I use notion to organize lots of things, in particular my research notes. I used to use R Markdown, which was great for mixing text, images, \(\LaTeX\), code, and (most importantly) emojis. However, over time my research notebook got bloated and trying to keep notes and also make sure everything rendered correctly became challenging.
I moved to Notion because it offers a very similar experience for markdown lovers.
Thoughts on the experience
Here’s some things I like about it:
- Cloud backed + mobile app
- All my notes are searchable
- Possible to export as markdown
- Databases! Every page can be a database and it’s pretty cool
- Templates! I use the “new experiment” button to add structured entries to my lab notebook
- Every page can be reformatted and nested on the fly
- I can sync TODOs across multiple pages: my main planner, and each project’s respective TODO list
- Useful shortcuts for Today’s date and cross referencing other pages
- There are some cute templates out there
And some gripes:
- No offline mode - even for simple notes!
- Search UI is not great: can’t search within code chunks, or toggle sections
- Markdown exports are clunky and not everything will be well preserved (especially images)
- Admiring cute templates feels productive, but it’s actually a massive time sink