When I First Tried Using Notion
I started using Notion after realizing that my Evernote setup had turned into a huge pile of random notes that I never looked at. The draw of Notion was its sleek blocks and how I could make a dashboard where my tasks, notes, and databases all lived together. But within the first week, I had about six dashboards half done, each linking to each other in circles. Clicking one link opened a page that linked back to the first page, then I’d lose track of what note I originally intended to find. It felt like I was constantly opening tabs inside the app itself. 😛
On a practical level, what worked really well in Notion was archiving project templates. For example, I could duplicate a meeting notes template with action items at the bottom and everything looked neat. But the performance problem showed up once I had several hundred notes. Scrolling lagged, and searching for a phrase took way too long compared to just typing it into a simple text search in something like Obsidian. At one point, I clicked to open a note and sat staring at a blank page for several seconds before the content loaded. That may not sound like much, but when you’re trying to capture a thought quickly, the delay feels like missing a train.
The Moment Obsidian Clicked For Me
When I gave Obsidian a shot, it looked bare bones compared to Notion. Just a folder of files on my computer. But after a week, I realized I liked the fact that everything was just stored as markdown text files. That meant if Obsidian went away tomorrow, all my notes would still be there. I tested this by opening the folder in a normal text editor and everything was fully editable. That alone made me feel more secure about investing in this setup.
The real “aha” came the first time I saw backlinks. I typed out a note about “long term note systems” and then, in another totally different note, I wrote a phrase in brackets with the same name. Without any work, Obsidian instantly tied those notes together. In Notion I would have had to copy and paste a link manually or create a relation column in a database. In Obsidian it just felt automatic. The graph view was fun to look at at first, but honestly, the backlinks panel is what I keep open all the time.
Notion Frustrations With Offline Access
The breaking point for me with Notion was when I was on a flight and tried to open some notes I had carefully prepared. The app loaded a skeleton of the page, but none of the content. I discovered that unless you have clicked on a page recently, Notion does not fully cache it offline. Which meant my big project writeup was just a blank shell until I got internet again. I sat there staring at it, thinking, if this was in Obsidian, it would just be a text file sitting in my drive.
When I use Obsidian offline, it’s no different than online. All the notes are just there. No syncing wait time, no spinning wheel. Later, when the sync plugin runs, it merges them automatically without me having to babysit it. I did get one scary conflict pop-up once where two versions of the note existed, but the app just saved both versions separately and let me choose. That felt much safer than the time Notion overwrote a chunk of my text with an older version without warning.
Trying To Collaborate In Both Tools
To be fair, Notion wins on sharing. When I wanted to send project tasks to a coworker, I just clicked share and sent them a link. They didn’t need to install an app, didn’t need to set up syncing, they just opened the page in a browser. We even edited it together like a lighter version of Google Docs. That ease of collaboration is unbeatable if that’s your main need.
Obsidian on the other hand is more like a personal notebook. I once tried to set up a shared vault with a friend using a cloud drive folder, but within a week we had note conflicts everywhere. He added a comma to a line I had edited the same morning and the sync tool duplicated the file. We ended up spending more time cleaning up duplicates than actually using the notes. Eventually, I gave up on making Obsidian collaborative except in small one-off cases.
How Each App Handles Linking And Structure
If you like databases, Notion feels powerful. I built a reading list database where each entry had fields for author, rating, and last opened. I could filter by unread, or sort by rating. The problem is I eventually spent more time designing new properties than actually reading the books. At one point I had ten properties just to track the same small list of notes. It felt like I was turning a bookshelf into a spreadsheet and lost the joy of just flipping through pages.
In Obsidian, everything lives as a note, and you just link them together using brackets. I made a page called “Books” and linked each note for the individual books. Then from each book note, I could link passages or references back to topics that mattered to me. That setup made browsing feel more like following a trail of ideas rather than clicking database rows.
Why Speed Becomes A Big Factor Over Time
When you only have a few notes, Notion feels silky. But after a couple years, if you keep piling it up, the lag becomes real. It’s not just loading notes; even typing can lag a bit if the page has many blocks. I’ve hit moments where I typed a sentence and watched the text appear with a noticeable delay. That made me anxious about losing my flow.
With Obsidian, speed was never an issue. I opened giant notes with hundreds of lines instantly. Search across thousands of files felt as fast as a local file search on my computer. Maybe that’s the key difference—Notion is running on their servers and syncing constantly, while Obsidian works directly on local files. That tradeoff means Notion can always be accessed from the web, while Obsidian is lightning fast locally.
Real Costs Beyond Just Pricing
Notion is technically free for personal use, but when I tried collaborating, I quickly saw the limit. To let multiple people edit databases, you need the paid plan. It wasn’t expensive, but it meant deciding if I was really going to stick with it before paying every month. Obsidian has a weirdly different model: the app itself is free, but syncing across devices and publish features cost extra. I ended up paying because not having my notes sync between my laptop and phone was a dealbreaker.
If we’re talking about hidden costs though, I think the real one with Notion is time. You will lose hours tweaking and reorganizing. I once spent an entire evening designing a tag system that looked beautiful, and then totally abandoned it a week later when I realized I just needed to type titles quickly. With Obsidian, the plain text format forces you to keep it simple, which in the long run means fewer wasted hours adjusting layouts that looked good for a day but didn’t hold up.
Switching Back And Forth More Than Once
The funny thing is, I didn’t quit Notion completely. I still use it for team projects where collaboration is the priority. But for my own long term notes, Obsidian has stuck better because I trust that it won’t suddenly break when I need it most. I do sometimes get tempted by new Notion features, like their AI tool, but then I remember the flight with the blank offline page and nope right out of that idea 🙂
Switching back and forth has been messy—I import from one app to the other, then find myself cleaning up broken links or weirdly formatted text. My Obsidian vault still has a folder called “Notion exports” that I never fully integrated. Meanwhile, my Notion still contains old notes that I intended to migrate but didn’t. It’s probably not the perfect system, but the important thing is that I finally know where to put new notes the instant I make them.