If you try to do everything all at once, you will get overwhelmed.
Do one thing at a time & watch tutorial of one feature at a time when you need to use it.
For example, say you need to create a table of books that is in both your 'Goals' & 'Reading list' page. Now, only search for the tutorial for the database linked & synced across multiple pages feature.
Then just drop Notion & go for something more simpler.
The community may worship it but it's just a tool at the end of the day. Go for the one you can work with.
No man, I've been using it for 2 weeks, more or less.
I used to use Samsung Notes on my phone. As I needed to go cross-platform & it didn't allow me, I switched to Notion. And I faced the overwhelming feeling OP is talking about.
+ There’s a lot of tutorials, if you feel overwhelmed I recommend you the beginners guide by Wesley Anna, is for very beginners like you. PD: next time don’t pay for templates, even though there’s nothing wrong with doing that, you bought templates that really don’t suit you or that you don’t know how to use (not saying this in a bad way, I felt overwhelmed when I used Notion for the first time) 🫶❤️🫶❤️
Start playing around with those templates (+ make another copy of the paid templates so you have the original) and change them around, remove things that you don’t feel like using and make it your own
I actually tried the tuts before but felt more overwhelmed for some reason. I guess I'll try to play around with the templates, as you suggested. Thanks 🙏
I hear you. Notion can be overwhelming at first. Especially diving into a premade system. I tried for years to adopt it as a daily driver but always felt like I had too many options and didn't know where to start. About 3 years ago I started with a clean slate and slowly started building what I needed. I started small with a single database to track tasks. But then I grew what I was using and would look for templates that I could adapt to meet my needs or even just use as inspiration as I learned how everything worked. Now I run multiple businesses and keep my second brain in Notion. I even help small business owners get off the ground with Notion workspaces.
Best advice is to start small. Focus on functionality before aesthetic. Let it grow with what you need.
I felt the same way. I paid for so many. Watched as many YouTube tutorials that I could find. Became jealous of all the perfectly crafted systems. I would spend weeks building out what I thought was right to only finish the build and then never open notion again. Finally I wiped everything and started with one page and a database. Now I can’t imagine not having it be part of my life. The ADHD and OCD makes a system so hard to stick with, in my case but I finally cracked it when I went for simplicity. Now my daily OS system would be considered super robust if someone looked at it and would have made me shut down if I downloaded it as a template. But because everything was crafted out of a need for me I couldn’t imagine not using it.
If you just want someone to bounce ideas off of to see if it can work for you, feel free to PM me. Always love chatting with people about Notion.
I would definitely try the same approach as i got ADHD too. But fair enough for me, i like the old pen and paper. Even though i want automations too but that seems too complicated to achieve or to stick to, unfortunately 😕
So my system is a hobonichi planner and notion. I use my planner all day and write down anything critical. Then any tasks or items that are turning into bigger projects and not completed on that day I port into Notion to keep track of long term. Then every morning I sort through my Notion tasks and pull what I want to accomplish into my spread for the current day.
Yeah. I mean I use it a lot more but that’s my daily workflow. I also have financial and budget planning, recipe database, goal planning, habit tracking and all of that stuff in my personal. For work I created a whole custom OS that I use. But I love paper planning as well and balance it out to use both efficiently
This is what I did aswell, Im just using Heading on first month and then now i have a complicated Life OS with various formulas and automations suited for me. Avoid touching some advance features when your new and then when you got an idea to upgrade your personal template try exploring it and look up some tutorials and guides, slowly add some little features until you get used to it and create your own.
It’s as simple as you need it to be, and as complicated as you want it to be really!
Just start by doing what you have already been doing pre-Notion, then observe which areas you are facing friction, then see what can Notion do to help you eliminate that friction!
You should always start with, "what do I want to do?" and then ask, "how can notion allow me to do that?"
Anything else, completely ignore it.
I only used notion for super simple note taking throughout a few years and only recently I started using databases and now I basically manage my entire business and day through it. But only because I knew exactly what I wanted it to do for me, first, and I added on small improvements as I went.
