As a Notion-user, this just seems excessive to me.
I love Notion because it gives me the ability to make "lightweight" notes/pads fast. I've since learned to utilize the linked database features which makes it easier to organize notes, tasks and projects.
At some point however, it feels like it just becomes busy-work to make new boxes to check, new links, relations and what-not.
To me the beauty is in the simplicity, cross-platform capabilities and relative ease with which I can create and access simple notes fast.
EDIT: I forgot templates. I use 2 or 3 templates for notes and "new projects". I never use more than 5 columns for my projects/notes either. And I don't have any "dashboards" besides my task-list (that I can sort as kanban with four status-indicators - basic stuff).
Same and same. My most effective Motion pages are the big ugly bullet point lists to quickly jot down to-do tasks or grocery lists or writing ideas or albums I want to listen to; what makes it all work is the ability to offload my brain into an external source as quickly as possible (and retrieve it later when I need it).
Some of these really fancy setups look nice, but they strike me as adding too much friction to the whole process.
Same, except s/notepad/vim. One big file. Easy to keep in version control (I keep it in my dot files repo), easy to search/grep, Currently has 10 years worth of stuff (well over 10,000 lines) but is still instantaneous to open and search. I've recently started trying out Logseq and there's a chance I may actually switch, but the single-text-file approach has served me very well for a long time.
I was the same, I've been on logseq for a while and I'm pretty much a convert. Syntax highlighting, embed images, todo/now/done -- all a bit more effortless.
And it all went into the same git repo as my previous vim based .plan ;)
It's not the most intuitive export (since there are backlinks, complex hierarchy, databases and all that jazz in Notion pages) but they do return Markdown for every page, CSV for databases (with some information loss), maintain folder structures, and multimedia attachments.
A quick search shows me that Notion exports can be used to populate Obsidian [1] (which implies that there's not substantial information loss).
Self-hosting also means you'll have to make sure it's up and secure at all times. I used to self-host a ton of things, but keeping a decent security posture has become so much effort it's just no longer feasible for me, and no longer fun, so I try to use SaaS with a good track record and a backup/export option for anything critical these days.
Tailscale is a centralized service that your whole network is exposed to. I'm using them but if you're self-hosting for security or privacy reasons, that's probably not what you'd want as they or someone who compromises them would essentially own your network and it doesn't get much more critical than that. You can monitor and harden your infrastructure against that, but that's no longer easy. If you trust Tailscale with all your traffic, including from/to your notes app, I guess you could just as well trust a SaaS notes solution with a good track record and support for exports/backups.
Tailscale is only partially centralized (the admin portion). The actual traffic flow is not.
But also, I use Headscale so I'm self-hosting my tailscale as well.
As a self-hoster, I would totally recommend to the average person to self-host services on your LAN, and just use tailscale to extend your LAN beyond your house (for example on your laptop and phone) so you can get to things when you're not at home. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
I like self-hosting when I can, too, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to the "average person". Especially if they would come back to me for tech support.
The average person is not capable of self-hosting software and SaaS is much nicer looking / more fully features 99% of the time. I say this as someone who loves self-hosting and self hosts most of my own stuff.
Notion's biggest market is students that have grown up with Google Docs. The idea of local storage is long gone for the "digital natives" generation. There was even this story from a couple of years ago from an engineering professor who had to change how she taught basic concepts because her students weren't familiar with folder-based file systems [0].
The majority won't. I have seen this myself, as I did not like the SaaS nature of Roam Research, and wanted a local-first solution. There is a large community of people using Logseq or Obsidian, but they are still a tiny monitory as these products don't have name recognition and there aren't as many polished videos about them on YT.
I am. I export my Notion to HTML regularly. I can do a plain text search on it.
I actually do regularly go back and search my notes and journals within Notion. Knowing that I will be able to do it if I ever leave Notion is comforting.
P.S. If anyone at Notion is reading this, please work on your search. It could be so much more useful.
I started doing this for a while but quickly switched to Obsidian. Obviously it doesn't have the same features but it serves the same purpose for me at least. The data format is much simpler and portable too, I just store the vault in iCloud and sync it to my phone.
I similarly moved from Notion to Joplin. My data, my server etc. For me the move was triggered by Notion being very slow, but later on, with the amounts of data I had in Notion, I started to worry about privacy etc as well.
Obsidian is great. My notetaking solutions went from
- raw text files
- raw markdown files
- + homemade server rendering the markdown live
- Obsidian
- Notion
I stick with Notion because it really is infinitely configurable. I rarely use 99% of the plugins but I have, in the past, used their API to populate the show the results of my experiments straight from my Python code to a Notion Table. Super convenient. I take regular (every six months or so) hard exports that I save to disk in case the company goes belly up tomorrow. I'm comfortable with it.
did the same but missed tasks and integrations so started working on https://acreom.com during covid. It's dev centric and data ownership focused, would love to get feedback.
I just wish obsidian was better at lists, especially on the mobile client. It's really painful moving things around tab levels, reordering items, etc. I can't even manage a grocery list without it devolving into complete chaos and broken markdown. There are extensions that help but extensions on mobile are really bad (just an enormous toolbar to scroll through, no real UI... the whole mobile app feels designed to be used with a keyboard which defeats the point of mobile).
Yeah the toolbar badly needs context awareness. If my cursor is on a list item then show me the list actions right there, not a global fixed list of things that never changes and almost never has what I need at the right moment.
>Many users find it’s just as useful for managing their free time.[...]
"“You don’t have to change your habits to how rigid software is. The software will change how your mind works,” says Akshay Kothari, Notion’s cofounder and chief operating officer"
Stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you? "What did you do this weekend?, Well nothing special really, but I got a 3000 line Notion document mapping every step of it". Can we stop attempting to export every workplace fad into personal lives?
Just enjoy your free time, focus on free, not on time. Compulsive busywork is not a replacement for spontaneity.
