Why Superhuman and Notion reduced my focus and productivity
I’m a huge productivity nerd. I love nothing more than tools that make my calendaring, email, or to-do list workflows better. I’ve given talks about my productivity tool stack and I’m constantly trying new ones.
We’re in a golden age for productivity tools. Over the past year, we’ve seen a meteoric rise of the next generation of email, calendars, to-do lists, spreadsheets, wikis, etc.
I naturally had to try them all out. After some initial testing, I decided to jump headfirst into two enormous changes to my daily work. I switched to Superhuman for email, and Notion for my to-do list.
Last week, I decided to switch back to good old fashioned Gmail and ToDoist. I’m feeling more productive and more focused. I wanted to reflect a bit on why I think these new tools didn’t work for me.
Why Superhuman didn’t work for me
I’m pretty sure I fit into the ideal demographic of Superhuman users. I’m the Cofounder and CEO of a venture-backed startup. Although we are very Slack-driven, a large portion of my daily communication is still email, and I’m handling hundreds of emails a day.
What I liked
- Hotkeys!: Hotkeys are amazing, and I already used them a bit in Gmail. Superhuman helped push me to drive my entire workflow in hotkeys
- Zero Inbox: I’m a big believer in the idea of a Zero Inbox flow, and it was great to use a tool whose core philosophy was the same.
- Speed: No more waiting for emails to load or extensions slowing me down!
- Built-in Rapportive: It’s great having Linkedin profiles pop up on the right sidebar automagically.
What I didn’t like
- Speed: At first this seemed like a major benefit, but I found that the incredible speed of Superhuman encouraged my own ADD. I was constantly jumping around between emails or switching back and forth between Chrome/Slack/Superhuman if anything took more than 200 milliseconds. I often found myself just using Cmd-T to flip between tools for no reason.
- Default Calendar: The default calendar that pops up on the right side when you type a date wasn’t helpful for me. I’m usually checking at least two of my own calendars and often several of my coworkers calendars before scheduling something. So I’d end up having to switch to Gcal every time anyways.
- Design: I love the idea of the minimalistic design, but I found the total lack of colors and distinction between emails disorienting. The emails felt much less human without the faces next to each message. The combination of speed and minimalism made it hard for me to focus on each individual email and not just skip to the next one.
- All my inboxes in one app: I specifically had 3 different email inboxes to allow me to prioritize. Superhuman made it easy to put them all in one app, but the result for me was checking all 3 inboxes too regularly.
- No extensions: I really thought I could get away without extensions, but Gmail has built an amazing marketplace of calendar, CRM, and other integrations that are super valuable.
There were definitely a few things I could have tried to resolve some of these issues. A big one would be creating a regular cadence of when I check email instead of leaving the Superhuman app open at all times. That in combination with only logging into the most important inbox at that time would have been good improvements.
Why Notion didn’t work for me
Ever since Wunderlist was sunset, I’ve been looking for a great task manager. I’ll caveat this section with the fact that I understand this isn’t what Notion is great at, but I think that the promise of Notion is it should be able to handle Tasks along with Wiki, Documentation, etc.
I set up a board using the GTD framework, which is how I organize my tasks.
What I liked
- Customization: I was able to quickly create a list with custom statuses and filters.
- Different views: Being able to view as a list or Kanban and toggle between the two is great.
- Emoji descriptors: It was great to be able to use emojis to better organize/visualize tasks.
- Text editor: I know this is somewhat debated but I really like the Notion text editor. It’s powerful and intuitive.
What I didn’t like
- Sorting/Reordering: It seemed like I had two options — either things were in sorted and every time I reordered them I got a warning, or there was no default sorting and I had to move everything into place.
- Clicks to add a task: Adding a task in the right status took 4 clicks (New, Click Status, Select Status, Esc/Click out) which adds too much to barrier of creating tasks.
- Clicks to complete a task: I had to open up the task and change the status to done, there was no way to just one-click complete
- Mobile: On mobile, everything turned into more taps and was just generally not easy to view.
I enjoyed creating a few personal lists for travel and adventure in Notion, and I can see how it’s a great documentation tool. But it loses a lot of the potential benefit of “all-in-one” by not providing a great task management option.
I’m always interested to hear about how others are using tools and what’s working for them! Would love to hear your thoughts.
