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The 23 minute video linked on the "ultimate notion setup for 2023" sounds like a great trap to fall into to not actually get anything done. I get the impression

The 23 minute video linked on the "ultimate notion setup for 2023" sounds like a great trap to fall into to not actually get anything done. I get the impression some people spend more time configuring these productivity tools instead of actually being productive. Although I admit I've been guilty the same thing, perfecting my .vimrc instead of actually working on projects. Messing around with static site blog generators when I should actually just be writing content.

rchaud 3y ago
It's also a very good example of why search engines suck today. Everything is stuffed to the gills with right keywords, to get the maximum number of clicks on the affiliate link that is almost certainly embedded in the video description.
dmd 3y ago
Over the last 20 years or so I've tried: index cards, wunderlist, todo.txt, remember the milk, Asana, Any.do, Evernote, Google Notebook, Simplenote, Trello, Workflowy, Google Keep, Bear Notes, org-mode, and probably a dozen others. Three years ago I started using Apple Notes and told my wife "if you see me trying anything else at all, yell at me". I've been pretty happy with it and am much more productive just using something rather than trying to find some magic new tool.
- jwestbury 3y ago
  The tool you have is usually the most efficient. Sometimes that's not true, but it's especially true if it's a tool you have everywhere.
- foxandmouse 3y ago
  The latest version of apple notes is great, but drafts has been the pkm tool I’ve been the happiest with.
- Jorslu 3y ago
  You have described the 2010's for me succinctly. Wow.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  Been using Apple Notes for 8 years now and can't imagine using any other tool at this point. Everything else is too complicated and with distracting thrills, or is too barebones. Notes is the perfect balance, and I like that the notes can be totally offline. The only thing that needs improvement is the search function. EDIT: Another thing I really like about Notes is how notes can be password protected, which includes full encryption, and they can be unlocked with your fingerprint. If the user doesn't interact with the app for a few minutes, the notes automatically relock themselves. This is great for journaling because I can be confident that the more candid thoughts I express won't be accidentally read by anyone.
  - rifty 3y ago
    Maybe you know about this but one of the things that helped me with Apple Notes search was discovering there was a 'Find Notes' shortcut action. It allows you to filter by folder while searching by name, body, date created, etc... It works out to be just about as efficient as if it was built into the app since you can use Siri to run it by saying/typing the shortcut name.
- harryf 3y ago
  In the end there’s actually doing stuff. And there’s putting it on a TODO list. Both are types of activity but only one actually got something real done
- runjake 3y ago
  Is there an easy way to link other notes in Apple Notes? I've used Obsidian for years now. Mainly because it's frictionless, I can easily link notes, and just Markdown files. I don't spend time looking for cool new plugins or new methodologies, so I don't have those temptations. I wish there were a better mobile app, though.
  - podviaznikov 3y ago
    made a tiny app to link notes in apple notes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35698521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35698521. mostly use it myself
    - runjake 3y ago
      I think your link is wrong. This link is to the post itself?
  - waboremo 3y ago
    Easy way? No. You can create a weird workaround though, on both mac and ios you share the link invite yourself, and then in share options you copy the link and then paste it in your note. However, I don't really recommend this as now you have a bunch of icloud links littering your notes and can become confused easily trying to determine which notes are actually shared and which ones were just shared with yourself. It's one of the biggest weaknesses of Apple Notes, and the only reason I (tried) searching for alternatives.
  - barbariangrunge 3y ago
    I installed obsidian today and spent the entire time configuring plugins etc. I uninstalled it for something simpler and less about configuration combos
- creamyhorror 3y ago
  I started with text files in Notepad, then learnt from a friend how to use Freemind to organise notes as hierarchical mindmaps instead. It worked great, but search was broken (DFS but only able to find results in one treepath?!). Years passed, and I needed something to take notes with on mobile, and Google Keep was the simplest fit. But Freemind and Keep were both still too inconvenient on desktop, so at some point I ended up back at text files. I skipped all other note-taking apps over the years because I was convinced by people here who said plaintext was best. In the last two years, though, my current text file has gotten too unwieldy to use. I have to do a bunch of searching to get to sections (or remember their character-exact names). Then last week, I lost a day's research notes because Google Drive crashed and didn't sync until it was too late, overwriting my work. Clearly, I'd outgrown my setup. This last Sunday, I researched note-taking apps that don't use proprietary formats or cloud storage: Obsidian? Foam? Dendron? Logseq? I went with Obsidian, which while closed-source, keeps everything in Markdown files, so I'll always be able to use them in the future. (Logseq's different approach also seemed promising, and it's open-source too; I'd recommend trying that too.) I set up Obsidian-git for reasonable syncing that wouldn't result my notes being overwritten by accident. It all took a few hours, not endless tinkering. I've migrated a few note sections into it, done a few diagrams and code blocks. Works well. I think I'm set for the next 10 years.
