Notion Users Overwhelmed Building Complex Systems
Users, particularly those attempting to build complex systems or integrate Notion with other tools, find the platform overwhelming and difficult to master. This complexity hinders productivity and limits its applicability for operational roles or less tech-savvy users. The platform's flexibility, while a strength, also contributes to a steep learning curve and ongoing frustration.
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“Same, I think they want relations to auto-populate but the explanation is pretty unclear.”
“oh I remember the chaos when they pulled that feature, people were not happy the fact that the release note URL went dead and then came back is pretty telling, notion does this weird thing where they roll stuff out to small batches of users without saying anything, so you might just be in an early test group I'd be careful about building anything critical around it though, if they yanked it once they could do it again and you'd be left scrambling maybe use it for low stakes stuff and kee”
“I definitely wouldn’t try to move everything into Notion on day one. With multiple businesses, employees, vendors and a family office, that could easily turn into another system you have to maintain. I’d use Notion more like a command center than a replacement for every tool. Keep files where they already make sense (Drive, Docs, etc.), then let Notion answer a few questions when you open it: What needs my attention? What’s in progress? What am I waiting on? Where is the relevant information? I’”
“Anything you could do with Zapier/make, you can do today with workers. Custom agents are powerful, but you still have to be clear on what you want to happen and when.”
“I've been having this exact problem for the past 4 years and it drives me INSANE. Right now my recurring tasks have to be manually reset, and it's reaching the breaking point in terms of what I am willing to put up with. I just cannot believe there are still no native recurring reminders in Notion. Pretty soon I am going to split off my tasks into Todoist (not free) and have Notion just be my notes database. I could have the entire thing running in Obsidian with plug-ins but I simply can”
“ok this is actually clever, the relation table for recurrence intervals is way cleaner than hardcoding days into each task. my only question is what happens if you mark something handled late, like two weeks after it was due. does it calculate the next date from today or from the original due date? because if its from the original due date you could end up with a next date thats already in the past, and your overdue view just stays cluttered.”
“Agreed OP you’re not being clear enough here. This sounds like a lack of Notion experience and know-how. I also auto link things to my month database, and this is even easier now with tabbed views inside custom page layouts. Basically it’s possible but you need to level up your understanding of Notion first.”
“that 15 minute sync is doing a lot of heavy lifting honestly. my hesitation with app script is always the maintenance when google decides to quietly break something in an update. how long have you had this running without it going sideways on you?”
“I Auto link pages and databases all the time but I can't understand your particular requirements even with all the capital letters.”
“yeah the repeat feature is genuinely broken, learned that the hard way. the formula workaround works but it took me way longer to set up than it should for something that basic. for personal use its fine, i agree. i just wish they'd fix the native recurring tasks instead of making us build workarounds like its a feature and not a bug.”
“Notion really need the option or automation by default FOR AUTO LINKING! I want to link a database elements where each page is a month of the year. You can say usea external tools like zapier/make to make the auto linking page, or use notion custom agent, SUCKS!! submitted by /u/Distinct_Ask_6063 [link] [comments]”
“I've been building a governance-style tracker in Notion (multiple linked databases: an inventory, an actions Kanban, and an evidence log) and wanted to share what ended up working, and hear how others approach similar "record of what happened and when" systems. What worked: three separate databases instead of one giant one (Inventory, Actions, Evidence). Relations link each Evidence entry back to both the Inventory item and the Action that triggered it, so nothing is just floating”
“Ich habe es mit claude gekoppelt und benutze die ki als Typse die mir auf Zuruf da alles brav einpflegt. Gerade dass dadurch fristen per Mail automatisch erinnern und die to dos strukturell dargestellt werden hilft mir im Projekt schon sehr. Aber es selbst zu pflegen wäre mir auch zu viel Arbeit”
“I'm not allowed to use Notion at work (sigh) but I can install a desktop app, and I was hoping AppFlowy could fill a basic need for task tracking, boards and notes. It did not. AppFlowy seems way too much like a beta release. The local storage option is an afterthought, and is not compatible with the cloud sync storage. The documentation often doesn’t match the product’s functionality, and based on forum posts I've seen, they’ve repeatedly lost people’s data in upgrades and not cared muc”
“What I think would be the most reliable for you is using Monitask. I would recommend connecting it via Zapier for live syncing. So basically Monitask will basically feed all your time spent in hours to Notion without any manual entry which should be suitable for you.”
