Today I Deleted Notion

No disrespect to those who feel different, but personally I don't like Notion because I feel uncomfortable editing documents live without a separate step where I can review changes, where a stray keypress might do damage to the document that I don't notice. Google Docs tends to affect me the same way.

Also, I think a lot of stuff that winds up in Notion, in the contexts where I have used it, would do better living in the relevant repository so that changes to docs can be better tied to changes in the code.

Also also, every time I use it I wind up with The Hues Corporation's Rock The Boat in my head, and while I like the song it shouldn't be on loop in my head more than once or twice a quarter please.

I'm not sure this is particularly damning criticism of Notion, but rather of the cult of productivity that has taken hold of a corner of the internet over the last few years. Roam, Superhuman, Obsidian, et al, are all in this too.

I actually found Notion pretty good as a company wiki at a previous role. It has its issues, and the engineers liked it less than people in non-technical roles, but as an accessible wiki with lightweight structuring of data, it's pretty good.

I will say that at least Notion is a decent enough Markdown editor. I recall I had some small gripes with how they use forward-slash for commands, and probably some other stuff I've forgotten by now but it's certainly functional.

It looks like it was designed to target the Google docs crowd of non-technical people in PM or other leadership roles where its minimalism combined with directory organization and file flexibility are desirable. In this sense I'm not _too_ surprised to see my technical friends ignore it, since there are so many tools in this niche already (Github wikis come to mind as an alternative for documenting various decisions, challenges, implementations, etc). I guess the real flaw with these sorts of products is that they're tools that are treated as solutions. There's no real need to add another tool to a org stack if what's working already isn't broken, and doing so obviously won't guarantee a massive increase in "productivity". You can document the shit out of blockers but at the end of the day someone with knowledge is still going to have to step in and help. This moreso goes for clickup and monday.com, though, which advertised the shit out of the Boston and NYC subways (clickup did a terrible job, I never really found out what they were until I googled it some months later and found it was yet another PM suite and I don't even recall what they're UI looks like).

Also, it's kinda absurd to me that notion feels the need to have both a certification program as well as a list of "certified consultants" who are "productivity experts and solutions architects". David Graeber would probably feel vindicated/depressed.

I find that as an individual (never used it within a Team), Notion is a great alternative to something like OneNote or Apple's Notes app. But the way a lot of "productivity experts" suggest using it is counter intuitive for exactly the same reasons that this person is citing. You could easily spend an hour each day fiddling with templates, filling out forms that you've created for yourself, and endlessly grooming your "backlog".

Personally I just use Notion as a dumping ground for ideas, planning stuff (like holidays), and kind of a library for stuff I may want to remember in future. If I was the kind of person that journaled it could be good for that as well I would imagine.

I understand where he is coming from. I desperately wish I had back the dozens of weekends I spent customizing tools like Notion (or Obsidian or Roam or Omnifocus or Things or...). At one point, I convinced myself, "I can do this better" and spent a few months hacking together my own tools that were infinitely worse than the worst of the commercially available software.

Then there are the rabid communities, YouTube channels, and cohort-based courses that make you spend hundreds of hours learning how to "be productive" in these tools.

I call this "fidgety work":

"fidgety work (n): 1. spending inordinate amounts of time researching, designing, and tweaking tools & systems with the expectation that time spent on 'productivity hacking' is an investment in future better and faster work; 2. procrastination

Real Work > fidgety work"

That said, there is probably an 80/20 argument here -- there are probably a handful of tips and optimizations that get you virtuosic with a given app. After that, it's all diminishing returns.

Someone should sell an ebook on this.

Personally I want to store my notes as local files and manage them using some open source software, if possible version them using git. Although there are plenty note taking solutions available I find it hard to find something truly exceptional. In total I have used Vim Wiki and Cherrytree the most. Tried most of the tools available and generally most of them offer either too much or too little. In my opinion Notion is a mess.

Last year I got bit by the productivity bug pretty hard. I tried all sorts of different tools/solutions to try and be as productive as possible in my personal and professional life.