  - protortyp 3y ago
    I can also recommend using Syncthing with obsidian. I use it to synchronize my vault to all my devices. I also added it to my existing Raspberry Pi server that's always online, so I always have a distributor instance running and don't need to worry about sync issues.
  - citizenkeen 3y ago
    Obsidian's ecosystem is incredible. You can make Obsidian a queryable database, a longform book editor a la Scrivener, or a gilded tabletop RPG campaign book. Half of what makes Obsidian so great is that they've encouraged modding so heavily.
  - eitland 3y ago
    I'm using Logseq for the same reasons. .txt was never going to cut it for me, I always include images like drawings, photos and screenshots etc. Logseq is open source, reasonable file format, stable, extensible, has a reasonable plan for funding itself without lock ins, and, for me, is among the smoothest I have used. Notably missing from old OneNote 2016: - shared notebooks w/indication of updates - smoother syncing Notable upgrades from OneNote 2016: - still exists - more structured (OneNote can out text and objects everywhere) - easily extensible - queryable - taggable (Tags in OneNote aren't really tags, only glorified emojis) - open source As for the modern version of OneNote, I have given it up. It almost isn't comparable.
- jeron 3y ago
  You can recognize the productivity junkie by the amount of tools they tell you they’ve tried
  - dmd 3y ago
    Hi, I'm Daniel, and I'm a todo list software addict
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  I'd tried paper notebooks (including really tiny pocketable ones) and Google Keep before picking up Apple Notes. Notes is the only one I've not had to work at continuing to use—it's just there, and I use it, and it works fine-to-great at everything I use it for, and that's it. If they ever turn it into some slow webshit thing, that may set me looking for another solution, but until then, no complaints on the note-taking front. I barely even try to organize it, and just let search do its thing. If I have some particular project (say, I'm DMing an RPG and composing & organizing my world/encounter/session stuff in there) I may try to keep all that in one category/folder for easier browsing of multiple related notes at once, but otherwise, I just dump stuff in and let search bring it back for me if I need it.
PragmaticPulp 3y ago
The same thing happens in the workplace, too. My last two jobs have had groups that adopted Notion and tried to use heaps of rules and templates and emojis that they wanted everyone to use to structure and document everything in Notion. It turns into an exercise where the Notion document becomes the goal, rather than a tool to help get work done. The Product Management group at my last company was the worst at this. They had hundreds of Notion pages that supposedly collected everything and show them in meetings, slide decks, and at every chance they had as proof that they were on top of things. Yet they could barely do any product management work that we needed to ship product because their whole world revolves around building Notion pages rather than building products. The sad part was that it worked, at least for a while. Executives would praise the team for being so organized and always having so much to show in presentations. Eventually people started to realize that they were lost in the process of writing Notion docs rather than focusing on getting work done, but it took a long time.
- blakblakarak 3y ago
  We tried it where I work and had the same result - we've since gone back to boring old Redmine. I do think it's great for personal use though - I use for everything from shopping lists to dream journals (don't judge me ;) ) to 5 year plans.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Redmine is amazing! Way underrated. https://www.redmine.org/ https://www.redmine.org/
- spzb 3y ago
  > It turns into an exercise where the Notion document becomes the goal, rather than a tool to help get work done. Same, except it's Jira and Confluence. Everything has to have story points assigned to it just so we can say we did an arbitrary number of points per sprint and show a impressive looking graph in retrospectives.
  - nuancebydefault 3y ago
fafqg 3y ago
[flagged]
rvense 3y ago
When I first got into Linux it seemed like a lot of people mostly used Linux to configure desktop environments and Conky to take screenshots of. There's a Buddhist parable about someone spending their whole life building a boat to cross a small river and dying before they made it across.
- 226_ebro_treaty 3y ago
  It happened to me :-) But the older I get, the more I prefer Window's Traditional UI. Needless to say, I don't like W11's design choices at all.
- shruggedatlas 3y ago
  I think you're referring to "The Parable of the Raft", which describes a man who has built a raft and crossed a river with it debating whether to hold on to the raft or not.
  - rvense 3y ago
    That sounds right, thank you for the reference.
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      It's right, but I actually really like your paraphrased version for this context. It resonated with me.
