ERRATA - Confused? Watch my introduction to Obsidian here: ua-cam.com/video/DbsAQSIKQXk/v-deo.html - 7:20 @S0mnambulist-667 says "You can rename headings while keeping link support. Right click the heading and choose "rename heading" and it will update all links." - Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!) - Patron vault zip here (thanks folks!) www.patreon.com/posts/121361085 - MD video source github.com/NamtaoProductions/namtao-com/blob/main/src/site/notes/No%20Boilerplate/NB43%20-%20Obsidian%20The%20Good%20Parts.md - Published web version www.namtao.com/No-Boilerplate/NB43---Obsidian-The-Good-Parts
My biggest problem is that my Obsidian usage is a no-holds-barred cage match between my autism and ADHD. I'm in a cycle that repeats every few months: 1. Get excited about it again 2. Start using it, but struggle to form any coherent systems of organization, down to the point of naming things inconsistently 3. Realize I've been wildly inconsistent in ways that would be a pain to go back and fix 4. Feel shame about the state of it, have trouble opening it at all 5. Never settle into using it consistently, eventually forget to actually use it and it stops existing 6. Repeat Would love a video on how to develop a proper "style guide" or naming scheme, or ... _something_ to create usage consistency that I can be confident with.
i feel this so hard, and have experienced a similar cycle. What has really helped me was being realistic with myself about what I actually care about writing down, because if you're writing stuff you don't actually care about, the whole environment will feel cluttered and you'll wonder why you're not feeling the benefits that people talk about. This realization alone should make the biggest difference. Prioritize your own feelings and experience over finding "the best" structure.
I think it strongly depends on how much time you spend writing a day. My personal career has me doing a lot a lot of thinking which I need to write down, so Obsidian structure kind of emerges organically I think if I was forcing myself to write stuff down it would be a lot harder
@@MrSomethingred I basically have the opposite problem: My personal career has me doing a lot of thinking that I have to write down, ship to a client, and then forget - most of what I need to remember is metadata that becomes outdated within a year or doesn't belong in obsidian.
I’m unimpressed how eager he is to trade away control. If you want me to trust you to tell me honestly if something is good or bad, you can’t do that while on it’s payroll
@@SpencerTwiddy Tiago Forte made a video about two years ago that proposed different notetaking archetypes, gardeners and architects were two among them (librarian the third): /watch?v=f3dDVtJ2sec And I swear I've come across an even older video that grouped notetaking approaches like that.
I started using obsidian from your first video, and have been using it since. I wish i had known about tag hierarchies earlier. I now know at least 5 people that have switched to obsidian from my recommendations, so thank you for introducing me to this wonderful app.
A small defense of folders: Even though yes, organizational folders shall not pass, but simply through the fact that your vault also exists embedded in a folderstructure designed to segregate what is inside and what is not, I do use folders for one technical purpose: Keeping my Vaults contents clean. For most people, the hear of gold of their vault is and always will be the markdown notes, but these often have to exist aided by attachments, such as images and audio. For that reason i personally chose to use folders to seperate the heart from the supports, and means I can quickly save and copy only the important part of my vault - the beating heart, not the 400+ Images or other more barbaric filetypes, or sometimes even notes from previous vaults I havent had time to 'modernize' yet. Great Video nontheless, and I am beginning considerations of a version 4 of my vault based on the ideas in the video.
@@NoBoilerplate I often share parts of my vault with co-workers, either for read-only purposes, or for them to actively collaborate. Sometimes, I can make due with sharing just the PDF version, but if they need to contribute back, this is impossible, so I have things in certain folders that I have synced and accessible to my organization, so they can have access to them as raw notes - for them Folders is the only way, and for me, it helps me distribute without fear of leaking information others should not be able to see
NAMED LINKS!! Finally! Thank you! Been searching for this forever. Dont understand why its not a bigger topic in the community. Building your own knowledge graph has so much value.
@obiwanjacobi @GAGONMYCOREY what works for me is slightly different from the syntax in the video. And you need the juggl plugin for visualization. part_of: - "[[note A]]" - "[[note B]]" relates_to: - "[[note C]]"
I think I understand your issues with canvas, but it was just such a game changer for my own learning/organization. My brain works exactly like a flow of interconnected nodes with tiny bits of information. I just wish it had better integration with the rest of Obsidian. Modelling things as inputs/outputs IMO is the perfect use for canvas. It helped me a lot through higher education in mathematics, since I could easily and visually organize where each requirement/input/assumption enters a process of, for example, deriving a theorem from two different theorems and a property.
I also really wanted canvas to work for me, for the same reason. There is a plugin that lets you update properties from canvas links and groups, but after the second time that borked my vault, I went back to plain text!