This just seems like so much work. The obsessive tracking of ever little thing. Does anyone really use this data in any meaningful way other that just admire its detail? What happens if you miss period, does this cause anxiety?
I've long dreamed of tracking every little thing. I don't know why but tracking everything I do, what I eat or drink or wear, how many hours I watch TV or sit on Reddit, how often I urinate, my work life balance, literally everything, the of having it all is exciting to me.
Beyond the thrill of acquiring and holding it, it would no doubt be more useful than simply admiring it. Compare it to say a sports trophy, that's something you simply admire although of course you have the memories of the journey to win it as well.
Data and tracking on the other hand feels practical and usable in the present and the future, as well as something to look back on or "admire".
Would you think less of people who put the hours into winning a sports trophy or writing a book (that they presumably never read or use themselves)?
This is a passion of mine as well , and is called “life logging” or “the quantified life”.
I have a long term passion project called Navigoals (Navigoals.com) built around the concept. It’s like a habit tracker but I organize all my habits/actions into a massive DAG so if I track something at a low level it also bubbles up to a high level goal. I can track instances of things or durations of things (time tracking).
I also have an unpublished iOS version with Apple Watch support, using the Watch is quicker to track stuff.
I realize to many this sounds insane but PLEASE email me waprin@gmail.com if you’re down to watch a demo over video chat.
As far as the people who think I’m crazy, here’s why I’m passionate about this project. I really had trouble focusing my whole life so as an adult I bit the bullet and got ADHD meds. Those helped a LOT at the immediate problem of focusing but literally made me crazy, very crazy, almost ruined my life. During recovery I decided I would meditate 5 minutes every day and journal one paragraph every day, which I used a habit tracker for. This was a key part of my recovery. That got me thinking - if a little tracking saved my life, what can a lot of tracking do? I also needed to better manage my time and goals without the usage of any medication.
People will say the data is pointless if you just admire it, not the case. I noticed in weight loss subs , people strongly advocate starting with food tracking. Just the act of forcing honesty with yourself about what you’re eating will change your relationship with food. In a completely different domain, the most important step to playing pro or semi-pro poker is diligently tracking all results. Same reason - forces honesty. And also in both cases, surfaces trends (e.g. I eat or play poorly certain times of day).
I track over 200 of my actions every day and I strive for my apps to make it quick to do. However it’s important to understand this does not turn me into a robot. My brain is so naturally all over the place , I wander and do random things so much, that just forcing myself to use apps to have _some_ structure and discipline puts me in the balance of a rigid life and an improvised one.
I am realizing I’m in the minority, most people I demo my apps to say, “that seems cool…for a certain type of person.” So, open to connecting with certain types of people.
I find tracking things is a helpful (and relatively healthy) way to manage anxiety. It’s a total time vampire - but once I’ve made my lists of todos/sheets/Roam/Notion/BuJo/whatever and convinced myself I’m organized and in control, then I can get real work done free of nagging concern I’m missing something. I try to find a healthy balance, and my level of tracking varies with my mental health and stress. I’ve noticed that if I’m tracking nothing, things are bad. Likewise, if I’m tracking EVERYTHING, I’m spiraling and things are bad.
honestly sounds like you should talk to a therapist. spending so much time "organizing everything" isn't a sustainable or effective way to handle your problems
I've tracked things like food intake for years at a time when loosing weight. I also tracked every dollar spent manually for 3 or 4 years.
Both times I did that they were extremely helpful to achieve my goals. Too much of what we do is on autopilot. Noticing what you're doing is a helpful way to course correct before you're 10k over budget or 5 pounds heavier.
You have to do it in a healthy manner though, you can't obsess about tracking. Be gentle with yourself and know you'll make mistakes, both in tracking and what you're doing.
It can be a lot of work. It can be a trap. But I don't think Notion is the problem.
I will share some personal experience on this journey.
I like to be organized where I need to. I worked up a TODO list habit and a note taking habit over time. At first it was pen and paper. Then plain text notes. Then Evernote. And now it's Notion.
Regardless of the tool, there were times when I overdid it. I became too meticulous. The TODO list, instead of keeping me organized and my mind free, became the source of my work and worry.
I iterated over time, and have built up a system that works for me. Whenever I feel that something becomes too heavy, I trim it. Notion is nice because it allows me to be flexible. It's more like a notebook with superpowers than Jira and Asana.
If you're obsessive and don't catch yourself, Notion can become the source of troubles. But so can cataloging your CD collection.
I recently shared my TODO list workflow with someone. I have a daily and weekly template and they're quite involved. The person was surprised asked me if I ever get stressed if I don't do it all. Not at all, I said. What I don't do gets thrown away and I start over tomorrow. It keeps me structured and organized, but I am not its slave.
It's not how involved your system is. It's how much it works for you, vs working against you.
I somewhat envy people who can meticulously plan like this. When I try to do something like this I love talking about the planning and researching, but putting it all together into a detailed plan stresses me because I don't even know where to start. It starts to make it feel like work. Then there's another side of me that loves spontaneous adventure and just going with the flow. If anyone has any tips to find a happy medium, I'm all ears.
I just got home yesterday from a 2 week vacation. I was feeling especially relaxed during the trip, much more than usual. I thought this was due to how good I had gotten at thought exercises and managing anxiety, and I didn't want to forget what I was doing that led to this so I bought a notebook. After I started writing I lost the sense of detachment that was so pleasant and couldn't get it back the rest of the trip.
I wear a Garmin sportswatch so keep an eye on the subreddit. If you go there you’ll see daily threads about arbitrary metrics like “sleep score”, “body battery”, hrv and vo2 max. People obsess over the numbers without really thinking to take a step back and thinking about how accurate the data is and whether or not it’s actually meaningful in any real terms.
Definitely a lot of folks out there becoming slaves to this sort of thing.
