Ask HN: How do you use Notion? I'm seeing people use it for hundreds of different things both for business and personal use cases. It's not good at everything but I find myself hacking and twisting instead of using multiple apps, so curious if this is a similar for y'all. |
Daily planner
- Every morning I do gratitude, "single most important task", and quick retro on the previous day.
- Schedule out my day giving every 15-minute block of time a goal. While being burnt out I would beat myself up for "not knowing what I am doing with my life". Having a schedule allows me to say "I should be doing x, I don't have to, but that is what I planned to do with this time" it calms some of that negative self-talk.
- Space for me to document random thoughts so they don't use active memory/thought process
Personal Wiki
- I have struggled with too many tabs open, or too many bookmarks in the past. To keep that at bay I have been trying this personal wiki approach for about a year.
- I have a few top-level pages for major categories of my life like bikes, household maintenance, fitness, computers, and programming. then I populate it with different types of content like pages, notes, and databases. These are things like car maintenance schedules, checklists for cleaning, and links/formulas I need to pay quarterly taxes.
Ticker file
- Single database with a few attributes. One attribute is the "review date" that I filter by.
- I chuck random things into this so I can pull them out of my active memory and come back to them later.
outloud personal reflection:
I much prefer using simpler tools dedicated to specific tasks (todo, calendar, notes, pictures, websites, etc)
> I chuck random things into this so I can pull them out of my active memory and come back to them later.
I feel like maybe this is the heart of it, having a personal cache to make a temporary mess in until you have time to clean it up later. I could see that being useful - though id want to move everything out of that place and not organize things within it
Single app has worked better for me. I am at 4 months of journaling and planning every day (I have used notion for a few years). When I was using desecrate apps I would go 1-3 weeks before system would fall apart.
For me the main pros are: Ability to move and copy elements from tickler to daily plan so easily. Ability to link todo's to documentation. Ability to take notes in a way that works with how I think, and ability to take handle incoming thoughts as fast as they need to be documented.
Main cons are: only "date time" construct in databases, I would prefer a "time" construct. Offline. Data portability.
> I feel like maybe this is the heart of it, having a personal cache to make a temporary mess in until you have time to clean it up later. I could see that being useful - though id want to move everything out of that place and not organize things within it
Cal Newport has a `working_memory.txt` file on every one of his desktops that he chucks random information into and then processes it at the end of the day. Maybe a system like that could be more your jam.
I might one day work up the courage to use [https://bangle.io/](https://bangle.io/) + github. Feels like owning my data + a bit more flexibility could be nice, but that seems like a lot of work.
I've been using Google Drive for years (at work). I still don't know where my files are and what the UI is doing. It is like a black hole of files that are shown in various ways. Google Drive IMO is one of the worst products out there. I hate it with a passion. I can pretty much say, in the list of 100 apps that I use, it ranks at the very bottom. Last.
For personal organizations and notes I have stick with OneNote for years and still find it superb especially to search notes and screenshots. Just missing a better todo list and planning.
It gets a lot of talk because people invest tons and tons of time in elaborate aesthetically pleasing set ups which can be very satisfying. But then the messy nature of "every day life" slowly erodes the ability of said setup to (cleanly) contain the information, and eventually a lot of people give up on it.
Notion used in that way is essentially trying to make a database for your mind. Except programmers know that writing a schema for a well defined business case is hard. Writing a schema for your knowledge of the natural world is somewhere between an endless task and an impossible task, yet that's what Notion will require of you to take on that role..
-
If you want to get actual value out of it, keep it simple. But if you keep it simple, imo you're better off using something like Evernote, which drops the whole "database of your mind" pretense and just focuses on letting you write.
- Bookmarking. Notion downloads the complete article not just links to it.
- Idea dump.
- Notes dump for any new learnings.
- Health records.
- Simple inventory Management. ...
Idea is to have a single app for all references. Works great across Desktop and iOS.
What I want?
1 click backup/restore.
Given that a lot of my data goes in it, and companies these days have a poor record of kicking-out users (and not telling them why) for the slightest of mistake. I would like to have some automated way to back-it-up on a daily basis.
Because the limitation of the format forces you to really prioritize, focus and throw away all unimportant garbage.
This gives me amazing peace of mind and clarity.
- A "dump" page for thoughts, current work, plans, TODOs, etc. for personal projects. Again, tried initially to be more structured with how I tracked work for personal projects, but ultimately found it too effortful and difficult to use later. Now I just have a growing page where I drop an `@now` and whatever the latest thing is I'm working on or thinking about for a given project.
- Structured notes for upcoming trips or pending decisions.
I pull out the app all the time to answer various questions
For example:
* What kind of oil does my car take again? When was the last oil change?
* How much did I weigh in 2015
* What's the square footage of my apartment?
* What was my start/end date of job X?
Lots of random details like that I may need to reference later
I use the tables a lot for anything that changes over time
Stuff like this is pretty unstructured so I like having arbitrary hierarchies to keep it organized
I don't use any community templates, though. Are there any people have found particularly useful? My Notion pages are generally just text and I'm happy with the default styling so I haven't felt the need to go out and search for anything specific.
It's definitely a matter of personal taste though. For me, it just works: the fluidity of the interface, adding new pages and sub-pages, the auto-saving that's completely out of my face, the auto-linking, the easy-to-remember macros...
For business, most of my clients are still using Confluence, and that's the exact opposite: clunky and getting in my way constantly. Again, a matter of personal taste but that counts for a lot when I am the done paying for the subscription! I would not pay for Confluence in a million years!
Now, what's the Notion equivalent to JIRA - any tips?
I've found https://getoutline.com to be a pretty solid contender, although with slightly less functionality.
I finally am getting my head wrapped around Tinderbox and it clicked. It’s a better tool for thinking for me. No sharing beyond sharing a file but that’s fine. I don’t tend to like collaborative software for that sorta thing.
They’re a YC alum making something a little more ‘streamlined’ than Notion. Doesn’t have as many blocks, but the ones it does have work well.
(No affiliation, just a happy user that moved over from Notion because it got a little too ‘bloated’ for my taste).
Gave it up and use multiple apps now. Main ones being Dendron, Complice and workflowy.
Endless. It serves as our source of truth.
I find it loads too long for me to use it as a to do list or diary.
I have a WORKSPACE folder I dump multiple .txt files into and then go through them later to organize. Ill post a path in the .txt if its related to a specific file or just a shortcut to the file instead of a .txt
It's kind of like a to-do, but I also have a todo list for more traditional checklist items that I am pretty good about checking.
>Data portability.
anything without this is a non-starter for me personally. I need to be able to import and export with the tools I use. the only exception I make for that is my todo list, because well I dont really care about the history. everything i put in it is meant to be deleted after i do the thing
Good lord. What a piece of shit. I'm sorry to vent here, but I wish I was not forced to use this thing.
In Dropbox, the file structure is prominent UI feature. In Google Drive, I feel like I just don't have the brains to use it. I am not smart enough. I don't have what it takes. I accept complete defeat and I surrender.
if an organization happens to be very organized on gdrive because they put in the heroic level of effort (if it's not just being constantly done as glue work by 1-2 people at the expense of recognized/rewarded work), that just shows the competence of the organization that would be true regardless of using gdrive / notion / a wiki / clay tablets.