The case for boring Notion systems (and why I stopped building clever ones)
Clever Notion setups are fun to build and terrible to live in. Here's what changed when I started designing for the Tuesday version of you.
I used to build Notion systems that were, frankly, showing off. Linked databases inside linked databases. A dashboard that looked like a spaceship. Then I'd miss a week, come back, and feel like I needed a manual to find my own grocery list.
The turning point was a client who emailed to say she'd abandoned her template because she couldn't remember which of three 'inbox' pages was the real one. That was my design. I'd optimized for the exciting first hour, not the tired Tuesday evening.
Now I design for the Tuesday version of you — the one who has eleven minutes and low patience. That means one obvious place for everything, fewer views, and defaults that don't require a decision. Clever is a feature I've mostly retired.
The result: my templates get used longer, and the feedback is quieter but better. People don't tell me it's impressive anymore. They tell me they actually open it. That's the metric I care about.