My true feelings about Notion (Yes, I'm still using it)

Notion still works for everyday productivity and complex personal databases, but heavy use of certain “power” features can make it noticeably slow—so slow that it can derail shipping a template. The clearest pain point comes from database roll-ups: when multiple databases connect and a database view relies on many roll-ups, updates force those roll-ups to recalculate, creating lag. A template the creator was preparing for launch became unusable in practice once Notion’s performance dropped, and the culprit traced back to extensive roll-ups.

The other performance snag is synced blocks. While synced blocks are positioned as a newer feature, the workflow can become sluggish when undoing or changing sync relationships—unsyncing multiple blocks from a synced block can take a long time. Together, these issues shape a practical rule: Notion can handle complexity well, but using roll-ups and synced blocks too liberally—especially inside databases with lots of roll-up activity—can turn smooth work into waiting.

Despite those drawbacks, the overall verdict remains positive. For personal use—task management, personal notes, and even school note-taking—Notion is described as consistently strong. The creator also runs a large family-tree database with thousands of entries and reports no major issues there, suggesting that scale alone isn’t the problem. Instead, the performance hit correlates more with advanced property usage and the number of roll-ups involved.

A second theme is that Notion experiences split into two camps: users who build their own systems for personal life, and template creators who must design for long-term performance in other people’s workspaces. Template creation is framed as harder than it looks because templates need testing over time, not just at launch. Feedback from users who adopted a template and then added lots of entries eventually revealed slowdowns—again linked to roll-ups—reinforcing that what feels fine in development may degrade under real usage.

On the “should I switch?” question, the guidance is pragmatic. Notion and Obsidian are presented as the two best-fit options, while Rome Research is discouraged as harder to learn and more advanced. The creator’s default advice to others is to try both and choose what fits, though personal preference leans toward Notion for its database views, table visualization, and the ability to connect databases in ways that feel like “Word in Excel’s world,” mixing document-style flexibility with spreadsheet-like structure.

The bottom line: Notion remains a go-to tool, but performance depends on how it’s used. If someone plans to rely on many roll-ups and synced blocks—especially across interconnected databases—they should expect lag and design accordingly, or risk templates and workflows slowing down at the worst possible time.