Notion is a note-taking and project management tool that people try using for literally everything. The biggest features are the interface and databases. Databases allow you to assign properties and the like to your pages, and then filter and present them in different views. This combined with the interface, which you build yourself to fit your needs, makes Notion a terrible tool for people who actually get stuff done.
Switching to Obsidian
I used to use Notion for school quite a lot. I even tried using it for everything, but I quickly found out that did not work. I had fancy databases for notes and assignments, and a ton of properties for sorting them. After that, I switched to Obsidian. I had a few reasons why:
- I liked visualizing with the graph view
- Not as much to setup
- Super customizable
- Owning my files
Obsidian was great. Some things took some getting used to, but the plugins made it much easier to actually use. For example, getting used to having to manage a file structure was tough at first. However, the folder notes plugin made things a lot easier after switching to Notion. I usually have a top level page for each folder, and this plugin allowed me to set a top level page that would appear when I clicked on a folder.
File organization has always been annoying for me. I would say I'm quite good at it, but folders just don't work for me. There are things that could go in multiple folders, and when do I reach the point of things being too organized? However, the alternative, tags, is also annoying to me. I either cannot remember the tags, don't use them, come up with new ones that I need to maintain, or am I just really inconsistent with tagging. Luckily, folder organization isn't too big of an issue with school assignments, as they're already organized into unit and lesson.
Another thing I really liked about Obsidian is how easy it is to link to pages. You just put text in brackets, and it will link to the page with that title. Because of this, multiple pages cannot share a title, but that is completely understandable. But this makes connecting pages so much easier, and connecting pages is really important in Obsidian.
Cracks Starting to Form
Despite Obsidian being so good, there were still a lot of major problems.
The first problem is having all files local. This is a pain in the butt to sync across devices, which I use a lot of in school. I used OneDrive, which worked for the most part. A frequent issue is that changing a setting would cause a merge conflict, and a duplicate file would be created. This was especially an issue with the statistics file, which has tons and tons of duplicates created due to merge conflicts during syncing.
Another issue is the app, both on desktop and mobile. I was lucky enough to be able to install Obsidian on computers last year, but this year our school has Macs, and the group policy actually blocks installing apps now. So now I can only view individual files, and without the app none of the features work. Also, for some reason the iOS app can only sync using Notion sync (which costs money), or using iCloud. So I just could not access any of my notes on my phone. That definitely was not annoying.
I'm not saying that local files are bad, they're great. You are in control of all your data, and you can access it as long as you have the files. Notion infamously promised an offline mode many years ago and still have yet to deliver. All that I am saying it that the approach I had didn't work for what I needed.
Back to Notion
After all of these pains, I went back to Notion. All the pains simply were not worth it. However, this time I decided to make some changes:
Instead of having a super complex dashboard, I treat everything like how I treated Obsidian. I don't use databases, notes are all sorted in a tree structure. This way I don't have to configure a ton of settings just to write down what a circle is. And it's great, I barely spend any time on Notion anymore, unless I need it. This also works great because I don't know how to install OneDrive on Linux, and I don't really want to figure it out.
With that being said, if you mainly use one device, I would highly recommend Obsidian. I am actually using it to draft this article right now! It may be a little more advanced than other note taking tools, but its power will make up for that. Plus, it's not even THAT much more advanced anyways. If you can format messages on Discord, you can write a document in Obsidian.