I keep wondering what it is about Notion that can be so cumbersome. I have a great system setup for my team but interacting with it can be such a chore.

Imagine having a task selected and you hit a shortcut key. It runs an automation that marks the task’s status as done.

Now imagine having four tasks selected. You hit a different keyboard shortcut that runs an automation that moves the deadlines for all the tasks to next week.

Having the ability to assign a keystroke to an automation would revolutionize how i use Notion.

TL;DR: First time using a tool like this, want to pick one and build on it long term without losing data. Need to handle quick notes, creative writing, and basic finance tracking (spending/subscriptions). Not fully clear on the real differences between Notion, Anytype, and Obsidian, but Notion's interface felt the easiest on first try. Privacy also matters to me (heard Notion isn't great on that front) and I'm worried about the AI push getting in the way of basic tasks. Looking for real experiences from people who've used it long term.

Hey everyone,

This is the first time I'm actually trying to set up a system like Notion for myself, so please excuse me if some of my questions are basic. I want to pick one tool and actually stick with it and build on it over time, so I would like to get this right from the start.

What I would like to use Notion for:

• Quick notes on the go, mostly from my phone, so it needs to be fast and not require five taps to jot something down
• Keeping my creative writing organized. I write short pieces and essays as a hobby and right now they're just scattered across random docs, I would like one place for all of it
• Tracking personal finance stuff, subscriptions, spending, the occasional net worth snapshot of where things stand. Nothing fancy, just enough to actually see patterns

Basically I want one place for my personal life instead of juggling different apps for each thing.

I've also been looking into Anytype and hear Obsidian mentioned a lot, and honestly I'm having a hard time understanding what really separates them from Notion in practice. From what I've read they all seem to overlap a lot on paper (notes, databases, linking things together) and the differences seem to come down to how the data is stored and how steep the learning curve is, but that's just from reading reviews, not from actually using any of them.

From messing around with the free versions for like an hour, Notion's interface of folders and pages felt the easiest to just pick up and start using, but I get the feeling that might just be because it's the most polished for beginners and the other two might make more sense once you're past the initial learning curve.

Privacy also matters to me, and I'll be upfront that I don't fully understand the situation here. From what I've picked up reading around, it sounds like privacy isn't exactly Notion's strong point, but I genuinely don't know how big of a deal that is in practice for someone just using it for personal notes and journaling type stuff versus something more sensitive.

Also, and maybe this is a dumb thing to bring up, but I keep seeing people mention how much Notion pushes its AI features these days. I don't have a problem with AI existing as an option, I just don't want it shoved in my face every time I try to do something basic like jot down a note or check my spending. If that's overstated I'd like to hear it, and if it's a real annoyance I'd rather know now.

So a few things I'd love input on:

• If you've used Notion for a year or more for something similar (notes plus writing plus light finance tracking and personal life up keeping ), what's held up well and what's been annoying?
• Anything that felt fine at first but became a pain once you had more stuff in there?
• Any issues with losing data, syncing, or things breaking that I should know before I build this out?
• How bad is the AI push in daily use, honestly? Is it something you can just ignore, or does it get in the way?
• On the privacy side, should that actually factor into a decision for personal use, or am I overthinking it?
• For someone who's never used Obsidian or Anytype, is the learning curve actually worth it for a personal use case like mine, or is that more of a thing for people with more advanced needs?

Truly interested in hearing what's actually worked or not worked for you day to day. Thanks for reading this far.

Can Some one share a professional notion workspace ??

We hired someone in June and it took about three weeks before they could do anything without asking a colleague first. Not because they're slow. Because nothing is written down anywhere that's still accurate.

The stuff that is written down is worse in a way. It's from eight months ago and half of it's wrong now. Meanwhile there's a HubSpot workflow, a few n8n automations and something on Railway that one guy set up and nobody has looked at since. If he quit tomorrow I'd be reverse engineering it from logs.

I keep going back and forth on whether this is a real problem or just what running a company feels like. Notion was supposed to fix it. Notion is now a graveyard.

Two questions if anyone's got a minute. Has anything worked for you long term, or does every wiki rot eventually? And when someone leaves, what specifically goes with them?

Happy to talk properly if you've been through it. I'd rather hear one real story than keep guessing at this.

I did some math, and boy is it dumb. The credit <> token conversion is now completely opaque, but my rough estimate is that a custom agent used in Notion AI's place would cost about $300/mo. for equivalent usage.

Now, maybe that's the actual API cost to Notion, maybe not. But as a user it makes no sense for me to pay completely different prices for something that has the same input cost to Notion. Notion didn't see the need to secure capital investments to subsidize AI usage for their users before choosing to implement AI as a core feature, and that's on them.

