software and Mac

indymike 5y ago

There are so many little apps that do one part of managing personal knowledge well. It's hard to find something that really manages it all well... the way YOU want to manage YOUR knowledge. Todo lists, messaging, calendar, notes, bookmarks all seem to fit... as does some kind of project management. So many tries over the years, and every time, some part is so bad that you end up throwing out the whole.

bdcravens 5y ago

For a long time I wanted to create a daily dev journal, but really wanted something super low friction. At one point I was just using markdown and putting in a git repo, but the process of saving was tedious. I was able to quickly import all the markdown files into Notion, and aside from giving each entry a title that has little semantic value, it's met and exceeded all my expectations.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
I use obsidian + git (it has a git plugin that will let you upload to any git site, including your own). It's not as pretty as notion, but it gets the job done and my notes are in a few different places so virtually impervious to destruction :) . I just can't see not have a completely transparent and future proof note repository.

nbzso 5y ago

I stopped investing in SaaS/Cloud silos in 2015 by deleting my Dropbox. At the time markdown and folders were sufficient to organize my processes. After a while I got tired of the clutter and invested some time to familiarize myself with Emacs and Org-mode. This and Synology sync (or any self-hosted cloud solution) are adequate and future-proof way of managing, collecting and working with information. Org-mode can be simple and quick, you can export to markdown, pdf, html at any time. Org-mode can be extended and complicated. And all of this without giving a dime to SaaS bonanza.:)

Bilal_io 5y ago
Do you mind sharing a bit more about your Synology Sync setup, especially your cloud backups if you do that.
- nbzso 5y ago
  I backup to another Synology station in somewhat secure location in my house, most important files are regularly burned into Blu-ray disks. You can use https://c2.synology.com/en-us https://c2.synology.com/en-us or any alternative.

adelowo 5y ago

Could you make this a template we can duplicate? :)

Solstinox 5y ago

Apple Notes is spectacular these days.

thekaleb 5y ago
In what ways?