Why your Notion workspace feels heavy — and how to lighten it
Most overwhelmed Notion users don't have too little structure. They have too many pages nobody opens. Here's the cut I make every season.
At some point last year I realized I had 41 top-level pages in my own Notion and I was opening four of them. The rest were a museum of good intentions: the habit tracker I abandoned in March, the reading log with two entries, three versions of a project database I couldn't tell apart.
The fix wasn't a new template. It was subtraction. Once a season I open my sidebar and ask one question of every page: did I touch this in the last 30 days? If the answer is no, it goes into an Archive page. Not deleted — archived. That distinction matters, because deleting feels scary and archiving doesn't.
What's left after the cut is usually five or six pages. A home base, a calendar or weekly view, a money page, a projects page, and one capture inbox. That's it. The lightness you feel isn't from a cleverer system. It's from having fewer doors to choose between every morning.
If you're rebuilding right now, don't start with a template that has 60 pages. Start with five and add one only when you catch yourself wishing it existed. Your future self will thank you for the empty space.