[Thursday Tech #8] Back to Notion?

Not my favourite but...

As you may know, I’ve been testing AnyType for the last few months as a personal knowledge management system — a fancy note-taking app that allows you to link your notes and more.

Pretty cool, but I got a bit frustrated this week. The thing is I love to use AnyType but it’s still at an early stage of development, so there are things that I don’t want to miss compared to Notion:

What I would miss by staying on AnyType?

• embeds

• integrations

• database timeline view

• the new Notion calendar app (pretty cool)

• automation: internal and external (could be nice for biz when scaling up, for gamification… should become possible later when the API is open)

• Buttons to trigger a series of actions

• AI (Not really, but why not?)

• share pages easily (although this should be coming soon on AnyType)

What I would gain using AnyType:

• flow of working and navigating

• freedom from structure: I can create it from my notes easily with Sets

• Tags (although I found a workaround to get tags in Notion)

• Sets and collections

• Objects

• Easy templates usable on the whole workspace

• Speed

• Clean and relaxing interface

• Widgets

Of course, I can also use both. But this is a bit redundant and may lead to data splitting between the apps.

Unless I use them for very different applications. I could use Notion for business and personal stuff, and AnyType for my research (or Heptabase which is even more suitable for my use case).

I share all this to give you my insights on those apps but also to send the message that there’s no perfect app and you can lose yourself for days and weeks chasing the One.

Thus if you’re unsure about what app to use, I suggest starting by listing your use cases: what do you need to do?

Then you can decide which app or combination of apps you want.

After too many hours this week rethinking and testing different options, that’s what I realized.

I converge on this:

• Notion for business (including client onboarding), combined with Milanote for creative projects (maybe) and Whimsical for mindmaps (for brainstorming, and outlining articles…).

• Heptabase for scientific research (or Obsidian for a free option using Canva that allows whiteboard creation, although not as good), because I need to learn and combine complex topics and use a lot of PDF as the data source.

This would fit my different needs: collaboration and automation for business and writing, knowledge management system for research.

What are your use cases? Which apps are you using at the moment?

I’d be curious to know and see how it works (or not) for you.

Be great,

Frank