@@NoBoilerplate Consider giving the Excalidraw plugin a serious try. I find it to be significantly more optimized than Canvas. Cons: - Not markdown, and not using an open source format - could use more integration with Templater & Datacore/Dataview Pros: - Software itself is Open Source - has ability to run javascript scripts that allow you to seriously fine tune features - has so many shortcuts, hotkeys, & aforementioned scripts, despite it being a “drawing” app, you can use your keyboard for a decent chunk of the workflow - insane development by the plugin team lead by Zsolt. I feel like for every 1 well-tuned Canvas feature, there are 5 Excalidraw features. Features that range from insane pdf manipulation and annotation, to small-but-significant QOL features like flowchart shortcuts, etc. - way more performant. I can embed many more Dataview queries and high res images in an Excalidraw drawing than Canvas for the same performance Excalidraw takes a decent bit of learning to get to your liking, but it’s head and shoulders above the native Canvas feature.
I’ve started using Obsidian for the last 6 months, and after watching a startup guide I absolutely love it. At the moment I’m using it as something very simple, note taking, but it’s the nicest one I’ve ever used
@@NoBoilerplate I started watching you for Rust content, but everything else has been right on point for what I'm looking for. I look forward to what is to come!
Yep, folders are such an antipattern, they force you to organize the information into single categories, even though the notes often belong into multiple! :D
This video is now a must-watch for anyone trying out Obsidian imo. All the lessons you describe here are things I had to learn myself after struggling with Obsidian for over a year. I had built up a decent personal wiki, but my notebook never truly became a "second brain" until I ditched folders, and began using metadata on all of my notes. Your video has all the stuff I wish I knew at the start, and is almost never mentioned in any of the hundreds of "boost your productivity NOW with Obsidian!" videos on this site.
The clarification here is fantastic, I haven’t had time to devote dedicated research to what you just handed to me free of charge. Thank you, thank you thank you. The first Obsidian video got me onto the application, this is the one that actually streamlines my ability to use it into something useful. I’m so grateful I didn’t have to do the research for this and you share it free of charge. I only hope I can give back to the world at large one day, the way you are today. I’m exceptionally grateful.
I don't think I have seen anyone use named links before, I have been building something custom for this myself so its really cool seeing I'm not alone with this. I am not 100% sold on markdown only but it does make sense, though I am fine with any open format as long as I can convert it freely. That said unnecessarily using complicated formats instead of tags or markdown should be avoided. I personally have my kanban boards use tags as the columns and the entries are documents that way I can have a simple todo list view of them and everything with the tag done can be checked, also filtering out done things is a nice thing to apply globally. Great video as always thank you
Have you tried the Kanban plugin? Really clever how it keeps it in markdown format, behind the scenes. My pitch for plain text markdown is at the start of this video: ua-cam.com/video/WgV6M1LyfNY/v-deo.html
@@NoBoilerplate The Kanban plugin is nice but I was looking for something to apply a tag to the linked note for that card when i move the it from one column to the next, as I would like the data to stay on the linked note and not on the card. I usually have multiple kanban boards that share some tasks so keeping the lane info in the note would be a big thing for me. I wont argue against markdown its too good for that, my current plan is to replace tags with links to have the ability to write a document about what this tag is about, but the workflow is still a bit annoying right now especially with how i would need to workaround nested tags but maybe named properties could be the solution for that.
I accidentally discovered them when, out of habit, typed [[ before referencing a person's name in a property. Absolute game changer for referencing relationships (family, friends, family of friends, work hierarchies, etc.), but I never thought about using it to classify notes in a hierarchy directly like this.
@@NoBoilerplate They’re a bridge between the File System and Obsidian, they are on the outskrits. My PKMS operates at the OS level and Folders are direct links between my internal mental map and my 2nd brain. Obsidian pigeonholed itself by focusing on .md, and Id be left reinventing the wheel creating the universality (specifically file extensions and Desktop Environment Scope) the OS allows for with little to gain for moving this functionality inside Obsidian Scope. My course of action is integrating / better connecting Obsidian to the rest of my computer wherever I can, instead of trying to import all the features present at OS level inside of Obsidian.
Its so crazy, your video on obsidian is what got me to start using it so many years ago, and I was just thinking about your channel, (plus I just started using plugins in obsidian) and bam! Another video
Loved the video. I have been using obsidian for around 2 years and have been doing folder structuring. I have captured many ideas but I didn't really done any productive or haven't achieved much from the idea I have collected for so long. I will try to follow that named link approach and see if I can truly create a second brain.
Been on the fence about picking up Obsidian for a while, but this video finally sold me on it. My last big project was 130+ pages of notes and I can't find ANYTHING reasonably.
You're wrong about 2 and kinda wrong about the first. You can have multiple vaults open at once, that's just a normal feature, I have 5 vaults, but only use my main one regularly. I'd also recommend not having more than one vault if you can work it out - deeply linking is the genius part of any system like this, and to partition your life into multiple vaults seems counter-productive to me. You don't need an account, it's actually super refreshing how old-school Obsidian is: Unlimited Freeware. There's no account needed because your files are actually on your computer, not someone else's cloud. You can sign up for their sync or publish services, sure, but you can also stick your files in dropbox, icloud, a git repo or wherever! Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!) I'd take open data over open source for my brain any day of the week.
@@NoBoilerplate Oh, I seems they've updated some stuff. Amazingly fast response and I wasn't aware of the option to not use an account. Though personally I prefer my source open.
I started using Obsidian for my Uni notes after your previous video. While I don't think my setup is optimal (each class is a seperate folder, with each week being a separate folder) linking to differnet concepts across classes is so helpful for intergrating knowledge. I study Psychology, and links are so useful for things like brain regions, the graph shows very clearly what areas are linked to what topics/processes. I'd already been using a very basic named link system, but only really using it as a "see also" section, building that into a full topology is a great idea. Same for tag hierarchies, how did I not know about that! Thank you for the amazing videos
Dont have time to watch the video, but I've been making obsidian blades for many years. It's actually a common material where I live. It's very easy to form a sharp edge. You can hit it with another rock, but I've even had success jusy throwing it up in the air and letting it hit concrete. It's best used for slicing and applications without very heavy use. It's quite brittle and trying to chop down a tree or something becomes difficult.
I also just recently started using named links in the metadata and was amazed by how flexible it feels with no downside, like on a book note having: category: "[[Sources]]" medium: "[[Books]]" author: "[[Author's Name]]" And then having a dataview in each of those notes to have a list of all sources, a list of all books, or a list of all books by that author. Notes have the feeling of being in multiple folders since I dont have to pick one place that the note belongs. The whole vault started to feel much more like a home after i started doing this. Edit: Actually i lied, one downside is that dataview can lag for a couple seconds when listing over a hundred notes, mainly noticeable on my journal dataview which lists multiple years worth of journal notes. I'm hoping this gets fixed when Obsidian releases the native Dynamic Views feature
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Alternatively you can also just use the Local Graph in those categories to e.g. see all books
This is awesome, really good tips 👍 Have been fascinated by the idea of building a second brain / knowledge graph using open format tools for years and tried using obsidian couple years ago but never stuck to it. Time to stop procrastinating and give it another go
Great Video! What I miss are some insights about how this system helps you to retrieve the right information. Actually I just use search to find the right notes. This helps me more than any fancy vault structure
I've used Obsidian extensively for the last 2 years to log what I do at work every day, keep one-off scripts, and keep work related photos/screenshots. The key feature if Obsidian that makes it useful for me is during weekly updates and performance review - I can instantly get an overview of what I've been working on (the built in graph) on a year-scale or daily-scale. I don't use tags, but links to pages with a project/theme as the title. It's not exciting, but very practical for recall (if you've been diligent about logging and categorizing).
I don't think I've ever clicked a UA-cam notification faster. Your first video on Obsidian made me _so_ excited to get started as it seemed like the perfect way to organise my ADHD-riddled brain. The problem I've found since has been porting all of my previous "stuff" in, as I've let perfection become the killer of progress and struggled to categorise my stuff into the right places. As a result I've now got yet another semi-operational org tool which isn't quite optimised enough for me to add my quick thoughts into, as I'm (paradoxically) worried they'll get lost. I've gone back to quickly noting things down in Keep, so now I've got even more stuff to port over. But Obsidian is different in that even after all this time, I'm still convinced it's the tool for me and I'm desperate to get back into using it properly. Perfection can come later. Thanks for a) lighting a fire under my backside once again and b) showing me some approaches I can take to make the process easier. I'm not being melodramatic, this is life-changing stuff. Thank you.
My pleasure! And give yourself time. I bounced on and off obsidian for a year before figuring it out. You should still use keep for an inbox, but build a daily process to scrape those fleeting notes into your obsidian system. Look into Zettelkasten!
I was quite Zettelkasten heavy in my first few years of Obsidian, but then I ended up defining a way my personal notes work vs my notes for work (separate vaults, similar but separate systems). That said, one thing I hated, was that I ended up making a lot of folders because I dabble in a lot of different tech and do a lot of different courses. I suffered an illness which severely impaired my working memory, I absolutely rely on my notes to survive - people at work think I am the most organised person, it has led to promotions before - however it is not that I am organised, but I simply won't remember anything if I don't write it down. That said, I have a hierarchy of folders in my personal vaults I'd like to think of how to do away with. - Books - Daily Notes - Excalidraw (for plugins) - Files (for images/pdfs) - Finance - Health and Life - Professional - Projects - Scripts (for plugins) - Shows (Quickadd shows I watch) - Tech (this has many folders inside, like Angular, Blender, Godot, CSS, Courses, Rust, Linux, Neovim etc) - Templates and then just flat files that haven't been organised anywhere yet or are files that I have used Dataviews to make my own living files - Dashboard (reference to other things I am interested in, such as Tasks and Meetings with people) - Shows to watch/favourite/watched - Notes I need to digest or are actively being worked on, such as a health log, or my government residence application I will watch this again, and try to look into it, but I almost have a pit in my stomach thinking of how to tackle this onslaught of folders I've made for myself. It's only 354 files and 42 folders.. but that's just in one vault.. my work one is triple the size
07:21 you can definitely rename a note without links to that note using [[note|alias]] or [[note|heading]] breaking. it's also been that way for as long as i can remember, i think a few years at least
The thing is, if you really need a mind map-like structure, you can't put it into markdown format. So they did it the best way possible using json, which in my opinion is also universal and minimalistic enough. My use case for canvas is creating a genealogy tree. Although I highly prioritize .md format first for each person's file, it is also very beneficial for me to look at the full picture and find gaps to continue research. And it looks cool.