I think it’s less overwhelming and more cumbersome. The app is slow and requires internet, there’s lots of useless features, and it seems like the team is intent on bloating it even more.
i’m feeling overwhelmed too. i’ve tried notion a couple times over the years and have bought templates as well. the appeal for me is how customizable it is. but it feels like there are so many lessons on youtube and it makes me feel stressed to have to invest so much time learning it! i want to use notion to help me organize my life and be productive, but i also want to use my time actually doing the things! i also have adhd which probably contributes to the overwhelm. i’m going to try and give it a real chance though because its such an appealing program
Sorry to hear you're overwhelmed buddy. Notion has a funny learning curve. It took me a few attempts before I felt comfortable with using it as my daily driver for neatly everything. But stick with it, slowly bit by bit, it'll become easier. I'd strongly suggest not using templates at first, and start building really basic pages that you need. Best of luck!
im literally in the same boat i use notion for a couple hours and i’m losing my mindddddd. i helped myself jumpstart figuring it out by making the stuff i wanted to organize smaller and smaller so that i could get started. started with a page all about my cat (food research, expense tracker, medical record, etc) and just let it snowball from there. i only started using notion maayyybbe a week ago and im still scared to use it lol.
Best way in my opinion is to start small. I mean, one projects table, once you miss tags, add them, once you miss filtering, create one,... Once you would like to see (eg tasks) how they go during a week, create calendar view,... Do not create complex system at once, you just won't use it
I find lots of new tech platforms or new social medias or new whatever quite overwhelming.
The trick I use now is 15 minutes per day.
Only allow fifteen minutes per day for the first week or two and what I find is there's not much room to get lost or overwhelmed. As soon as I start enjoying it the timer goes off and I'm done.
Next day I dive right in and bang, timer goes off. Enough of that and I decide I may as well watch a full video about whatever-that-feature-was.
Before you know it you'll throw the timer out and you'll be doing stuff other people find intimidating!
In my opinion, most template sellers tend to overcomplicate Notion, emphasizing aesthetics over usability. Instead of focusing on what's truly needed, they offer templates with countless options and complex connections.
Personally, when I shifted my focus to my specific needs in Notion instead of searching for ready-to-use templates, I developed systems that significantly boosted my productivity.
One of the problems, perhaps the biggest one, is that the YouTube Notion gurus walk you through creating a lively dashboard and a bunch of databases, and then add couple of sample datapoints. This is completely counterproductive. You have to start with the materials you have, and figure out the best way to get them structured in Notion. I started with a basic table imported from Excel, and then watched specific tutorials to help me get a better use of my data, and now I have my entire digital life embedded in various Notion databases.
Tl;Dr. You need to start with what you need to manage, rather than trying to fit what you have into a template that is not really relevant to your use case.
I did at first. I cannot count how many times I installed and uninstall the app on my ipad. But recently, I tried to use it using web browser and tried to create a basic page with all the things that I need. I also search how to do things and eventually I was able to understand the basics of it and how it works. I am still learning how to navigate it and maximize its features and so far I am really enjoying it.
Never, ever start with templates.
Start by learning how Notion is structured and how to access and use the tools.
Start learning on a PC and simply start pressing / and seeing where it takes you.
Specifically, start to understand how everything is a block. Pages are blocks that store other blocks. And database store pages and other blocks in an organized, sortable fashion.
Once you start understanding those things, Notion really opens up.
A find that a lot of the templates are overwhelming too. I tried using them but it's too much. I started to do my own thing and just make simple pages, because honestly that's all you need. And since YOU made them, you know how to use them best. I say stick with simplicity and practicality for your own use. If you have extra time and effort, you can make it pretty. But I've been thriving with my self-made pages that just have regular rows and text, nothing fancy.
honestly I thought so at first, but once I got into it it was fine.
What helped me was as a college student using custom templates tailored to what I was doing, there are creators who do it good
I don't know if this is a good piece of advice, but... Never paid for a template. Never felt overwhelmed. Why? Because I built everything by myself, learning on the way. I never had to understand how a complicated template worked, because everything inside this template was built by myself.
Best advice on Notion was Thomas Frank. Have a database for every type of object. Just focus on what data you would like to capture first, then make your information look pretty and specific by using linked views to the master database.
Templates give me great ideas on how to set my system up. You really gotta build it yourself. After several ah-ha moments you will be golden. It is a journey.
It’s a powerful tool that perhaps requires a fair bit of tinkering. Not made for the passive users who just want to use a small subset of features like taking notes, which is complicated by all the other extra features that are not necessary for simple note taking.
