What is Notion?

"an all-in-one workspace. Want a task list? A product roadmap? A design repository? They are now all in one place. You can even customize your own workspace from dozens of LEGO-style building blocks."

Taken directly from Notions own website (https://www.notion.so/about), this basically sums up what Notion is all about. They are aiming to combine the vast majority of business and productivity apps into one customisable system that works around what users need. A very large area to cover.

What is Obsidian?

According to the Obsidian developers they’re aiming for the following: the three most fundamental directions of Obsidian:

• Local-first and plain text;
• Link as first-class citizen;
• Make it super extensible.

or for a shorter and snappier version: "an IDE for your notes"

Obsidian has a smaller target in mind than combing the best of what all other systems have to offer, but instead aims to develop a note taking application that works for programmers and those that are already comfortable with the likes of markdown language.

What do I Like About Notion

User Friendly

This is somewhat subjective depending on your tastes and experience. When you first start using Notion they make it very simple and obvious how Notion can be used. At first, your Notion workspace will likely be very simple and make use of only a few of the many features that Notion has on offer. This allows for beginners to get a taste for the software before committing entirely to the more advanced methods that you can use to organise your life with in Notion.

User Interface

Although I also like the interface of Obsidian I think Notion is slightly better, especially when it comes to looking user friendly. I think that this is likely due to Notion’s target audience being less technical and more consumer. Not that this is a bad thing at all, it just means that more of the UI is designed for beginners rather than people who know every keyboard shortcut under the sun and how to navigate through an application with purely a keyboard and no mouse. It does allow however for the "power users" to use keyboard shortcuts and other tricks to move through workspaces very quickly. Notion also offers a very simple toggle to move between a dark and light mode which in this day and age is a necessity.

Relational Databases

To begin with, relational databases seem like a very over the top feature to use just to manage tasks and to-do lists and the like. However, once you begin to setup all of the fields and relationships that you need between all of your pages you’ll forget how you ever lived without a database. Without this feature I think Obsidian would kill Notion in an instant. The power you have using relational databases is unbelievable. The ability to create a huge database of tasks and then filter it down to only tasks that are linked to a certain project within a certain timescale and with a certain tag is nothing short of amazing. I personally have 3 relational databases setup that manage all of my tasks and projects in perfect harmony.

What do I Like About Obsidian

Developer Oriented

Although not as instantly friendly as Notion appears to be, Obsidian is very welcoming for anyone that has spent time in an application such as Visual Studio Code. The interface is very minimal and uses iconography rather than text for most tabs and headings. As they say in their about page, Obsidian is built on plain text. I never really considered this until I started using Obsidian, but what would happen if Notion ever just decided to pack up shop and let the software crash and burn. All that data would be gone. But with Obsidian it’s just text in a file.

Local First

A few times recently, Notion has had server issues and access to it has either been painfully slow or non-existent. With Obsidian, that just can’t happen. Even if development was to be abandoned this very second, all my files are just sitting in a folder on my computer. Fair enough they aren’t available through the magic of "the cloud" but at least they’re mine and only mine. This means I can choose how I want to back them up, how they’re stored, where they’re stored and who I can give access. Not to say that I don’t trust Notion with my data but just the peace of mind you get from having local files is something that I never really considered until Obsidian.

The Graph

Although this is more of a convenience feature than something that should be a make or break when picking between these two pieces of software, the graph view in Obsidian is truly amazing to look at. I haven’t even been using Obsidian that long and already, looking at my graph and seeing how pieces of information connect across topics is amazing. This is something that I think Notion could include in their software since it already makes use of a very similar linking system to Obsidian, however Notion’s reliance on relational databases would make this feel less organic if you ask me. Notion is far more rigid in it’s design while Obsidian feels like it develops naturally as you use it. I spent a large amount of time setting my Notion workspace up to allow me to input my data in the most efficient way possible while with Obsidian I feel more like I can just throw it in and link it together when I fancy.

What Don’t I Like About Notion

Speed

I’m not going to say that Notion is slow. But sometimes it definitely isn’t fast. Mostly when loading up huge amounts of data from a database or something beefy like that is when it struggles the most. Although not a huge issue it can sometimes be very annoying. Obsidian on the other hand has never had as much as a hiccup. This will be due to the local nature of the program while Notion has to retrieve all of it’s information through the mystical cloud. The Notion team has been working on this however and I have noticed a reduction on loading after some recent updated on Notions backend, so this will likely become less of a problem as time goes by.

