3 Reasons why you might want to re-think your Notion workflow

I don’t use Notion as I used to anymore.

Notion is a great way to organize personal and work documents, but it has its quirks. I used to use it to keep all my notes, thoughts, and organized research, but throughout the past four months, I’ve radically changed the way I use the platform.

Why?

I’ve found there to be a lot of challenges to using Notion and my personal workflow together.

My three main problems with Notion:

1. It’s too difficult to organize a lot of information

Creating and structuring folders is easy in the beginning, but harder as you gather more and more types of information that might not relate to each other. This might sound bizarre, as the product essentially operates off “how easy it is to use,” but I’ve found that in order to truly organize your documents, you need to create your own personal folder structure taxonomy.

Taxonomy is a way to organize and categorize data. It is a hierarchical structure that can be used to make sense of the world by grouping things together based on how similar they are. Taxonomies may be hierarchical (or tree-like) or non-hierarchical (or network).

A small example of a folder screenshot of a taxonomy- a fairly organized folder structure to help you know how to differentiate what you’re looking at.

However, taxonomy planning can be a total pain, unless you have the time to map out and create file structures for how your information should be organized. Think about how you can decrease the amount of necessary information that’s required to organize, so it can be broken up into more manageable pieces.

2. You can spend more time organizing your Notion than using it

Notion templates are great! They help you get things done, but they can also get in the way if you’re trying to organize research. It’s important to remember that Notion is just a tool, and it’s not going to do the work for you.

It’s easy to get lost in “Notion template land” looking for the perfect Notion template that will magically organize your life. I’ve definitely gotten bogged down by simply trying to organize a Notion system itself instead of accomplishing the tasks I set out to do. See my example here:

Business design Notion example. Just a lot of things going on here- it’s pretty hard to organize this and make sure all new pages go into the right folders.

To fix this, think about how you prefer to intake information and how you actually categorize important documents. Does this need to be stored specifically? Ask yourself how it might be better displayed and easily found (tags, fewer folders, linked documents, etc).

3. It requires too much effort to organize your research and documents.

There is a lot of friction for users to put their files into planned folders. You need to open Notion, try to remember which file or folder you put a certain topic into, then place the file while creating a new page. Having to organize information cognitively is hard, but it’s even harder on the spot as you’re just trying to remember which research pieces you want to keep, and how to get back to them.

Here’s an example:

Setting up each research row takes a solid few minutes to create, then separately categorize, write up the title, create a new author tag, and then remember to come back to the Notion when you finish it and remember to mark it finished or still reading. Then, you’d need to re-categorize or tag your work to make sure it can be easily found/has the information you need to access. Then, if you were to leave and come back, you’d need to remember where you stored the base, and what you tagged it with.

Footnote — This specific instance is where I found Evernote’s clipping product to be a better tool, in terms of “clipping” screenshots, files, or pages and tagging them into a folder or topic. I have issues with some of Evernote’s folder structure work, but their clipping tool is *chef’s kiss* — see below.

Example of the Evernote clipper — much easier to save and categorize documents while in the browser than Notion

But this begs the question: is organizing information always the best solution to knowledge management?

I’ve been thinking recently about the general process of why and how we organize information, particularly how we need to balance formal documentation (i.e., things we absolutely need to document and need to be reproducible so that many people can understand and accomplish the same goal) vs. general personal knowledge management/knowledge documentation.

Surprisingly, I’ve started to phase Notion folders out of my general note-taking workflow. I am now using bare-bones blank documents. It is a significantly simpler method and seems fairly unorganized on the surface. However, I’m able to find the information I need by simply searching for terms and finding the relevant data via keywords.

Two other products come to mind when I think of “tag-based” or “relational” note-taking (Roam Research and Obsidian). I have not used either of these products, but they do seem closer to what I am thinking about in terms of helping information retrieval easier.

It makes me really question: do I need to remember this information? If yes, then I’ll write it down.

It’s an incredibly easy and frictionless experience, and if I really need to remember the information, I can always re-shuffle the information into a larger doc or folder in Notion or another knowledge management tool.

If you want more reminders to use your data, I suggest using a simple tool such as Todoist to add a task with a due date either linking that information or a keyword that can be easily referenced. Todoist has amazing date processing and you can essentially remind yourself to use research on a daily/weekly/monthly cadence or as one-offs.

Things to use Notion for

Even though I’ve stopped using Notion for organizing information via folder structures and bookmarks, the number one strength I’ve found with Notion is actually in its spreadsheet (table) organization and capabilities.

I’ve loved being able to track and plan trips with statuses like “in progress, not started, complete” and being able to flip back to the document whenever I need to remember to plan something. I also can categorize the books I’ve been reading or anything else I’ve been collecting/want to see a colorful, visualized spreadsheet. Then, I can use each row of the spreadsheet to click into a cell and create a note or list of possible itineraries for the trip. For example, it’s helpful for me for keeping track of how many books I’ve read (personal books) and the ratings of those books.

See here for my structure -

Research book structure for one of my personal reading Notions.

However, I think the table view can be less helpful if the structure is too difficult to maintain. Or, if you don’t have specific columns in mind for the table structure.

Another fun structure I use with Notion is all the fun coffees I’ve tasted:

Notion for craft coffee ratings

So, what next?

I’m going to be focusing on using Notion for more specific usages, particularly with table-oriented data and tracking. I like the idea of a node-based note system like Roam or Obsidian for notes but need to dive deeper.

Notion and Roam Research are two powerful tools that make it easy to organize and store digital content. With Notion, you can store databases, documents, images, and more, and a tool like Roam Research makes it easy to quickly search and access information. By using both tools together, you can better organize and access your digital content.

When choosing the best option for organizing and accessing information, it is important to consider your specific needs and how the tool can help meet them. For example, if you need a powerful table/spreadsheet visualization tool, Notion may be the better choice. If you need to create a personal knowledge base, then Obsidian or Roam Research may be the better option. Ultimately, the best way to choose is to evaluate the features of each and decide which one best fits your needs.

I will be writing another piece next about how I’ve specifically changed my personal knowledge base to fit my own note-taking and information-gathering needs.