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Comment by aluminussoma | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad it works for them, and I am a little skeptical whenever someone fawns over Notion (is it a paid placement? Is it someone who is trying sell templates?). To me, as someone who uses Notion for work, it is a dystopian vision, like using JIRA for my personal life's tasks.

I very much prefer simple, low tech solutions to dealing with my life's problems.

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Well.. it does look like a paid placement.. she's a Notion Ambassador.. I have no idea what that means.. but if her domain is "notionthings" and she's preaching about Notion... I'm taking a lot of this with a grain of salt.

That said, the only reason I didn't adopt Notion for my social club (went with Confluence) is because Notion has a surprisingly small file storage for free accounts. Basically made it a non-starter for setting up something basic to try and convince my club to adopt.

I share the skepticism, but I will admit that I can see it benefiting some people. I just know myself enough to know that I probably would not be consistent enough to keep it updated.

For my day to day, I currently just use Zim. Not perfect, but it is just text and just works:D

Selling Notion templates is a complete cottage industry right now. So many people who were once selling video courses are just bundling up what they think mid-level managers will think looks sexy/smart from a note-taking/organizational system and selling it to them.

I know that's not anything new, but it's interesting to see how pervasive it is for one, specific service. Seems much easier to do than selling like... Asana automations? Zapier zaps?

It's also possible to use Notion / Logseq / Notes.app in a very brutalist, low-system way. I work at Notion but a huge system like this that's big on filing would never work for me. I use it like Notes.app, except I create databases for filing stuff like interesting links, furniture shopping, and a few other things, as needed. No upfront big shenanigans, and certainly no filing workflows!

Notion has an entire ecosystem of paid templates, it's a side hustle for many.

Unfortunately this has kept off of Notion as trying to look up videos of how it works usually leads to a wall of "Notion-fluencer" thumbnails, all of whom look no older than first-year university student.

I absolutely love Notion. I first started using it where I work now, and was blown away about how easy it is to organize. Is it great in every way? No (looking at you search!) but it is the best of the tools out there.

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