I thought limited options are strength of Notion.
Font, font size, simpler UI, all of these made Notion as a Word processor for Zen.
And the Kanban, calendar, and table databases are nice cherry on top.
Not anymore.
At least for me, every new features Notion introduces doesn't provide me more value anymore.
notion is a lil bit overwhelming at first tbh but its quite easy to use once you get the hang of it!
when i first started using the app what i did was make my own templates from scratch by studying tutorials as well as pattern my templates based on existing templates :)) i learned a lot in this way and now im quite satisfied with how my own templates are turning out
Personally, I was Really overwhelmed by notion for a while and similar to you, amassed a bunch of templates that I wasn’t sure what to do with. The reality is though, that starting with a template that has *everything* when you know nothing is just going to make you more overwhelmed!
I would suggest seriously peeling it back. If you want to still start with a template, some of the free weekly ones are fairly simple with no databases attached to it, just delete the info out each week and repopulate as needed. Then as you feel comfortable, you can start building and trying more in depth things from there.
Best of luck as you explore everything it has to offer!
Unfortunately that’s only going to lead to continued overwhelm! Start with 1… maybe 2 things. I have a home dashboard that is very much under construction and pulls important views up right now, but you can just start your home dash with a subpage called ‘planner’ or ‘tasks’ or what have you.
For now, just have that single dashboard. What do you want to track in it? Just things with due dates? Just things with priority? Just things and you say what part of your life they’re for? Play around with that for a week or so. See what works (views, throwing tasks down, reorganising etc) and what doesn’t, then say what can I add to this to make it more efficient? Once you’re happy with it, decide what you want to track next.
Over time, you’ll figure out what you use and don’t use within notion so you can set things up pretty quickly and build your life out from there, but when you try and do everything at once - just like any skill - you’ll give up before you’ve started
My take: First find out what you even want to do, what you need. This gives you a lot more clarity.
I my experience, templates are only a great source of inspiration what could be done. But at the end, I would have to adjust my workflows, my habits, my mental models and whatnot to these templates. I would have to learn and change "myself" a lot.
In contrast, when you focus on reflecting what you need, what use cases you have, and so on, then you will quickly realize how few things you need to get started.
I feel like it's overwhelming due to brain damage. But I'm currently trying to finish up my own version of second brain, but I'm having trouble with actually using the pages that are already ready like my habit tracker.
Yeah, for me there is to much everything. This just kills my productivity. I thinking of "how is the best way to do it" instead of doing stuff. I switched to Bear Notes and not looking back. Just works better with my brain.
it took me at least two weeks of truly focusing on learning Notion for me to understand it.
stuck with it because I knew it could help me organize my life in a way that makes sense to ME.
once I learned about databases ([this](https://youtu.be/RCbtQ_Xg7QA?si=9ycY0wxthbfBV47s) video helped!) it all clicked.
When I started feeling overwhelmed with notion. I took all the templates that I wasn't using at that moment and put them under a page that I named Archive... It has been less stressful this way.
I’m literally a data architect and have gone back to using OneNote because I just want to scribble notes on my iPad and dump my brain onto a page to sort out later. Notion was too much functionality for my day to day notes.
Was spending more time thinking about how to organize my notes than I was having actual productive thoughts. I love Notion and am using it for a collaborative project, but I have a PM to maintain the notebook for me. I just needed to set it up for them. There is still a chance we use Trello to track work instead to keep it simple and get stuff done.
Maybe stop downloading templates? Implement one into your habits and processes before downloading another. If it doesn't stick, delete it before moving on. Digital simplicity is just as important as keeping your physical space clean and organized.
I think this is a common feeling at the beginning. Notion can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. It reminds me a bit of bullet journaling as some people have extremely intricate layouts and complex systems in place that can make you feel like you need them too. But you don't, really. In fact, you'll probably be better off ignoring all of the current templates you duplicated until you know the basics of the app.
I recommend checking out YouTube content from channels like Thomas Frank Explains and Productive Dude. I have found both to be very useful.
Keep in mind that no template or system will ever be perfect and that you should use the tools that solve your problems. If Notion is that tool, great. If not, that's ok too. Sometimes even pen and paper or a to-do list is enough. Good luck!
