<story><title>People who use Notion to plan their whole lives</title><url>https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/25/1072148/meet-the-people-using-notion-to-plan-their-whole-lives/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jdgoesmarching</author><text>Weird that nobody’s mentioned it yet, but the main value proposition of Notion is that is uses mini-relational databases instead of tables. It’s like Airtable baked inside of a note app.&lt;p&gt;It has a ton of downsides like being slow, not having offline access, and no E2E encryption, but there are few tools that execute well on the approachable database concept. I wish there were more, because the standard approach of doing bizarre spreadsheet hacks to achieve the same functionality is much less intuitive to me.&lt;p&gt;The reason there’s an entire weird industry around Notion is not surprising to most people here: relational databases are useful. Unfortunately, most database tools are too unapproachable or cumbersome for most. Notion and Airtable wrapped a good UX around creating semi-primitive rdbs and here we are.</text></item><item><author>ChildOfChaos</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t get the notion hype, I just don&amp;#x27;t like it.&lt;p&gt;Even worse, is you go on product hunt and there are nonstop &amp;#x27;product&amp;#x27; launches which are just notion templates named &amp;#x27;operating systems&amp;#x27; being sold at crazy prices for what they are.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t get what I am missing. I personally love and use Trello, because it&amp;#x27;s basically just a bunch of lists that I can drag and drop too, i have a boards named &amp;#x27;spark board, where i keep lists of things I am interested in, it&amp;#x27;s a list of movies, tv shows, games to play, things to eat, things i might want to buy, even lists for different people and things they mentioned so i have gifts for them when it comes time to buy, whenever i need anything I just go there, search the list and find something, but notion is just annoying to me, I hate the UI and i don&amp;#x27;t see the point in it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>015a</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve put some thought into how cool it would be to have a feature similar to Notion databases within Obsidian; probably not integrated into the markdown document, but similar to their new Canvas feature, separate files next to markdown documents which map to SQLite databases with a standard schema that you can browse right within Obsidian. Feels like something an add-on could exist for, but doesn&amp;#x27;t; and&amp;#x2F;or I hope its something the Obsidian team is thinking about now that Canvases are shipped.</text></comment>
<story><title>People who use Notion to plan their whole lives</title><url>https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/25/1072148/meet-the-people-using-notion-to-plan-their-whole-lives/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jdgoesmarching</author><text>Weird that nobody’s mentioned it yet, but the main value proposition of Notion is that is uses mini-relational databases instead of tables. It’s like Airtable baked inside of a note app.&lt;p&gt;It has a ton of downsides like being slow, not having offline access, and no E2E encryption, but there are few tools that execute well on the approachable database concept. I wish there were more, because the standard approach of doing bizarre spreadsheet hacks to achieve the same functionality is much less intuitive to me.&lt;p&gt;The reason there’s an entire weird industry around Notion is not surprising to most people here: relational databases are useful. Unfortunately, most database tools are too unapproachable or cumbersome for most. Notion and Airtable wrapped a good UX around creating semi-primitive rdbs and here we are.</text></item><item><author>ChildOfChaos</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t get the notion hype, I just don&amp;#x27;t like it.&lt;p&gt;Even worse, is you go on product hunt and there are nonstop &amp;#x27;product&amp;#x27; launches which are just notion templates named &amp;#x27;operating systems&amp;#x27; being sold at crazy prices for what they are.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t get what I am missing. I personally love and use Trello, because it&amp;#x27;s basically just a bunch of lists that I can drag and drop too, i have a boards named &amp;#x27;spark board, where i keep lists of things I am interested in, it&amp;#x27;s a list of movies, tv shows, games to play, things to eat, things i might want to buy, even lists for different people and things they mentioned so i have gifts for them when it comes time to buy, whenever i need anything I just go there, search the list and find something, but notion is just annoying to me, I hate the UI and i don&amp;#x27;t see the point in it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sillysaurusx</author><text>Be sure to mention that if you dare venture down the path of learning about this mysterious mini-relational database, emerging with useful knowledge will cost you three quarters of your sanity and the soul of your firstborn.&lt;p&gt;It’s not quite that bad, but every. Single. Time. that I’ve been intrigued about notion’s advanced features, I’ve slapped myself two hours later and said “get back to work; you could spend your whole life learning about this. Or at least your whole weekend.”</text></comment>