I have the Apple Watch and I hardly ever check the stats but every few months it pings me with something like "Over the last 5 days, your resting heart rate dropped" which was a period I was on holidays, made me wonder if it was the lack of access to coffee, or just a more inactive period where I sat in a car most of the time.
The long term data can be interesting. Moved apartments and saw my elevation climbed stat went up as the local area was not so flat
It's contextually bounded, I think. You can't be the librarian of your whole life, but you can parcel out some things that warrant discrete records(e.g. finances).
I do think it's pointless to put all of it in a computer. Some things do better with a whiteboard(or an electronic version of such like Boogie Board) or a paper journal. The computer is for if you genuinely want to edit, rearrange, and structure the data. It constantly tempts you to do so.
To never do it, or to do it all the time, are neither good. The best is if you can do trials of things like this. To be able to monitor something closely, but then draw conclusions and let it go.
I think after using so many of these organization apps, I used plaintext note taking apps, sublime text, trello, more structured note taking apps (evernote, Agenda for Mac, etc), Todo apps (so many of them, incl pomodoro style), then went back to trello and I think I'm staying there.
Everybody is different, and Trello is a great application (I use it for longer-term planning with my partner), but after starting to use Pagico, I'm completely sold. Being able to plan things as projects, and putting them to a unified or independent gantt charts is a great way to visualize daily and long term load.
First of all, Pagico is really cross platform. It has clients for macOS, Linux and Windows, plus iOS (I use it on macOS, iOS and Linux). It allows me to group the tasks either in a free floating Inbox, or in their respective projects.
I can combine all these projects' tasks in a single view, or see them in their independent contexts. This allows me to see my whole workload (private + professional) and plan my life accordingly, even for future.
Every project can have its lists, notes, files and schedule. This allows me to take small notes and track my projects and carry these notes everywhere. Hence, I don't lose my mental state about a project. It also tracks project progress and your working patterns, like which days you're more active on the projects by analyzing your activity on said project.
Tasks can be added pretty quickly while planning, even with some NLP support. "Do this. Next tuesday" automatically scheduled, and the date string is automatically stripped. NLP is done locally, on the app.
You can export these notes as HTML pages if you want, but I generally move notes to Evernote or the prıoject's public Wiki, if I chose to close the project, but that's not a given. Sometimes I just leave them in.
Pagico provides a sync capability through its servers, yet you don't have to use it. It can work nicely over Dropbox for example, but mobile clients won't be able to sync with it.
The application is designed very neatly. Actually, it's just a web view with a dedicated/specialized PHP server running as a different process. It's much more lighter than Electron, yet it works very well.
The developer is also very responsive to bug reports and feedback. They are developing the thing for a very long time and they know what they're doing.
The app is not perfect, of course, but it works very well for what it does. I bought it during pandemic, and it's now my de-facto planning tool.
However, I still use Trello for even-longer term planning and Evernote for "eternal" documents. All three works pretty well for me. I spend maybe ~10 minutes every night to plan for the next day, and I'm happy.
I also want to note that I don't use many of the collaboration features of the app, and it has much more features than I actively use.
The 23 minute video linked on the "ultimate notion setup for 2023" sounds like a great trap to fall into to not actually get anything done. I get the impression some people spend more time configuring these productivity tools instead of actually being productive.
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's also a very good example of why search engines suck today. Everything is stuffed to the gills with right keywords, to get the maximum number of clicks on the affiliate link that is almost certainly embedded in the video description.
Over the last 20 years or so I've tried: index cards, wunderlist, todo.txt, remember the milk, Asana, Any.do, Evernote, Google Notebook, Simplenote, Trello, Workflowy, Google Keep, Bear Notes, org-mode, and probably a dozen others. Three years ago I started using Apple Notes and told my wife "if you see me trying anything else at all, yell at me". I've been pretty happy with it and am much more productive just using something rather than trying to find some magic new tool.
Been using Apple Notes for 8 years now and can't imagine using any other tool at this point. Everything else is too complicated and with distracting thrills, or is too barebones. Notes is the perfect balance, and I like that the notes can be totally offline.
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.
Maybe you know about this but one of the things that helped me with Apple Notes search was discovering there was a 'Find Notes' shortcut action. It allows you to filter by folder while searching by name, body, date created, etc...
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.
In the end there’s actually doing stuff. And there’s putting it on a TODO list. Both are types of activity but only one actually got something real done
Is there an easy way to link other notes in Apple Notes?
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.
Easy way? No. You can create a weird workaround though, on both mac and ios you share the link invite yourself, and then in share options you copy the link and then paste it in your note.
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.
I installed obsidian today and spent the entire time configuring plugins etc. I uninstalled it for something simpler and less about configuration combos
I started with text files in Notepad, then learnt from a friend how to use Freemind to organise notes as hierarchical mindmaps instead. It worked great, but search was broken (DFS but only able to find results in one treepath?!). Years passed, and I needed something to take notes with on mobile, and Google Keep was the simplest fit. But Freemind and Keep were both still too inconvenient on desktop, so at some point I ended up back at text files. I skipped all other note-taking apps over the years because I was convinced by people here who said plaintext was best.
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.
I can also recommend using Syncthing with obsidian. I use it to synchronize my vault to all my devices. I also added it to my existing Raspberry Pi server that's always online, so I always have a distributor instance running and don't need to worry about sync issues.
Obsidian's ecosystem is incredible. You can make Obsidian a queryable database, a longform book editor a la Scrivener, or a gilded tabletop RPG campaign book.
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.
Yep, good reasons to use Logseq. I picked Obsidian over Logseq because of the larger community, and because I thought the former's UI looked suitable for hierarchical notes in main categories, which is my usual approach. I go to the right folder and append to the end of the relevant note. I do like Logseq's more free-flowing, block-tagging, hypertext-journal approach, but thought I didn't really need the journal format for now.
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.
