On why I hate Notion and still decided to build my first product on the same platform
Notion (notion.so) is doing more bad than good to people who're trying to be more productive.
Now that my first free product is out on the Internet, I decided to reflect a little on why I built my first product on a platform with which I have had this love-hate relationship from the beginning.
Before we move on with our post, for I few days, I have thought of adding this little section from my About page that describes what topics will be covered in the newsletter. As you know, we humans have this tendency to fall in love with new, interesting, and novel topics (at least I do), and the result sometimes completely goes against my readers. I understand that you want to read what you signed up for, and that’s totally okay. This is my small request to message me, or reply to the email, or comment under the posts if you want to read something specific on the topics that I am about to share. I’ll be more than happy to fulfil your request (and satiate my own curiosity as well, hehe).
From the About section of White Space:
White Space is the result of a teenager documenting how he’s exploring and discovering things in life. You’ll read on a variety of topics including, but not limited to:
articles that help you become a better “digital-first writer.”
read: What being an editor for 2+ years has taught me about writingpersonal life, sneak peek into law school (sometimes), and anything that’s on my mind.
read: Why am I moving to Substack despite being disappointed with the platformcontemporary ‘digital’ writing, critique pieces, and commentary.
read: Desk Notes #1: Commentary on Contemporary Writingtechnology, scientific development, media and commentary on the latest in tech.
read: Bluesky is Building a Payment Platform and Why Should We Care
All in all, I want to write about everything. From the suicide that shook the entire college and left me traumatized to the latest in tech and everything in between, be it writing, reviewing tools, or writing a commentary/critique. I want to experiment. I want to provide value to you in the process. I hope that sounds interesting to you as well. If yes, let’s get rolling!
I hate Notion. Not that notion in your head. Notion, the uber-popular note-taking app. Back when it launched, almost every other productivity creator on YouTube was getting aroused (kinda) just by hearing its name, lol. They can’t stop preaching how good it was. ”It can 1,000x your productivity,” I recall hearing that from some YouTuber years ago. Word verbatim, I swear. Now that I think of it, this has got to be the most hilarious thing ever.
I hated Notion for giving this false illusion of productivity. It’s just beautifying your road to productivity, not making you productive or anything. But in this process, you’ll feel like you’ve been a heck lot of productive all this while. But in reality, you were just travelling and have arrived nowhere.
Enters my first digital product: a helpful guide to Medium newbies to navigate through publications by curating and regularly updating the top 50 publications on the platform. I decided to build it after a couple of writers started asking which publications should they pitch to on Medium next after getting added to one that I owned and ran. I decided to keep it free of cost so that everyone can access it, but in case someone wants to support me, they can generously pay any amount they want to.
Currently, it has 28 sales and 7 five-star reviews. (Cheers to small wins!)
Guess what, this product is built on Notion. (face-palm moment for me)
But why did I do it, you ask? If I hated any other platform as much as Notion, I’d have never opened it in my lifetime. However, something about this platform made me come back to it when I was faced with the challenge of deciding on a place to host my data.
The answer lies in the basic “how the platform is getting used?” question. Look, Notion currently has a valuation of $10 bn. That’s unimaginable for a note-taking company. For comparison, Opera, the browser company, has a valuation of just $1.6 bn. So how does a company that makes note-taking easier (or, that was what it started out to do) get this absurd valuation figure?
The answer is the vibrant community it has built. Go to any forum, and you’ll find an evergreen discussion about the product. This epidemic of meta content for the platform is making investors go crazy. All the creators are giving out advice, techniques, and ‘templates’ for creating the most productive life possible. But are they living a life like that? Do they track their calories, their reading goals, their finances, their classroom notes, their sleep schedule, and their gym routine all on Notion? I highly doubt it.
That’s what I hate this platform for. It’s good for accessing a database but does an awful job at tracking or being productive—the very reason they advertise and advocate for. Their platform makes you counter-productive and pseudo-productive. I hate that.
But When I had to decide to host my data while keeping it accessible to everyone who’ll be using it, Notion stood out. It’s simple to use, clean, minimal and above all, gets the job done. Beautifully.
Take a look (from my recent product):
It’s clean. It’s beautiful. And the changes I made to the database are reflected on the web in real time. No refreshes or reuploads are needed. I love that.
My love/hate relationship with Notion thus continues.
Ways you can support the 18-year-old writer behind this newsletter
A lot goes into writing and delivering value on a consistent basis, and a small earning from the same motivates a writer. Newsletter subscriptions are currently not available for writers based in India. Substack, I hope someday you solve this problem for the Indian writers. But until then, here are some ways you can support my labour of love, i.e. writing and building:
buying my free (pay-as-you-want) product on Gumroad. It’s only of use if you write on Medium or want to get started. This product will give you a list of top active publications accepting new writers on the platform. Some publications have upwards of 800,000+ followers.
buy me a coffee on Ko-fi: I have never really tried this platform. Previously, I used to attach my personal PayPal link and I got some donations from that. Let’s see if this makes the experience any good. I’ll be really happy on the other side of your screen if you decide to buy me a coffee hehe. I have just connected PayPal, so I don’t know how this will work, but let’s see.
a $5 optional membership through Ko-fi: If you want a means to support me on a monthly basis, here’s a $5 tier. If you value this 18-year-old’s labour that goes into writing this newsletter and building other products while navigating teenage and law school, consider subscribing. This will make me extremely happy, while also giving me some validation.
pledge your support for subscribing in the future: I hope someday Substack and Stripe work their way out and support subscriptions for writers based out of India. Meanwhile, you can pledge support through Substack to subscribe in the future. This way, you’ll be notified when White Space enables subscription in the future, and you may decide to subscribe to it then.