Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Notion VS Focused Notion

Compare Notion VS Focused Notion and see what are their differences

Notion logo Notion

All-in-one workspace. One tool for your whole team. Write, plan, and get organized.

Focused Notion logo Focused Notion

A productivity system built on Notion that helps you plan, prioritize and achieve your by becoming organized, productive and efficient without stress and anxiety.
  • Notion Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-12
  • Focused Notion Focused Productivity System
    Focused Productivity System //
    2024-08-18
  • Focused Notion Today Task Management
    Today Task Management //
    2024-08-18
  • Focused Notion Task Planner
    Task Planner //
    2024-08-18
  • Focused Notion Goal
    Goal //
    2024-08-18
  • Focused Notion Life Vision
    Life Vision //
    2024-08-18
  • Focused Notion Notebook
    Notebook //
    2024-08-18
  • Focused Notion Meetings
    Meetings //
    2024-08-18

Focused was created to help people achieve their goals and lead more organized, fulfilling lives. Drawing on my personal experiences and lessons on goal achievement, perseverance, and organization, I used my expertise in Notion to develop a solution that aims to help people who feel stuck or lost enhance their productivity, become more organised and ultimately achieve their goals. Focused combines my personal experiences with many of the world leading productivity frameworks and methodologies to help people to become more successful and sustainably productive long-term.

Many have great ideas that never materialize due to uncertainties about starting and maintaining momentum. Focused addresses this by being more than a mere tool for tasks, organization, or tracking. It's a comprehensive system designed for long-term productivity by improving emotional and physical well-being, ensuring all elements work in harmony.

The question isn’t just about motivation but understanding and tackling the underlying issues. While Focused isn’t a cure-all, it offers a structured approach to identifying and resolving these barriers, leading to improved efficiency and productivity.

I’m curious about the productivity and organization challenges you face, and for Focused users, how it has helped you overcome these hurdles.

Focused Notion

Platforms
Notion
Release Date
2024 August
Startup details
Country
Australia
State
QLD
City
Brisbane
Founder(s)
Luca
Employees
1 - 9

Notion features and specs

  • All-in-One Workspace
    Notion combines note-taking, task management, databases, calendars, and collaboration features in a single platform, reducing the need for multiple tools.
  • Highly Customizable
    Users can tailor Notion to fit their specific workflow with customizable templates, pages, and databases, making it versatile for various use cases.
  • Collaboration Features
    Notion offers seamless collaboration with real-time editing, comments, mentions, and shared workspaces, enhancing teamwork and productivity.
  • Cross-Platform Availability
    Notion is available on multiple platforms, including web, desktop, and mobile, providing flexibility and accessibility from anywhere.
  • Integration Capability
    Notion supports integrations with various third-party applications like Google Drive, Slack, and Trello, allowing for a more interconnected workflow.

Possible disadvantages of Notion

  • Learning Curve
    Due to its extensive features and customization options, new users might find Notion challenging to learn and navigate initially.
  • Performance Issues
    Some users report that Notion can become slow or experience lag, especially with large databases and complex pages.
  • Offline Limitations
    While Notion offers some offline capabilities, its functionality is significantly reduced without an internet connection, which can be inconvenient for some users.
  • Pricing for Teams
    Though Notion offers a free version, its premium plans can be expensive for larger teams, which may be a constraint for startups or small businesses.
  • Privacy Concerns
    As with any cloud-based service, there are potential privacy and data security concerns, especially for users handling sensitive information.

Focused Notion features and specs

  • Productivity
    Define your life vision using the pre-built questionnaire. Then create your Life Statement which is the north star for your life. Define long-term (goals), medium (projects) and short-term (milestones) objectives. Gamify your productivity by tracking your progress every time you complete a task. Use rewards to boost your motivation.
  • Tracking
    Sustainable productivity through a health lifestyle. Use Journals to process your emotions, see the positives and remove subjectivity of your day. Habit tracking for becoming health spirit, soul and body which is required for peak productivity to achieve your goals. Rewards for gamification of your goals and ultra motivation. Reviews to refresh your inspiration, track your progress and adjust your direction if necessary.
  • Knowledge
    Centrally store all your information in a single database. Organize it by the pillars of your life (notebooks). Further allocate it to specific topics (tags). Enhance your thinking by finding new connections and ideas between your information using notebooks and tags. Use the 11built in templates to create content that is easy to read, looks good and is consistent. Use the inbox to capture now, sort later.