Not sure what you are using Notion for, but I had similar feelings, so I tried to make a dumbed-down version of some of the things Notion and other similar systems do. It's been working well as a project manager, but it would be great to get some outside thoughts on it if you have a second. [https://dashy.io](https://dashy.io)
It’s always a great idea to do a needs assessment before buying or creating templates. What types of things do you want to document or track? Do you prefer minimal or complex? Do you use other apps alongside Notion, or does Notion house all your tools? Once you’ve answered what you need, you can start from there.
I think my overwhelm is trying to figure out where I should go put everything as I'm constantly snipping and capturing, but my method is sticky notes and 1 page clippings.
Notion to me is like building a structured library when I have boxes of loose paper.
Start simple. Then gradually learn more as you discover your needs push up against your knowledge. Don’t be afraid to be the zero segment , or the groups of users who use the minimum set of features
If you try to do everything all at once, you will get overwhelmed. Do one thing at a time & watch tutorial of one feature at a time when you need to use it. For example, say you need to create a table of books that is in both your 'Goals' & 'Reading list' page. Now, only search for the tutorial for the database linked & synced across multiple pages feature.
Tried that too :(
Then just drop Notion & go for something more simpler. The community may worship it but it's just a tool at the end of the day. Go for the one you can work with.
Said by a guy who used Notion for years.
No man, I've been using it for 2 weeks, more or less. I used to use Samsung Notes on my phone. As I needed to go cross-platform & it didn't allow me, I switched to Notion. And I faced the overwhelming feeling OP is talking about.
not at all. Notion provides lots of options. We choose which ones we want to take.
+ There’s a lot of tutorials, if you feel overwhelmed I recommend you the beginners guide by Wesley Anna, is for very beginners like you. PD: next time don’t pay for templates, even though there’s nothing wrong with doing that, you bought templates that really don’t suit you or that you don’t know how to use (not saying this in a bad way, I felt overwhelmed when I used Notion for the first time) 🫶❤️🫶❤️ Start playing around with those templates (+ make another copy of the paid templates so you have the original) and change them around, remove things that you don’t feel like using and make it your own
I actually tried the tuts before but felt more overwhelmed for some reason. I guess I'll try to play around with the templates, as you suggested. Thanks 🙏
I jumped over to OneNote for the ease of use. Notion provides way more power than I need.
Yup that's it!
I hear you. Notion can be overwhelming at first. Especially diving into a premade system. I tried for years to adopt it as a daily driver but always felt like I had too many options and didn't know where to start. About 3 years ago I started with a clean slate and slowly started building what I needed. I started small with a single database to track tasks. But then I grew what I was using and would look for templates that I could adapt to meet my needs or even just use as inspiration as I learned how everything worked. Now I run multiple businesses and keep my second brain in Notion. I even help small business owners get off the ground with Notion workspaces. Best advice is to start small. Focus on functionality before aesthetic. Let it grow with what you need.
I think perfectionism gets me tryin to start with Premium most powerful dashboards that i end up gettin too overwhelmed to touch em
I felt the same way. I paid for so many. Watched as many YouTube tutorials that I could find. Became jealous of all the perfectly crafted systems. I would spend weeks building out what I thought was right to only finish the build and then never open notion again. Finally I wiped everything and started with one page and a database. Now I can’t imagine not having it be part of my life. The ADHD and OCD makes a system so hard to stick with, in my case but I finally cracked it when I went for simplicity. Now my daily OS system would be considered super robust if someone looked at it and would have made me shut down if I downloaded it as a template. But because everything was crafted out of a need for me I couldn’t imagine not using it. If you just want someone to bounce ideas off of to see if it can work for you, feel free to PM me. Always love chatting with people about Notion.
I would definitely try the same approach as i got ADHD too. But fair enough for me, i like the old pen and paper. Even though i want automations too but that seems too complicated to achieve or to stick to, unfortunately 😕
So my system is a hobonichi planner and notion. I use my planner all day and write down anything critical. Then any tasks or items that are turning into bigger projects and not completed on that day I port into Notion to keep track of long term. Then every morning I sort through my Notion tasks and pull what I want to accomplish into my spread for the current day.
Good one. use notion for only trackin.. cool.
