u/EmployerSpecific8321

Went through a phase of buying pretty much every trending Notion template I saw — habit trackers, life OS setups, the works. Duplicated each one, used it for maybe 4 days, abandoned it, bought the next one hoping THIS one would be the one that sticks.

Took embarrassingly long to realize the templates weren't the problem. Every single one had good bones. What killed them was always the same thing: I'd duplicate a massive pre-built system designed by someone else's brain, and it never matched how I actually think or work day to day.

What finally worked wasn't building from scratch either (tried that too, got overwhelmed by blank page syndrome). It was taking ONE bought template and ripping out like 70% of it in the first week. Kept only the 2-3 sections I actually opened daily, deleted the rest without guilt.

Realized templates are basically starting points, not finished houses. The value isn't in using them exactly as designed, it's in having something to react to and cut down instead of building up from nothing.

Anyone else buy a bunch of templates before figuring this out, or was it obvious to everyone but me?

started selling notion templates a few months back, small shop, nothing crazy. figured id share what actually worked vs what i thought would work but didnt

what worked:

- niche templates beat generic ones by a lot. a "wellness tracker" or "ai prompt organizer" outsold my generic "life planner" every time

- pinterest brought way more traffic than i expected, way more than reddit tbh (until recently lol)

- bundling 2-3 related templates together increased order value more than adding new standalone products did

what didnt work / wasted time on:

- spent way too long perfecting mockup images before having a single sale to validate the product actually sells

- tried tiktok early with zero strategy, basically wasted content that went nowhere

- assumed more templates = more sales, but honestly 5 well made ones outsold 12 mediocre ones

still early and learning a lot, but curious what others here found actually moved sales vs what turned out to be a waste of time

Spent 2 years tracking "did I work out" as a yes/no checkbox. Streak looked great on paper, motivation was terrible in reality, because a single 10-minute walk counted the exact same as a full hour session — so I'd default to doing the bare minimum just to keep the checkbox green.

Switched to tracking minutes instead of a binary yes/no, and something clicked. Suddenly there was room to have a "light day" without breaking anything, and actual progress became visible over weeks instead of just a streak number that resets your motivation to zero the second you miss one day.

Same thing happened when I switched water intake from "did I drink water today" to an actual count. The binary version let me lie to myself with a single sip.

Lesson that applies beyond fitness/health stuff too: if a habit can be "technically true" while still not moving the needle, the tracking method is the problem, not your discipline.

What's something you track that you eventually realized was measuring the wrong thing?

Been using Notion for a few years now and like most people, I went through the phase of setting up every property type "just in case" — ratings, formulas, rollups, the works.

Here's what actually stuck vs what I quietly deleted:

Still using:

- Status (select) — simple, always visible, drives my whole workflow

- Date — obvious but I under-used it for years

- Relation — connecting tasks to projects is the one thing that actually changed how I work

- Checkbox — dumb simple, but I use it constantly for daily trackers

- Person/tag — even solo, tagging by context ("errand", "deep work") helps me batch tasks

Set up once, never touched again:

- Formula properties (cool in theory, I never actually needed the math)

- Multi-level rollups (impressive in a demo, useless day to day)

- Priority as a separate select (status already implied priority for me)

- Custom emoji-heavy status labels (looked nice for a week, then annoying)

- Files/media property on non-visual databases

Curious if others had the same experience — did any of you actually get long-term value out of formulas/rollups, or is it mostly a "cool feature, rarely used" thing for most people too?