Notion vs Obsidian for a Solo Developer: What I Actually Use

Two years in: they do not compete

I have used Notion and Obsidian every week for over two years as a solo dev, builder, and baseball coach who does way too many things at once.

In the first few months I did what every nerd does. I tried to force one of them to be the single source of truth. I built big systems. I watched videos. I over-architected my notes. It looked great and felt smart.

Then my actual work calendar slapped me in the face.

Client projects. Side projects. Kids. Lifting. Writing. Coaching schedules. My real life did not care about my second brain schema. It only cared about friction. Did I open the thing and find what I needed in 3 seconds or not.

After a lot of context switching and a few painful weeks where I tried to move everything into one app, the pattern was obvious. Notion and Obsidian are not rivals in my setup. They sit in completely different jobs.

Here is how it settled after two years of actual use, not theory.

What Notion actually owns for me

Notion is my external brain for shared and structured work. Anything that feels like a lightweight app with views, statuses, and a URL I can send to someone else usually ends up there.

1. Project CRM for client work

I do a mix of creative web builds, performance tuning, and weird one-off tech projects for clients. For that I need the boring stuff.

• Who is this client
• What did I promise
• What did I deliver
• Where are we in the pipeline

So I have a single database called Clients. Every client is a row. Properties: status, engagement type, last contact, deal size, link to active project, link to invoices. Nothing fancy, but it beats hunting through emails.

Every time someone messages me about work, I drop them in there. Even if it never turns into a project. It takes 20 seconds and future me thanks me when the same name pops up again 8 months later. I tried doing this in Obsidian with markdown files and YAML. It worked technically. It did not work behaviorally. I just never opened it.

2. Kanban for actual shipping

Task tools come and go. Notion stayed.

I have a Workboard database with a simple Kanban: Backlog, This Week, Today, Blocked, Done. I do not over-tag it. I do not track energy levels or estimate points. If a task sits in This Week for three weeks, I delete it or ship it. That rule matters more than any feature.

Why Notion here instead of Obsidian tasks plugins or some dedicated PM tool. One reason. Views.

• Board by status for daily work
• Table by due date for a mini crush mode
• Timeline when I stack launches or big deadlines

Plus, I can link a task directly to a client or project page. It creates a tiny bit of structure that future me does not hate.

3. Public and semi-public docs

Anything I might ever share with a client or collaborator lives in Notion by default. That includes:

• Onboarding docs
• Process pages for how I run builds
• Project briefs and scopes
• Meeting notes that need to be sent as a link

I tried exporting things from Obsidian into Notion when I needed to share, but that just created another layer of friction. So I flipped it. Client facing, structured, or sharable. Straight into Notion.

Is Notion the best writing experience. No. I think its editor feels a bit floaty and click heavy. I still use it here because sending one clean URL beats everything else.

4. High level life dashboards

I have one page called Command Center. It is a simple Notion page pinned in the sidebar. It has:

• Linked view of my Workboard filtered to Today and This Week
• Linked view of current clients with status not equal to Closed
• A small "Now" section that I update every month

This is not aesthetic. No gradient covers. No fancy icons. Just a fast way to see work-on-fire along with a bit of context. Notion is good at that kind of view stitching so I use it there.

What Obsidian actually owns for me

Obsidian runs the thinking and raw knowledge side for me. Anything that lives more in my head than in a project spec usually ends up in a markdown file in my vault.

When I say “knowledge” I do not mean some ideal Zettelkasten. I mean messy half-thoughts that future me can grep.

1. Daily logs and thinking-in-public-for-myself

Each day I open a daily note in Obsidian. Shortcut. New file based on a template. The name is just the date. That file gets everything:

• What I worked on technically, down to commit hashes sometimes
• Rough ideas that pop up while making coffee
• Training notes: what I lifted, how I slept, HRV trends
• Coaching notes from baseball practice

This log reads like a messy personal changelog. I do not care how pretty it looks. I care that it exists and loads instantly even on a train with bad WiFi. So Obsidian wins.

Yes, I could do this in Notion. I tried. It felt like typing into a website. There is a subtle mental friction when I know I am in a cloud app. Obsidian feels local. I type faster and I overthink less.

2. Code snippets and problem autopsies

I keep a folder called Snippets & Fixes. This has saved me so many times.

Whenever I hit a weird bug that takes longer than 10 minutes to solve, I write a tiny autopsy:

• What broke
• What I tried
• What actually fixed it

I paste the actual code, or at least the key part, into a fenced code block. Sometimes I throw in a screenshot. I tag it with something like #nextjs or #cloudflare or #css. Nothing too complex.