I'm not aware of any extension that gives you a hierarchical sidebar on the left.
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 ;-)
Hah, appreciate it. Although I actually do like finding out about better alternatives and weigh the benefits of switching. It's good to know what people are happy about, even if it isn't quite for oneself.
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.
You maybe already know, but I write it anyway in case you or someone else find it interesting:
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?
> As for the modern version of OneNote, I have given it up. It almost isn't comparable.
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!
> the win32 style full desktop application on Windows, AKA onenote 2021.
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).
I'd tried paper notebooks (including really tiny pocketable ones) and Google Keep before picking up Apple Notes. Notes is the only one I've not had to work at continuing to use—it's just there, and I use it, and it works fine-to-great at everything I use it for, and that's it.
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.
The same thing happens in the workplace, too. My last two jobs have had groups that adopted Notion and tried to use heaps of rules and templates and emojis that they wanted everyone to use to structure and document everything in Notion.
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.
We tried it where I work and had the same result - we've since gone back to boring old Redmine. I do think it's great for personal use though - I use for everything from shopping lists to dream journals (don't judge me ;) ) to 5 year plans.
> It turns into an exercise where the Notion document becomes the goal, rather than a tool to help get work done.
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.
As long as you use Jira and Confluence to track what you are doing and make handy reference notes, they work super good.
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.
I would argue that the performance of Jira being what it is along makes it pretty unsuitable for just taking reference notes. Our onprem hosted instance is pretty slow, which you might blame on server provisioning, except last time I used Jira cloud it was even worse with an empty instance (compared to our at least multiple million tickets instance)
Well Confluence is for the handy notes, which can grow into quality documents if you have them reviewed and updated. Personally never experienced performance issues.
> 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.
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.
> Everything has to have story points assigned to it just so we can say we did an arbitrary number of points per sprint
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.
I can't think of any healthy team dynamic that doesn't require some form of deliverability estimates (this is not limited to engineering), and am very curious how you approach this.
Ideally a good tech lead with a pulse of his team and stack should be able to do it alone. When estimations are crucial they can be further analyzed with more people.
It's the beaurocratic gamification aspect I despise.
That's why you have someone whose job is to make that Notion/Confluence/Dokku who is part designer, part technical writer. They're sometimes called company historians.
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.
Yes! I'm Johnny.Decimal and I'm starting to advocate for the idea of 'the Librarian' at work. You need someone to organise your stuff. That person needs the right skills -- passion, even -- to do that job.
Today that role is filled by either a) nobody or b) the lowest lackey who doesn't give a hoot about the concept.
I think you're referring to "The Parable of the Raft", which describes a man who has built a raft and crossed a river with it debating whether to hold on to the raft or not.
Nothing wrong with spending one's life building a boat if that is what floats your boat. It is the journey, not the destination, where you spend the most time so might as well make it a happy one!
I used to be a total Linux nerd throughout highschool. To the point of being a Gentoo user! On a machine that took 3 days to build KDE.
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.
There was just a post about the distinction between being someone who fiddled with tuning a bike, versus someone who rides a bike - and how ultimately complete devotion to one must preclude the other. (Or the more charitable version, there was only really time in most people’s lives for the serious practice of one side of the hobby, not the other - you can’t be taking apart your bike and putting it back together and be riding it all at the same time)
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)
Same here. I then ended up just using pandoc and a small shell script and it's served as a great static site generator letting me focus on writing my markdown.
I use Trello for car restoration projects, and I’ll admit I lost basically an entire day just trying to get this automated workflow to happen. But after having figured it out, it made things like cataloguing new parts that I need a 0 second automated process vs a 1 minute manual process. Like basically infinite time gotten back.
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.
I have diagnosed ADHD and I have struggled with this, but like someone else said, you have to make sure you don't fall into a hole trying to make one of your pages perfect -- I mean, go for it if that's what you're interested in, but I have accepted that something perfect for me will take refinement and delayed gratification.
I don't use Notion, but I kind of fell down the similar Obsidian rabbit hole.
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.
Obsidian makes a big deal of their graph view, but in the time I've been using it I've never touched it. I really like the WYSIWYG-ish markdown editor and the search seems to actually work. Those are the killer features for me. I tend to just make a new working note every week, copying last week's outstanding to-dos on Monday morning.
I'm more or less in the same boat. I like that app a lot, I even pay for it, but I think the graph view is largely a novelty.
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".
I think it's a different sort of rabbit hole. If you lean in to the graph-based organization and try to build a mind-map, it can get pretty deep. I had to restrain myself when I found organizing every market segment and competitor in my industry, or every technical topic I'd ever come across.
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.
Obsidian's rabbit hole is hidden in the extensions, which are going far deeper than Notion extension-options. It's really such a shame that Notion has no local native extension-ability.
> I get the impression some people spend more time configuring these productivity tools instead of actually being productive.
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.
Or look on amazon, there are so many extremely well selling books based around that very idea. Unfortunately the end result is usually feeling productive by reading the book, but then never actually being productive outside of that.
I see a therapist who specializes in OCD. They believe that the mood journal trend around 2010-2015 led to a lot of people - nearly all of their patients including me - having a compulsion to write down and re-think/overvalue every passing thought.
>The 23 minute video linked on the "ultimate notion setup for 2023" sounds like a great trap to fall into to not actually get anything done. I get the impression some people spend more time configuring these productivity tools instead of actually being productive.
> perfecting my .vimrc instead of actually working on projects. Messing around with static site blog generators when I should actually just be writing content.
I went through some of the video, and I found it interesting that most of the projects and task the presenter is showing are about making videos. There's something borderline ironic in the cyclicality of those youtube people focusing on "productivity" mainly producing videos about how to be productive.
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?
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.