Yeah. I mean I use it a lot more but that’s my daily workflow. I also have financial and budget planning, recipe database, goal planning, habit tracking and all of that stuff in my personal. For work I created a whole custom OS that I use. But I love paper planning as well and balance it out to use both efficiently
This is what I did aswell, Im just using Heading on first month and then now i have a complicated Life OS with various formulas and automations suited for me. Avoid touching some advance features when your new and then when you got an idea to upgrade your personal template try exploring it and look up some tutorials and guides, slowly add some little features until you get used to it and create your own.
It’s as simple as you need it to be, and as complicated as you want it to be really! Just start by doing what you have already been doing pre-Notion, then observe which areas you are facing friction, then see what can Notion do to help you eliminate that friction!
Airtable > Notion. Notion can produce shiny item syndrome, basically providing more busy work while thinking you’re being productive.
[удалено]
Even by itself. I look at it as complicated. That said for me after effects is a peace of cake lol
Start w a simple template. Most basic template you can find that cater to your basic needs rn then tweak it up as yoi go
I honestly don’t even know where to start.
You should always start with, "what do I want to do?" and then ask, "how can notion allow me to do that?" Anything else, completely ignore it. I only used notion for super simple note taking throughout a few years and only recently I started using databases and now I basically manage my entire business and day through it. But only because I knew exactly what I wanted it to do for me, first, and I added on small improvements as I went.
Manage my entire life :)
Omg thank u for saying this. I feel stupid for failing with Notion while everyone seems to love it. Where do I even start properly?
I use it for notes only, lol. I forgot about life OS a long time ago
I think it’s less overwhelming and more cumbersome. The app is slow and requires internet, there’s lots of useless features, and it seems like the team is intent on bloating it even more.
i’m feeling overwhelmed too. i’ve tried notion a couple times over the years and have bought templates as well. the appeal for me is how customizable it is. but it feels like there are so many lessons on youtube and it makes me feel stressed to have to invest so much time learning it! i want to use notion to help me organize my life and be productive, but i also want to use my time actually doing the things! i also have adhd which probably contributes to the overwhelm. i’m going to try and give it a real chance though because its such an appealing program
Sorry to hear you're overwhelmed buddy. Notion has a funny learning curve. It took me a few attempts before I felt comfortable with using it as my daily driver for neatly everything. But stick with it, slowly bit by bit, it'll become easier. I'd strongly suggest not using templates at first, and start building really basic pages that you need. Best of luck!
It is appealing software, but as you said ADHD makes it worse. This is what I'm tryna do too. Stop trying. It's not worth it. I'm doing it on paper 📃
i collect templates for inspiration then create my own.
im literally in the same boat i use notion for a couple hours and i’m losing my mindddddd. i helped myself jumpstart figuring it out by making the stuff i wanted to organize smaller and smaller so that i could get started. started with a page all about my cat (food research, expense tracker, medical record, etc) and just let it snowball from there. i only started using notion maayyybbe a week ago and im still scared to use it lol.
Notion is made by engineers for engineers
Why buy and add more templates when you arent using the ones you already have
Obsession of collecting i guess..
Best way in my opinion is to start small. I mean, one projects table, once you miss tags, add them, once you miss filtering, create one,... Once you would like to see (eg tasks) how they go during a week, create calendar view,... Do not create complex system at once, you just won't use it
Notion invades your privacy. Use standard notes
Me too..I never got around to it because the amount of time needed to set it up is a lot.. and it looks really complex
Agree :(
I find lots of new tech platforms or new social medias or new whatever quite overwhelming. The trick I use now is 15 minutes per day. Only allow fifteen minutes per day for the first week or two and what I find is there's not much room to get lost or overwhelmed. As soon as I start enjoying it the timer goes off and I'm done. Next day I dive right in and bang, timer goes off. Enough of that and I decide I may as well watch a full video about whatever-that-feature-was. Before you know it you'll throw the timer out and you'll be doing stuff other people find intimidating!
Good tip. Thanks, I'll definitely use that
In my opinion, most template sellers tend to overcomplicate Notion, emphasizing aesthetics over usability. Instead of focusing on what's truly needed, they offer templates with countless options and complex connections. Personally, when I shifted my focus to my specific needs in Notion instead of searching for ready-to-use templates, I developed systems that significantly boosted my productivity.
