Be cool and (un)productive with Notion and why I stopped using it.
I recently came across this article by Jose Ahmad, which turned out to be a very interesting piece of content. Jose, as a designer, lists many reasons why lots of folks might be moving away from Notion.
While I don’t have any data to back it up, I can share my own experiences. Based on Jose’s piece, it seems that his observations are very well aligned with mine.
All-in-One Distractor
I haven’t used Notion for personal stuff for a while now, so I wanted to take a look at the current state of things there.
The current tagline on Notion’s site is: In Notion, work feels better (and gets done faster). With a little help from AI.
Well, that wasn’t really the case for me.
And it looks like other people had similar experiences.
In order to do the work, we must first build the perfect tool! And I mean perfect!
Many ex-notion users said that they found using the product unproductive, and they found themselves spending days and even weeks building systems without making any kind of progress toward their goals, goals that led them in the first place to use the product.
Ah, yes—guilty.
I can’t count the hours wasted on either polishing the perfect tool/system/whatever or searching for the best template, only to use it for a couple of days and then find out I don’t really like it (a usual scenario when using other folks’ templates) or realizing that my perfect tool needs further adjusting to be more PERFECT.
Obviously, the cycle has no end.
As a person who likes to experiment and always looks for improvements, making whatever tool faster, more efficient, and more ✨productive✨, I was easily lost with the possible options (or stuck scrolling through all the available templates, as there is a template for pretty much everything).
The end result is always the same:
- Best case scenario: a false perception of doing something, when none of the actual work was done.
- Worst case scenario: the above + several hours wasted watching YouTube tutorials on how to be more productive with Notion.
On-demand complexity tool built for high-effort people
Jose uses a very fitting term in his article: on-demand complexity.
It relates to Notion being a beast of an all-in-one app with tons of features dumped on you from the get-go.
Of course, nothing stops you from using Notion just for simple note-taking. But then again—personally, I often feel overwhelmed and distracted by the vast, super-duper cool features I’m not using. Or I’m using them the wrong way.
And whether Notion is the best app for taking notes is a separate topic…
Worth the effort?
Jose also writes about Notion being for high-effort people who are willing to dig very deep into Notion:
People who are ready to dig deep down into every detail of what they are trying to use and ready to spend hours just to understand how they can make the most out of notion so that they can win the day are those who really use notion and are very loyal to it.
No way, Jose! But I’m a high-effort person. At least I think I am :(
I’d like to think that I’m a high-effort person, but only when the high effort is worth it.
I don’t want to spend days learning Notion to get the max out of it, just like I don’t want to study my all-in-one printer.
Single Responsibility Principle
It looks like I’m a person who prefers built-in simplicity rather than on-demand complexity.
Because if there is a more complex option within reach, I’ll definitely try it (or at least get distracted by it). And in the end, I’ll get lost in it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that users should be left with absolutely no choice at all. You do you!
But personally, I much prefer how Obsidian handles that.
As a base, it provides a very simple, single-purpose tool. BUT if, for some reason, you want to use it as your calories tracker with fancy graphs, you can also do that with plugins.
The difference is that all of the choices aren’t dumped on your face all at once. And you can still breathe.
Good bye Notion
When I was using Notion, I was trying to use it for, let’s say, organizing both your work-life and your life-life: to-dos, notes, calendars, reminders—all that jazz.
So if I was about to drop it because of all the reasons mentioned above, I needed an alternative.
Let’s use a specific example:
One of the more complex tools I used with Notion was a sort of CRM. I didn’t like any of the CRM software on the market—either it was too big for my needs or too expensive.
At a minimum, I need a place to manage tasks, keep track of them, and connect them with a specific client.
Moving away from Notion, now instead of creating everything in a single app, I’d much rather split the whole system into a couple of single-responsibility pieces.
So, to be specific, instead of Notion, now I use:
What’s great is that right now, in 2024 (and for a couple of years now actually), making different platforms work together is not that hard. I can use, for example, Make for that!
And, following up on the previous point, Make is really the high-effort tool that, in my opinion, is worth spending time to learn.
Wait, I still use Notion?
So after all of that semi-ranting, I must have dug Notion six feet underground, right?
Well, not really. I still use Notion occasionally (e.g., in some client work within clients’ workspaces).
The difference is that in that context, the purpose is clear, and there’s really no option to drift away from it.
After all, when used with intention and clarity, Notion can still be a useful tool.