There is value in structure and rules, to clear your mind and give you orientation for your work. But everyone is also different, so you also need to first figure out the structures and rules which are working for you and your situations. Which, yeah..it's an eternal trap of bike sheeding. Flexible tools like notion are very helpful and seductive in those regards. They can help you get your things done, but can also led you astray to the wrong roads.
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'm going to be a little mean here, but I think it needs to be said: "How to be productive in Notion" videos and template sales sites and such are always made by boringly unsuccessful people. I would love to see a broader intensive study on this topic, but just from my observations: its youtube and tik tok creators with a few thousand viewers, people who may actually be rather busy but don't drive much success from what they do. Running on a treadmill (and spending hours a week planning that run) so to speak.
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.
I've recently started using Notion in a similar way that your engineer uses Markdown files. Apple Notes is great and I have moved away from paper notes simply because there is no search and it can be hard to flip back through books to find what was said in a meeting six weeks ago. My favourite thing about paper notes is that I engage more with the meeting since I have something to do with my hands.
Which is why I just ditched scrivener for a markdown editor with minimal features for my writing. Configurable tools can lead you to spend all your time configuring them instead of using them
I actually found YC advice on startups to work great in real life as well. Afaik YC is all for execution and thus write great material for getting things done. Best advice ever for me was the whole single metric thing - pick a metric, makes sure it goes up x-% every week.
But is he? I mean his linkedin is, and I mean this with no malice whatsoever, quite average compared to the effort that goes into maintaining such a system?
The software that's running my life right now is ToDoist.
I have daily chores, I need to remember to do at different times of the day. Other things are every 3 days. Others are on specific days. Others are every k weeks.
If I need to remember to do something, it goes on the list with a specific day and time I want to do it by. At the end of every day I review what's left and either do it or postpone it.
Cleaning a checklist works for me. Do what works for you.
I’ve been a paid Todoist user for years - probably 6 or 7 years I would guess. I like almost everything about it but it drives me crazy that they won’t add blocking/blocked by flags and the ability to assign a task to more than one project - both of which, incidentally, Notion can do.
I’ll keep using Todoist for personal stuff but for shared work projects Notion works better for me. It feels like they just fundamentally chose a great set of abstractions. I do wish their mobile UX was better, though.
I've quite liked their mobile UX actually! On Android, I have an entire screen devoted to the widget. I swipe to the right, read the list, add to it, check things off. I rarely open the actual app.
Todoist and Obsidian for me. I linked them with extensions. Obsidian is my notebook and Todoist keeps me on track. People that go this deep into pkms aren't efficient workers. They can be extremely helpful, but this sounds frankly unhealthy and unhelpful.
I use Trello to organize my life. At the moment I cannot imagine what kind of features an alternative would have to offer for me to consider switching.
Hmm -- can you link directly to Trello lists/cards? Wondering if you could leverage a Chrome link on the home screen if that would then throw you over to Trello automatically? Not sure.
I use Trello for a lot of things. I'm not saying notion is this thing, but customizing the dessign to the workflow works better than One App To Rule Them All.
My go to example here is grocery lists. Most "productivity" apps have a checklist feature, but thats super bare bones. I used to use Cinnamon, but its been taken off the store (anylist is a my current meager replacement). What made it _good_ was that instead of "done/not done" state checklists offer was that it modeled an inventory flow. Pantry -> Buy List -> Shopping cart -> Pantry.
The shopping process is simple and repeatable. I start with the Pantry list, which describes all the stuff I expect in a well-stocked pantry, and step one is to confirm I have them. Anything I don't have (or need more of) I move to the buy list. Later, at the store, the Buy list is my guide to what goes in the shopping cart.
This is very similar to the original intention of Kanban, but:
- the UI is much smoother than trello. Just swiping, no drag and drop. And there's an undo button
- the metadata is customized to the process, and can decorate the UI with info. Prices forecast your total at the checkout register, grouping by aisle or location makes it easier to grab the right stuff and confirm you've grabbed all the stuff in one go.
- after a period of inactivity all items in the cart move back to the pantry automatically
Trello, at its core is designed for team project management, with many tasks occurring in parallel. The UI is designed to visualize the amount of work being done and where the bottlenecks live. It's very good at this! It even lets you design custom workflows to model the exact work being done. But there's always going to be a tensions in place working against it -- making apps that work for everything usually end up great at nothing, and its product market fit seems to be agile software development, so thats where its UI and feature set lean towards.
So IDK if you switch as much as slowly add to the pile of apps.
I built minimal.app as the antithesis of over-planning, over-documenting, over-organizing, and over-thinking. The feature that keeps the mind open is the Note Lifetime, whereby notes die when you don’t engage with them [1].
This is in contrast to notion, evernote, et al where writers collect stuff and live in these information silos, trapped by the confines of their tools. Of course many (most?) thoughtful people can pull themselves out of these traps with discipline, but I prefer my tools devoid of these slippery slopes that make discipline a necessity [2].
I use Minimal to “plan my life” just like the characters in this story, except every time I open the app it feels like an empty slate, a blank canvas, so new projects can take new directions and new mindsets are less constrained by prior mindsets. As the designer and builder, my goal is to capture the best of a paper notebook and the best of software. I know I’m not executing perfectly, but this is a fun and exciting guiding principle.
[1] – Also the interface is just clean with features hidden away until they are needed.
[2] – Just like a well-architected structure makes the resident by default open-minded, comfortable, and joyous, our tools similarly have a “gravity” or default effect on the user. It’s very important to observe these patterns.
[Final aside] – Anyone who wants to can get a free membership and unlimited access tk premium features by joining the beta program - do it at minimal.app/#beta if you want to check Minimal out.
Dying notes are a fascinating thought, and relate to some of the cruft aspects I've seen with any sort of task-tracking.
That said, in my usual note-taking app, I have things like recipes I might make once in a blue moon, and I'd be very annoyed if I lost my late grandma's lasagna recipe.
Based on the site, it looks like it moves them to a “deleted notes” folder rather than actually completely destroying them.
