You built the perfect Notion setup on a Sunday and never opened it again.
The dashboard had a habit tracker, a task database with five views, and a template for every kind of day. It took four hours. By Wednesday the tasks were in your head again, and the guilt was in your head with them. If you have ADHD, that story is so common it has a shape, and we wanted to know why the shape repeats.
So we read what Notion users say, at scale, and then asked what an ADHD brain does with each complaint.
What we did
We scanned 363,000 Notion posts, comments and reviews, then read 2,520 of them by hand.
The scan covered r/Notion since 2024, nine other subreddits, the App Store, Google Play, Trustpilot and Hacker News, up to September 2026. Coders sorted each complaint into one of 20 pains in 7 families. We dropped 199 posts that were selling something. A second coder re-read 88 items and agreed with the first on 93% of them, so the numbers are not one person's mood. One complaint can name up to three pains, so the shares add to more than 100%.
Two honest limits. This is Notion users in general, not people with ADHD; the ADHD reading is ours, and we say where it rests. And Reddit and app reviews are where people go to complain, so the numbers describe what hurts, not how many users are happy.
Slow to reach: 37% of complaints
A thought is gone before the page is ready.
"Slow to load and type" is the single biggest pain in the whole set, at 19%, and it is a top-two pain in every source we read. Pages load slowly. The phone app lags. Notes need the internet, and the internet is not always there. One r/Notion user in 2025 said every other app on the laptop ran fine and Notion alone felt like a ten-year-old Windows PC.
Now put an ADHD brain in front of that spinner.
With ADHD, it is hard to keep a list in your head. A 2013 meta-analysis of 38 studies found adults with ADHD score lower on working memory, the short store that holds a thought while you use it (Alderson and colleagues, 2013). The thought you had in the shower lasts seconds. A page that takes eight seconds to open is not slow. It is after the thought is gone.
Hard to trust: 27% of complaints
Updates break things, pages come up blank, accounts get locked.
This family leads the app store reviews, at 59%, and it leads r/Notion at 33%, where current users write. One user opened a page in 2026 and found the database empty, every word gone. Others describe a layout moving under them with each update, or a support system that answers only with an AI.
For an ADHD brain the tool has one job: to hold what the head cannot. A tool that sometimes drops the list is worse than no tool, because now you keep the list in two places, and the head is one of them. The lost page teaches you not to trust the page. The next dump goes nowhere.
Too much tool: 22% of complaints
A blank page that asks you to build a system first.
This is the pain people expect, and it is real. "Too complex to learn" is 11% of all complaints and 55% of what new users complain about in their first weeks. "Building systems instead of working" is another 7%: hours on dashboards and templates, then the system is dropped. In the subreddits where people who left explain why, it reaches 19%.
Here is why an ADHD brain builds the dashboard and skips the work. An ADHD brain starts on what is new, not on what is important. The template is new. The tasks inside it are from last week. So you spend Sunday on the new thing, feel productive, and Monday's list is still Monday's list. The setup was not laziness. It was the novelty lever, pulled at the wrong target.
Where people go, and what they say when they leave
People who left Notion talk about something different from people still using it.
Current users complain about lag and bugs. Leavers name ownership, "the notes are not mine", nearly seven times more often (20% against 3%), and "too much tool" more often too (27% against 17%). They left for control, not only for speed. Among r/Notion users since January 2025 who named where they went, counting each person once, Obsidian took 56% of the moves. The rest spread across a dozen simpler or local apps.
One more number. Posts asking Notion to fix the basics instead of adding AI rose about 14 times, per 10,000 posts, between early 2025 and the 2026 peak. The people who stayed are asking for a notebook that opens now and keeps what they wrote.
What to do if you have ADHD and a dead Notion
Stop building. The building was the problem, and more building will not fix it.
- Keep one page. Not a system. One page called Today, and nothing under it.
- Capture somewhere that opens in under two seconds. Apple Notes, a text file, a voice memo. The dump can move later. The thought cannot wait.
- Put a time on anything with a time, where you look. "Friday" in a property is a fact. "3h left" on the row is a reason to start.
- If what you have is tasks, not notes, use a tool for tasks. Notion is a good wiki for a team. The thing in your head at 2pm is not a wiki.
If you still like Notion for reference, keep it for reference. Recipes, the lease, the project docs. Just stop asking it to be the place you start from.
How Kaapi does it
We built Kaapi for the two pains at the top of the list.
It opens to one box. You type or say everything in your head, half sentences and typos included, and a model that runs on your Mac turns it into small tasks. A time you wrote becomes a countdown. There is no database to design and no view to pick. Your dumps and tasks are saved only on your Mac, so the notes are yours in the plainest sense: they are files on a computer you own.
Frequently asked questions
Is Notion bad for ADHD?
Not bad, but built for a different job. Notion users' biggest complaints are that it is slow to reach (37%) and hard to trust (27%), and both land harder on a brain that cannot hold a list in its head. It works as a reference wiki. It struggles as the place you capture a thought and start a task.
Why do I keep abandoning Notion?
Usually because setting it up was the interesting part. An ADHD brain starts on what is new, and a fresh template is new. Once the template is built, the tasks inside it are old again and the brain moves on. The fix is less system, not a better one.
Should I buy an ADHD Notion template?
Try one page first. In our data, "too complex to learn" is 55% of new users' complaints, and a template adds structure before you have a habit. If you still want a template after a week on one page, buy the simplest one you can find.
What is a good Notion alternative for ADHD?
The one that opens in a second and keeps what you wrote. Among Reddit users who said where they went, Obsidian took 56% of named moves, mostly for speed and ownership. For tasks rather than notes, use a to-do app that sorts the dump for you and shows the time left on each task.
Sources
- Kaapi (September 2026). What hurts Notion users: 363,000 posts scanned, 2,520 hand-coded against a 20-pain codebook, double-coded on 88 items with 93% agreement. Sources: r/Notion, nine other subreddits, App Store, Google Play, Trustpilot, Hacker News. Not an ADHD sample.
- Alderson, R. M., Kasper, L. J., Hudec, K. L., and Patros, C. H. G. (2013). Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and working memory in adults: A meta-analytic review. Neuropsychology, 27(3), 287–302. doi.org/10.1037/a0032371
- Dodson, W. (updated 2025). How adults with ADHD think: Uncomfortable truths about the ADHD nervous system. ADDitude. additudemag.com/adhd-in-adults-nervous-system. A clinical model from practice, not a trial.