Organic Organization
Sometimes I see productivity advice on the internet that showcases all manner of systems and structures. All of the organizational woes in your life would be solved if you just adopted this New System! It taps into a sort of desire to start fresh, free from all previous "sins" of the past, which is really just self sabotaging.
Tools like Notion and Obsidian are customizable enough that you can set things up to work however you wish, and so there's a bunch of writing about how to set it up to help organize yourself; Anyone who has seen productivity advice on the social medias has seen things like this. There's a certain allure with those types of setups. I like the idea of having this solid system that you use for organization and it enables you to do what you want. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong, but those things have never worked for me. In the past, I tried a whole system in Notion with dashboard pages and notes with tags and sorting in a database and it didn't last. Too many buttons and menus for me to press, I feel. I used to think that I needed a to-do list app, but I've found that simpler methods work just as well.
And, I dunno, productivity is kind of fake anyways. Like, the idea of productivity is an attempt to reign in and make something predictable that really isn't. There are better and worse ways of working (especially when collaborating with others), but even the most optimal conditions aren't guarantees, and optimal conditions vary between people anyways. So, it always ends up as this internal struggle of self imposed expectations that may or may not line up with reality or what is reasonable. The concept of productivity and organization has a life of its own, and now we are encouraged to maximize productivity by adopting these new shiny systems and tools. We may think: perhaps that I'm just missing this one setup, this one thing that will help me be as productive as this other person on the internet.
The most important thing (that has worked for me) is that you stick with the systems that you adopt. Consistency is the biggest concern, really. This means that jumping ship to a new thing has the highest chance of failure. The problem with dropping everything and jumping into a new system or app with all of these bells and whistles is that you don't really know if it will work for you yet! You might put all of this effort getting everything set up, only for you to not like it at all. Also, migrating to a new system may mean losing the wisdom of the old system: you may be taking certain things for granted, and really miss certain features when they're gone.
I think that personal organization systems are things that are best "organically grown" rather than given to you off the shelf. Start with something simple, and gradually change the system in small ways to make improvements on it. Actually using a system for an extended period of time will allow you to really know the ins and outs of it and what works for you. You will be able to develop solutions for problems that actually exist, instead of hypothetical problems that you try and solve with a new thing. It's similar to overcoming the "curse of the blank canvas" in art: something that exists in a rough state, outside of your brain, gives you a direction to iterate on.
None of the ways that I organize my own life started off how I use them today. They are constantly growing and shifting in ways that are tailored to me and how I like to do things. It started off as trying to adopt the systems that other people use, but I've changed things around and made them suit me better. This is the main reason why I like hearing about the ways that people organize themselves: everyone is doing something slightly different that works for themselves.