If you’re familiar with Notion and Tana, you may understand the dilemma.

Both tools offer features that can help streamline your workflow and manage your knowledge.

But is one better than the other?

Should you migrate entirely to Tana, lured by its shiny new features?

Or should you stick with the tried-and-true Notion?

The answer isn’t as black-and-white as you might think.

Instead of choosing one tool over the other, why not use both in a way that leverages their individual strengths?

This blog post will explore why moving completely to Tana might not be the best idea and how you can use both tools effectively in your workflow.

Why I recommend not to move entirely to Tana?

Let me tell you a story.

Just imagine.

One fine day, you decide to embark on the journey of moving your tasks to Tana. With determination, you transfer your projects and notes, putting in the necessary manual work.

However, after a few days, a realization starts to set in.

You might start missing the long-form content and blocks that Notion offers. Suddenly, you begin to appreciate the architect personality that Notion caters to, and the urge to migrate back to Notion grows stronger.

And this feeling of regret can become even more powerful when Notion introduces new features related to backlinks and outlining!

While Tana may seem like the perfect solution with its unique features, it’s crucial not to overlook the strengths and capabilities of Notion.

The grass always seems greener on the other side. Familiarity can breed contempt.

Understanding the strengths of Tana and Notion

Instead of choosing that “perfect app”, (there’s no perfect app), you need to play by strengths of these platforms.

Before we jump into the nitty-gritty of how to use Tana and Notion together, let’s quickly highlight their unique strengths.

Strengths of Tana:

1. Outliner: Tana is an outliner at its core. It’s like your thoughts, captured in tidy bullet points (or ‘nodes’, as Tana calls them), making your notes look super organized. Downside? Not good for writing!
2. Daily Notes: Tana has this cool feature of daily notes, giving you a fresh space to jot down anything and everything every day.
3. Tags, SuperTags, and Live Queries: Tana takes tagging to a whole new level with SuperTags and Live Queries, making your information easily searchable and organized.
4. Databases: Tana allows you to create databases using tags and fields, which is pretty handy for organizing and accessing information. Also it has the ability to create views with filters and sorts similar to Notion.

Strengths of Notion:

1. Rich content: Notion is great for handling rich content. Think images, embedded videos, and all sorts of cool blocks to make your pages look fantastic.
2. Powerful task and project management: With Notion, you can create robust systems for managing tasks and projects, complete with deadlines, assignees, and progress tracking.
3. Advanced database functionality: Notion’s databases are a thing of beauty, allowing you to view, sort, and filter your data in myriad ways.
4. Integration with other tools: Notion plays well with other tools, making it a breeze to integrate your workflows.

Now that we know what each tool brings to the table, let’s see how we can leverage their strengths to create a powerhouse productivity system.

How to use them together?

1. Use Tana for quick captures and Notion for deep dives: Tana is perfect for quick captures because of its Input API, mobile apps, and shortcuts for quick capture.

   It allows users to easily jot down ideas and thoughts on-the-go and save them for later review. Notion, on the other hand, is better suited for in-depth exploration and elaboration due to its rich content handling capabilities and advanced database functionality.

2. Use the right platform for the right content type: Tana shines for text-based content management, while Notion is your go-to for rich content with blocks functionality. So, use Tana for quick capture, planning, brainstorming sessions, and reflections, and lean on Notion for project management, content creation, and tasks that need a rich interface.
3. Integrate the two apps via links: Bridge the gap between the two platforms by using links. If a project in Notion has related notes in Tana, add a link in Notion to that Tana page, and vice versa. As they both are cloud apps, you can wait for stronger integrations to come up soon!
4. Regularly review what content needs to be transferred over to Notion: Set aside regular times (weekly, monthly, etc.) to review your Tana notes and decide what should be moved over to Notion. This will help to ensure that you’re not duplicating efforts or neglecting to incorporate important information into your primary knowledge base.

Example workflows (Notion + Tana)

So how might you decide between Notion and Tana for common workflows?