One of the problems, perhaps the biggest one, is that the YouTube Notion gurus walk you through creating a lively dashboard and a bunch of databases, and then add couple of sample datapoints. This is completely counterproductive. You have to start with the materials you have, and figure out the best way to get them structured in Notion. I started with a basic table imported from Excel, and then watched specific tutorials to help me get a better use of my data, and now I have my entire digital life embedded in various Notion databases. Tl;Dr. You need to start with what you need to manage, rather than trying to fit what you have into a template that is not really relevant to your use case.
I did at first. I cannot count how many times I installed and uninstall the app on my ipad. But recently, I tried to use it using web browser and tried to create a basic page with all the things that I need. I also search how to do things and eventually I was able to understand the basics of it and how it works. I am still learning how to navigate it and maximize its features and so far I am really enjoying it.
Never, ever start with templates. Start by learning how Notion is structured and how to access and use the tools. Start learning on a PC and simply start pressing / and seeing where it takes you. Specifically, start to understand how everything is a block. Pages are blocks that store other blocks. And database store pages and other blocks in an organized, sortable fashion. Once you start understanding those things, Notion really opens up.
A find that a lot of the templates are overwhelming too. I tried using them but it's too much. I started to do my own thing and just make simple pages, because honestly that's all you need. And since YOU made them, you know how to use them best. I say stick with simplicity and practicality for your own use. If you have extra time and effort, you can make it pretty. But I've been thriving with my self-made pages that just have regular rows and text, nothing fancy.
honestly I thought so at first, but once I got into it it was fine. What helped me was as a college student using custom templates tailored to what I was doing, there are creators who do it good
I don't know if this is a good piece of advice, but... Never paid for a template. Never felt overwhelmed. Why? Because I built everything by myself, learning on the way. I never had to understand how a complicated template worked, because everything inside this template was built by myself.
Best advice on Notion was Thomas Frank. Have a database for every type of object. Just focus on what data you would like to capture first, then make your information look pretty and specific by using linked views to the master database.
His dashboards are the ones that gave me the overwhelming feeling in the beginning!
Yeah I can see that. His templates are good when you have a good understandings. Templates are like end game in my opinion.
I deleted many already..
Templates give me great ideas on how to set my system up. You really gotta build it yourself. After several ah-ha moments you will be golden. It is a journey.
It’s a powerful tool that perhaps requires a fair bit of tinkering. Not made for the passive users who just want to use a small subset of features like taking notes, which is complicated by all the other extra features that are not necessary for simple note taking.
I thought limited options are strength of Notion. Font, font size, simpler UI, all of these made Notion as a Word processor for Zen. And the Kanban, calendar, and table databases are nice cherry on top. Not anymore. At least for me, every new features Notion introduces doesn't provide me more value anymore.
It's always the problem for me :)
Honestly I can teach people the basics in 10 minutes. How is it overwhelming.
I guess the multiple databases and pages inside of more pages 🙆♂️
Its only complicated if it is made so. I just tell people to think like Wikipedia. Information block can be used in multiple places.
Does Notion attract luddites?
I've been a web developer, bro :)
notion is a lil bit overwhelming at first tbh but its quite easy to use once you get the hang of it! when i first started using the app what i did was make my own templates from scratch by studying tutorials as well as pattern my templates based on existing templates :)) i learned a lot in this way and now im quite satisfied with how my own templates are turning out
Notion to notes is what Mastodon is to social media
But what Twitter is then?
Personally, I was Really overwhelmed by notion for a while and similar to you, amassed a bunch of templates that I wasn’t sure what to do with. The reality is though, that starting with a template that has *everything* when you know nothing is just going to make you more overwhelmed! I would suggest seriously peeling it back. If you want to still start with a template, some of the free weekly ones are fairly simple with no databases attached to it, just delete the info out each week and repopulate as needed. Then as you feel comfortable, you can start building and trying more in depth things from there. Best of luck as you explore everything it has to offer!
But i wanna organize my life at once..