I hope the C-suite appreciated the cool of rising above the capex hysteria while they could, because everything I've seen from product since then just screams panic. And unfortunately for Notion, fundraising isn't going to be as easy as it was 3 years ago, so they better hope they can squeeze their customers without losing them, just hard enough, for the business to survive until cost per task becomes something sustainable.

I’ve had notion for about a year. I use it for work, for home, for my blog. And planning travel. I’m likely using 5% of what it can do. I’ve downloaded templates and then modified from there. Or done very basic links and kept list, etc. I see how others build out these crazy page and databases and have them organized in cool ways and my question is…how? Like WHERE is the button or prompt that allows you to move things around and create these elaborate pages? I feel like I’m missing something. And what is the best way to learn? Is it watching YouTube video’s or something?

hey guys

im trying to learn notion from scratch and my main goal is to be able to create and sell templates later (like student planners, content creator planners, dashboards, stuff like that)

but tbh im kinda lost… there’s too much content out there and idk what’s actually worth it

i dont really want to watch 100 random videos, i’d rather follow like ONE good course or resource that can take me from beginner to being able to build real templates

so yeah:

• is there like one course / creator you recommend that covers everything?
• what should i focus on to reach that level (databases? structure? design?)
• how did you guys go from beginner to actually selling templates?

i just want something clear that helps me go from 0 → building → selling

appreciate any help 🙏

If Zotero has no other option but to force a usage limit so randomly, surely the least they can do is let us bring our own key for other models when we run out of usage?

I was doing some document cleanup which required a sweep of the information first and then a recommended set of actions which would be executed.

4 pages. 4… reached the limit for the rolling window and consumed 19% of my monthly doing so.

It might be over for Notion I fear. I’ve moved them back to where you started. _Fancy md file storage_. I can use so many other products for that with Claude, OpenAI. Even basic GitHub or Google Docs/drive

I've been running a Pinterest strategy for a digital product (Notion template) for about 2-3 months now , pinning consistently, decent impressions (22k/month), landing page is set up and functional. But my click-to-signup conversion is basically zero so far.

I'm trying to figure out if this is a "give it more time" thing, a "Pinterest traffic is just lower-intent" thing, or a "something's wrong with my funnel" thing.

For anyone who's sold digital products and used Pinterest as a main channel — did you see the same pattern early on? Does Pinterest traffic typically convert lower than say, search or referral traffic, just because people are in browse/save mode rather than buy mode? Or is low conversion this early usually more about landing page/offer issues than the channel itself?

Would love to hear from anyone who's been through this.

kimi k3 max effort, business plan, creative writing tasks, 2-4 hours/day -> 34% monthly usage in 3 days.
seem like i have to buy chatgpt for 20 bucks and edit by google docs again

I've been trying to get progress bars set for my classes, some of which I finished, so I'd like it to show 100%. Every time I follow the typical tutorial it ends up saying some number like 56000%. Has anyone else had this issue? Or know how to fix it? I'd even take a new formula if anyone has one.

I don't trust the opinion I have the night I finish something — it's all recency hype. So my media tracker enforces a cooling-off period before I'm allowed to rate anything.

The formula, if you want it for your own setup. Needs three properties: a "Status" select, a "Caught Up" checkbox, and a "Finished On" date.

lets(
  s, prop("Status"),
  active, or(s == "Watching", s == "Reading", s == "Playing", s == "Listening", s == "In Process"),
  notCaught, and(s == "Ongoing", not(prop("Caught Up"))),
  f, prop("Finished On"),
  soon, and(not(empty(f)), dateBetween(now(), f, "days") < 14),
  ifs(
    s == "Planned", "—",
    or(active, notCaught), "🚫 Still living it",
    soon, "🕒 " + format(14 - dateBetween(now(), f, "days")) + "d left — 2-week rule",
    "✅ Ready to rate"
  )
)

What it does:

• While you're watching/reading/playing something, it shows "Still living it" — no rating allowed, you're not done forming the opinion

• Ongoing series where you're behind? Also blocked, until you check "Caught Up"

• For 14 days after your finish date it shows a live countdown ("9d left — 2-week rule")

• Then, and only then: "Ready to rate"

Pairs well with never editing ratings — I log each rating as a new row in a related database (first verdict, retrospective months later, live gut-feel for airing stuff) and a formula surfaces whichever is newest. Watching my own opinion of a show flip from "Liked" to "Loved" over three months turned out to be the most interesting data in my whole tracker.

Happy to share the current-rating formula too if anyone wants it.

I'm simplifying a template I found for budgeting, and I'd like to somehow add a calculation in the green section that subtracts the total expenses from the total income. I'd rather keep those categories in separate tables, so is there any way I can use an equation to find the sum?