“I just added recurrence to the notion stuff. - I made a database with records named "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "yearly", "bi-weekly" etc and one named "ad-hoc" - Each record has a numerical number of days as a property - ad-hoc has 0 Then a database of tasks might have a record like "change printer toner." That record has some properties: - a relation to the recurrance table, for example "monthly" - a property cal”
“See the image below, may give you more of an idea (Notion just takes the top part of pages in promotional images for the marketplace). Activities are grouped and sorted on a list view on the right side (there is also a separate page of the database with multiple views). Even if you have multiple Activities, you write a single Daily Note for a day and relate the note to multiple Activities. One note per Activity can be done if you want everything super tidy but it adds extra friction in my opinio”
“Dashboard looks clean. How does it handle things when you have a lot of concurrent activities?”
It's a builder's platform. So it's whatever you make of it.
“for small medium business. notion is fine. for larger one. stay away. just don't I'm using it for my personal task management and it works fine. also the repeat feature in the database sucks. don't use that. instead use formula to calculate due date and automation so the card get recycled in circle back to 'todo' when it is 'done'”
“The calendar plus notes app combo is underrated, most people overcomplicate it with systems that need constant feeding if it takes longer to log the task than to do the task, the system's dead weight”
“I stopped using Notion for this exact reason. Honestly, I switched to just using my calendar and notes app.”
“Yeah, live syncing saves a lot of annoying manual updates. I used Monitask with Zapier to push tracked hours into Notion, and it kept the records updated without me having to copy anything over.”
“Been using Notion for a while now and I keep hitting the same wall. I set up something solid for tracking recurring tasks, meeting notes, followups, the kind of stuff that never stops when you're running an office. Works great for two weeks. Then I miss a couple days, the system breaks down, and I'm spending more time fixing the database than doing the actual work. I write dev tutorials on the side so I'm used to building structured things, and even I can't land on something that”
“The tool knowing what it is even when you hide the interface is the most accurate description of why Notion does not work for serious drafting even when the setup looks clean. Notion was built for structured thinking and it produces structured thinking even when the task is supposed to be unstructured and exploratory. Writing prose in a database tool and writing prose in something built only for writing are genuinely different experiences and no amount of interface customization changes what the”
“stuff like that at the same time impresses and scares me. you cannot back up or export that stuff, you're building an application inside someone else's garden there.”
“he "shared memory layer or everyone starts from scratch" point is so right. one thing though: notion's a great store, but agents reading it just search pages storage and actual memory are two different problems. (that gap's what i work on at supermemory.ai ) ever had an agent treat an old notion page as truth?”
“The question is never what's the best place for this one thing? It's always what's the best place for everything. You want the slides right next to your notes and lecture transcripts and the syllabus and in the flow of the class. You want it to build a story about the class subject matter and your journey learning it. That's Notion. That's not Google Drive. Don't forget that Notion can summarize those slides to augment your notes.”
“Running a remote team of 8 and the Notion setup I built six months ago is starting to crack. Too many databases, too many filtered views nobody updates, and I spend more time maintaining the system than using it. The core problem is task ownership. People add stuff but statuses go stale immediately. I have a master tasks DB with assignee, status, priority, due date. Linked views per person on a team hub page. Sounds clean on paper. Falls apart in practice because people just stop touching it aft”
“I’d probably use both rather than choosing one. Notion is great for organizing your classes, notes, assignments, and having everything connected in one workspace, while Google Drive is better suited for keeping the actual files and folders. For school, I’d probably keep the original PDFs/slides in a structured folder system and link them from Notion. That way your notes stay clean and searchable in Notion without turning it into your main file-storage system. The bigger thing, IMO, is having a c”
“Students get Notion Plus for free. But I still wouldn't use it to store files, so I agree.”
“What school doesn't give you bunch of free storage in either Google or OneDrive? I would not use Notion to store files, it feels terribly inconvenient for that.”
“Hi, I was once a past user of notion a long time ago but recently start using it again. From the title you can see Notion vs Google Drive. Why this tittle? It is because I am using notion for school again and I am between if I should upload my slides or notes my professor post to Google drive or notion. I am highly toward notion because there isn't a limit in how much GB you can have in total in your workplace. But I know that Google drive have a 15gb limit including Gmail, photos, docs,etc”
i think theyre just page icons in notion, not separate tools or anything
“Same. I have everything I need organized well enough that I can find it. If I want something to do a large change I just get Claude or GPT to do it for less cost.”
“why have separate databases for all these things when you could just set up reminders? or use one calendar and consolidate them?”
“I switched it off at my earliest convenience. But I use Notion to store, track, and display things I specifically created, I don't use it for workflows with a bunch of busy work.”
