A tech investor got brutally roasted after he shared the detailed Notion database he uses to manage his marriage. He says the haters don’t get that he’s just being organized.

• Ben Lang, 30, is a Notion super fan.
• He was roasted online after he revealed that he was using Notion to manage his marriage.
• Lang told BI that while he does enjoy the memes, Notion definitely isn’t controlling his life. 

Ben Lang, 30, is a huge fan of the note-taking software Notion.

Lang was one of the startup’s first employees, and he spent around five years leading Notion’s community efforts.

But while most users use Notion to track their finances or plan their projects, Lang uses the software to manage something a little closer to the heart: His marriage.

“My wife and I use Notion religiously to manage our day-to-day life. Here’s a screenshot of our set-up,” Lang wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on April 6.

The template includes a section for budgeting and holiday planning. There’s also a repository of “life”-related planning items, including tabs to create a repository of “our principles” and “learnings.”

Lang told BI in an interview on Friday that he and his wife are indeed using the template, which he says more than 2,300 people have downloaded as of press time.

Lang said he first introduced his wife to Notion when they were planning their wedding, and they’ve used it together ever since.

“I would say I’m definitely the one who drives the structure of the page and how we use Notion,” Lang said.

“There are times where I’ll ask her to add something in the Notion, and there are also times where she’ll ask me to add something in the Notion,” he added.

While some online commenters were interested in using the template to manage their relationships, others made fun of Lang’s page. They likened the Notion-based planning of one’s married life to OKRs and high-stakes performance reviews.

“My friend’s husband is currently on a PIP I think this will help him a lot,” another user joked, referencing the performance-improvement plans tech workers are placed on when their performance is deemed lackluster.

The roasting also found its way to Lang, who told BI that he was “entertained” by all the memes and jokes that people were coming up with about his work.

“I think people who saw what we were doing either thought it was ridiculous, or it was so wholesome and amazing that we were investing in our relationship,” Lang told BI. “So people either loved it or hated it.”

That was when Lang decided to embrace the humor.

“I was entertained by the people hating it and all their memes. So I figured what I would do is, I would just make a parody of their responses,” Lang told BI.

On April 9, Lang posted a screenshot of what he said was an updated copy of his Notion template. This joke template had new elements — like a section that tracks “Quarterly OKRs” and another tab for “360 performance reviews.”

Jokes aside, Lang told BI some of his haters have the wrong idea about his Notion use and presume that the page dictates and controls all aspects of his marriage.

“They could be thinking, ‘Oh, there’s this couple who are controlled by this Notion page and it’s how they live their life every moment.’ In reality, that’s not how it is,” Lang said.

“The way we see it, this is just a very useful home base for us to track things, to log and remember things, and to plan things,” he said. “It by no means is controlling our lives or is taking away the spontaneity and joy of life that some might think.”