Writing

As I mentioned earlier, the organic feeling that I get from writing in Obsidian just isn’t there in Notion. This may just be down to the way that I use it, but for me, inputting data into Notion is quite robotic. Each page needs a name, a date, a tag, a relation to a project etc… etc… This is however also Notions greatest benefit as without this rigid system, relational databases would be nowhere near as powerful as they are, so it’s a bit of a double edged sword. The slash command method of creating headings and changing colors and formatting is great though. It means you never have to go hunting for the correct syntax to make something bold or italicized which is just perfect.

Calendar

Notion has a calendar view for it’s databases however it just doesn’t quite tick the right boxes for me. It does look nice and it does allow you to organize your time, however the lack of repeating events and the ability to view the calendar as a single week for example just make it slightly less than perfect. I always find myself using something like google calendar rather than Notions calendar as it’s far more capable when it comes to sharing events and integrating into the likes of Google Maps for travel times and things like that. I don’t expect Notion to make any great strides in this area to be honest as it seems like this calendar function would work perfectly for something like an office where employees can see meeting dates along with accompanying minutes, that sort of thing. I just don’t think Notion’s calendar works for personal use brilliantly. I can’t say that Obsidian does it better however since it doesn’t actually natively have a calendar feature. There is a very nice plugin however that allows for navigating notes by date however it doesn’t offer nearly as much as Notion does in that regard.

What Don’t I Like About Obsidian

Organisation

This is personal preference again, since how you organise your files is entirely dependent on how you best navigate your way through them. To get Obsidian to look tidy when navigating files purely through the file structure is tedious to say the least. I personally decided to go for a numbering system to hierarchically group my notes into sections. Since all of my Notion pages are encompassed in one grand database, they all stay perfectly organised in the system. This keeps everything in just the right place so I can find it quickly. Obsidian however, requires more though if I want to find something. This can quickyl be overcome by just using the search function, which 9 times out of 10 will find what I’m, looking for, but sometimes I just wish I could find things as if I was filtering a Notion database.

First Impressions

In full honesty the first time I used Obsidian I deleted it after spending far too much time just trying to get the basics of how it worked through my head. It has quite a significant skill level for just basic usage. Technically it doesn’t actually have a high skill floor since you can just start writing straight into a page and just leave it floating about in a directory, but for me, I like to have at least some structure in my notes and how I group them, even if the links between notes should really form naturally as I add more into the vault. The technique I found best for Obsidian is the MOC, or Map of Content approach (https://publish.obsidian.md/lyt-kit/Umami/What+is+an+MOC+-+Various+Answers) which I believe was developed mainly by Nick Milo, an Obsidian forum user who almost treats Obsidian and Personal Knowledge Management as a religion.

Adaptability

In terms of raw ability, Notion beats Obsidian hands down. Obsidian just isn’t aimed at the likes of task management, team work, project management etc… It does one thing, and it does it brilliantly but no one should be considering using Obsidian to fully replace Notion. For me personally, I think Obsidian is better for learning and writing with, whereas Notion is better for planning and structuring with. The notes that I create withing Notion feel more complete than those that are in Obsidian, like I’ll write them and never see them again, whereas I feel like what I write in Obsidian will always remain relevant and end up linking with something further down the line. Notion has always been what I’ve used for university work however I may dip my toes in to using Obsidian now to see how well I can adapt it to such a rigid learning approach. But when it comes to checking what I learned in week 1, day 2, lecture 3, of an electronics class, Notion just seems to make that experience so easy.

Apples to Oranges

So what one does tick my boxes? Both really. I will be continuing to use both Obsidian and Notion going into the future. If I had to give up one I think it would be Obsidian, since I can use Notion for more than just writing and linking ideas, but I would miss it. I have used Notion for about 3-4 years now and it really does work for what it says it does and the way the company is moving looks good so far. Obsidian feels far more indie than Notion right now. I don’t know if this is a bad or good thing since it likely creates the right image for the software, being locally stored and all. Neither Obsidian or Notion ticks all the boxes, but they both tick their own respective boxes very well. I’ll still rely on Google Calendar to cover for Notion’s less than perfect calendar and I’ll still rely on Notion to cover for Obsidian’s less than perfect planning ability.