This post describes the creative problem I had to solve—choosing a fun medium for self-expression so I could stop feeling FOMO—and why Notion solves it for me. Contains rich existential angst; does not include falafel

13th May, 2021

In today's utopia/dystopia of tech-enabled self-expression, there is quite a bit of pressure to express yourself. That quiet person you went to school with is now a fashion influencer on Instagram with 400K+ followers and her own brand. Others in your age-group, who gave the same All India exams and went to the same set of colleges you did, have squeezed inspirational stories out of them and seen great success on LinkedIn. (👀 Aviral Bhatnagar 👀.)

"What have you been upto? 😒," you ask yourself.

"I'm not quiet, and I'm a marketer, so I should also productize and sell myself!" you I realize.

Thanks to the pandemic, we're constantly in touch with online versions of everyone we know—from friends and relatives to colleagues, acquaintances we haven't been spoken to in years, celebrities, and the thousands of influencers we see a few times each day—all of whom are uniformly comparable through their follower-counts. We've never had such an objective metric for judgment, nor so much opportunity to represent ourselves*—*and look good in the process—to such a diverse audience.

Who am I, though?

'Putting yourself out there' starts with some level of agreement—with yourself—on who you are. To then continually generate representations in line with it seems to come astonishingly easily to some people. I took solace in a characteristically hard-hitting sketch by creator Srishti Dixit, who complains about how hard it is to choose between her several selves when asked to "Be Yourself", and the danger of truly being herself. The other character in the video—also played by Srishti, as tends to be in our self-starring, made-at-home comedy sketches these days—says "Well, just be positive then!"

It's true. One has to bear so much influence today. Of course you feel like influencing back. It's only natural, and all a big headache.

So when you're still trying to figure things out—who you are, what to create, how to do it while also performing at a full-time job—self-expression starts as an experimental exercise. There is regular use of a set of tools, cutting across: