The case against the all-in-one Notion dashboard
Every mega-dashboard I've built eventually collapsed under its own weight. Here's what I do instead.
I've built the giant Notion dashboard. You know the one — home page with a quote of the day, a habit tracker, a reading list, five linked databases, and a progress bar that never moved. It looked incredible in screenshots. I used it for eleven days.
The problem isn't Notion. It's that an all-in-one dashboard asks you to maintain the system before you can use it. Every time you open the app, you're doing admin. Real work needs a door you can walk through in one click, not a lobby you have to cross.
My current setup is three pages. A projects page with one database. A content page. An archive. That's it. When I need to write, I open the content page and the draft is right there. No navigation, no widgets, no friction between me and the work.
Here's the test I use now: if a page hasn't been opened in 30 days, it gets archived. If a database view doesn't change a decision I make, it gets deleted. My workspace is smaller than it was two years ago, and I ship more.
Start with one page for the thing you're actually doing this week. Add structure only when the absence of it slows you down. That's the whole method.