First, Garland Coulson is a dang cool name!

I'm intrigued at how much success you've had using it as CRM. I keep wavering between migrating some of our shared work excel lists to Airtable or Notion. Your description of 'database meets wiki' is perfect and it's why I like Notion so much. I haven't tried to create heavier relational databases (like a functional CRM) in Notion though. I think of Airtable as the gold standard of 'no code' custom light databases. I know that Notion tables aren't as functional as Airtable's nor does it have the reporting/charting/dashboarding functionality. But of course Airtable doesn't have any knowledge base function beyond note fields in its tables and you can't embed and nest content like Notion.

My impression is that if I try to build a fairly intricate relational database in Notion that it'd be fairly easy to accidentally break, especially if non-nerds are collaborating with it. Apparently your experience is different?

Also FYI, Notion reps have indicated that gantt charts and backlinks ("what links to here") are on the horizon. I'm excited for those.



Garland Coulson wrote:

I use Notion every day.

While it isn't perfect, what I love about it is that it lets me create
my own solutions for myself and my clients. I usually describe it to
people as database meets wiki. I use it for task management, CRM,
workflow process management, checklists and a lot more.

Not sure I saw this mentioned anywhere in this topic, but one of the main reasons I'm considering a major switch to Notion is that it allows for real time collaboration. Out of all the tools I'm aware that allow for this, Notion by far has the most robust feature set for organizing data.

I didn't get beyond their privacy policy:

"As a condition of your use of the Service, you grant Notion a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide, transferable, sub-licenseable license to access, use, host, cache, store, reproduce, transmit, display, publish, distribute, modify and adapt and create derivative works (either alone or as part of a collective work) from your Content. As part of the foregoing license grant you agree that (a) the other users of the Service shall have the right to comment on and/or tag your public Content that you make available to them and/or to use, publish, display, modify or include a copy of your public Content that you make available to them, and (b) we have the right to make any of your public Content available to third parties, so that those third parties can distribute, make derivative works of, comment on and/or analyze your Content on other media and services (either alone or as part of a collective work); except that the foregoing (a) and (b) shall not apply to any of your Content that you post privately for non-public display on the Service."

https://www.notion.so/Terms-and-Privacy-28ffdd083dc3473e9c2da6ec011b58ac

That alone is enough to stop me from ever using Notion.

That is a really nasty policy. Goodbye Notion.

I favor Dynalist's policy. Under "Data Ownership":

"You own the data you put into Dynalist. By putting your information into Dynalist, you do not grant us any special rights with regard to that information."

Simon wrote:

I didn't get beyond their privacy policy:

The Notion T&Cs also begin by stating that your data is yours. I think that the license verbiage quoted refers to information that is put into the general Workspace section. After that language was shared here, I moved everything into the Private section within Notion. Note the last clause of this long paragraph in the Notion T&Cs:

"As a condition of your use of the Service, you grant Notion a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide, transferable, sub-licenseable license to access, use, host, cache, store, reproduce, transmit, display, publish, distribute, modify and adapt and create derivative works (either alone or as part of a collective work) from your Content. As part of the foregoing license grant you agree that (a) the other users of the Service shall have the right to comment on and/or tag your public Content that you make available to them and/or to use, publish, display, modify or include a copy of your public Content that you make available to them, and (b) we have the right to make any of your public Content available to third parties, so that those third parties can distribute, make derivative works of, comment on and/or analyze your Content on other media and services (either alone or as part of a collective work); except that the foregoing (a) and (b) shall not apply to any of your Content that you post privately for non-public display on the Service."

I don't know enough to assess whether this language generally is similar to that of other websites with public and private sections. I did a quick check of Trello, where users can designate Boards as public or private. Here's what Trello's policy says:

"Please be aware that some boards can be made publicly available, meaning any content posted on that board, including information about you, can be publicly viewed and indexed by and returned in search results of search engines. You can check the board settings at any time to confirm whether a particular board is public or private."

I don't mean to suggest that Notion's terms are better or worse than those of similar services. Unlike Trello, where Boards are designated as "Private" or "Public," Notion seems to designate sections as "Private" or "Workspace." At the very least, I think Notion should make it much clearer that anything not posted in the "Private" section can be shared.