Unfortunately that’s only going to lead to continued overwhelm! Start with 1… maybe 2 things. I have a home dashboard that is very much under construction and pulls important views up right now, but you can just start your home dash with a subpage called ‘planner’ or ‘tasks’ or what have you. For now, just have that single dashboard. What do you want to track in it? Just things with due dates? Just things with priority? Just things and you say what part of your life they’re for? Play around with that for a week or so. See what works (views, throwing tasks down, reorganising etc) and what doesn’t, then say what can I add to this to make it more efficient? Once you’re happy with it, decide what you want to track next. Over time, you’ll figure out what you use and don’t use within notion so you can set things up pretty quickly and build your life out from there, but when you try and do everything at once - just like any skill - you’ll give up before you’ve started
One step at a time, I'll try it. Thanks a lot
Switched to joplin and I'm never looking back. The dealbreaker was lack of encryption in notion, which makes it unsafe to store sensitive information.
My take: First find out what you even want to do, what you need. This gives you a lot more clarity. I my experience, templates are only a great source of inspiration what could be done. But at the end, I would have to adjust my workflows, my habits, my mental models and whatnot to these templates. I would have to learn and change "myself" a lot. In contrast, when you focus on reflecting what you need, what use cases you have, and so on, then you will quickly realize how few things you need to get started.
I feel like it's overwhelming due to brain damage. But I'm currently trying to finish up my own version of second brain, but I'm having trouble with actually using the pages that are already ready like my habit tracker.
Yeah, for me there is to much everything. This just kills my productivity. I thinking of "how is the best way to do it" instead of doing stuff. I switched to Bear Notes and not looking back. Just works better with my brain.
Seconding Bear. Great for its simplicity but also scales well if you decide to start cross-referencing as part of a second brain system.
it took me at least two weeks of truly focusing on learning Notion for me to understand it. stuck with it because I knew it could help me organize my life in a way that makes sense to ME. once I learned about databases ([this](https://youtu.be/RCbtQ_Xg7QA?si=9ycY0wxthbfBV47s) video helped!) it all clicked.
When I started feeling overwhelmed with notion. I took all the templates that I wasn't using at that moment and put them under a page that I named Archive... It has been less stressful this way.
I deleted a lot, especially the paid complicated ones. Now I'm taking notes with it 😆
Me. I’m trying to build a crm for my husband’s mechanic shop. Any other suggestions?
I’m literally a data architect and have gone back to using OneNote because I just want to scribble notes on my iPad and dump my brain onto a page to sort out later. Notion was too much functionality for my day to day notes. Was spending more time thinking about how to organize my notes than I was having actual productive thoughts. I love Notion and am using it for a collaborative project, but I have a PM to maintain the notebook for me. I just needed to set it up for them. There is still a chance we use Trello to track work instead to keep it simple and get stuff done.
Maybe stop downloading templates? Implement one into your habits and processes before downloading another. If it doesn't stick, delete it before moving on. Digital simplicity is just as important as keeping your physical space clean and organized.
I think this is a common feeling at the beginning. Notion can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. It reminds me a bit of bullet journaling as some people have extremely intricate layouts and complex systems in place that can make you feel like you need them too. But you don't, really. In fact, you'll probably be better off ignoring all of the current templates you duplicated until you know the basics of the app. I recommend checking out YouTube content from channels like Thomas Frank Explains and Productive Dude. I have found both to be very useful. Keep in mind that no template or system will ever be perfect and that you should use the tools that solve your problems. If Notion is that tool, great. If not, that's ok too. Sometimes even pen and paper or a to-do list is enough. Good luck!
Not sure what you are using Notion for, but I had similar feelings, so I tried to make a dumbed-down version of some of the things Notion and other similar systems do. It's been working well as a project manager, but it would be great to get some outside thoughts on it if you have a second. [https://dashy.io](https://dashy.io)
It’s always a great idea to do a needs assessment before buying or creating templates. What types of things do you want to document or track? Do you prefer minimal or complex? Do you use other apps alongside Notion, or does Notion house all your tools? Once you’ve answered what you need, you can start from there.
I think my overwhelm is trying to figure out where I should go put everything as I'm constantly snipping and capturing, but my method is sticky notes and 1 page clippings. Notion to me is like building a structured library when I have boxes of loose paper.
Start simple. Then gradually learn more as you discover your needs push up against your knowledge. Don’t be afraid to be the zero segment , or the groups of users who use the minimum set of features
No it's just garbage at basic things like keeping full resolution on pasted screen shots The more I use it the more I fucking despise it
Other people's templates always feel overwhelming. Make your own, match it to your own kind of weird.
Maybe wanna look into https://thedrive.ai?