“Notion is incredible for data relationships and rules based RPC (and I still use it as an info store), but it's absolutely nowhere close to Trello in terms of simplicity and UI for Kanban.”
“The Notion export to markdown is fine for that. I'm the maker of Acres which is one of those apps, a canvas on top of markdown files, but it has no mobile app so if you need phone access you would pair it with something else.”
“Basically, I've loved using Notion but they're now too expensive and I don't feel like they've kept hold of their original "vision". But I'm having trouble finding something to move to that works as well - but maybe I could just be suffering from the inevitable teething of setting up a new system after having one that works for me for so long?”
“I use obsidian on a daily as an analyst (for 6 years now), and I've found solutions to monitor markets and data while only using Obsidian's native features like bases, canvas and simple plugins like dataview.”
“I thought it was a lot easier to make note evergreen on Obsidian, where as Notion felt more like a drive with notes loosely related. I got so used to map of contents that organizing notes by folder felt restrictive.”
“I'm accepting that Obsidian's aesthetics are not what Notion's are, but on the same day I can customize them a lot more and change things that Notion just simply wouldn't let me do. The simplification within Obsidian also shows me how much I was overusing databases when I didn't need them.”
“Obsysidan works better than notion for me. Notion feels over-engineered while obsydian feels just like a more complete version of notepad, which I like more. You can pay the subs for cloud sync, but I’m a cheapskate so I just plug a git to my note folder and sync it that way.”
“Obsidian has the benefit of being in markdown, which means you can just send a note to lab members or advisors without needing to worry about if they can open/read it or not, or what OS they're on. I picked it over Notion at the time also because Notion requires browser access which can also be annoying.”
“Bro I literally got so fed up that I just switched back to Notion. I totally respect Obsidian and I think there are cases for using it, but I'm a Notion guy. I learned that.”
“It also builds things for me, which has always been part of where I get lost in Notion. I get stuck playing around creating everything, instead of actually using the system. Since I can explain it all and Claude will build it, it has eliminated that part of the problem.”
“I've tried Notion a few times but I always end up spending more time organizing it than actually writing notes lol. For me, quick capture + being able to find it later matters more than having a perfect system.”
“I've gone through a few phases with Notion. At first I tried to make it handle basically everything, then slowly stripped it back. Now I mostly use it for project stuff, reference pages and keeping track of things I don't want scattered across five different apps.”
“I’ve put together a Notion database: 📚 210 Plenary, Oral & Mini Oral presentations 📝 181 summaries of abstracts released so far 🏷️ Biomarker, stage & treatment tags”
“My notion for a long project looks exactly the same. I think the structure is fine, the problem is nobody’s there to enforce the discipline of updating it.”
“Working on an indie game on the side and Notion is where I track everything. Design docs, sprint tasks, bug logs, random ideas at 2am that may or may not be brilliant.”
“Using the most basic version of Notion (like nothing but titles, no icons or fancy banners, etc.) and using the toggle feature definitely helps me with notes. I do love working with pen + paper and I feel like it helps me retain the most info though!”
“Have been doing this for months for better context memory, tried obsidian, GitHub, but for a truly freeing experience where you see information compounding visually, be it GPT or Claude, notion ironically is a perfect fit. Especially when the AI can keep it organized.”
“The problem with Notion which has happened to me as well, is that most people try to perfect the system rather than actually solving the problem with the solution they thought they would get by using Notion lol so then people create all these convoluted systems that don’t really do anything useful besides hoarding “data”.”
“Why does the official Notion Web Clipper completely destroy code blocks and tables? I use Notion daily for technical research and saving docs, but every time I clip a page, the code blocks get flattened into plain unformatted text and tables lose formatting.”
“Native Notion can get fairly close if the dashboard is treated as a navigation layer: keep one source database, then use linked views filtered to favorites, recent items, and each platform/category. Rollups and formulas can handle counts and simple stats, while columns and callouts make the page feel less like a raw database.”
“You can get surprisingly close with a few linked database views, filtered views, and rollups for the stats and cards, but Notion will still feel like database blocks. If the second design depends on richer charts or a single polished layout, keeping Notion as the data layer and adding a separate front end is probably the cleaner path.”
“Notion plus a local memory folder, no vector DB. One thing I’d add to your setup. I ended up with three tiers instead of two. Chat is RAM, a local folder of small markdown files is the agent’s own disk, and Notion is the shared drive humans actually read.”