Notion is one of the new hot apps at the moment. It’s gone from being a niche newcomer to increasingly mainstream. Over the years that Notion has been active many have preached the virtues of this application – and it does have many. Alongside this, many people (even those who love Notion) have lamented its flaws. Many of these have been addressed as Notion has been relentless in it’s update release schedule. There is however one big problem with Notion that I believe will never be removed. Notion’s biggest problem will never be solved because it is fundamental to the core of what the app is.
You see with Notion, its big selling point – its USP, is also it’s biggest problem. Notion is endlessly customisable.
This is a major strength. Do you want to plan and track your reading lists? Notion can do that. Do you want a note taking app? Notion can do it. A Task Manager? Yup, Notion can help you there too. A social media publishing manager? Notion! A content creation planner and tracker? A Movie collection database? A personal Website? A new tab page for your web browser? Notion can do all of this and more.
You can do anything with Notion. This is its big strength. But it’s a big problem too. I cannot put it better than Ian Malcom does in Jurassic Park.
“…your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park
ToDoist has limitations. Evernote has limitations. In fact every productivity app I can think of right now has two things that Notion doesn’t really. A purpose and limitations. Notion isn’t really designed to be anything apart from a fully customisable, block based database tool. And, with the amount of customisation on offer, there is little that you cannot do.
This has three problems:
- Everything has to be built from scratch (or borrowed/bought from a template)
- Everything you build will be less good than a bespoke application.
- Everything in Notion is treated as a ‘page’ by the app and so all things are equal.
So, I can build a habit tracker in Notion. But it won’t be as good as a dedicated habit tracker. I can build a task manager, but it won’t be as effective a dedicated app. Etc Etc… And building all of these takes an awful lot of time. Yes you can buy templates but that can get expensive very quickly and every template will need some tweaking to meet your needs. And, with everything in Notion, finding things becomes tricky – especially with quick search. Notion doesn’t know that something is a task or a project or habit or an article or a note or notebook. Everything is just a page and if everything is in Notion, the number of search results will increase and increase. So finding anything will take longer and longer.
Notion is a good app and it’s one that I would recommend to people. However, in order to so effectively, we need to place limits on our use of it. What those limits are can vary and I’ll discuss this in a later post. But, to use Notion without getting sucked in to constant tinkering and building without actually doing the work – set limits on how you use it and what you use it for.
I don’t know about Notion but was reading this right after reading a chapter of “You’re Only Human” (Kelly Kapic). Here’s something I’m going to mull in the light of my morning’s reading – “If we are ever going to have a healthy Christian response to the challenge of time, stress and anxiety, we don’t just need better time management; we need to rediscover the fear of the Lord”.
Discuss.
(p. 135)
Yes. I have a post coming on Thursday that addresses this in part, though I am looking through the lens of grace. The headline is that our issues with time, stress and anxiety stem from wanting to be like God.