Simon wrote:

I didn't get beyond their privacy policy:

Oh myyyy, i love the cloud.
In german cloud rhymes with stealing (in fact it doesnt rhyme, it is exactly the same pronounciation).

How can any company use such a tool?

exatty95 wrote:

After that language was shared here, I
moved everything into the Private section within Notion.

That may not be enough:

"Any content stored on the Service will be stored indefinitely, unless it is explicitly deleted or unless otherwise set forth in a separate agreement with an Enterprise (as defined below). This process is described under "Termination"."

https://www.notion.so/Terms-and-Privacy-28ffdd083dc3473e9c2da6ec011b58ac (under 1. Content, last paragraph)

If you have once made the content public, I'm not sure how irrevocable that is other than deleting it from the platform. You'd need to check with notion.

I have an immense dislike of any organisation that sets such a draconian content policy. IMO this indicates their business values and it is not something I would go anywhere near.

It reaffirms an old truth, "always read the small print"!

Notion just got a very unfavorable review in PC Magazine:

https://www.pcmag.com/review/370368/notion

xtabber wrote:

Notion just got a very unfavorable review in PC Magazine:

https://www.pcmag.com/review/370368/notion

I'm really trying not to be a fanboy here but I got a good chuckle out of the summary.

From 'cons'- "Few options for customizing views or organizing content."

That tells me right there that the reviewer just doesn't get it. That he doesn't think notion is good at precisely what its core competency is made me stop reading the rest.

If anything, Notion's ability to mix wiki, database, and outliner (with transclusion!!!) makes it hard to use only because you have endless organization possibilities instead of being forced to organize one way... Notion knows this and that is why they have a ton of templates to make it easier to grok the potential. The reviewer didn't seem to like the abundance of those templates either.

I've been enjoying most the critiques on this site as there are definitely real cons to notion but this review is like saying Excel is bad at math. I'm annoyed that this writer gets paid for this and Paul J Miller produces superior content as a side hobby.

There are definitely some valid criticisms in that review, but many of the points are ridiculous, e.g., the claim that Evernote has more customizable views than Notion.

I think the criticisms of the editor are largely off-base. Notion's editor is extremely well designed and in my opinion probably the best compromise between Markdown-style and arbitrary formatting-style apps, in the sense that it's WYSIWYG but also easy to draft documents with actual structure, and easy to add structure later by transforming blocks if you start by just writing down a bunch of quick text-only notes. (I wish the same kind of editor was available as a standalone desktop tool or an Emacs mode, actually.)

It can be hard to figure out how to set it up though, which is the usual Achilles heel of most powerful information managers. I think they're aware of this and clearly trying to straddle a fine line between user-friendliness and power.

xtabber wrote:

Notion just got a very unfavorable review in PC Magazine:

https://www.pcmag.com/review/370368/notion

xtabber wrote:
Notion just got a very unfavorable review in PC Magazine:

https://www.pcmag.com/review/370368/notion

I thought maybe I reacted too harshly about the summary so I skimmed the article. Turns out I wasn't harsh enough....

Notion instead uses collapsible dropdowns. In the image below, for example, you can see there's a page called Reading List, a subsection called Media, and then subpages for Articles, Podcasts, Essay Resources, and so forth. Effectively, you could have three panels: Reading List > Media > Articles. I expected that clicking on Media would show a preview of all the subpages it contains. But no. You can't even select Media. If you try, Notion automatically selects the subpage directly below it instead.

She couldn't select 'Media' because that's a database, not a page, and what she is calling 'subpages' under 'media' are custom views of that database. In her screenshot, the views have little dot icons instead of big page icons to make this even more clear. She doesn't even have a basic understanding of the difference between Notion databases and stand-alone pages, which honestly isn't that hard to understand after glancing at a few templates or spend 3 minutes in the 'getting started' material.

Other options for your page are tables, boards (like kanban boards), lists, calendars, and galleries. Jeez Louise, those sound a whole lot like templates.

Again, those aren't options for pages, those are custom view options for databases, which you can embed inline into pages. The irony is those templates exist to make these distinctions clear yet she keeps complaining about too many templates as she continues to showcase ignorance of Notion's basic capabilities.

Maybe a quarter of the options shouldn't be among all those choices at all. They should be text that you can format. Who scrolls through a list of content types to make a bullet list? That ought to be a format you can choose from a formatting bar. But that's not how Notion does it.