I’m not sure if it is locally hosted or a cloud thing. If it is a cloud thing, having noted eventually degrade might be a nice reminder that like any cloud thing it could just up and vanish at some point. That recipe is probably due for long term storage.
That is an interesting idea, but not something I would ever want in a notes app. A note may be important but never opened.
For example, I have a note in Craft with my bike serial number and a picture of me standing next to it. If my bike is ever stolen and recovered, this note is proof of ownership. I have not opened this note since creating it, because my bike has not been stolen, but I would obviously hate to lose it.
For one thing, it's common for enthusiasts to replace stock components. A serial number stamped onto the frame isn't useful all the time, especially if the frame itself is secondhand. If someone takes your >$2,000 carbon wheelset then you're SOL, likely no matter what.
Looking at the site, I guess the dead notes might just be hidden in a “delete” folder instead of actually gone forever, which seems like a reasonable compromise.
The "note lifetime" image on their page mentions pinning notes to keep them from being deleted, but if that keeps it persistently at the top of the list it's probably not what you'd want either.
The minimal.app idea would make more sense for a ToDo list app than a note app, I think. ToDo items that aren’t either checked off or interacted with after a time are likely not either urgent or important and can be auto-deleted.
I just use Sublime and a notes folder containing text files groups in folders by topic. The search function is excellent, and I don't need anything more.
I keep my root notes folder open as a project window, and just use CMD+T to find by filename, or CMD+Shift+F to "superfind" across all of my files by word or Regex.
I love this! I'm starting to feel this is a solution to a lot of info-overload stress in our lives. I'm making an iOS app with the same slant: every day has its own list, so you start fresh every day, or you can add to your tomorrow's list at night so you start the day prepared. I also added a bullet-journal-like view for the month and it all adds up to a lot less stress than what I've been doing before (the testflight is at https://testflight.apple.com/join/t5ZpRV2l )
I presume you were scratching your own itch but maybe you can answer a question for me, why are the majority of productivity apps on here only available on IOS?
I think it comes down to business mechanics. I think it’s often the case that Apple-ecosystem customers are more willing to pay for a product, allowing the company to have a direct relationship with stakeholders. It’s quite nice to charge a customer money, respond to their questions and feedback, grow together, succeed together. Advertising and other non-paying solutions do not have such powerful interest alignment, particularly for smaller and more artisanal brands. So business are choosing customers that support this more harmonious alignment by going platform-specific.
(In my case, I simply don’t have enough resources to support Windows, Android, and web versions. For Minimal, Windows is the most requested second platform.)
Workflowy is what I have been using for almost a decade. I think the reason it works so well is because it is simple. Anti features are so powerful in an app like this otherwise you can spend all your time tweaking and coming up with the perfect system.
Have they added any way to have multiple root nodes? After using Workflowy for a decade on and off my tree is cluttered with notes and I want to start afresh but not lose them all. Keeping 1500+ nodes hanging around also slows the app down.
Yes this is what I do also - But reading this thread is perhaps making me wonder if this is an unusual approach? To me its very normal to know what I need to do, and very very rarely do I miss something, a task etc.
Shameless plug, but if anyone here enjoys Notion but finds it a bit overwhelming for managing their life, we designed Supernotes[1] to be a bit more settled / less trying to be "the everything app". We just released a new version yesterday that includes some fun features like "view depth" which might appeal to HNers. It's also markdown based, so less lock-in to a proprietary JSON format than Notion (though still not OSS – recommend Logseq if that's what you're looking for).
I think it is ironic that the notes for usage for Notion is in the embedded youtube video called 'the ultimate notion setup for 2023', which seems to me to be text explained in a video.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 319 ms ] threadI love Notion because it gives me the ability to make "lightweight" notes/pads fast. I've since learned to utilize the linked database features which makes it easier to organize notes, tasks and projects.
At some point however, it feels like it just becomes busy-work to make new boxes to check, new links, relations and what-not.
To me the beauty is in the simplicity, cross-platform capabilities and relative ease with which I can create and access simple notes fast.
EDIT: I forgot templates. I use 2 or 3 templates for notes and "new projects". I never use more than 5 columns for my projects/notes either. And I don't have any "dashboards" besides my task-list (that I can sort as kanban with four status-indicators - basic stuff).
Some of these really fancy setups look nice, but they strike me as adding too much friction to the whole process.
One list which has everything. No apps, no workflow, no SaaS fees. Works better than anything else I've tried.
And it all went into the same git repo as my previous vim based .plan ;)
I just wish it had a decent vi mode!
I don’t see why I’d need an admin dashboard and a DBMS to effectively prioritize what I need to accomplish in 16 hours.
It is likely that there will be some use cases for power users, however one must justify the development and opportunity costs associated with that.
https://www.notion.so/help/export-your-content
https://www.notion.so/help/back-up-your-data
> one must justify the development and opportunity costs
GDPR
A quick search shows me that Notion exports can be used to populate Obsidian [1] (which implies that there's not substantial information loss).
[1] - https://forum.obsidian.md/t/notion-2-obsidian-migration-inst...
We support Markdown/CSV "plain text" export, a semantically-rich HTML export, and a PDF export which is just the HTML export rendered as a PDF.
https://www.notion.so/help/export-your-content
https://selfhosting.quest/search?q=wiki
But also, I use Headscale so I'm self-hosting my tailscale as well.
As a self-hoster, I would totally recommend to the average person to self-host services on your LAN, and just use tailscale to extend your LAN beyond your house (for example on your laptop and phone) so you can get to things when you're not at home. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...
My generation knows what a file is.
Generation after me does that.
I actually do regularly go back and search my notes and journals within Notion. Knowing that I will be able to do it if I ever leave Notion is comforting.
