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.
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.
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.
About showing burn down chats: usually they are shown a few times in early stages of the project, but don't get any attention anymore once they start showing unwanted or erratic results.
Also story points estimations/tracking (as opposed to time in real world units) : never saw it work in practice.
Whoever says software/hardware project time schedules are 'under control' or 'predictable' is probably joking.
If your management can't understand these charts - including when you get results you don't want - I think your management is failing.
E.g. if you don't realize "whoa there's a lot more ambiguity here than we expected and it's causing big delay" until the project goes sideways trying to find clarity, then you missed something big in your earlier planning and estimation.
And whether or not it was important to spend the time to try to get a more accurate estimate vs just start building should be a business-requirement and project-specific decision, but it should be a conscious one.
If you have a manager that's treating N points as a target, then you just have a bad manager. Sprint points are just a signal for how over/under your estimates are on average, to help inform future planning. If someone goes on vacation, how do I know how much work the remaining team can handle? It's also a good signal for measuring the impact of team/process changes (to be clear, the idea here is post hoc analysis and not +N points as a target).
That said, how would you prefer to handle capacity planning? Points aren't perfect, but trends should stabilize over time (you can have predictability/consistency without precision). You can even map point values to ranges of time (e.g. 1 point = [2, 8] hours) if it helps.
It's the beaurocratic gamification aspect I despise.
Having 2 meetings. 1 for task presentation and 1 for task estimation next day is really great
It is the only solution I've ever seen for the "documentation always gets cut" problem with SWE. Someone's whole work stream is thorough documentation and knowing everything. How features work, what customers requested them, what technical trade-offs were made and why.
I miss having one of these people every day at $dayjob. She would make reports for questions that's needed a thorough response. I asked what I thought was an innocent question about what a small kafka cluster was used for and I got back a long-ass document that outlined the whole saga, the complaints the customer had, the VP discussions, the MRs that introduced it, other things people proposed and why they were shot down, meeting notes, screenshots of the discussion on Slack. Like hot damn.
Today that role is filled by either a) nobody or b) the lowest lackey who doesn't give a hoot about the concept.
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.
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.
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.
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.
mostly use it myself
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.
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.
Half of what makes Obsidian so great is that they've encouraged modding so heavily.
.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.
If Logseq can also do hierarchical organising/browsing with a simple sidebar interface, I think I'll give it a go. Does it work well for that use case? What's nice is that you can run both Logseq and Obsidian on the same Markdown files, since they're (mostly compatible) Markdown, so I'm not too worried about switching as needed or even using both.
The right side however has a built in "Contents" page - which tells you what it is for - only as far as I know one has to fill it out oneselves.
That said, my goal was not to convert you or anyone. I am a NetBeans user myself so I know a bit or two about others telling me why I should switch to "clearly superior alternatives" and I don't want to do that to others ;-)
Sounds like Obsidian fits me better than Logseq for now (for the inherent hierarchical organisation). Though one of these days I'll try running Logseq on the same files just for a different view and to try out journalling.
AFAIK Logseq docs encourage new users to put everything under Journal and just tag the relevant blocks. Multiple hierarchical tags are possible, as are aliases, which comes in handy, e.g. I have examples of good ux nested three steps down from root, but in practice I write [[Good UX]] and paste the screenshot and I am done, it shows up at the right place, but is a lot more readable in my journal. BTW, that alias could have been #GoodUX as well and I would have gotten away with hashtag notation.)
Currently I sponsor the project and use the built in sync but it is a bit rough around the edges still and I have seen a solution for automatic conflict resolution using syncthing.
Do you use a script or something or are you just careful?
Agreed, that's why I'm happy they basically kicked "onenote for windows 10" to the curb and leaned back into the win32 style full desktop application on Windows, AKA onenote 2021. It even has full dark mode and dictation now!
It exists?
Edit: I checked and it does exist! Thanks!
I installed it and verified tags are just as cute as before.
I don't have time to verify if the old brilliant sync via file share feature works longer, but the rest of it looks good. I probably should test OCR of pasted images too, now that I think of it, although the OCR in Windows Power Tools has replaced it for me.
I'll probably not use it much again now that I have Logseq and thankfully don't work at many "Microsoft only" shops but if sync via fileshare works it is back as my recommendation for smaller shops that insist on Microsoft centric setups.
I'd probably also personally prefer it to Confluence on small projects (and that thankfully means almost every project I touch).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
It doesn’t offer a fraction of what Notion does. The rabbit hole is so much shallower.
In Notion I think the rabbit hole is overly-complicated documents. In Obsidian it's going crazy with the graph and volume. That and finding the optimal set of plugins.
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.
The phenomenon you describe (the configurators instead of doers) can be found in the upper right corner of the schema in the linked post.
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)
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.
https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzX...
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.
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?
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.
I feel attacked.
This is me with emacs.