I like the idea of something like Notion but I have no idea how I would preserve my data or ever migrate it. I imagine you have to have some pretty complex stuff going on to have rich text, images, databases, macros and whatever else all in a file or notebook. Getting it out in some sort of format may not be too hard, but how would you ever migrate that to new software?
Am I over thinking this?
I know Obsidian stores everything in plaintext, but how would something like Notion or Affine (a self-hosted one) compare.
People who choose Notion are either ignorant of or don’t care enough about the lock-in to set up and use something like Obsidian instead.
Honestly a big part of it is marketing: Notion advertises on the local metro in many cities, Obsidian gets recommended by people on techy online discussion forums.
Another part is initial friction: with obsidian you need to figure a few more things out before you can get going (e.g. do I want to sync/backup this? Where should that go?). With Notion you just make an account, validate your email and then get started (which is an onboarding process everyone is familiar with)
But essentially
how would you ever migrate that to new software?
You’re not supposed to ask yourself this question until it’s too late
As much as I prefer lock-in free methods, Obsidian or any other note taking software I’ve seen does not come close to covering full set of what Notion has to offer in terms of features relevant to note-taking. Inline Kanban, tables, and just about every single things that cannot easily be represented in text and images are usually not covered. Also: collaboration, synchronisation, sharing. Lack of vendor lock-in is secondary.
My understanding is that Obsidian has these features and more with plugins and such, but, yeah, it’s a not insignificant amount of work to setup.
There’s always a way. I’ve gone from Evernote to Joplin to Notion. When the time comes, I’m confident I’ll be able to extract my notes.
I try to go for simple data Formats, not least, because I can later reuse these second brains from my locally hosted ai much easier.
Also because I do not want my second brain to be on the clutches of any cloud company.