So Notion created a really slick /slash/ interface which lets you instantly transform content types without leaving the keyboard, which is a great alternative to menu options and truly one of it's uniquely great features... and she would prefer to grab the mouse and hunt through a ribbon. Who scrolls through a list of content types to make a bullet list? Nobody after like the 2nd time they've scrolled and selected that. We are hitting slash-b and creating a bullet list instantly without breaking flow.

Notion continues to be pushy as you create content. Select a table, for example, and you automatically get a three-by-three table with headers filled in. You can add more columns and rows, and you can change the headers, but it's endlessly frustrating that you can't do that from the get-go. You must first consider the table Notion thinks you should use. By the time I reached this point in making a note, I felt so distracted that I didn't remember what I came to do.

My gosh, again with conflating a real honest inline database view when she apparently just wanted to create a simple 2d grid...which itself is one of Notion's best features. So she ignores Notion's awesome drag and drop content-into-rows/columns function which is showcased to anyone who first opens the software...and tries to replicate Evernote's WORKAROUND to that by attempting 'insert table' and being annoyed that she's presented with a default database instead of a grid. Wow, this is painful to read, yet like a car accident, I can't look away....

A critical aspect of note-taking apps is being able to customize your views. In Evernote, for example, you can choose to see a card view (helpful when you have images), expanded card view, snippet view, side view list, or top view list. The view you choose should match the way you look for and assess information. I work almost exclusively in sidelist view, for example, because it shows me more previews than another other option and lets me easily see the date on each note. The qualities of that particular view best meet my needs when I'm trying to find the notes that I need. Notion doesn't have any options at all. You can't change how your notes or pages appear in preview. You get a sidebar with text and optional icons, and that's it. Through and through, Notion has no sense of giving the user agency.

Holy....crap.... "Notion doesn't have any options at all".... is her conclusion about something with infinite mixed-content dashboarding capability because it doesn't have a preview pane column beside the navigation tree. You can even emulate page previews in Notion by using a database gallery view....among dozens of other ways to view and arrange content. Well, I guess if what you are going for is exactly Evernote, then Notion isn't a good option.

The bizarre thing is there ARE real negatives to Notion, I was fully expending her to talk about the laggy mobile app performance which is a real problem. But she ignores real negatives while describing the strongest features as deficiencies. If this was a blog post I wouldn't care but PC Mag implies a basic level of competence....

I thought that part of the review was fair actually. The lack of simple/basic tables in Notion is one of the points that gets brought up again and again on social media. Multi-column layouts with a small number of columns are easy (at least on the desktop Notion; they're not shown as columns on mobile), and embedding a tabular database into a Notion page is easy. But if you just want a simple word processor-style table rather than an embedded tabular database, there's no support for that. It's powerful but overkill.

nathanb wrote:

My gosh, again with conflating a real honest inline database view when
she apparently just wanted to create a simple 2d grid...which itself is
one of Notion's best features. So she ignores Notion's awesome drag and
drop content-into-rows/columns function which is showcased to anyone who
first opens the software...and tries to replicate Evernote's WORKAROUND
to that by attempting 'insert table' and being annoyed that she's
presented with a default database instead of a grid. Wow, this is
painful to read, yet like a car accident, I can't look away....

Chris Thompson wrote:

I thought that part of the review was fair actually. The lack of
simple/basic tables in Notion is one of the points that gets brought up
again and again on social media. Multi-column layouts with a small
number of columns are easy (at least on the desktop Notion; they're not
shown as columns on mobile), and embedding a tabular database into a
Notion page is easy. But if you just want a simple word processor-style
table rather than an embedded tabular database, there's no support for
that. It's powerful but overkill.

nathanb wrote:

You are right and this is one of my personal gripes with Notion, that I wish it could do simple grid tables as OneNote's tables as a separate feature than it's databases. Though that's probably more about my habits, as Notion's ability to create column and row content areas on a page is functionally more similar to simple tables than its databases are. It's absolutely a valid distinction to make and people can argue if a database/simple-table approach fits better for them. But they first need to realize that tables and databases are fundamentally different.

She might as well have compared Solidworks to Paint on the basis of cropping a photo.

