Why I recommend Tana vs Notion for personal productivity

While Notion is a powerful and popular tool used by millions, I've found that Tana offers distinct advantages for project management and personal knowledge management.

Notion and Tana are both flexible information management tools, designed to help users create custom workflows and manage personal or collaborative projects.

Notion revolves around pages and databases, making it a "build-it-yourself" workspace where users can adapt the tool to their specific needs. Tana, on the other hand, is an outliner that uses a linked network approach, leveraging "supertags" to easily manage complex projects and structured data. Instead of rigid structures, Tana offers flexible connections between information, making it accessible from any relevant context.

The core difference between these tools is how information is structured and accessed. In Notion, fully utilizing its power requires a database-centric approach. Users create separate databases for different types of content and establish relationships between them to connect information. This structure is useful for team collaboration but often feels cumbersome when managing personal knowledge. Navigating to specific databases or through multiple folder levels adds friction.

The power of Tana

Tana's power lies in its combination of the daily node, the outline, and "supertags" (akin to classes in programming). In Tana, information flows to where it needs to be, without the hassle of navigating databases or predetermined folders.

Your main starting point is the daily node, which lets you work from a central place. This reduces the barrier to entry when entering information as we don't have to worry about where it goes. Whilst this sounds trivial, it is a powerful change as it removes a hurdle you would have previously had to overcome, even if you didn't realise it. Once your information is on the page, it's much easier to edit and organise. Information is linked organically with supertags and reference nodes, allowing it to resurface in multiple contexts naturally. It also gives you you a built-in calendar and logbook without the burden of switching applications.

A major difference in the software is that Tana is fundamentally an outliner. An outliner is a specialised text editor that allows you to organise your text in a branching, tree-like structure. Think of it as a mind map, but with text. Branches are achieved by indentation, using Tab to indent and Shift-Tab to unindent. This allows you to structure your notes quickly. Outliners allow for more intuitive thought organization and better visualization of information hierarchy.

Admittedly, deciding on outliners are often a matter of personal preference—some people find it more natural for capturing their thoughts, while others prefer the more traditional folder or database setups offered by tools like Notion.

Supertags define what a node 'is'. They are the starting point for classifying information, and they allow users to add meta-data to node with user-defined fields to add further context to information. This is helpful for defining ontologies, or structured description of systems. They can be thought of as information templates, which help you structure your information for easier retrieval.

Navigating and retrieving information

Both tools offer a left sidebar for navigation, but Tana goes a step further with the ability to open multiple windows within the interface, allowing you to reference and drag and drop nodes as needed. Tana also features a command bar (Ctrl + K) for quick actions, while Ctrl + S is reserved for search—a small but powerful usability boost.

Tana's querying capabilities are more fluid than Notion, letting you surface relevant information easily and configure views and filters with less friction. In Notion, creating "List" views to filter information information from your databases can be cumbersome.

Key Advantages of Tana

• 1. Quick Information Capture
  • No need to navigate to specific databases or folders
  • Mobile-friendly capture, including voice notes with transcription
  • Organize information later without disrupting your flow
• 2. Flexible Information Retrieval
  • Access information through multiple pathways
  • Information surfaces naturally in relevant contexts
  • Contextual menus show related content
  • Quick reference with backlinks

Conclusion

While Notion excels as a versatile workspace, Tana's strength lies in its more natural, flexible approach to managing. Tana is still in active development, so it's worthwhile caveating that Notion might still be the better choice if you need web clipper functionality or robust team collaboration features (Tana's are in development). If you don't like outliners, you're also better served sticking with Notion. Notion's block-based approach also lends itself to visual customisation, so if you want to create aesthetically pleasing workspaces you're also better off sticking with Notion, at least for now.

For personal productivity, Tana's link-based structure and fluid organization are often more efficient than Notion's database-centric model. If you're after a tool that adapts to your ideas and evolves with your needs, Tana could be the fresh start you're looking for. The combination of features in Tana makes it a frictionless experience—a tool that works with you rather than against you. Eventually, it fades into the background as your daily driver, seamlessly supporting your workflow.