I was wondering if there would be a possibility in the future to move/pin the favorites section to the top to be with the search and notification buttons so that it stays visible even when you scroll through the left bar:
I understand the rationale for not crowding the area but the fact that you have to continuously scroll up and down to get back to favorites makes this a bit hard to use. I think having the option to pin this would give users some flexibility.
By the way, the Worspace icon (complete top left) has its own dropdown with not-often-used links. We might as well move the ‘Upgrade’ and ‘Settings’ links in there, so they are not visible all the time in this top navigation area (which is high value cognitive space).
This would result in only the following links to always show (including your suggestion):