That's very reasonable. I built my own genealogy tree using named links, parent being the only one required to make the whole tree. Visualised with the juggl plugin or breadcrumbs it's perfect!
I've built a personal KB of about 1000 pages of notes already in markdown (I started a few years back). Now it's time to consider putting that markdown into an Obsidian vault. Thanks for giving us such a great overview :)
How I use Obsidian: open a daily note and write stuff down. Create folders for work and personal with notes for recurring topics. Use the search bar to find notes. No links, no tags, and the only plugin I use is Remotely Save to sync all my data across windows/Mac/iOS. I'm a year in and it saves me tons of time and prevents me from solving a question twice.
My Obsidian vault has a sort of landing page that contains a quote from one of your videos: "There appears to be no subject that, if explained deeply enough, isn't truly fascinating"
I finally managed to make the leap to Obsidian by using it to manage my playthrough of Book of Hours (the gameplay consists of cataloguing and curating a massive collection of knowledge and objects). I ended up making extensive use of named links in combination with the DataView plugin to keep track of what I should/could do next.
Folders can be used with an index note, and they are good capture locations and share points to collaborate. If you don't collaborate, and you don't bring in things from outside Obsidian (or use tools not in Obsidian), there is no real need for them. But if you do engage in either of these use cases, use the Obsidian Folder Notes plugin and it improves the mental model of folders.
I've been using logseq for a little over a year now and I love it. I've moved pretty much all of my note taking and journaling there. (I'm pretty sure it was because of your old obsidian video actually. I did some more research into it and decided I personally preferred logseq) I personally really like the daily journal focus of logseq. I personally rarely use pages besides those, with the exception of writing projects, and instead I take daily notes and tag them with the relevant tags.
I've been using Obsidian for by video game design notes and I immediately noticed the problem of folders. I wasn't sure what to do about it, so I just minimized the folders by keeping them to a single tier and trying to make mutually exclusive categories. I was linking in the basic wikilinks fashion, but not knowing about tags, I had an entire set of docs just to hold lists of links to similar sheets. I am going to implement a tag system based using PARA tags at the top, and then I will get rid of the list sheets and move everything into the root folder. Thanks for this comprehensive explanation!
I've been using obsidian for a few years, i think inspired by your earliest videos. i too fell prey to the folder falacy XD. slowly but surely unfoldering
Finally i found you back on home page . I just saw that you were in my previous subscription list in which i completely removed almost all of my subscriptions.
I love folders 😂 they help me organize the linking with folder note. I can after that create further linking. But it automates the core of it. I understand folders force you to categorize as only one thing, but that helps me to define the predominant category, then i can add more with links [[like this]]
You're talking about the Folder Note plugin? This kind of problem made me realise the issue with folders. Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor. I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
I spent the last few months to work on my Obsidian Vault and arrived to almost the exact same conclusions ❤ Only difference is that I still use Todoist for quick task tracking, the keyboard navigation and input is so much better. My biggest question right now is what to do of folders. I agree they're awful. But they're good for organizing non-markdown files like PDFs or data files I have on other sources. So I have the concept of main tag vs secondary tag. The main tag is a property and represents the reason why I created the note. Having this tag automatically moves the note to a folder with the same structure. And I can replicate this structure on other filesystems to find my files easily.
What a great video! Obsidian has replaced Google Keep, Scrivener and all other writing software and the Google Suite. I use folders and [[ links ]] to reference and jump around my 400 files so far. It's amazing to use within a novel writing situation to jump or bring up any notes I have on the world, a character or even loose ideas for this project that I may need quickly to avoid breaking my concentration.
i use folders for when two notes have the same file name but are different concepts entitely. the suggestions plugin still works because the file name is a real word and it indicates which folder the concept is coming from
That's a very reasonable take, but it actually never comes up for me. I create files by pressing ctrl O and then typing a name. If the name already exists, I keep typing
Good video. From my own trial and error, I can confirm these to be the best ways to manage your vault, but I personally still moved on because Obsidian seems to be maintenance heavy no matter the system. I'm drifting towards multiple specialized apps because I see the value of their constraints, and for all the things that no specialized app can do (like help me remember what I have to do for the week), I use pen and paper. On the surface it may seem complex, but I see it like grammar. Very complicated upon analysis, yet languages are spoken effortlessly regardless, and that's how my system feels to me.