I am ok with using multiple systems and ended up deciding on on three pieces of software that worked for me.

- OmniFocus for tracking todos/project steps (e.g. buy a desk as part of my home office remodel)

- Notion for documenting my reasoning and researching project items (e.g. desks that I am thinking about getting for my home office remodel)

- Obsidian for taking random notes/copying and pasting interesting stuff I come across (different styles of office desk) I haven’t quite gotten a ZK-like workflow down for this yet

The part that made this work for me was setting aside specific times to check OmniFocus and linking into Notion from OmniFocus. Just using the apps and building muscle memory to reach for the appropriate app helped a lot.

I am sure I could simplify this using org-mode or something, but I’m tired of reading/learning new productivity systems.

In my experience Notion is too slow, especially with more than a few pages. I used to use it (I actually still have an unlimited pro membership for free since I was a beta tester several years ago) but nowadays I stick with Markdown and git.

If we use the analogy of physical stationery and forms, each one serves a specific, tailor made purpose. A tax form, daily journal form, double entry accounting form, an invoice, etc. are specifically designed for that purpose. You could technically use a blank page as a starting point to make any kind of form you need, but straight up blank pages are not very efficient outside of personal home use.

Notion and its brethen, AirTable, etc. are just pain in the ass to set up. They're infinitely customizeable and that's a bug, not a feature IMO.

I'll take a proper CRM or a Wiki tool over a blank slate.

I use Notion as an extended markdown editor whose pages can be shared easily. Public documents that needs to be shared quickly among a group of people like one-time guides, etc.

I don't like Google Docs because it's not markdown and formatting and stuff takes mouse clicks or weird keyboard "shortcuts".

I haven't found anything as convenient as Notion for the same but if I was looking for alternatives, it would be because (i) Notion is slow and (ii) the generated URLs are long and annoying.

I wonder if I can self-host a `hugo server` for the same task.

I gave up on electronic productivity tools for the same reason: too much time fiddling with tools and data entry, not the actual work I was trying to be productive at.

A brick of post it notes, a pile of blank paper, a binder clip, and a few nice pens and pencils solved the problem for me. The rest of the stuff that isn’t so much about productivity as it is capturing information for future reference, I just stick that in a git repo of text files with whatever editor I happen to open (or just cat’ing to a file if it’s a quick note).

The first part of the tweet, quoted in the title, is just clickbait.

The second part has nothing to do with Notion:

> I realized I was spending more time trying to increase productivity and efficiency, instead of actually doing the things I was trying to make more efficient.

I’m just venturing a guess, but if all you’re going to do is delete Notion, you’ll probably still spend most of your time trying to increase productivity and efficiency rather than doing the things that need doing.

I don't have any strong opinions on Notion, but the for the logseq social media mafia, optimal note-taking, not optimal doing is the means and the end. I switched from evernote to obsidian. It's good enough for me, but I have struggled to make it work in the cloud and mobile, why self-hosting the files. But I also write stuff down on paper, Trello, Slack, email, etc. So maybe I'm not the best person to weigh in on obsessing over proper note taking.

I've actually been using notion more and more. I tried obsidian at first but really didn't feel like syncing the stuff by myself, and as I only exclusively take notes on my PC and never pen and paper (because of dysgraphia) I found that it got out of my way and had enough features for me to use it as a daily driver.

Apple Notes or macdown (https://macdown.uranusjr.com/) or even just vim + grep (maybe fzf also) have been the easiest for me, and they don't require an internet connection

We used Notion as our company Wiki but I always felt it was slow for me when I wanted to use it for personal notes and info. I tried various tools include markdown editors as well but just kept going back to OneNote as my go to for all notes and details.

I just use notion as a non infuriating editor. I still keep local notes in plaintext. Google docs is probably fine too if all you need is shared docs. Just don’t say the confluence word if you want to keep talking to me.

Without encryption it’s a non starter for me to use

Yeah I switched to i3 years ago.