- bakul 3y ago
  Nothing wrong with spending one's life building a boat if that is what floats your boat. It is the journey, not the destination, where you spend the most time so might as well make it a happy one!
- Swizec 3y ago
  I used to be a total Linux nerd throughout highschool. To the point of being a Gentoo user! On a machine that took 3 days to build KDE. Around freshman year of college I switched to Mac. Realized I wanted my computer to be a tool, not a hobby. Some config is fine, but for the most part I stick to the defaults now and trust that people who spent years thinking about this stuff have it handled. If they don’t, it’s probably because I’m not their target user and should pick a different app or OS.
sveme 3y ago
Now this is a fascinating take, as exactly that thought was discussed in a concurrent thread on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35670129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35670129 The phenomenon you describe (the configurators instead of doers) can be found in the upper right corner of the schema in the linked post.
- alwaysbeconsing 3y ago
  Excellent cross-link, thank you! That was not on my front pages and I would have missed it.
mock-possum 3y ago
There was just a post about the distinction between being someone who fiddled with tuning a bike, versus someone who rides a bike - and how ultimately complete devotion to one must preclude the other. (Or the more charitable version, there was only really time in most people’s lives for the serious practice of one side of the hobby, not the other - you can’t be taking apart your bike and putting it back together and be riding it all at the same time) Tinkering with tooling and ‘process’ with software seems like it could be another realm of that principle. You can either spend the next week playing with syncing, hosting, processing, making sure your extensions and utilities all hook seamlessly into eachother… or you could have spent that week writing using just notepad and already have X-thousand words down. (There’s probably a happy medium for everyone though)
sureglymop 3y ago
Same here. I then ended up just using pandoc and a small shell script and it's served as a great static site generator letting me focus on writing my markdown.
dclowd9901 3y ago
I use Trello for car restoration projects, and I’ll admit I lost basically an entire day just trying to get this automated workflow to happen. But after having figured it out, it made things like cataloguing new parts that I need a 0 second automated process vs a 1 minute manual process. Like basically infinite time gotten back. The biggest win imo is it took a rote and tedious task (inventory management) associated with my fun task (working on a car) and removed it from my fun task which allows me to enjoy my fun task more and gives me greater odds of completing it.
fogoflove 3y ago
I have diagnosed ADHD and I have struggled with this, but like someone else said, you have to make sure you don't fall into a hole trying to make one of your pages perfect -- I mean, go for it if that's what you're interested in, but I have accepted that something perfect for me will take refinement and delayed gratification.
tombert 3y ago
I don't use Notion, but I kind of fell down the similar Obsidian rabbit hole. Obsidian is interesting because it makes you really feel like you're being productive, creating links and little "mini wikis", but it didn't seem like I was actually accomplishing more. I still use the app for notes, but now I mostly use it for just a "relatively easy to search" notes app.
- leoedin 3y ago
  Obsidian makes a big deal of their graph view, but in the time I've been using it I've never touched it. I really like the WYSIWYG-ish markdown editor and the search seems to actually work. Those are the killer features for me. I tend to just make a new working note every week, copying last week's outstanding to-dos on Monday morning.
  - tombert 3y ago
    I'm more or less in the same boat. I like that app a lot, I even pay for it, but I think the graph view is largely a novelty. I very occasionally utilize the "linking" features with the [[]], but I only really do it when there's an obvious link, not because I care much about a mind map. Though to be honest, the thing that gets 99% usage is "just a place to copy and paste stuff so I don't lose it".
- gherkinnn 3y ago
  At the end of the day, Obsidian is a specialised file explorer operating on text files, links, and images. It is about as simple as it can get. It doesn’t offer a fraction of what Notion does. The rabbit hole is so much shallower.
  - tombert 3y ago
    Sort of? There's a bunch of plugins for Obsidian that really do augment the hell out of it, so it's still a reasonably deep rabbit hole.
  - whats_a_quasar 3y ago
julianlam 3y ago
> I get the impression some people spend more time configuring these productivity tools instead of actually being productive. I think that's not a consequence of the software, but that some people have an innate draw towards these sorts of activities. e.g. take a look at the community around journalling. Tons and tons of subjectively beautiful layouts and designs, and productivity is merely a side effect.
- waboremo 3y ago
  Or look on amazon, there are so many extremely well selling books based around that very idea. Unfortunately the end result is usually feeling productive by reading the book, but then never actually being productive outside of that.
PascLeRasc 3y ago
I see a therapist who specializes in OCD. They believe that the mood journal trend around 2010-2015 led to a lot of people - nearly all of their patients including me - having a compulsion to write down and re-think/overvalue every passing thought.
rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 3y ago
>The 23 minute video linked on the "ultimate notion setup for 2023" sounds like a great trap to fall into to not actually get anything done. I get the impression some people spend more time configuring these productivity tools instead of actually being productive. This is me with emacs.
nyarlathotep_ 3y ago
> perfecting my .vimrc instead of actually working on projects. Messing around with static site blog generators when I should actually just be writing content. I feel attacked.
ramraj07 3y ago
It’s the 2020 equivalent of getting your perfect vim or eMacs config maybe?
charles_f 3y ago
I went through some of the video, and I found it interesting that most of the projects and task the presenter is showing are about making videos. There's something borderline ironic in the cyclicality of those youtube people focusing on "productivity" mainly producing videos about how to be productive. And yeah, the administrative burden of maintaining such a system gives me pause ; the decorum of being formal gives the impression of being productive, but are you really productive when 25% of your time goes into the project management and time you invest in setting it up?
jitl 3y ago
(I work for Notion) This is certainly a trap with any tool with exciting possibilities. I personally don't use any templates; I'm of the "brutalist Notion" school of thought. When I want to use Notion for something, I start with the simplest possible approach that could work. Then I add Notion features if they prove necessary. So for something like household chores, I started a Notion page called "chores" and just add to-do checkboxes there when there's a new task, and at-mention myself or my partner to assign things if needed. This is instead of making a database with status, assign property etc. We do use some separate databases for shopping, meal planning/recipes, and make larger pages for specific trips. Keeping things simple initially and adding complexity where it's needed means you never over-invest in a system that's not necessary. Plus, every column you add to a database is one more bit of work you need to do to "file" something completely. I find it discouraging to add friction to stuff I already consider a chore that I want to avoid.
splatzone 3y ago
Relevant: Andy Matuschak: People who write extensively about note-writing rarely have a serious context of use https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzXQu8ErVNv https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzX...
PurpleRamen 3y ago
There is value in structure and rules, to clear your mind and give you orientation for your work. But everyone is also different, so you also need to first figure out the structures and rules which are working for you and your situations. Which, yeah..it's an eternal trap of bike sheeding. Flexible tools like notion are very helpful and seductive in those regards. They can help you get your things done, but can also led you astray to the wrong roads. I think at this point it might be useful to have some studies in how selforganization-porn-addicts and mental health issues correlate. I get the impression that people with adhs for example are more likely to search out this kind of tools&systems to get some control over their mind&life back. I know it's at least for me the case.
015a 3y ago
I'm going to be a little mean here, but I think it needs to be said: "How to be productive in Notion" videos and template sales sites and such are always made by boringly unsuccessful people. I would love to see a broader intensive study on this topic, but just from my observations: its youtube and tik tok creators with a few thousand viewers, people who may actually be rather busy but don't drive much success from what they do. Running on a treadmill (and spending hours a week planning that run) so to speak. Subsequently: Go ask the CEO or other leaders of your company the systems they use to stay organized. I bet twenty bucks that the most common answers to that question, when limited to the note-taking space, are: Nothing, and Apple Notes. If that definition of success isn't your cup of tea, then go ask who you perceive as the most productive person you work with. I did that very specifically with this extremely talented and productive engineer on my team, and his answer: markdown files in a big folder, grep, and vim. Ok greybeard :) But point being: Its almost never Notion or tools at a similar power level. Its simple shit. Physical journals, Apple Notes, Google Keep, Google Docs, for the technically inclined just markdown files.
- ZhadruOmjar 3y ago
  I've recently started using Notion in a similar way that your engineer uses Markdown files. Apple Notes is great and I have moved away from paper notes simply because there is no search and it can be hard to flip back through books to find what was said in a meeting six weeks ago. My favourite thing about paper notes is that I engage more with the meeting since I have something to do with my hands.
barbariangrunge 3y ago
Which is why I just ditched scrivener for a markdown editor with minimal features for my writing. Configurable tools can lead you to spend all your time configuring them instead of using them
thecleaner 3y ago
I actually found YC advice on startups to work great in real life as well. Afaik YC is all for execution and thus write great material for getting things done. Best advice ever for me was the whole single metric thing - pick a metric, makes sure it goes up x-% every week.