For all the Notion lovers out there, a nerdy interview with Marie Poulin, a heavy user of the plataform

https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/how-to-run-your-life-inside-of-notion

rafael costacurta wrote:

For all the Notion lovers out there, a nerdy interview with Marie
Poulin, a heavy user of the plataform

https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/how-to-run-your-life-inside-of-notion

Very interesting reading; thanks for the link. I’ve come across a couple of blogs now where people are using Notion as their complete management/knowledge system, which is rather impressive. It’s also rather tempting!

Anyone have any comment on Notion as your complete management system? I’d like to know how it scales over time and especially if maintaining the system becomes increasingly complex. I like the fact that all the data is mobile.

Following Notion’s expansion of the terms of its “free” user policy, I’ve been having a bit of a play.

And yes, it’s an awesome app. Almost ridiculously powerful, but also very easy to use. That’s quite an achievement.

I’m thinking of using it as a writing platform. The investigation continues.

Any follow-up on Notion for outlining and writing? I don't need its project management features, just wondering about how it fares for outlines and writing and output. Did it get keyboard commands for indented and outdented nodes yet?

Simple tables have been added to Notion, here's a good overview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_uo9sUvVGA

I just started trying Notion out, it is incredibly powerful and flexible which necessitates a learning curve. But the interface seems really great, so once you learn the basics many things seem possible.

Thomas Frank's YT channel has a great set of introductory tutorial videos, he also has made a bunch of templates including a pretty deep task/project manager.


nathanb wrote:

Chris Thompson wrote:
I thought that part of the review was fair actually. The lack of
>simple/basic tables in Notion is one of the points that gets brought up
>again and again on social media. Multi-column layouts with a small
>number of columns are easy (at least on the desktop Notion; they're not
>shown as columns on mobile), and embedding a tabular database into a
>Notion page is easy. But if you just want a simple word processor-style
>table rather than an embedded tabular database, there's no support for
>that. It's powerful but overkill.
>
>nathanb wrote:
>


You are right and this is one of my personal gripes with Notion, that I
wish it could do simple grid tables as OneNote's tables as a separate
feature than it's databases. Though that's probably more about my
habits, as Notion's ability to create column and row content areas on a
page is functionally more similar to simple tables than its databases
are. It's absolutely a valid distinction to make and people can argue if
a database/simple-table approach fits better for them. But they first
need to realize that tables and databases are fundamentally different.

She might as well have compared Solidworks to Paint on the basis of
cropping a photo.

Notion is turning out to be pretty amazing for my use- deep, versatile, and a ton of resources online (templates, Youtube tutorials, etc.) I guess this forum is Outliner Software.com, but on a general level we are really talking about hierarchies (and types) of information, and Notion lets you work in so many ways.

Pages of pages, databases of pages, pages of databases, toggles, columns, etc. all give me a lot of freedom to structurally and visually organize information the way I want. You have to be careful to not spend too much time just working on the app itself (rather than your content), but once I have an idea for something it's usually not hard to implement. Also, you can create templates for everything, so once you make some building blocks they are easily repeatable.

Not only are there are a lot of building blocks at your disposal, but everything is very malleable and can be changed on the fly. Folding text or other objects with toggles, converting selected text into a subpage and vice versa, turning pages into database items and vice versa, organizing info into columns, all is very easy to do. With the new API it also didn't take me long to find/adapt some iOS Shortcuts for either typing or recording (with or without transcription) new Inbox items without going into the app, as well as forwarding emails into Notion.

It took the free personal account for me to be able to figure this all out, there's no way I could have learned this only playing around with say a 50 item limit.

I still am not sure what happens as I add more and more information into Notion, but I don't think it should be inherently more unmanageable than other apps.

I do like Notion – very much – but you've hit the nail on the head: always beware of an app where you may end up spending more time playing with the ingenious possibilities offered by the app than actually managing your information in it!

So after some playing with Notion, I have reluctantly abandoned it.

steveylang wrote:

Notion is turning out to be pretty amazing for my use- deep, versatile,
and a ton of resources online (templates, Youtube tutorials, etc.) I
guess this forum is Outliner Software.com, but on a general level we are
really talking about hierarchies (and types) of information, and Notion
lets you work in so many ways.

