Today I Deleted Notion(twitter.com)
twitter.com
Today I Deleted Notion
https://twitter.com/tadaspetra/status/1545149403270356992
54 comments
Google Docs if you have editing privileges you can switch to suggesting mode and it will allow you to “suggest” changes (diff like) instead of outright make them, I usually like doing this for documents which aren’t mine.
Notion I agree but it does have a way to lock a page so you can explicitly unlock it to make edits, more clunky than having a “suggesting mode” but it works.
And both product actually have history so if you do accidentally blow away something or add garbage you can revert to the version before you made accidental changes.
Notion I agree but it does have a way to lock a page so you can explicitly unlock it to make edits, more clunky than having a “suggesting mode” but it works.
And both product actually have history so if you do accidentally blow away something or add garbage you can revert to the version before you made accidental changes.
Similarly, I prefer writing markdown in my editor of choice, then copy-pasting it into whatever documentation thingy my employer used, (at that time, Esa [0]). Notion treated the entire piece of markdown as a single 'block' or whatever their terminology was, meaning I had to reformat the whole thing again. That was really annoying and is the sole reason I stopped using Notion.
[0]: https://esa.io
[0]: https://esa.io
I used notion for a long time. I was never satisfied with it, but everyone around me used it, and so did I.
2 months ago I found a good alternative called ERA. It is targeting developers and their needs (as far as they market it that way).
It's currently free to use as it is in beta, but for me it offers everything I need.
https://era.sh
2 months ago I found a good alternative called ERA. It is targeting developers and their needs (as far as they market it that way).
It's currently free to use as it is in beta, but for me it offers everything I need.
https://era.sh
[deleted]
Do you think a manual "save" button would solve this? I ask because am in the midst of creating a SaaS with no autosave. Was worried this would be a turn off. But some users prefer manual save! Would love your opinion. Note: there is a "crash-protect" feature, in case of crashes before saving.
Invent drafts. Auto save drafts.
To me, it's just barely short of a moral principle that software should never accidentally lose user content. "Crash-protect" is only adequate with a very broad idea of a "crash". On mobile or in a browser tab, the app might get killed at any time to save memory. Am I going to go to Wikipedia on my phone to get some info for what I'm writing in your app, and come back to find a blank text box again? Or if I get distracted in the middle of it and then have to reboot my computer fit an update? These might look like orderly shutdowns, not "crashes".
To me, it's just barely short of a moral principle that software should never accidentally lose user content. "Crash-protect" is only adequate with a very broad idea of a "crash". On mobile or in a browser tab, the app might get killed at any time to save memory. Am I going to go to Wikipedia on my phone to get some info for what I'm writing in your app, and come back to find a blank text box again? Or if I get distracted in the middle of it and then have to reboot my computer fit an update? These might look like orderly shutdowns, not "crashes".
A manual "save" button would help, with autosave reduced to (as you say) "crash-protect" (although depending on context that could include up to a full undo-redo tree); I'd especially like an ability to see all the changes that I'm proposing, to add some notes about why I'm making the changes, and to handle conflicts semi-manually. If you're thinking this sounds a lot like git, yes.
I'm happy to have my opinions considered, but I would caution against overfitting to them - most people don't seem to like the UX that I like.
I'm happy to have my opinions considered, but I would caution against overfitting to them - most people don't seem to like the UX that I like.
Not sure if this would apply to your app, but a common pattern is to display a "draft saved" type autosave message. (Email, for example.)
On our site we implemented a step where you have to re-publish your post.
For that exact same reason.
Can't you just revert or undo just about anything in notion, Google docs, etc?
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 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.
Superhuman is Really useful. And almost completely devoid of friction.
Yeah I'm not saying that it's bad, for the right person I'm sure it's a good product.
My point was that it's part of this productivity cult. I think there's a lot of diminishing returns involved.
My point was that it's part of this productivity cult. I think there's a lot of diminishing returns involved.
Site's a bit of a turn off in several ways:
https://superhuman.com/
Still, guess I might give it shot...
[deleted]
LOL what...
Won't even let me dload/test anything.
Wants me to pay 30/mth via cc 1st.
Yeah, no...
It self selects for people who have the propensity to pay. In that case I think keeping it behind a pay wall is useful, for them.
[deleted]
I'm giving Superhuman a second go. So far it is O.K. - I keep going back to Gmail, perhaps because I'm so use to its workflow.
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.
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.
(Disclaimer: I work at Notion)
> 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.
Surprisingly, this is largely due to market demand! A lot of customers ask us to help tailor workflow solutions to their needs, especially if their team is growing quickly. We don’t have bandwidth internally keep up with that for our small/medium business customers. So, those customers go looking for consultants, contractors, or eventually to hire for full-time Notion knowledge management positions. These programs help our customers find quality talent and build a trustworthy base we can refer people to.
