Why Your Notion SOP Page Has 4 Lines and a Blank Section

You opened Notion.
You typed a heading.
You named it “Processes.”
…and never went back.

That’s not your fault.
It’s a format problem.

Almost every founder I talk to has this page. Sometimes it’s in Notion, sometimes in Google Docs, sometimes in Confluence. But it always looks the same:

• A title
• Two bullet points
• “TODO: add more detail here”

And then… nothing.

It’s not abandoned because you’re lazy.
It’s abandoned because the way you’re trying to document is broken.

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The real problem

We’ve been told that SOPs = writing.

But think about how you actually learned anything in your business.

You didn’t read a long doc.
Someone showed you.
You tried it.
You made mistakes.
You figured it out.

That’s how real learning happens.

So when you sit down to “write an SOP,” your brain resists. Because you’re trying to turn something you do naturally into something you have to explain perfectly.

That’s hard.

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Why founders struggle with SOPs

Here’s the honest truth:

You don’t struggle because you lack discipline.
You struggle because your knowledge is in your head, not in words.

You’ve done your onboarding process 100 times.
It feels obvious to you.

But when you try to write it down, you get stuck.

Why?

Because you skip steps without realizing it.

The small things you think are “obvious”…
are exactly what a new hire needs most.

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The tool isn’t the issue

It’s not Notion.
It’s not Google Docs.

You can have:

• Beautiful dashboards → still useless
• Simple text files → incredibly helpful

The difference isn’t the tool.

It’s how the SOP was created.

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What actually works

Instead of writing… talk.

Walk someone through the process:

• What do you do first?
• What happens next?
• What do you do when something goes wrong?

Let someone ask you questions.

That conversation gets recorded.
That becomes your SOP.

Talking is easy.
Writing feels like work.

So naturally… you avoid it.

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A better way to think about SOPs

Don’t try to write your processes.

Extract them.

Think:

“How do I get what’s in my head… out?”

Not:

“How do I write the perfect document?”

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Quick question

Has this happened to you?

You started documenting…
made some progress…
then slowly stopped?

What actually killed it for you: time, format, or something else?