rchaud 3y ago

It's also a very good example of why search engines suck today. Everything is stuffed to the gills with right keywords, to get the maximum number of clicks on the affiliate link that is almost certainly embedded in the video description.

dmd 3y ago

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

jwestbury 3y ago
The tool you have is usually the most efficient. Sometimes that's not true, but it's especially true if it's a tool you have everywhere.
foxandmouse 3y ago
The latest version of apple notes is great, but drafts has been the pkm tool I’ve been the happiest with.
Jorslu 3y ago
You have described the 2010's for me succinctly. Wow.
ravenstine 3y ago
Been using Apple Notes for 8 years now and can't imagine using any other tool at this point. Everything else is too complicated and with distracting thrills, or is too barebones. Notes is the perfect balance, and I like that the notes can be totally offline. The only thing that needs improvement is the search function. EDIT: Another thing I really like about Notes is how notes can be password protected, which includes full encryption, and they can be unlocked with your fingerprint. If the user doesn't interact with the app for a few minutes, the notes automatically relock themselves. This is great for journaling because I can be confident that the more candid thoughts I express won't be accidentally read by anyone.
- rifty 3y ago
  Maybe you know about this but one of the things that helped me with Apple Notes search was discovering there was a 'Find Notes' shortcut action. It allows you to filter by folder while searching by name, body, date created, etc... It works out to be just about as efficient as if it was built into the app since you can use Siri to run it by saying/typing the shortcut name.
harryf 3y ago
In the end there’s actually doing stuff. And there’s putting it on a TODO list. Both are types of activity but only one actually got something real done
runjake 3y ago
Is there an easy way to link other notes in Apple Notes? I've used Obsidian for years now. Mainly because it's frictionless, I can easily link notes, and just Markdown files. I don't spend time looking for cool new plugins or new methodologies, so I don't have those temptations. I wish there were a better mobile app, though.
- podviaznikov 3y ago
  made a tiny app to link notes in apple notes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35698521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35698521. mostly use it myself
  - runjake 3y ago
    I think your link is wrong. This link is to the post itself?
- waboremo 3y ago
  Easy way? No. You can create a weird workaround though, on both mac and ios you share the link invite yourself, and then in share options you copy the link and then paste it in your note. However, I don't really recommend this as now you have a bunch of icloud links littering your notes and can become confused easily trying to determine which notes are actually shared and which ones were just shared with yourself. It's one of the biggest weaknesses of Apple Notes, and the only reason I (tried) searching for alternatives.
- barbariangrunge 3y ago
  I installed obsidian today and spent the entire time configuring plugins etc. I uninstalled it for something simpler and less about configuration combos
creamyhorror 3y ago
I started with text files in Notepad, then learnt from a friend how to use Freemind to organise notes as hierarchical mindmaps instead. It worked great, but search was broken (DFS but only able to find results in one treepath?!). Years passed, and I needed something to take notes with on mobile, and Google Keep was the simplest fit. But Freemind and Keep were both still too inconvenient on desktop, so at some point I ended up back at text files. I skipped all other note-taking apps over the years because I was convinced by people here who said plaintext was best. In the last two years, though, my current text file has gotten too unwieldy to use. I have to do a bunch of searching to get to sections (or remember their character-exact names). Then last week, I lost a day's research notes because Google Drive crashed and didn't sync until it was too late, overwriting my work. Clearly, I'd outgrown my setup. This last Sunday, I researched note-taking apps that don't use proprietary formats or cloud storage: Obsidian? Foam? Dendron? Logseq? I went with Obsidian, which while closed-source, keeps everything in Markdown files, so I'll always be able to use them in the future. (Logseq's different approach also seemed promising, and it's open-source too; I'd recommend trying that too.) I set up Obsidian-git for reasonable syncing that wouldn't result my notes being overwritten by accident. It all took a few hours, not endless tinkering. I've migrated a few note sections into it, done a few diagrams and code blocks. Works well. I think I'm set for the next 10 years.
- protortyp 3y ago
  I can also recommend using Syncthing with obsidian. I use it to synchronize my vault to all my devices. I also added it to my existing Raspberry Pi server that's always online, so I always have a distributor instance running and don't need to worry about sync issues.
- citizenkeen 3y ago
  Obsidian's ecosystem is incredible. You can make Obsidian a queryable database, a longform book editor a la Scrivener, or a gilded tabletop RPG campaign book. Half of what makes Obsidian so great is that they've encouraged modding so heavily.
- eitland 3y ago
  I'm using Logseq for the same reasons. .txt was never going to cut it for me, I always include images like drawings, photos and screenshots etc. Logseq is open source, reasonable file format, stable, extensible, has a reasonable plan for funding itself without lock ins, and, for me, is among the smoothest I have used. Notably missing from old OneNote 2016: - shared notebooks w/indication of updates - smoother syncing Notable upgrades from OneNote 2016: - still exists - more structured (OneNote can out text and objects everywhere) - easily extensible - queryable - taggable (Tags in OneNote aren't really tags, only glorified emojis) - open source As for the modern version of OneNote, I have given it up. It almost isn't comparable.
jeron 3y ago
You can recognize the productivity junkie by the amount of tools they tell you they’ve tried
- dmd 3y ago
  Hi, I'm Daniel, and I'm a todo list software addict
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yamtaddle 3y ago
I'd tried paper notebooks (including really tiny pocketable ones) and Google Keep before picking up Apple Notes. Notes is the only one I've not had to work at continuing to use—it's just there, and I use it, and it works fine-to-great at everything I use it for, and that's it. If they ever turn it into some slow webshit thing, that may set me looking for another solution, but until then, no complaints on the note-taking front. I barely even try to organize it, and just let search do its thing. If I have some particular project (say, I'm DMing an RPG and composing & organizing my world/encounter/session stuff in there) I may try to keep all that in one category/folder for easier browsing of multiple related notes at once, but otherwise, I just dump stuff in and let search bring it back for me if I need it.

