Why I Kept Bouncing Between Keep and Notion
It started like most of my half-functional workflows — somewhere between a new-client Slack dump, five browser tabs open to Past Me’s notes, and what I thought was a brilliant idea but couldn’t find later. For years I’d bounced between Google Keep and Notion, convincing myself that *this* setup would stick. Spoiler: it didn’t.
Capturing your thoughts is tricky when you don’t trust your system to hold them. That’s been my constant frustration with Keep and Notion. But in very *different* ways.
Keep is fast. Dumb fast. You hit Ctrl+Shift+K (or whatever hotkey your Chrome extension bound it to), and boom — blank note. It’s like texting yourself. The problem? I ended up with 87 unlabeled notes that all say “landing explainer header use emotional adjective” 😐. Not helpful two weeks later.
Notion, on the other hand, slows you down *by design*. It basically demands structure. Where Keep drops the idea and runs, Notion asks, “Where should I file this? Should it go under ✨ Big Ideas or 🔔다 Content Topics?” Which is great…until you have five Notion databases with almost the same name.
So the real question became: which one fails *slower*?“
Running Google Keep in Actual Creative Situations
There’s no friction. That’s the appeal.
I use Google Keep like a voice recorder. If I’m outside, I’ll long-press on my homescreen, tap the Keep widget, and just start voice dictating. Boom. It’s in there. I don’t even look until later. Feels breezy…until I go fishing for the one idea I vaguely remembered writing down during a Chipotle run.
Search in Keep is *okay*. You can look by label or keyword. But I never label stuff in the moment. Who does? So usually, I’m hunting for some fragment I *think* I typed. Maybe “workflow bottleneck” or “calendar rerouting”? And you know what happens — I find five other notes with the same vague terms and get distracted reading them.
Keep also doesn’t do nested anything. You can’t have folders. You can’t really group notes besides labels, which are flat — so “My Side Project” and “My Side Project v2” just show up in the same long list. Yikes.
Here’s an example of where it totally broke down:
– I was drafting onboarding email hooks across devices (phone and desktop).
– I had three Keep notes active: one for ideas, one for past headlines, one for random client input.
– Accidentally pasted a chunk of client feedback into the wrong note — because notes all look the same and there’s no version history.
Somehow, all three notes ended up with overlapping text 😫. No undo. Had to retype sections from memory.
Useful when you need a brain dump catch-all. Risky when your ideas actually matter.
How Notion Forces You to Plan Before You Think
Notion is where ideas go to grow up…but only if I’m in the mood to parent them.
I tried building a “Capture” dashboard once. It had four views: Inbox, Content — Raw, Blog Drafts, and Archive. I had synced databases and made template buttons to auto-stamp ideas with the date and type. Smart, huh? Until I was on a walk and had a thought.
Pulling out the Notion app takes a full minute on my Android. Then the sync stalls. Then the mobile databases load in that stupid card style that hides half the page name. By the time I got to the input form, I’d forgotten the idea 🙃.
Sure, on desktop, Notion feels powerful. But even then… it’s too *perfect*. I get paralyzed tweaking the layout of my capture template instead of actually capturing stuff. I’ll open a page to jot down “brainstorm Twitter thread about invisible automation wins,” and 20 minutes later I’ve added icon headers and a Kanban column called ‘maybe.’
Real example: I once missed out on a really good headline because I tabbed into my Notion, thought “hmm should I use the Quick Capture page or the Funnel Notes folder?” — then someone on Slack messaged me, and poof 💨.
Comparing MultiDevice Behavior Between the Two
On mobile, Google Keep wins. Not even close.
You can open it without waiting. It works offline. You can talk into your phone and get a note with both the audio and auto-transcribed text. That’s magic when you’re mid-laundry and suddenly think of a killer lead magnet angle.
Notion, by comparison, is painful on mobile. Every time they roll out a “speed improvement,” I test it again. It *is* faster than before — but it’s still not capture-fast.
Scenario I re-run every three months:
– Idea pops up while driving. Pull over, tap Keep: note saved.
– Try the same with Notion: open app → wait → tap page → tiny cursor → incorrect keyboard mode → give up.
