Just recently, Notion raised $50 million on a $2 billion valuation. I’ve been using this tool for quite a while now so I decided to share my experience with it:

A couple of years ago, I tried using Notion, I didn’t really like it at first so I stopped using it on the same day I signed up.

It was June of last year when I came across it again on Twitter and thought I’d give it another shot, which I’m glad I did.

Now, I use Notion for a lot of things: work, personal goals, and even to keep track of my bills. Before this, I was juggling Trello, Asana, Confluence and quite a number of google docs and sheets to keep track of my tasks and progress until it came to a point when I felt really frustrated having to use all of these tools, when Notion can replace and house almost everything that I want to see (at least to some extent).

I still think that Trello, Asana and all the other productivity tools are very effective, in fact I still use them from time to time, it’s just that Notion, being an all-in-one database, has made me more productive and efficient with my work and personal life.

Here’s the current layout of our command center on Notion.

To explain how I think Notion compares to the other tools I’ve used before, this is what I always say to my friends:

It’s like I was doing this thing, then I discovered this other thing that could help me do the same thing better.

So let me share what I love about Notion, so far:

✔️Interchangeable database views are my favourite. I literally just have to enter data once and Notion can present the information in which ever view I want to see it in — table, board, calendar, list or gallery.

✔️Allows collaboration in a small team. I remember when we first started a project, we kind of dumped everything in a shared iCloud note (spoiler alert: not very effective). All ideas / comms were there, in addition to our WhatsApp convos. Naturally, the note became too overwhelming overtime until it wasn’t effective anymore.

We thought about using Asana / Trello but realised we’re too small of a team to maximise the powers of these tools. Now, with Notion, we get Asana + Trello + (Confluence, Evernote, Airtable, etc) at least to some extent, in one program.

✔️Personalisation of our own workspace. when you first sign up with Notion, you’ll get a blank canvas, and it’s up to you to personalise and/or tweak the available templates to improve and make your workflow better. this made our team feel more involved, as though we actually own the program and we built it to cater to our and only our team’s own needs.

✔️Emojis. they make working with Notion a lot more fun!

✔️The mobile app. I’m always on the go, and may not always have an access to my computer. so whenever I need to delegate a task, or to remind myself to do something, I can easily do it with my phone.

All that said, if I were to be asked to rate my satisfaction with Notion, I’d say the following: I signed up for a paid account.

I know I can do a lot more things with it but I haven’t really gotten the chance to fully dive in and explore. but if there’s one thing that I can think of right now that I want Notion to have is a feature that automatically duplicates recurring tasks (to-dos) — Asana-like.

Now, my Notion workspace is nowhere near perfect and my team and I are constantly improving our ways of using it to maximise what it has to offer. but so far, I’m happy I decided to give Notion another shot.

Is the company worth a billion dollars? 🤷

Is their product worth a monthly subscription? Yes definitely worth a 💰