I bounced on and off Obsidian for a while, but I eventually got tired of apps changing their business model and leaving me cold. I'm in control of Obsidian, if it's heavy, it's my fault. You won't find what you want on the other side of the fence. If you find yourself with heavy systems in other apps, you might find the problem is the systems you build, not the apps that built them.
@@NoBoilerplate I partially agree, though there's a bit of a false dichotomy. I may not use Obsidian, but I still have control of all of my data. I use Calibre for book management, regular .md files for ephemeral book notes (see below for permanent ones), CSV for finance/transactions and paper/calendar for my tasks. But in regard to the main issue, this is where I totally disagree. If entropy is the natural state of things, then systems must require maintenance. Some systems require more maintenance than others, but so long as we're in the paradigm of systems, I feel that we're bound to polish the axe without cutting down trees (in the extreme case, anyway). The alternative is to improve your current brain rather than trying to build a second one. Build habits that develop your working memory and review to the point that the organization you require can all be in your head rather than on paper. We already have to depend on our first brain anyway: no system can be used competently without some working memory. So might as well go all the way in is my current stance; surely the connections we build there will be stronger and longer lasting than the ones we build on Obsidian.
Just a few weeks ago, I had a dilemma with the Canvas plugin where I wanted to link to my created canvases but couldn't since it's not a md file and thus, you can't add metadata to it. My workaround for this is the Excalidraw plugin where you can switch to the usual Obsidian editing view, edit the metadata there and add links. In my use case - creating reference sheets for drawing - Excalidraw is good but it's not as easy to create mindmaps like in Canvas, which is quite a shame. Great video!
I have excalidraw installed (I've used it in a few previous videos) But it suffers from the same problem as canvas. Though Nicolevdh shows it can have text, too: ua-cam.com/video/zmgqMZi6QL8/v-deo.html
A Quantum Leap reference will always make me hit Like. But you already turned me on to Obsidian last time. ""I right their wrongs, I fight their fights - geez, I feel like I'm Don Quixote." - The NoBoilerplate Guy
I also used Obsidian for a lot of times, and in most parts, it is a great software and tool, but I think it comes short in some aspects. (edit: formatting) 1. *The note-taking is not atomic* : By atomic, I mean things like LogSeq, where each "block" (or paragraph if you will) is a stand-alone thought or remark on what you are working on. This is more related to using it as a study note-taking app (which is often seen out there), but not limited to it. I think this underlying approach incentivized by Obsidian's design falls short when trying to consolidate information in your brain, as notes (in my way of viewing them) are more of a "brain relieve" mechanism and logic test about the way you conceptualize what you are studying, and not some sort of copy-pasta about what the content is _supposed_ to mean (sorry if I worded it weird). For instance, if I just write down everything I see online about a concept (like, idk, the French Revolution or something), I'm not really making this note about my thinking process, and it will be just like any other Wikipedia page (and considerably worse at that). 2. *The Yak Shaving* : I didn't know this phenomenon had a name, but what you said was really on point. With so much potential for customization and tailoring, I've found myself multiple times simply procrastinating on the actual work rather than actually taking notes and watching classes. 3. *Jack of all trades, master of none* : As you said, you can do basically anything inside Obsidian, even browsing if you really wanted to. But, ultimately, as a markup writing and indexing tool, it was not tailored to be a web browser, task management system, CRM, database center, and coffee brewer, despite there being a plugin for each of those (not the coffee one *yet*). Likewise, the experience inevitably fails when managing so many things in one place not tailored for any of them while increasing the base logic for the flow of information ("Should I add my task as a kanban note, a task for the task plugin #1492, or as `- [ ]` in my daily file?"), and when you eventually want to simplify it, you have a bunch of notes with specific markup language aimed to be rendered by the coffee brewer extension-which you found ultimately useless for _actually_ having things done. 4. *No great integration with other tools* : This is a fixable issue if the devs were to focus on it, but the lack of some quality-of-life features can be really annoying; like not having a widget for adding a quick thought to your daily note, even though loading into your vault takes a significant amount of time for a simple fleeting thought when you have 30+ extensions that need to be loaded. Also, maybe a more immediate issue, like not having support for files that would be very appreciated in a "vault," like EPUB, for example. 5. *No self-host/web version* : All of these are personal, but I find it extremely annoying having to switch between programs for taking notes on something, even though my browser (kudos to Zen) has split-view capability. What I *do* think Obsidian really shines at is making wikis for your specific project. Maybe a writing project, with notes for the characters, locations, etc., all interlinked between themselves! Any project that relies on a robust basis of information, with maybe a need for hypertext, I think Obsidian really shines! Btw, this is not an attempt to undermine your video-I just thought about sharing my view on it as well 😁
I use 2 top level folders: Notes and Utilities. Utilities has 2 sub folders: Attachments and Templates, to store those files respectively. Everything in Notes uses tags for organization.