PragmaticPulp 3y ago

The same thing happens in the workplace, too. My last two jobs have had groups that adopted Notion and tried to use heaps of rules and templates and emojis that they wanted everyone to use to structure and document everything in Notion. It turns into an exercise where the Notion document becomes the goal, rather than a tool to help get work done. The Product Management group at my last company was the worst at this. They had hundreds of Notion pages that supposedly collected everything and show them in meetings, slide decks, and at every chance they had as proof that they were on top of things. Yet they could barely do any product management work that we needed to ship product because their whole world revolves around building Notion pages rather than building products. The sad part was that it worked, at least for a while. Executives would praise the team for being so organized and always having so much to show in presentations. Eventually people started to realize that they were lost in the process of writing Notion docs rather than focusing on getting work done, but it took a long time.

blakblakarak 3y ago
We tried it where I work and had the same result - we've since gone back to boring old Redmine. I do think it's great for personal use though - I use for everything from shopping lists to dream journals (don't judge me ;) ) to 5 year plans.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Redmine is amazing! Way underrated. https://www.redmine.org/ https://www.redmine.org/
spzb 3y ago
> It turns into an exercise where the Notion document becomes the goal, rather than a tool to help get work done. Same, except it's Jira and Confluence. Everything has to have story points assigned to it just so we can say we did an arbitrary number of points per sprint and show a impressive looking graph in retrospectives.
- nuancebydefault 3y ago

fafqg 3y ago

[flagged]

rvense 3y ago

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

226_ebro_treaty 3y ago
It happened to me :-) But the older I get, the more I prefer Window's Traditional UI. Needless to say, I don't like W11's design choices at all.
shruggedatlas 3y ago
I think you're referring to "The Parable of the Raft", which describes a man who has built a raft and crossed a river with it debating whether to hold on to the raft or not.
- rvense 3y ago
  That sounds right, thank you for the reference.
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    It's right, but I actually really like your paraphrased version for this context. It resonated with me.
bakul 3y ago
Nothing wrong with spending one's life building a boat if that is what floats your boat. It is the journey, not the destination, where you spend the most time so might as well make it a happy one!
Swizec 3y ago
I used to be a total Linux nerd throughout highschool. To the point of being a Gentoo user! On a machine that took 3 days to build KDE. Around freshman year of college I switched to Mac. Realized I wanted my computer to be a tool, not a hobby. Some config is fine, but for the most part I stick to the defaults now and trust that people who spent years thinking about this stuff have it handled. If they don’t, it’s probably because I’m not their target user and should pick a different app or OS.