Equally important is the demand for more education, certification, and collaboration from those very experts/consultants. These people are building their livelihoods on their Notion expertise. Certification helps differentiate and validate them.
> 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.
Surprisingly, this is largely due to market demand! A lot of customers ask us to help tailor workflow solutions to their needs, especially if their team is growing quickly. We don’t have bandwidth internally keep up with that for our small/medium business customers. So, those customers go looking for consultants, contractors, or eventually to hire for full-time Notion knowledge management positions. These programs help our customers find quality talent and build a trustworthy base we can refer people to.
Equally important is the demand for more education, certification, and collaboration from those very experts/consultants. These people are building their livelihoods on their Notion expertise. Certification helps differentiate and validate them.
Notion seems to have perfectly nailed that "eager adoption by non-technical teams" spot that Slack did a few years ago in their niche. I've worked with several organizations that went all-in on Notion, and can think of two that would have hired consultants if they weren't in the "no money" segment of the nonprofit sector. So I'm happy to see you embracing the consultant ecosystem for your product.
> It looks like it was designed to target the Google docs crowd of non-technical people.
This doesn't mirror my experience at all. I'm super technical and after evaluating all the options I landed on Notion because it's by far the most "get out of the way and just write."
Notion: Go to documentation, see an area where you have something to add, click, type, done.
"Pages": Go to documentation, see an area where you have something to add, context switch to your terminal, maybe clone it, create a new branch, go to the pages repo, go to the file, add your change, commit, push, open a PR, post a message to slack for someone to click approve, merge.
This doesn't mirror my experience at all. I'm super technical and after evaluating all the options I landed on Notion because it's by far the most "get out of the way and just write."
Notion: Go to documentation, see an area where you have something to add, click, type, done.
"Pages": Go to documentation, see an area where you have something to add, context switch to your terminal, maybe clone it, create a new branch, go to the pages repo, go to the file, add your change, commit, push, open a PR, post a message to slack for someone to click approve, merge.
Agreed. I consider myself to be pretty technical and I explored Github Wikis, static site generators, local markdown, etc, and then Notion showed up one day. I could click to create a new markdown-ish document, collaborate on it with the other people on my team, embed images, write equations, and do way more than I could in any of the other solutions I sorta hodge-podged together.
I don't have time to write notes app, and even if I did, I probably would've made something like notion, but worse.
At this point, I do all of my technical writing in Notion. Equations, tables, nesting, publishing... I can even embed an interactive graphing calculator or videos of my work. A plain markdown file can't do that and neither can LaTeX.
I don't have time to write notes app, and even if I did, I probably would've made something like notion, but worse.
At this point, I do all of my technical writing in Notion. Equations, tables, nesting, publishing... I can even embed an interactive graphing calculator or videos of my work. A plain markdown file can't do that and neither can LaTeX.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think the personal tier is now free to everyone, not just beta testers. I think the slowness issues got fixed a while back - there was a point where they were releasing new features weekly, and then basically nothing happened for 6 months, and then the next few releases fixed a lot of 'under the hood' stuff with performance and search and so on.
Still a great tool, I moved away from it for personal reasons, but I very much like it still.
Still a great tool, I moved away from it for personal reasons, but I very much like it still.
I'll have to take a look again then. My account seems to be the organizational one but it's somehow still free for me instead of the X per month it should be.
Not sure when you last used it. But it is a lot faster now. Still slow compared to local tools of course.
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.
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 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 use gists for this task (https://gist.github.com/)
It would be nice to have something like what you describe that can authenticate via email though for more confidential things.
It would be nice to have something like what you describe that can authenticate via email though for more confidential things.
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).
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.
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
Yep, same here. That's what i like about OmniFocus, it's fully e2e encrypted and can optionally be self hosted too.
Same with Obsidian, just can just self host it/put it in a git repo.
Same with Obsidian, just can just self host it/put it in a git repo.
Official syncing on mobile costs $10/mo. Too much for the 2MB of text I have.
Other syncing options on Android I've found has felt super hacky so I stopped using it.
Other syncing options on Android I've found has felt super hacky so I stopped using it.
Yeah I switched to i3 years ago.
It's Notion the block based knowledge base thingy, not the tiling manager (which got renamed from ion3 to notion I read).
> block based knowledge base
What does that even mean?
What does that even mean?
Instead of treating a document as one, every part of the document is a separate block. Every paragraph can be a block, every table is a block, every image can be a block. This makes referencing to specific information very easy, as every block can be referenced, displayed somewhere else, a.s.o.
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.