Obsidian templates (core plugin) are much more powerful than you probably realize. If you have a template that only has frontmatter properties, when you apply that to a note, it will update, just those properties. e.g. all my notes have a timestamp, but I also have "blog" posts and when I publish those, I like to update the timestamp to latest (among other things) so I use a template that just has those properties. I also use zettelkasten for a similar reason, this plugin essentially gives you an extra "create note" button, but one that lets you had a automatic template. And with this, I have no reason to use something like templater, which while cool, usually leads me to yak shaving too much.
I used to seldom take notes, and as such used to do what I was used to - organize the notes within folders. But recently, I have been taking a large amount of notes while playing ELDEN RING, so that I could play at figuring out the lore, interpersonal connections and such things by myself and have noticed how much I pushed myself away from using folders. I still have remnants of them in that Vault, but generally, it has become significantly easier to manage, as the capacity needed to 'keep the folder structure' could now be used elsewhere.
I got used to properties from using LogSeq at work (I used it as a replacement for Obsidian because at my job Obsidian isn't cleared for use and it does like 90%ish of what Obsidian does functionally). Without folders as an option in LogSeq, properties are pretty much essential IMO for using it effectively. I still prefer Obsidian to LogSeq because it is way more ergonomic and has way better UX, but now I see the benefit of properties. LogSeq is so much more cumbersome for navigating the graph than Obsidian. But it did introduce me to the more freeform structure of having properties with lists of named pages as values. Actually in general I prefer most everything that refers to a unique entity in a property to be a wikilink, because I can store metadata and notes about it in that page as necessary.
I've always wondered, how do you style your obsidian presentations? side by side images seem impossible to make. Maybe that would be a cool deep dive video
There's a screenshot of me actually making this video in the first few minutes of this video! Meta. I use either the grid or split element that advanced slides provides, easy peasy :-D Read the readme!
I might not use obsidian but i was working on a note taking program anyway, so this video is still usefull for me,i can "borrow" some nice ideas from these videos😏 Ps:cool seeing you in the comment section replyng to every comment!
If you're going to steal any idea from Obsidian, please steal plain text data. Make your notes markdown files on disk, then you can use obsidian AND your own note taking application on the same data!
The main problem I keep encountering is the split between work and private projects, public and personal knowledge. - Yes, I could track the bugs and todo's of my projects in there, but I might as well dump a readme in the project folder and eventually move those into git issues. - Yes, I do like to note down personal TODO's, but I either do them right away, write them down to get remembered about them and if not, it's not important anyways and the same goes for work-todo's. Either do them right away or tag them in Outlook until further notice, I either need the context around that or Obsidian would just make me document my work, which holds up and is not really the intended purpose anyways.
My recommendation is EVERYTHING goes in obsidian. Sure, link to urls in other sites and apps, but the more you pull into your trusted system (work or play), the better everything will link together. One vault, one brain.
I'm still probably going to use folders. They're a very easy organizational tool that makes it where I don't have to use search to find the note I want. I don't quite know why, but I just hate obsidian's search feature. Besides that, as long as I follow the 7 +/- 2 rule and never get it more than 3 layers deep, it'll stay reasonably manageable. Though I will admit it is only useful for organizing the sidebar.
if folders work for you, great! For me, the problem started because folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor. I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
I love using obsidian as a notepad. Have been looking to get more organized for more then a decade. But even after years of trying to get more organised and using different systems I keep failing to get it to stick. Taking notes, i don't know if i'm any good at it. But i really struggle to maintain them. Tips on how to enter data in obsidian is good. But I'm looking for a more encompassing guide or think process, that would be nice. But still, thanks for the video. It's always a delight to see you pop up on my feed.
it's painful, but worth it. I did it myself over the summer. Be careful to do it in small bits, and use the most powerful computer you have, renaming all the links takes time! :-D
@@NoBoilerplate Thanks! My "Wiki" notes are all in the same folder, regardless of topic, but all my manuscripts and notes are all folder-divided. My vault is 4+ years old, and there are a lot of orphaned nodes. Slow and steady, you're right.
Named links in Obsidian enable atomic notes to be reused across contexts without content changes. While Juggl offers local graph visualisation, it could be more powerful if node colours reflected their edge relationships to the central node (e.g., 'supports::' edges showing target nodes in green, 'objects-to::' edges showing targets in red) rather than static node attributes. This contextual colouring would enhance argument mapping by visually representing how each node's meaning shifts based on its relationships. My ontology for categorising logical and associative relationships between notes would benefit greatly from such dynamic visualisation. It's weird that this (not to mention named links in the graph view) hasn't been officially implemented.
4:08 so for folders I mostly use it for 2 things - broad categories, and secondarily, automatic naming. I find it just easier to name notes based on when I add it to a folder with templater. So I have a school folder, and in that I have folders for each semester (just as an organizational tool, I want the date format to not have the year out front I probably shouldnt do this but yk) and in that I have a folder for each class. Once I make a new note in one of those folders it is automatically given the class name (based on the folder) and the date to name the file itself. All that being said I should probably apply some things in this video, ill still use the folder trick but perhaps purely for automatic naming, and start using tags instead for most other things. Im gonna have to do a lot of redoing my vault....