Notion videos

The Most Powerful Productivity App I Use - Notion

More videos:

  • Review - I switched to Notion for a week... Here's what happened!
  • Review - Notion is Truly an All-in-One Productivity Tool (App Review)

Focused Notion videos

Focused - Productivity System to achieve your life goals.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Notion and Focused Notion)
Productivity
98 98%
2% 2
Project Management
100 100%
0% 0
Task Management
96 96%
4% 4
Notion Apps
0 0%
100% 100

Questions and Answers

As answered by people managing Notion and Focused Notion.

What makes your product unique?

Focused Notion's answer:

I've tried many productivity apps, and while they've mostly been helpful, they often fall short because they only focus on a single niche. For example task management apps, they won't guide you on whether the tasks you are completing are really moving you towards your goals, or they won't help you to be organized, or even help you avoid burnout. They just get you to do more tasks, which is limiting and why many people don't end up finding long-term success. The same applies to time tracking, note-taking, or habit tracking apps, they're great in their specific area but not for overall success.

The only way to use apps effectively for long-term success is to spend a lot of time working out what works for you, which apps suit your system and then configuring each app for that system. This is very time consuming, complicated and expensive, especially as you will need to try many apps before you find the ones that suit you best.

Focused solves this. It's an all-in-one system designed to work across all aspects of your life, especially in productivity, knowledge, and tracking. It aims for long-term, sustainable success, not just short-term fixes. Built on Notion, Focused offers unparalleled customization. You can adjust everything to fit your needs, from the homepage layout to adding new views or templates. This is something that just isn't possible with an app, customizations are often very limited if any.

Focused offers significant advantages over traditional apps. In addition to the above, there's no subscription fee, your data remains private and secure, and you have complete productivity system that works holistically across your life to help you achieve success.

What's the story behind your product?

Focused Notion's answer:

I have been obsessed with productivity and organization for many years, since I my early 20s. Mainly due to necessity as I first was doing a dual degree while working in IT full-time, then I moved to working full-time and running my own side business with my wife + a fairly successful blog; and now full-time work and Focused + the side business.

So out of that, I have spent many, many hours reading books, learning different techniques and implementing them in my life to see how they work. I also got onboard with Notion very early on (moved from Evernote), so I built many of the very early iterations of Focused for myself before I even thought I could create something for others.

I think that is why I feel Focused is different from other productivity apps and even Notion templates (although I don't consider myself as a template at all, more of a productivity system). The value I add is the experience and the trials and tribulations of learning, implementing and using all of these different systems. So I know the pitfalls, I know what works and what doesn't.

So Focused is not just a tool, it also has all of the documentation and life coaching to go along with it. Tips, tricks, ideas to help people overcome the pitfalls I did. The biggest one which is common for the majority of people and which is a common thread throughout my documentation is that of overcoming guilt about not doing enough, because although that can be a short-term productivity booster it certainly isn't a long-term one. It is actually a productivity killer. Which why a lot of people start with a productivity tool or framework and get a short-term boost in productivity but ultimately don't keep it going so they never actually achieve what they are trying to achieve. This is the main reason I built Focused - for those people.

The other reason is because due to my 9-5 and the stress at work, especially during COVID, I ended up with a breakdown and burnout. I had to take time of work and the effects of that stress and burnout still haunt me today at times. It has been a massive journey of learning that productivity isn't just about doing more, it is about consistency. It is about processing emotions, having a healthy lifestyle and about learning when to work and when to rest. Just do do do isn't the answer. As a result of this, I major heavily on this in Focused, because the biggest killer of productivity is stress, anxiety and burnout. All things that can be avoided if the right tools and techniques are in place. I wouldn't want anyone to go through what I did, and so that is the other major reason why I built Focused.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Focused Notion's answer:

Notion, plus the following productivity frameworks:

  • The One Thing
  • Getting Things Done
  • Building a Second Brain
  • Atomic Habits
  • Essentialism
  • Daily Journaling
  • Productive Gaming
  • Gamify
  • Personal SWOT Analysis
  • GEM

Focused is designed around my many years of experience using and applying many of the world's leading productivity frameworks. It isn’t just something that has been cobbled together, its based on actual real-life experience FIRST, making Focused a productivity system that actually works.

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Notion and Focused Notion

Notion Reviews

  1. jk22
    · consultant at GFI ·
    Notion has helped in documenting our business

    It's been very very helpful to streamline different people on our team, especially remote workers to help them understand what's going on in our business without 100s of meetings.