“oh this is really interesting as I’m currently trying to maximise how I’m using Claude and Notion. Would you be willing to share some of the ways you’re using these please?”
“I seriously doubt you can actually produce anything with this. What exactly is the outcome of all of these put together? What do you actually do? You didn’t write this text either. So again and i apologise in advance if i sound like a dick but i am honestly curious.”
“If there’s one thing to know about me, it’s that I’m obsessed with productivity, efficiency, and scale. When I see someone using a new tool, agent, or workflow that creates leverage, it immediately catches my attention and typically doesn’t leave. There have been countless nights when I lie in bed thinking about where it could fit, what it could replace, and whether it could give me (or someone I’m working with) leverage. My X and YouTube feeds are filled with new tools, agents, and workflows —”
“It's solid for search and summaries but the MCP integration is where it actually shines, that setup unlocks a lot”
It's progressively become absolutely substantial to my way of using notion
“Hello everyone. I'm curious about your thoughts on Notion AI and whether it is genuinely useful for work/personal use or mostly just annoying bloatware. In my own opinion I feel it is useful for search mostly, or asking questions and getting caught up. Curious to hear what other people think. submitted by /u/Skye7821 [link] [comments]”
“The one that survives for me is a single running page with the date at the top and nothing else in it. No properties, no icon, no template. What made the redesigning stop was working out what it was for. The tidying was insurance against not finding things later, and rearranging felt like doing something about that. Structure was standing in for confidence. So the question I ask now is whether a change makes something easier to find later or just easier to look at. Every icon and cover I ever se”
“Ig it's better to switch to obsidian/coda even before using notion as I want to use it for personal use only”
“If you use Notion for yourself and your work, what goes in your personal HQ or personal dashboard? Is this like home stuff? recipes? Things like that? I’m trying to make myself a personal dashboard, and I'm like, "Hmmm, would my goals go here, or just personal goals?" LOL this can get in the weeds. ideas? thoughts? submitted by /u/EasternAd5351 [link] [comments]”
“Organising becomes procrastination at the point where the change you're making helps future work rather than the thing in front of you. That's a usable test. If you're adding a property because this week's work needs it, fine. If you're adding it because some later project might, you're decorating. Notion is genuinely good at making something you already wrote findable later. It's not good at making you do the thing, and nothing is. Dashboards are the worst offender,”
“Heard, I used to build company’s os’s like this before the age of agents and this conceptually was common place for most agency’s with like 10-20 clients min”
“The hard part is describe what you want before GPT can do it for, and this is actually what you pay for.”
“I have seen a similar problem and it's MacOS issue. Next time you try to create a task try to move the windows around and see if the fields become accessible and if that works - try to look for the app who's interface blocking that same area (even if its in background).”
“yeah, i'd probably use a dedicated time tracker and sync it into Notion rather than trying to build the whole thing inside the database. maybe try using monitask it can push the tracked hours through Zapier, which makes the setup pretty painless imo.”
“I think you just gotta keep at it until it feels natural again. I switched to writing prose and comic scripts from Google Docs to Notion and it took me a few weeks to stop wanting to go back to a basic word processor, but now it feels fine again. I draw too, and I kinda relate the feeling to using a different drawing software, even between similar platforms its different enough that using a new one feels off until you just keep at it and get used to it.”
“Well, I switched over the years between different patterns. Even one that involved deeply-nested micro-pages from everything (every concept, thing etc). In the end, the clearest model ends up being the one where each page corresponds to a major topic. This applies also to my journal (unsurprisingly), where each day has a page in a special database. So, I have a page about Mars since it's such a huge topic on its own, and that is nested in an "Astronomy" page, and so on. But Mars it”
“Feature Request The posibility to create Whtieboards Pages. It would be exteemelly useful has to many tools (like Notion) has: Affine, Fibery, Obsidian, etc…”
“Nothing seems to get better. Just the "AI Slop" (well phrased). I want to migrate to something else but there's too many choices and too much friction.”
“the masjid schedule sync idea is solid, not sure how feasible it is in notion though”
“Hey r/Notion ! Like a lot of you, my Notion workspace used to be a graveyard for random browser bookmarks that I swore I’d read later. Half of them ended up behind paywalls, broken links, or turned into messy web clippings that completely broke my database formatting. I got tired of the clutter and wanted something built strictly for research digestion and fast archiving, so I built FetchMark . It’s an offline-first web app (with a Chrome extension) designed to rescue web content before it di”