I do use folders simply because sometimes I have to find things manually, and that can be much easier to do when it’s been broadly categorised. However, I absolutely try to avoid using folders as faux metadata. I should be able to move my notes around into different folders without breaking any Dataview queries or stuff like that. Let the metadata be metadata, and let folders do their own thing
I use obsidian specifically as a resource for writing my novel, I even write said novel in obsidian itself. I don't fully agree that folders are "Bad Obsidian" when you're use is a more mechanical focus like mine. I use folders to organize my information, and keep the writing and worldbuilding sections isolated from each other, but usually written side by side. It can be argued that I'm not using obsidian to its fullest potential, but I do want to say that there are situations where Obsidian's Folder's aren't simply an out of meta legacy feature, and instead a feature for flows that don't operate cohesively.
This is the n'th time you've gotten THIIIIS close to convincing me to abandoning OneNote. Being beholden to Microsoft servers and OneDrive syncing has been only mostly reliable, but the ability to Section, Page, Subpage, and still have Links, write text anywhere, put pictures and links anywhere, draw all over anything anywhere like a real notebook has been such a useful UX for me. Obsidian has some plugins that come close but I have too many "mood board" style one-note pages I'm having a hard time going full-send into this. Today's video was a dang good sell on using Obsidian for some of my story-telling projects, as it's kind of irritating having to "folder" some pages, especially Characters, in my Onenote by being trapped by Sections/Pages... Like does a page belong in World Building, or Story, or Characters? It's actually all of them, and using tags to make it exist in all three of these at once is the only way to solve that problem. But now I'm still stuck because of all the other Good Parts of OneNote, and how to my knowledge there's no thing quite as simple to use and quick to serve as equivalent in Obsidian.
Everybody can end up doing some yak shaving, but if you are constantly looking for new tools to solve your organization problem, constantly creating a new task management procedure that will definitely solve all your problems and, two weeks later, it’s sitting unused, you may be fighting an unknown battle with ADHD. For 25 years in my career, that’s what happened to me. It’s not a “sickness”, it’s a brain structure to prioritize different things. No, everybody does not have ADHD today; you just hear about it more because we are better at diagnosing it and we are all so connected socially. And, no, everybody is not a little ADHD; if these things don’t cause regular and significant problems in your life, you are not an ADHD human, you are just a typical human. No shame in that.
yeah the problem with this is mainly the amount of vendor lock-in you'll need to deal with if you ever need to leave obsidian for any reason. Not only that but also i'm not gonna lie, having a massive mess of notes appear when i try to access my vault through my OS to check something does not feel very good at all. That's really the biggest issue i have with using links and tags. They're a very high level solution to what is in my opinion a very low level problem. The thing is that categorization for me is important sure, but not nearly as important as keeping things simple and easy to remember. I made a very recent comment in your first obsidian video about how i'd just finished the process of moving to emacs org mode, because i wanted to try it out. What i really liked is that Org Mode's headings allows you to keep files fairly concise. Instead of creating multiple notes under a folder that fits that category. i instead just use one note for that category and structure new notes with headings. Since you can collapse headings and therefore shorten a lengthy file down to just the top most headings. What i managed to do with this is have only 3 org files, one with all of my projects and tasks, another with all of the important resources i need while i'm learning new things and finally an agenda note to keep track of important events. I've found this system fairly easy to work with, and what's great about it i think is this system is still usable even when accessing it through another text editor. It's allowed me to allow for a very simple and concise solution to a problem that i think most people tend to overthink, which is why you see so many people procrastinate with these kinds of apps.
I really dislike having all the documents on the same level, so I do use folder for high level categories, or as a way to group specific documents. That already significantly cleans up the project, without compromising flexibility too much.
the flexibility to do what, exactly? Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor. I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
@@NoBoilerplate The flexibility to look at the files and see what the hell is going on :D If everything would be on the same level I'd go nuts. I understand that from within Obsidian the file-based hierarchies don't make much sense, but as a human that can look at the filesystem it really can make a difference. Keeping the top-level of the Obsidian project organized makes it more useful for me, rather than an endless list of files to no end.
@@_DRMR_ the obsidian-tagfolder plugin solves that issue imo. it lets you view all the notes categorized into hierarchies on the sidebar like with folders, except it uses your tags for the hierarchy instead.
Sorry, but I have to disagree re: folders. Folders may be rigid, but that's exactly why they are powerful. With note apps, folders are the hardest PKM structure at our disposal. Folders give us confidence and certainty. File navigation cannot just break like links and tags can. There are many good use cases for folders. Retrieval through Divide & Conquer. Separation of concerns. Encoding knowledge clusters. In general: a cleaner vault. Folders aren't a curse. They just have to be used deliberately and with restraint.