sveme 3y ago

Now this is a fascinating take, as exactly that thought was discussed in a concurrent thread on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35670129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35670129 The phenomenon you describe (the configurators instead of doers) can be found in the upper right corner of the schema in the linked post.

alwaysbeconsing 3y ago
Excellent cross-link, thank you! That was not on my front pages and I would have missed it.

mock-possum 3y ago

There was just a post about the distinction between being someone who fiddled with tuning a bike, versus someone who rides a bike - and how ultimately complete devotion to one must preclude the other. (Or the more charitable version, there was only really time in most people’s lives for the serious practice of one side of the hobby, not the other - you can’t be taking apart your bike and putting it back together and be riding it all at the same time) Tinkering with tooling and ‘process’ with software seems like it could be another realm of that principle. You can either spend the next week playing with syncing, hosting, processing, making sure your extensions and utilities all hook seamlessly into eachother… or you could have spent that week writing using just notepad and already have X-thousand words down. (There’s probably a happy medium for everyone though)

sureglymop 3y ago

Same here. I then ended up just using pandoc and a small shell script and it's served as a great static site generator letting me focus on writing my markdown.

dclowd9901 3y ago

I use Trello for car restoration projects, and I’ll admit I lost basically an entire day just trying to get this automated workflow to happen. But after having figured it out, it made things like cataloguing new parts that I need a 0 second automated process vs a 1 minute manual process. Like basically infinite time gotten back. The biggest win imo is it took a rote and tedious task (inventory management) associated with my fun task (working on a car) and removed it from my fun task which allows me to enjoy my fun task more and gives me greater odds of completing it.

fogoflove 3y ago

I have diagnosed ADHD and I have struggled with this, but like someone else said, you have to make sure you don't fall into a hole trying to make one of your pages perfect -- I mean, go for it if that's what you're interested in, but I have accepted that something perfect for me will take refinement and delayed gratification.

tombert 3y ago

I don't use Notion, but I kind of fell down the similar Obsidian rabbit hole. Obsidian is interesting because it makes you really feel like you're being productive, creating links and little "mini wikis", but it didn't seem like I was actually accomplishing more. I still use the app for notes, but now I mostly use it for just a "relatively easy to search" notes app.

leoedin 3y ago
Obsidian makes a big deal of their graph view, but in the time I've been using it I've never touched it. I really like the WYSIWYG-ish markdown editor and the search seems to actually work. Those are the killer features for me. I tend to just make a new working note every week, copying last week's outstanding to-dos on Monday morning.
- tombert 3y ago
  I'm more or less in the same boat. I like that app a lot, I even pay for it, but I think the graph view is largely a novelty. I very occasionally utilize the "linking" features with the [[]], but I only really do it when there's an obvious link, not because I care much about a mind map. Though to be honest, the thing that gets 99% usage is "just a place to copy and paste stuff so I don't lose it".
gherkinnn 3y ago
At the end of the day, Obsidian is a specialised file explorer operating on text files, links, and images. It is about as simple as it can get. It doesn’t offer a fraction of what Notion does. The rabbit hole is so much shallower.
- tombert 3y ago
  Sort of? There's a bunch of plugins for Obsidian that really do augment the hell out of it, so it's still a reasonably deep rabbit hole.
- whats_a_quasar 3y ago

julianlam 3y ago

> I get the impression some people spend more time configuring these productivity tools instead of actually being productive. I think that's not a consequence of the software, but that some people have an innate draw towards these sorts of activities. e.g. take a look at the community around journalling. Tons and tons of subjectively beautiful layouts and designs, and productivity is merely a side effect.

waboremo 3y ago
Or look on amazon, there are so many extremely well selling books based around that very idea. Unfortunately the end result is usually feeling productive by reading the book, but then never actually being productive outside of that.