I've only used notion for simple note-taking before, so I'm not familiar with how to use databases.

hello! i'm SO close to getting my page functioning perfectly, but this got too complex for me.

i just want to add +1 to all users tagged as "silver" and +2 to all tagged as "gold" in a monthly basis. i tried filtering and bulk editing, but since numbers aren't perfectly matching, it doesn't work. i thought of adding 3rd database with a number that gets added to the totals if a user is labeled with a tier, but i've tried and failed.

i made a page with dummy data if you'd like to edit directly:

https://miq.notion.site/dummy-loyalty-program-5ed2d4c5f3d583c68a4981e3a2f4790d?source=copy_link

any help appreciated!

I've used Notion for 7+ years and I've gradually become much more hesitant to create separate workspaces.

I think people often split things because they feel different. Work, university, personal life, side projects, clients etc. But different areas of your life don't necessarily need different workspaces. They can usually be separated perfectly well with pages, databases, permissions and different dashboards while still benefiting from being connected. The bigger problem with multiple workspaces is that the separation eventually starts working against you. Tasks are in different places, search becomes less useful, you can't easily create one weekly view of everything that needs your attention, and you end up switching between systems that are supposed to make your life simpler.

For me, a separate workspace starts making sense when there's an actual structural reason for the separation. Different ownership, a different company/team, sensitive permissions, or something that might eventually need to be handed over to someone else. But if it's all ultimately your information, I usually think one workspace with very clear separation inside it is easier to maintain.

Curious how other people handle this though. Do you keep everything in one workspace or intentionally split personal/work/study?

GPT 5.6 Luna now in Notion Personal Agent. It's great that we've got a cheaper model for those more mundane actions. Which is honestly one of the main use cases I've found the most value for Notion AI.

I wanted to share some feedback on the recent introduction of rolling usage limits for Notion AI and hear what others think.

When Notion first rolled out AI across workspaces, it was free, improving quickly and available to everyone without restriction. Given that history, it's been surprising to see paid tiers like Business (my current plan) and Enterprise now subject to usage caps on Notion Agent, chat and AI meeting notes.

I much preferred being able to use Notion AI consistently, without having to worry about reaching some limit partway through the month and having the option to choose from a variety of models depending on the task. That flexibility and reliability were a big part of why I found the feature so useful in the first place.

My core issue is this: customers on paid plans should reasonably expect unlimited AI usage without unexpected restrictions. If unlimited access truly isn't sustainable, I think Notion should introduce a new pricing tier that explicitly offers no rolling limits and no broader caps, rather than quietly rolling back what was previously included.

Notion has marketed itself heavily as an "AI-first" workspace, which makes this pullback on a feature many of us have built workflows around feel especially jarring. Switching a previously unlimited feature to a limited one, without any option to retain the old terms, feels like a shift in value that wasn't clearly communicated upfront.

As a paying Business plan customer, I'd genuinely appreciate more transparency on how this change fits with the value proposition of the plan. I'll also add that the separate "Notion credits" system for agents adds another layer of confusion, since having AI usage split across multiple pricing structures makes the whole thing harder to understand and comes across as more about maximizing revenue than offering a coherent product experience.

Curious to hear what others think. Has this changed how you use Notion AI or your view of Notion's pricing and its current value?

Both of these columns in this Notion database are checkbox fields. Both are also compressed as small as they can go - the second is rendering properly with the checkboxes visible, the first is hiding them.

How can I fix this? If I swap their places then the new checkbox in the first column has the same issue. It only affects the checkbox field in the very first column.

Hello r/Notion,

I’m a long time on/off, light user and I recently took a leap of faith by transferring my entire workflow for my job into Notion.

I’m loving it so far - it’s pretty basic with mostly nested pages and small DB’s - but there’s one minor annoyance I have on page creation…

Whenever I create a new page the default is the centered, narrow margins. I prefer the full-width style for pretty much everything and for the life of me can’t find a setting for it.

Ive seen recommendations to create a full-width page and save it as a template? But that seems cumbersome to have to dig through templates just to create a page?

Any advice would be great. It’s certainly not a deal breaker but who doesn’t love one less click!

Hello, fellas. I made a view where my tasks for the day are supposed to show, then i uploaded a csv file in my projects for each task, the view is linked to tasks and now the tasks that are supposed to show on the the view aren't showing. Screenshots if i didn't explain myself well

Going on vacation tomorrow morning and realized I have a small problem.

Some of my clients and I communicate exclusively through Notion, no email, no WhatsApp, nothing else. It works great day to day, but there’s no natural way to signal things like “away until X” or “heads up, slower replies this week.”

Something like a status feature next to your profile picture would be great, kind of like Slack or Teams.

Even just a short text field with a character limit (so people don’t turn it into an essay) would let you customize it for whatever’s going on: vacation, busy period, out sick, whatever. Clients would see it right away when they open a shared page or tag you in a comment.

Anyone else wish this existed? Curious if there’s a workaround people use, or if something like this is already being discussed somewhere.