P.S. If anyone at Notion is reading this, please work on your search. It could be so much more useful.
sancta simplicitas
- raw text files
- raw markdown files
- + homemade server rendering the markdown live
- Obsidian
- Notion
I stick with Notion because it really is infinitely configurable. I rarely use 99% of the plugins but I have, in the past, used their API to populate the show the results of my experiments straight from my Python code to a Notion Table. Super convenient. I take regular (every six months or so) hard exports that I save to disk in case the company goes belly up tomorrow. I'm comfortable with it.
It could be a fraction of the features, like just text editing and good lists, and you could always switch to editing markdown if you needed to.
Have you checked out the mobile toolbar? It makes indent/unindenting list items easy.
We didn't pay for this or incentivize it, it's an original story from the press.
Stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you? "What did you do this weekend?, Well nothing special really, but I got a 3000 line Notion document mapping every step of it". Can we stop attempting to export every workplace fad into personal lives?
Just enjoy your free time, focus on free, not on time. Compulsive busywork is not a replacement for spontaneity.
Beyond the thrill of acquiring and holding it, it would no doubt be more useful than simply admiring it. Compare it to say a sports trophy, that's something you simply admire although of course you have the memories of the journey to win it as well.
Data and tracking on the other hand feels practical and usable in the present and the future, as well as something to look back on or "admire".
Would you think less of people who put the hours into winning a sports trophy or writing a book (that they presumably never read or use themselves)?
I think about all the things i'll track, then realise just how disruptive and time consuming that will be and give up.
I have a long term passion project called Navigoals (Navigoals.com) built around the concept. It’s like a habit tracker but I organize all my habits/actions into a massive DAG so if I track something at a low level it also bubbles up to a high level goal. I can track instances of things or durations of things (time tracking).
I also have an unpublished iOS version with Apple Watch support, using the Watch is quicker to track stuff.
I realize to many this sounds insane but PLEASE email me waprin@gmail.com if you’re down to watch a demo over video chat.
As far as the people who think I’m crazy, here’s why I’m passionate about this project. I really had trouble focusing my whole life so as an adult I bit the bullet and got ADHD meds. Those helped a LOT at the immediate problem of focusing but literally made me crazy, very crazy, almost ruined my life. During recovery I decided I would meditate 5 minutes every day and journal one paragraph every day, which I used a habit tracker for. This was a key part of my recovery. That got me thinking - if a little tracking saved my life, what can a lot of tracking do? I also needed to better manage my time and goals without the usage of any medication.
People will say the data is pointless if you just admire it, not the case. I noticed in weight loss subs , people strongly advocate starting with food tracking. Just the act of forcing honesty with yourself about what you’re eating will change your relationship with food. In a completely different domain, the most important step to playing pro or semi-pro poker is diligently tracking all results. Same reason - forces honesty. And also in both cases, surfaces trends (e.g. I eat or play poorly certain times of day).
I track over 200 of my actions every day and I strive for my apps to make it quick to do. However it’s important to understand this does not turn me into a robot. My brain is so naturally all over the place , I wander and do random things so much, that just forcing myself to use apps to have _some_ structure and discipline puts me in the balance of a rigid life and an improvised one.
I am realizing I’m in the minority, most people I demo my apps to say, “that seems cool…for a certain type of person.” So, open to connecting with certain types of people.
Both times I did that they were extremely helpful to achieve my goals. Too much of what we do is on autopilot. Noticing what you're doing is a helpful way to course correct before you're 10k over budget or 5 pounds heavier.
You have to do it in a healthy manner though, you can't obsess about tracking. Be gentle with yourself and know you'll make mistakes, both in tracking and what you're doing.
I will share some personal experience on this journey.
I like to be organized where I need to. I worked up a TODO list habit and a note taking habit over time. At first it was pen and paper. Then plain text notes. Then Evernote. And now it's Notion.
Regardless of the tool, there were times when I overdid it. I became too meticulous. The TODO list, instead of keeping me organized and my mind free, became the source of my work and worry.
I iterated over time, and have built up a system that works for me. Whenever I feel that something becomes too heavy, I trim it. Notion is nice because it allows me to be flexible. It's more like a notebook with superpowers than Jira and Asana.
If you're obsessive and don't catch yourself, Notion can become the source of troubles. But so can cataloging your CD collection.
I recently shared my TODO list workflow with someone. I have a daily and weekly template and they're quite involved. The person was surprised asked me if I ever get stressed if I don't do it all. Not at all, I said. What I don't do gets thrown away and I start over tomorrow. It keeps me structured and organized, but I am not its slave.
It's not how involved your system is. It's how much it works for you, vs working against you.
I wear a Garmin sportswatch so keep an eye on the subreddit. If you go there you’ll see daily threads about arbitrary metrics like “sleep score”, “body battery”, hrv and vo2 max. People obsess over the numbers without really thinking to take a step back and thinking about how accurate the data is and whether or not it’s actually meaningful in any real terms.
Definitely a lot of folks out there becoming slaves to this sort of thing.
The long term data can be interesting. Moved apartments and saw my elevation climbed stat went up as the local area was not so flat
I do think it's pointless to put all of it in a computer. Some things do better with a whiteboard(or an electronic version of such like Boogie Board) or a paper journal. The computer is for if you genuinely want to edit, rearrange, and structure the data. It constantly tempts you to do so.
First of all, Pagico is really cross platform. It has clients for macOS, Linux and Windows, plus iOS (I use it on macOS, iOS and Linux). It allows me to group the tasks either in a free floating Inbox, or in their respective projects.
I can combine all these projects' tasks in a single view, or see them in their independent contexts. This allows me to see my whole workload (private + professional) and plan my life accordingly, even for future.
Every project can have its lists, notes, files and schedule. This allows me to take small notes and track my projects and carry these notes everywhere. Hence, I don't lose my mental state about a project. It also tracks project progress and your working patterns, like which days you're more active on the projects by analyzing your activity on said project.