Even when Notion finally launches, there’s that weird “what database is this?” question. Like… what’s main index for housing ideas? Your Second Brain? A Notebox in PARA? Do you even remember where Inbox is set to route new entries? Neither did I.
And typing with my thumbs into a Notion template form with six toggles? Nope, not happening 🚫.
Organizing Old Ideas Is Where Notion Wins
Once captured, Notion does this magical thing: it lets you *connect* ideas.
I went back through my old “Raw Thoughts” database once and realized I could back-link notes into project dashboards. Suddenly, weird half-thoughts from six months ago had a context. Keep can’t touch that.
Example: I had an old Notion page titled “Update client intake onboarding visuals,” and inside it was a backlink to a tiny half-written thought: “Show timelines vertically instead of bullets.” That idea became the anchor slide in a new proposal later.
Try that in Keep and you’d be rewriting ideas from scratch.
Also, bulk moving notes between databases? Can’t do that in Keep. There’s no bulk edit, and no automations (unless you go wild with Apps Script 😵 which I tried once — absolutely not worth it).
In Notion, I’ve set filters to auto-tag any notes with the word “automation” and then sync those to an “Emergent Ideas” database. Super neat. But I’d still forget to open Notion and write things down.
The Sad Truth About Syncing to Other Tools
Neither tool plays great with Zapier out of the box.
Keep has no official API 😩. I tried using a third-party Gmail hack where you label a draft email as “KeepCapture” and run a Zap to extract it. Horrible. Delays. Clunky parsing. Sometimes the text came back garbled because Gmail filters changed without warning.
Notion has an API, yes — but good luck syncing captures unless you control every database schema precisely. I once built a Zap to push starred Slack messages into Notion. It worked… for two days. Then Notion changed the properties in one database (I renamed “text” to “Content”) and the Zap silently failed.
If you’re using either tool as part of a larger idea pipeline (Notion > Email Drafts > CMS), you quickly hit a wall.
So what do most people end up doing? They switch to Obsidian or Apple Notes or linear project tools like ClickUp instead. Or start over. Again. 😐
If You’re Rewarded By Thinking In Whispers
This one’s personal. But here’s what I noticed — when I use Keep, I whisper ideas to myself. Thoughts come out half-formed. Quiet. Ambient.
With Notion, I narrate. Big Voice. I type like it’s already supposed to make sense — like the idea better be worthy of a fancy page.
That changes what I capture. Keep lets fleeting, strange ideas survive. Notion forces a little rigidity. That’s great for thought refinement. Not so great when your idea is “spreadsheets hate me — this should be a tweet.” 😂
My advice? Use both — but only if you treat them differently.
I pin Keep widget on my phone just for unfiltered noise. Then I review them weekly and either trash them or upgrade them into Notion.
It kind of works. Until it doesn’t.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Real Fails That Made Me Switch Tools Before
– Once, my Keep notes de-synced for 3 days. Android updated. Notes vanished. Came back later but missing edits.
– Notion mobile updated while I was traveling and removed support for widgets. My capture flow broke for a week. Total blackout of thoughts.
– Keep’s web version got blocked on a work VPN. No access. Notion still loaded — saved the day that time.
– I tried pasting a Notion database into WordPress using their “Copy Link + Embed” — it rendered as nothing. Tried it with a plain Keep note: worked instantly.
– Keep inserts massive image previews when you clip notes from Chrome. Nice… until your list of post ideas turns into a scroll-fest of giant screenshots that load slowly.
I’ve probably rebuilt this process eight times. Same goal, different tools.
The Real Decision Hangs On This Part
Do you care about speed or structure?
For raw speed — Keep wins. You give up clarity, but you’ll never miss a chaotic idea again.
For structured thinking — Notion shines. But you have to earn it. If your brain is frenetic like mine, you might not always make it to the part where Notion helps.
So here’s where I gave up trying to pick one:
– Keep: Instant catch net. Throw everything in.
– Notion: Weekly “idea inventory” processor. Pull from Keep, refine, link, discard.
It’s one more thing to remember. Just like all the other systems I forget… until the idea’s gone.