    👍 Pros:    Ui is very attractive|Easy to use|Great for collaboration|Good customer service|Free to use
    👎 Cons:    Steep learning curve
  2. Ramesh Kumar
    · Product Manager at Aerial ·
    Extremely helpful- made life easier

    My remote-first start-up has eliminated more than 200+ hours of meetings and 1000s of mismanaged documents because our entire communication happens through Notion.

    👍 Pros:    Clean ui|File sharing|Modular
    👎 Cons:    Learning curve
  3. Boyd Richardson
    · Writer at SE ·

    As someone who's always on the lookout for the perfect productivity app, I was excited to try out Notion. It promises to be an all-in-one tool for everything from note-taking to project management to personal wikis.

    From the moment you open Notion, you can tell that it's different from other productivity apps. The interface is sleek and modern, and it's easy to navigate. The app is divided into pages, which can be customized with different templates to fit your needs. You can create to-do lists, databases, wikis, calendars, and more.

    One of the things I love about Notion is the ability to create relationships between pages. For example, you can create a database of your favorite books and then link to a page with your book reviews. Or you can create a to-do list and link to a page with notes about the task. This feature makes it easy to keep all of your information in one place and to connect related items.

    🏁 Competitors: Microsoft Loop
    👍 Pros:    Highly customizable|All in one|Collaboration|Cross platform
    👎 Cons:    Steep learning curve

Top 10 Notion Alternatives for 2025 and Why Teams Are Choosing Ledger
If you're looking for a Notion alternative that supports real, scalable teamwork, you're not alone. Whether you’ve outgrown Notion or are just exploring more robust, team-friendly platforms, here’s a breakdown of the top 10 alternatives in 2025—and why Ledger is becoming the go-to choice for modern teams.
How Tight-Knit Teams Get More Done with Innovative Project Management Tools
Notion: More than a task manager, it acts as a knowledge base. You can store guidelines, references, wikis, and to-do lists all under one roof.
Source: medium.com
11 Popular Knowledge Management Tools to Consider in 2025 
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Source: knowmax.ai
11 Best Google Keeps Alternatives for 2024
Unlike other note-taking apps, Notion stands out for its endless customization. It’s like an all-in-one workspace structured by pages and blocks.
Source: upbase.io
20 Obsidian Alternatives: Top Note-Taking Tools to Consider
Notion is a popular alternative to Obsidian for its simplicity, minimalistic interface, and large community. On top of note-taking, you can use Notion as a task management tool to create simple to-dos or build a personal knowledge base. You can also embed links, images, videos, code snippets, etc. Notion also has bi-directional functionalities enabling you to interconnect...
Source: clickup.com

Focused Notion Reviews

We have no reviews of Focused Notion yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Notion seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 441 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Notion mentions (441)

  • Cool SHIT you can do with docker
    Two of the most popular open source note taking app are affine (basically notion but open source) and obsidian (which stores notes in markdown). - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2024)
    Notion | https://notion.so | Android Engineer | SF | hybrid (in office 2x a week) | Full time
      Level: Mid/Mid+ (4-6yrs experience).
    - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Karyam: Simples everyday writing app
    Advanced Notion and Google Doc writing editor. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • My blog post workflow
    I manage my non-work and work-adjacent tasks in Notion. Whenever I have an idea, regardless of how big or small or silly or achievable it is, I'll add it to Notion, and use labels to categorise it by type of output (e.g. blog, silly project, website update). Today I wanted to write a short post for my site. I clicked on the filtered blog post view, and selected this one (because I hoped it would be a quick one!). - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • 6 AI tools that feels illegal to know🤖
    Notion.so redefines workspaces. With its intelligent organization and collaboration features, it's more than a productivity tool—it's a digital haven. Discover the art of streamlined and efficient teamwork. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

Focused Notion mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Focused Notion yet. Tracking of Focused Notion recommendations started around Aug 2024.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Notion and Focused Notion, you can also consider the following products

Trello - Infinitely flexible. Incredibly easy to use. Great mobile apps. It's free. Trello keeps track of everything, from the big picture to the minute details.

Second Brain - Capture & organize everything in Notion.

Asana - Asana project management is an effort to re-imagine how we work together, through modern productivity software. Fast and versatile, Asana helps individuals and groups get more done.

Taskos - Taskos To Do List is the simplest and most intuitive to-do list application for android.

Evernote - Bring your life's work together in one digital workspace. Evernote is the place to collect inspirational ideas, write meaningful words, and move your important projects forward.

promptpanda - Secure AI Prompt Management for Teams.