Tasks can be added pretty quickly while planning, even with some NLP support. "Do this. Next tuesday" automatically scheduled, and the date string is automatically stripped. NLP is done locally, on the app.
You can export these notes as HTML pages if you want, but I generally move notes to Evernote or the prıoject's public Wiki, if I chose to close the project, but that's not a given. Sometimes I just leave them in.
Pagico provides a sync capability through its servers, yet you don't have to use it. It can work nicely over Dropbox for example, but mobile clients won't be able to sync with it.
The application is designed very neatly. Actually, it's just a web view with a dedicated/specialized PHP server running as a different process. It's much more lighter than Electron, yet it works very well.
The developer is also very responsive to bug reports and feedback. They are developing the thing for a very long time and they know what they're doing.
The app is not perfect, of course, but it works very well for what it does. I bought it during pandemic, and it's now my de-facto planning tool.
However, I still use Trello for even-longer term planning and Evernote for "eternal" documents. All three works pretty well for me. I spend maybe ~10 minutes every night to plan for the next day, and I'm happy.
I also want to note that I don't use many of the collaboration features of the app, and it has much more features than I actively use.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is me with emacs.
I feel attacked.
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?
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.
https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzX...
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.
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.
But is he? I mean his linkedin is, and I mean this with no malice whatsoever, quite average compared to the effort that goes into maintaining such a system?
This might be peak /r/LinkedInLunatics
I have daily chores, I need to remember to do at different times of the day. Other things are every 3 days. Others are on specific days. Others are every k weeks.
If I need to remember to do something, it goes on the list with a specific day and time I want to do it by. At the end of every day I review what's left and either do it or postpone it.
Cleaning a checklist works for me. Do what works for you.
I’ll keep using Todoist for personal stuff but for shared work projects Notion works better for me. It feels like they just fundamentally chose a great set of abstractions. I do wish their mobile UX was better, though.
My go to example here is grocery lists. Most "productivity" apps have a checklist feature, but thats super bare bones. I used to use Cinnamon, but its been taken off the store (anylist is a my current meager replacement). What made it _good_ was that instead of "done/not done" state checklists offer was that it modeled an inventory flow. Pantry -> Buy List -> Shopping cart -> Pantry.
The shopping process is simple and repeatable. I start with the Pantry list, which describes all the stuff I expect in a well-stocked pantry, and step one is to confirm I have them. Anything I don't have (or need more of) I move to the buy list. Later, at the store, the Buy list is my guide to what goes in the shopping cart.
This is very similar to the original intention of Kanban, but:
- the UI is much smoother than trello. Just swiping, no drag and drop. And there's an undo button - the metadata is customized to the process, and can decorate the UI with info. Prices forecast your total at the checkout register, grouping by aisle or location makes it easier to grab the right stuff and confirm you've grabbed all the stuff in one go. - after a period of inactivity all items in the cart move back to the pantry automatically
Trello, at its core is designed for team project management, with many tasks occurring in parallel. The UI is designed to visualize the amount of work being done and where the bottlenecks live. It's very good at this! It even lets you design custom workflows to model the exact work being done. But there's always going to be a tensions in place working against it -- making apps that work for everything usually end up great at nothing, and its product market fit seems to be agile software development, so thats where its UI and feature set lean towards.
So IDK if you switch as much as slowly add to the pile of apps.
This is in contrast to notion, evernote, et al where writers collect stuff and live in these information silos, trapped by the confines of their tools. Of course many (most?) thoughtful people can pull themselves out of these traps with discipline, but I prefer my tools devoid of these slippery slopes that make discipline a necessity [2].
I use Minimal to “plan my life” just like the characters in this story, except every time I open the app it feels like an empty slate, a blank canvas, so new projects can take new directions and new mindsets are less constrained by prior mindsets. As the designer and builder, my goal is to capture the best of a paper notebook and the best of software. I know I’m not executing perfectly, but this is a fun and exciting guiding principle.
[1] – Also the interface is just clean with features hidden away until they are needed.
[2] – Just like a well-architected structure makes the resident by default open-minded, comfortable, and joyous, our tools similarly have a “gravity” or default effect on the user. It’s very important to observe these patterns.
[Final aside] – Anyone who wants to can get a free membership and unlimited access tk premium features by joining the beta program - do it at minimal.app/#beta if you want to check Minimal out.
That said, in my usual note-taking app, I have things like recipes I might make once in a blue moon, and I'd be very annoyed if I lost my late grandma's lasagna recipe.
I’m not sure if it is locally hosted or a cloud thing. If it is a cloud thing, having noted eventually degrade might be a nice reminder that like any cloud thing it could just up and vanish at some point. That recipe is probably due for long term storage.
The bottom is stuff from years ago. It can be nice to revisit
That is an interesting idea, but not something I would ever want in a notes app. A note may be important but never opened.
For example, I have a note in Craft with my bike serial number and a picture of me standing next to it. If my bike is ever stolen and recovered, this note is proof of ownership. I have not opened this note since creating it, because my bike has not been stolen, but I would obviously hate to lose it.
Why not just include a photo of the receipt as proof of ownership?
(In my case, I simply don’t have enough resources to support Windows, Android, and web versions. For Minimal, Windows is the most requested second platform.)
Counterpoint: Turning the important things into a checklist so you don't forget about them, and get them done quickly frees up time to live your life.
I wouldn't even pay that for the full app to own for life.
I know how handy it is.
But I think about the simplicity of it, and it offends me to pay so much for the ability to do something which I feel ought to be a standard thing.
$49 is nothing to most here. It's doable for me. But there are countries - many - where that's a month's median wage.
$49 for a blockbuster game - sure. It's optional, there were hundreds of thousands of hours of work put into it, etc.
Little foldy triangles costing the same, and you don't even own the software? Nah.
I usually prune my tree every few years. But 1500 nodes should be pretty OK.
[1] https://supernotes.app/changelog/