3 ms·

> Its flexibility proved to be its weakness. New users confronted with so much flexibility were often overpowered by the steep learning curve required to use th

> Its flexibility proved to be its weakness. New users confronted with so much flexibility were often overpowered by the steep learning curve required to use the program. I wonder if Notion may suffer a similar fate?

thomascountz 2y ago
Sounds similar to trying out emacs/org-mode for the first time. I think such flexible programs do well with the help of crowdsourced/community-based conventions; Notion templates, YouTube videos of Obsidian vault tours, and blogs about org-mode workflows and use cases, for example.
- jgalt212 2y ago
  be careful here. you may end up spending too much time organizing your notes, and too little time getting things done.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    In general, for me at any rate, having some simple even handwritten to do lists and some basic calendaring get me 90% of the way there. I was just never able to get into any of the systems out there like daytimers and getting things done. I had a work colleague who religiously used a Palm Pilot to track to do items… which was invariably a lengthy list of overdue items.
cratermoon 2y ago
These things are great for academics or professionals in certain fields. They need ways to organize, reference, and write (or otherwise create) from a large corpus of knowledge and experience notes. They are motivated to learn to use these tools because that's they only way to manage their work. The average person just doesn't deal with enough stuff to make it worth their while, even if they can figure it out. They may be perfectly capable of using it, but find it's too much for their needs. A person writing letters and short stories wouldn't use a desktop publishing package, it just doesn't fit their needs. Most people are content with editing their photos with simple tools rather than working with Photoshop.

3 ms·

> Its flexibility proved to be its weakness. New users confronted with so much flexibility were often overpowered by the steep learning curve required to use th

by benfortuna 2y ago

thomascountz 2y ago
Sounds similar to trying out emacs/org-mode for the first time. I think such flexible programs do well with the help of crowdsourced/community-based conventions; Notion templates, YouTube videos of Obsidian vault tours, and blogs about org-mode workflows and use cases, for example.
- jgalt212 2y ago
  be careful here. you may end up spending too much time organizing your notes, and too little time getting things done.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    In general, for me at any rate, having some simple even handwritten to do lists and some basic calendaring get me 90% of the way there. I was just never able to get into any of the systems out there like daytimers and getting things done. I had a work colleague who religiously used a Palm Pilot to track to do items… which was invariably a lengthy list of overdue items.
cratermoon 2y ago
These things are great for academics or professionals in certain fields. They need ways to organize, reference, and write (or otherwise create) from a large corpus of knowledge and experience notes. They are motivated to learn to use these tools because that's they only way to manage their work. The average person just doesn't deal with enough stuff to make it worth their while, even if they can figure it out. They may be perfectly capable of using it, but find it's too much for their needs. A person writing letters and short stories wouldn't use a desktop publishing package, it just doesn't fit their needs. Most people are content with editing their photos with simple tools rather than working with Photoshop.