PascLeRasc 3y ago

I see a therapist who specializes in OCD. They believe that the mood journal trend around 2010-2015 led to a lot of people - nearly all of their patients including me - having a compulsion to write down and re-think/overvalue every passing thought.

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 3y ago

>The 23 minute video linked on the "ultimate notion setup for 2023" sounds like a great trap to fall into to not actually get anything done. I get the impression some people spend more time configuring these productivity tools instead of actually being productive. This is me with emacs.

nyarlathotep_ 3y ago

> perfecting my .vimrc instead of actually working on projects. Messing around with static site blog generators when I should actually just be writing content. I feel attacked.

ramraj07 3y ago

It’s the 2020 equivalent of getting your perfect vim or eMacs config maybe?

charles_f 3y ago

I went through some of the video, and I found it interesting that most of the projects and task the presenter is showing are about making videos. There's something borderline ironic in the cyclicality of those youtube people focusing on "productivity" mainly producing videos about how to be productive. And yeah, the administrative burden of maintaining such a system gives me pause ; the decorum of being formal gives the impression of being productive, but are you really productive when 25% of your time goes into the project management and time you invest in setting it up?

jitl 3y ago

(I work for Notion) This is certainly a trap with any tool with exciting possibilities. I personally don't use any templates; I'm of the "brutalist Notion" school of thought. When I want to use Notion for something, I start with the simplest possible approach that could work. Then I add Notion features if they prove necessary. So for something like household chores, I started a Notion page called "chores" and just add to-do checkboxes there when there's a new task, and at-mention myself or my partner to assign things if needed. This is instead of making a database with status, assign property etc. We do use some separate databases for shopping, meal planning/recipes, and make larger pages for specific trips. Keeping things simple initially and adding complexity where it's needed means you never over-invest in a system that's not necessary. Plus, every column you add to a database is one more bit of work you need to do to "file" something completely. I find it discouraging to add friction to stuff I already consider a chore that I want to avoid.

splatzone 3y ago

Relevant: Andy Matuschak: People who write extensively about note-writing rarely have a serious context of use https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzXQu8ErVNv https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzX...

PurpleRamen 3y ago

There is value in structure and rules, to clear your mind and give you orientation for your work. But everyone is also different, so you also need to first figure out the structures and rules which are working for you and your situations. Which, yeah..it's an eternal trap of bike sheeding. Flexible tools like notion are very helpful and seductive in those regards. They can help you get your things done, but can also led you astray to the wrong roads. I think at this point it might be useful to have some studies in how selforganization-porn-addicts and mental health issues correlate. I get the impression that people with adhs for example are more likely to search out this kind of tools&systems to get some control over their mind&life back. I know it's at least for me the case.

015a 3y ago

I'm going to be a little mean here, but I think it needs to be said: "How to be productive in Notion" videos and template sales sites and such are always made by boringly unsuccessful people. I would love to see a broader intensive study on this topic, but just from my observations: its youtube and tik tok creators with a few thousand viewers, people who may actually be rather busy but don't drive much success from what they do. Running on a treadmill (and spending hours a week planning that run) so to speak. Subsequently: Go ask the CEO or other leaders of your company the systems they use to stay organized. I bet twenty bucks that the most common answers to that question, when limited to the note-taking space, are: Nothing, and Apple Notes. If that definition of success isn't your cup of tea, then go ask who you perceive as the most productive person you work with. I did that very specifically with this extremely talented and productive engineer on my team, and his answer: markdown files in a big folder, grep, and vim. Ok greybeard :) But point being: Its almost never Notion or tools at a similar power level. Its simple shit. Physical journals, Apple Notes, Google Keep, Google Docs, for the technically inclined just markdown files.

ZhadruOmjar 3y ago
I've recently started using Notion in a similar way that your engineer uses Markdown files. Apple Notes is great and I have moved away from paper notes simply because there is no search and it can be hard to flip back through books to find what was said in a meeting six weeks ago. My favourite thing about paper notes is that I engage more with the meeting since I have something to do with my hands.

barbariangrunge 3y ago

Which is why I just ditched scrivener for a markdown editor with minimal features for my writing. Configurable tools can lead you to spend all your time configuring them instead of using them

thecleaner 3y ago

I actually found YC advice on startups to work great in real life as well. Afaik YC is all for execution and thus write great material for getting things done. Best advice ever for me was the whole single metric thing - pick a metric, makes sure it goes up x-% every week.