One of the most common refrains that that people don’t “get” Notion until it changes their lives. Then people love it. The make free templates for the community. They make video after video on the tips and tricks of Notion. But many people are missing Notion’s super-power, which in my opinion, is clarity through simplification.
Is Notion the “Best?”
If you ask the wrong question, you’ll get the wrong answer every time. And people want to know if Notion is the best. Is it the best:
- Checklist App?
- Task Manager?
- Calendar?
- Habit Tracker?
- Process Builder?
- Word Processor?
- Spreadsheet Editor?
- Database Software?
- Library / Media Storage System?
- Overall Productivity App?
- Team-Coordinating App?
- Wiki Creator?
- Website / Blog Editor?
The answer: No. It’s not. It’s not supposed to be. It’s not supposed to replace a dozen specialized pieces of software. And just because you theoretically could get Notion to do the things in this list, doesn’t mean you should.
Let Google Calendar be your calendar. Let ToDoist be your task management app. Let Evernote be your Library / Media Storage app. Let Obsidian be your research app. Don’t make Notion into something that it’s not. Don’t make it into the multi-tool of software just so you can brag to your minimalist friends that you only have one app on your iPhone. The goal of Notion is to simplify the chaos in your life, not force you to divest yourself of every helpful tool you posses.
The Information Tipping Point & Notion
Somewhere around 2005 the Western world hit a tipping point, where we started to have more information than we could possibly absorb. Our brains are hard-wired to pursue knowledge, inspiration, beauty, and wisdom from any available source, reveling in the joy of new-found insights. People have been doing this for thousands of years, but recently that balance switched. Now we’re bombarded by media, news, photos, memes, and videos in a never-ending, ever-present avalanche of stimulation. Our brains weren’t made to handle it, and we have a really difficult time moderating or controlling the inputs.
But in true squirrel-brained fashion, people started keeping track of every peice of information. Every photo ever taken in stored in terrabytes upon terrabytes in the cloud, never again to be seen (but it’s safe). We save thousands of posts. Podcasts are for dishes, music for workouts, audiobooks are for every commute. But that doesn’t mean that this information is important, or that we’ll ever want to find it again. The OneNotes and Evernotes of personal management promise that we can store all the information we’ve ever been intrigued by (shiny object syndrome) and will be able to find it at a moments notice. But that’s not what we really need for our day-to-day lives (don’t get me wrong here – I use OneNote a lot, but it’s not the right tool for organizing your life, in my opinion).
Let Notion be Notion.
So then you have Notion. It’s flexible, and fun, and you don’t need to be able to code to build the digital equivalent of a bullet journal. But what it does is it helps your human brain summarize, prioritize and simplify the data avalanche into something that can assessed, focused, harnessed and leveraged to help you simplify, organize and prioritize your life.
Don’t put your entire life into Notion, just the parts that you care about, and where you really want to see progress. You can build a habit tracker (or better yet, take an existing habit tracker template like this one and modify it to serve your needs) of what you really want to focus on. You can build spreadsheets that simplify your life. You can use the collapsible blocks to outline and summarize articles and books you enjoy and want to remember. But don’t try to track everything in Notion or you’ll move back into the state of overwhelm that drove you to consider a personal productivity tool like Notion in the first place.
Here’s what I am using Notion for:
- Habit Tracker – I want to have some daily activities – Kettlebell workout, Stretching, Journaling, Reading and Prayer. My other work tasks I manage using Microsoft ToDo and Google Calendar. And that’s OK.
- Reading List – I love keeping a list of active and completed books. It helps me to see what I am enjoying, and what books I need to complete.
- Kids Meal Plan – At 6:15AM, my brain isn’t that great. Having a pre-planned meal list for the kids is a lifesaver for me.
- Investing & Dividends – It’s a simple spreadsheet, but it helped me get clarity on my retirement portfolio and set up an investing strategy for the next 9 months. This would not have happened without Notion, and it will save me a good 60 hours over the course of this year.
Conclusion
Notion is great. It’s aesthetically pleasing. It’s easy to work with. It has just enough friction to force you to simplify, prioritize, and reflect on what you’re doing – which is the real key to understanding and organizing your life.