Pages of pages, databases of pages, pages of databases, toggles,
columns, etc. all give me a lot of freedom to structurally and visually
organize information the way I want. You have to be careful to not spend
too much time just working on the app itself (rather than your content),
but once I have an idea for something it's usually not hard to
implement. Also, you can create templates for everything, so once you
make some building blocks they are easily repeatable.

Not only are there are a lot of building blocks at your disposal, but
everything is very malleable and can be changed on the fly. Folding text
or other objects with toggles, converting selected text into a subpage
and vice versa, turning pages into database items and vice versa,
organizing info into columns, all is very easy to do. With the new API
it also didn't take me long to find/adapt some iOS Shortcuts for either
typing or recording (with or without transcription) new Inbox items
without going into the app, as well as forwarding emails into Notion.

It took the free personal account for me to be able to figure this all
out, there's no way I could have learned this only playing around with
say a 50 item limit.

I still am not sure what happens as I add more and more information into
Notion, but I don't think it should be inherently more unmanageable than
other apps.

I never much liked Notion for note taking or managing my tasks, etc. (I do all of that in Logseq now), but it has some nice features I do use:

1. Website

Notion makes it easy to create your own website with a custom *.notion.site URL. I moved my Obsidian Publish site over here because it is actually much easier to manage. Everything looks exactly the same in the app and on the site, and changes are published instantly.

2. Sharing

Notion makes it very easy to share private pages with my students, which is great for teaching. Even better, anyone with an academic email address can get a free premium subscription.

So I use Notion for my academic webpage and for sharing lecture notes with students and it has been working pretty well, but there are so many things about the UX for Notion that drive me crazy. The worst thing for me is how it handles creating new pages, which (unlike Roam or Logseq or Obsidian) are not just links in your text, but have some kind of special status, making them hard to move, and if you delete them you also delete the page they link to. (You can recover them from the trash, but this keeps happening to me because I'm so used to Logseq...)

It didn't take me long to set up my Notion workspace to my liking, with occasional small tweaks here and there to further optimize. No decisions feel too constraining as everything is pretty malleable- it's very easy to convert a list of items into a toggle list, or into its own page, or into database entries (or its own database), and back and forth. It's also really easy to work with Kanban boards since they are just another view you can use with any database.

My major complaint about Notion right now is cloud-only data. I'm not that worried about occasionally dropping out of cell coverage or whatever, it's more that I feel the lag in my day to day use at my desk or at home. Every time you click through to a page, it loads like a web page (which it literally is I guess) instead of a regular app.

I'm playing around with Obsidian right now, it's a shame though as if Notion had local data storage I would have no significant complaints about it.


MadaboutDana wrote:

I do like Notion – very much – but you've hit the nail on
the head: always beware of an app where you may end up spending more
time playing with the ingenious possibilities offered by the app than
actually managing your information in it!

So after some playing with Notion, I have reluctantly abandoned it.

steveylang wrote:
Notion is turning out to be pretty amazing for my use- deep, versatile,
>and a ton of resources online (templates, Youtube tutorials, etc.) I
>guess this forum is Outliner Software.com, but on a general level we
are
>really talking about hierarchies (and types) of information, and Notion
>lets you work in so many ways.
>
>Pages of pages, databases of pages, pages of databases, toggles,
>columns, etc. all give me a lot of freedom to structurally and visually
>organize information the way I want. You have to be careful to not
spend
>too much time just working on the app itself (rather than your
content),
>but once I have an idea for something it's usually not hard to
>implement. Also, you can create templates for everything, so once you
>make some building blocks they are easily repeatable.
>
>Not only are there are a lot of building blocks at your disposal, but
>everything is very malleable and can be changed on the fly. Folding
text
>or other objects with toggles, converting selected text into a subpage
>and vice versa, turning pages into database items and vice versa,
>organizing info into columns, all is very easy to do. With the new API
>it also didn't take me long to find/adapt some iOS Shortcuts for either
>typing or recording (with or without transcription) new Inbox items
>without going into the app, as well as forwarding emails into Notion.
>
>It took the free personal account for me to be able to figure this all
>out, there's no way I could have learned this only playing around with
>say a 50 item limit.
>
>I still am not sure what happens as I add more and more information
into
>Notion, but I don't think it should be inherently more unmanageable
than
>other apps.
>