Later when the same class of bug shows up six months down the line, I search for a vague phrase from my memory and it pops up. This is where the local markdown plus instant search combo shines. Obsidian feels like grep with a UI. Notion search has improved, but I still do not trust it for this type of work.

3. Research and writing for long form content

Any blog post idea, content outline, or long form research starts in Obsidian. I am literally writing this in Obsidian right now.

Why. Because I want my words in plain text first. No formatting. No accidental blocks. No lag when I paste code or write longer paragraphs.

My writing flow:

• Dump bullet points and messy thoughts in a note per topic
• Link to related notes if I remember them, but I do not obsess
• Once the idea feels cooked, I move it into a proper draft file
• Final polish happens where it needs to publish, not in Obsidian

So Obsidian holds the raw material. The final thing goes on richardlemon.com, Notion (if it is a doc), or somewhere else.

4. Personal operating system stuff

I track a lot of personal data. Sleep, HRV, experiments with supplements, training blocks, and some weird productivity tests. I am a builder and a biohacker, I cannot help it.

All of that lives in Obsidian. I do not want my diet tweaks next to client revenue numbers. Different mental space.

I keep a few key notes pinned:

• Protocols for sleep, training, focus days
• Experiments where I log what I am testing for 30 days, like a new wake time or caffeine rule
• Rules list that I review weekly, very short, very blunt

These feel personal and local. I want them in markdown files that sync through my own setup, not locked behind someone else’s account system.

The failed experiments in the middle

This all sounds clean and intentional. It was not.

I tried several setups that looked smart on paper and then collapsed instantly under real work. A few examples so you can skip the same mistakes.

Trying to run tasks in Obsidian

For two months I went all in on Obsidian tasks. Plug-ins, dataviews, everything. It looked incredible.

I had queries like:

• Tasks due this week
• Tasks tagged with a client name
• Tasks created from meeting notes

The problem. I stopped trusting the list. Too many moving parts. Too many chances for a broken query. Also, I do not want to maintain my own todo system logic on top of doing actual work. I already maintain code bases. I do not need to maintain my productivity environment as if it were a product.

So now all real tasks live in Notion. Obsidian gets mentions like “remember to refactor X” inside a daily note, but those get turned into actual tasks in Notion if they matter.

Trying to move knowledge into Notion

I also tried the opposite. The grand unified Notion workspace where everything lives in pretty linked databases. Projects, notes, ideas, references. I built it over a weekend. It looked incredible.

Then I tried to actually take fast notes while on a call. Click, click, new page, type, formatting jumps a bit, someone asks me a question, I miss it because my brain is still in the interface. Not ideal.

When I am thinking, I want a keyboard, a blinking cursor, and zero loading icons. Obsidian gives me that. Notion does not.

The actual dividing line I use

After two years of bouncing between these tools, here is the simple rule I use now.

If it needs structure, collaboration, or a URL, it goes in Notion.

If it needs thinking, speed, or long term personal memory, it goes in Obsidian.

That is it. No fancy architecture. No unified tagging system across both. I do not try to sync them. I tried that. It felt like doing DevOps on my own notes.

Instead I accept the gap. There is overlap. Some ideas exist in both places at different resolutions. That is fine. If a project spec lives in Notion and I have deeper technical explorations about it in Obsidian, I just paste the Notion link into my Obsidian note once. Good enough.

How this actually feels in day-to-day work

Here is a normal day for me as a solo developer with client work, my own projects, and life stuff.

• Morning: open Obsidian, new daily note, write down sleep, training, one focus for the day.
• Then I open Notion Command Center, scan Today and This Week, promote or kill tasks.
• When coding, I stay in Obsidian for scratch notes and bug autopsies.
• When planning a feature or writing a proposal, I open the Notion project page and write in there because that ends up shared.
• If a call happens, I take raw notes in Obsidian, then later copy the structured bits into the right Notion doc.

This might sound like more work, but it is actually less. Each tool has a clear job, so I am not constantly negotiating with myself about where something goes.

How to pick if you only want one

If I somehow had to pick only one tool tomorrow, my answer would depend on the type of solo dev you are.

If your work is mostly client facing, structured, and collaborative, I think Notion wins. The fact you can send a link, build quick CRMs, and see tasks in multiple views is practical. You can still think in Notion. You just need to tolerate the cloud app feel.

If your work leans toward deep research, code experiments, indie hacking, or you just like owning your files, I would pick Obsidian. Add a simple task system or use a minimalist external todo app and you are fine.

For me, the hybrid is ideal. Not because it is cool, but because my brain and my work want different environments. Projects and people in one. Thoughts and experiments in the other.

I stopped trying to crown a winner. I just gave each app a job and cut everything else.