Here are some examples:

Task and project management

• Project planning: Imagine you’re about to kick-off a new project. Start by outlining your project in Tana, using its outliner mode to break down the project into manageable chunks. Think of it as your initial sketch. Then, transfer this outline of a project plan to Notion, where you can assign tasks, set deadlines, and track progress. It’s like moving from a rough sketch to a detailed blueprint.
• Managing tasks: Use Tana for capturing tasks to your inbox (using its excellent Capture app), and then move tasks to where they belong in Notion at the end of the day. For instance, if you note down a thumbnail idea in Tana, you can easily move it to the relevant Notion video page. With this, you can quickly find what you need when you need it.
• Meeting notes: Jot down meeting notes in Tana by default. If these notes are useful for a project, transfer them to Notion where they can be put into action.

Content creation

Let’s say you’re a content creator. Use Tana to quickly jot down content ideas and outline them as they come to you throughout the day.

Then, in Notion, develop these ideas further and integrate them into your content calendar, adding in details about deadlines, progress, required tasks, etc.

I personally use Notion for my entire content management purposes, including outlining and also writing, which includes collaborating with my team of content writers.

I personally use a Chrome extension called StyleBot. I have added a CSS code for Notion that adds indentation lines whenever I use sub-bullets.

This allows me to create familiar outlines within Notion that are visually appealing.

Knowledge management

• Note-taking workflow: When taking notes, use Tana for initial note-taking and capturing key points quickly. Later, review your notes and transfer the key insights to Notion, where you can add additional context, links, images, and other relevant media for future reference.
• Research notes: When conducting research, use Tana to quickly capture information, quotes, or references. Once the research phase is complete, transfer your organized notes to Notion, where you can develop your ideas further, create detailed outlines, or even draft entire articles or reports.

In summary, you could use Notion as your primary repository of knowledge, where all the final and polished notes, ideas, and projects live, while using Tana as a workspace for drafting, brainstorming, and organizing thoughts.

Daily journaling

Tana excels in interstitial journaling, allowing for quick and effortless daily entries.

This approach proves particularly beneficial for capturing thoughts and reflections, as it helps maintain motivation and flow.

If you have the rest of the system in place, the insights gained from these entries can then be implemented in Notion. This can help foster discipline through intentional design.

How to use Notion like Tana?

Notion has a lot of overlooked features that allows you to use it similar to Tana. Here are some pointers:

• Quick Capture: Use the Notion app or Instant Notion for quick capturing on the go. For easy input, leverage the Drafts app or Save to Notion Chrome extension.
• Outlining: Create subpages and use side peek mode for effective outlining. Install the Table of Content (TOC) extension for easy navigation. Add indentation lines using custom CSS or utilize toggle headings.
• Daily Pages: Create a “Days” database for daily pages and setup recurring template creation.
• Backlinks: Manually add backlinks in Notion to link pages together. Use the “Turn Into Page” feature to automatically add backlinks. Enhance backlinks functionality with the Evergreen Notes for Notion Chrome extension.
• Blocks to Database Items: Utilize the “Turn Into Page” feature to convert blocks into database items.

With Notion, the most common problem is when you create content, you need to first decide where to post your content.

On the other hand, with Tana, you first focus on creating content and then tag it dynamically to let the system organize it on the fly.

However, if you manage to use a good Notion template that provides a solid structure to organize your information, things will be different. For example, I’m using a life operating system called the Core System , that provides a solid foundational structure on top of which I can build my Notion workspace. It allows me to implement all the Tana-like functionalities right within Notion. It helps me bridge the gap.

If you are interested in knowing more about how I use Notion like Tana, I have published a dedicated blog post on how to make use of Notion like Tana.

Closing thoughts

If you’re anything like me and constantly have ideas popping into your head, Tana is an awesome tool for capturing and brainstorming. It’s like mindmapping on steroids, with advanced querying and other features that take the experience to a whole new level.

By reviewing these ideas and moving them over to Notion, you can further develop and organize them in a way that totally makes sense for you and your workflow.

Remember, the most important thing is to find a system that works for you and your workflow.

You might need to experiment and tweak these suggestions to figure out what works best for you.