It can be said that Joshua Bergen is a very productive person. And his secret is an app called Notion. Bergen, a Vancouver-based product manager, uses it to plan international trips down to the smallest detail – with notes and schedules, among other things. He uses the software to make lists of the movies and TV shows he’s seen and how he finds them. Notion is also handy for keeping track of your 3D printer projects, planning snowboard trips, or keeping up to date with a list of the funniest things your offspring has said.
Interestingly, Notion isn’t actually designed for any of that. Instead, the tool for knowledge management is intended for work in companies. But more and more users are using Notion to organize their private lives. They use the software in many different ways: from documenting their meditation habits to logging their drinking behavior or exchanging shopping lists.
“I’ve found that my productivity on my own projects has skyrocketed since I’ve been using it,” says Bergen. He has completed more projects in the last two years than in the 10 years before. “Maybe that’s obsessive, maybe that’s too much, but it’s everything to me and I love it.” So why does software that, according to the manufacturer, was developed for “better, faster work” also have so many fans in private life? After all, there are numerous apps of this type.
Numerous adjustments in Notion possible
One of the reasons Notion has such a loyal following is its flexibility. At its core, the app is designed to bring together the various systems a company uses for functions like human resources, sales, and product planning into one “hub.” It uses simple templates (templates) that allow users to add or delete features. Employees from different locations can easily collaborate on notes, databases, calendars and project boards.
This high level of customization sets Notion apart from other productivity applications. It’s also why Notion is popular with people who want to use it to plan their free time. The app became well-known in 2018 in particular through a niche on YouTube, where more and more people are dealing with the topic of productivity in videos. There are tips on time management and instructions on how to organize your entire life using software. Millions of views are generated regularly.
The fan base has multiplied in the last five years. More than 275,000 people are now at one special subreddit In the process, tens of thousands of users share free Notion templates in private Facebook groups. And on TikTok, videos showing how to “make Notion beautiful” get millions of views.
Notion planning: from moving to meals
“You don’t have to change your habits because the software is rigid. The software changes the way you think,” says Akshay Kothari, co-founder and chief operating officer (COO) of the developer company behind Notion. “I think that’s a big reason for its popularity in the community: people feel like the things they do with it are their own.”
The customization options are quite impressive. Notion fan Bergen can use the app not only to store the serial numbers of every product he’s ever bought in case they’re stolen, but also to take a detailed inventory of every single numbered box he’s packed during a move.
Wesley Anna Tiner, a product designer and content creator in New York, also thinks Notion is indispensable. She uses it to plan her upcoming move as well as all her meals of the week. “I also have a lot of notion pages that are just for fun,” she explains. For example, she received a perfume sample for Christmas and then created a database with the various other cosmetics that she wants to try every day in the future – all with personal ratings, of course. She now also uses Notion as a mood tracker, wish list, and self-care tool.
Five years of notations instead of notebooks
Tommy Meyer, a web developer from Phoenix, Arizona, started using Notion back in 2018 after realizing he was carrying around three different notebooks to keep everything organized. He says he hasn’t written a shopping list on paper for years. He now also uses Notion to plot fantasy novels that he wants to write.
Notion is good for taking notes and keeping a journal. Adam Warren, a British actor and voice actor, discovered it as a YouTube management tool. “I’m now making about as much from my channel and subscriptions to Patreon as I would from a good full-time job. All of the management of this business is done through Notion,” he explains. All his video projects are in the database. “I use the Kanban view to track their status. And I also script my videos directly into these pages.”
Obviously, for people who like the feeling of being well organized, such platforms make a lot of sense. Apps like Notion can help them structure their lives and make them easier. It then feels less overwhelming and chaotic, says psychologist Elena Touroni, who offers counseling.
When to-do maintenance becomes more important than work
However, spending too much time optimizing and organizing our lives can be counterproductive. “If we give more importance to creating to-do lists than to completing the actual tasks,” says Gabriele Oettingen, a psychology professor at New York University. There is already a technical term for this: “planning fallacy”.
Using Notion to track whether you’re drinking enough water each day or going for a run on schedule doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually doing those things. “In a way, Notion can help me create structure, but it can’t force me to follow it,” she says.
And: For people like Bergen, who use the same app to plan both their private and work life, this could also have disadvantages, adds Oettingen’s colleague Touroni.
“The obvious advantage is that work and personal life often overlap and using the same app then takes this into account for more efficient scheduling,” says the psychologist. “The downside is that it makes it harder to draw boundaries between work and personal life as you have to navigate both spheres of life when using the app.”
Notion – it’s kind of an addiction
Despite the plethora of competing programs at their disposal, Notion’s most staunch fans say they’re unlikely to switch to other, possibly better, platforms any time soon – it’s a kind of addiction. User Tiner from New York says that she now does “95 percent of her life” through Notion.
And the future already seems to be here: the creators of the app recently released their own AI bot for automating tedious tasks and summarizing large documents. The reaction of the Notion community on social media will be closely monitored, it said. “For a company that makes money from business-to-business software, it’s unique to experience this kind of user love,” says COO Kothari. “This is definitely not a matter of course for us.”
(jl)