@@mastermenthe I have to disagree or at least qualify this a bit. When I said "clean vault" I didn't want to indicate that we need elaborate folder hierarchies. We don't. What we want is to remove all friction that might trip up our thinking. Clutter is not thinking. Collisions of potent ideas are very valuable but not all files in a vault qualify for this process of creativity and knowledge building. Take for example template files. Do you want your vault and mind cluttered with templates while you are journaling or writing or thinking? I suppose not. You want a hard shell for your system so that you can contain the chaos. I have 7 top-level folders. One is called "The Keep." It has no subfolders. Most of my files go there. But I also have a top-level folder for lifeless records like templates, as these should not partake in the chaos.
I may just be underusing tags, but I honestly can't fathom getting rid of folders, that feels crazy to me, lol. I'll have to try it out with doing it just with a small part of my vault first, and see how I like it.
If anything, most folks underuse links. I only have 4 tags in my system! Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor. I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
There's a lot of hatred of folders in the obsidian community, but there's two usecases where they're invaluable: classes and types My notes are organized by type, so I have a source type, a person type, a writing project type, etc. Not to mention attachments and snippets taken from other places. Additionally, as a university student all my class notes come from classes with a pre-defined subject, and so each of my concepts go in a specified subject folder. Subject and type folders let me trivially query with a limited scope, such as by organizing every equation from every physics class into a class-organized list, which lets me make notes sheets without issue. This becomes useful specifically because of how limited the need for folders is: They're an extremely useful broad tool for organization data with a pre-defined structure. While tags and links are like chisels, the humble folder is a saw. Time is only lost when folders are used to try to organize data without an existing structure, in which case you fall into edge cases.
I try to avoid folders as much as possible, but keeping the fact that I want to be able to move my vault around whenever, I try to keep a slight bit of folder in my vault, just so I can find a way in my vault just from the file browser.
It is far too early for me to even pretend to comprehend this. You're going on watch later Triss, I also should watch your first Obsidian video again, that's what made me start using it in the first place. Which reminds me, I need to start using that again.
i have used google docs and also some other note taking apps but nothing clicked as much as a physical diary even though i mainly program games, i like to have a diary rather than some docs. but after watching your videos i decided to give obsidian a try and i am absolutely loving it, the mark down format is quick and easy to write and both understand. We dont need any fancy task taking apps, just a simple file is the ideal way to go.
wonderful! I love the daily notes feature, I have that window open at the side of my screen all day for quick note taking -it's the inbox into my system
I don‘t support Obsidian as it is not open source. I find it sad that people pour so much work into writing open source plugins and yet the core software is proprietary. I use Emacs with an org-mode setup and the concepts are still applicable, so I appreciate your videos
I love org-mode, and it's how I started out. However, for reasons explained in my previous Obsidian video, I had to move away. While I'd prefer obsidian were open source, because my data is in standards compliant markdown, I'm not worried at all. Also, as you say, nearly all the plugins are open source. Obsidian.nvim is what I reach for at the command line if I need it!
Personally I use Logseq. It may not have full feature parity to Obsidian, but I've never felt particularly left out. One minor gripe I have is that the markdown it produces is not 100% standard.
logseq has a lot of features out of the box tho that you might not need with no way to turn them off, for me its an advantage since it does everything i need without having to install a single plugin but i can understand if that is bloat to some (i guess the same reason why i prefer using jetbrains ide's rather than vscode or vim, convenience and stability)
ERRATA
- Confused? Watch my introduction to Obsidian here: ua-cam.com/video/DbsAQSIKQXk/v-deo.html
- 7:20 @S0mnambulist-667 says "You can rename headings while keeping link support. Right click the heading and choose "rename heading" and it will update all links."
- Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!)
- Patron vault zip here (thanks folks!) www.patreon.com/posts/121361085
- MD video source github.com/NamtaoProductions/namtao-com/blob/main/src/site/notes/No%20Boilerplate/NB43%20-%20Obsidian%20The%20Good%20Parts.md
- Published web version www.namtao.com/No-Boilerplate/NB43---Obsidian-The-Good-Parts
at 07:01 you mistyped "wikilinks"
6:35 "fronrmatter"
Regarding there not being anything like Obsidian that is open source: Take a look at LogSeq as a potential alternative.
I like the blast resistance and the nether portal feature
sure, if you've got a flint & steel
@@NoBoilerplate as long as you can make fire with any of the intended mechanics, it should work either way :)
@@k_user_handle HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON XD
@@NoBoilerplate Actually It's always been like this, IIRC when the fire "block" is placed by any means it checks if it's inside an valid portal frame
@@k_user_handle still waiting for a lightning to hit the portal
My biggest problem is that my Obsidian usage is a no-holds-barred cage match between my autism and ADHD. I'm in a cycle that repeats every few months:
1. Get excited about it again
2. Start using it, but struggle to form any coherent systems of organization, down to the point of naming things inconsistently
3. Realize I've been wildly inconsistent in ways that would be a pain to go back and fix
4. Feel shame about the state of it, have trouble opening it at all
5. Never settle into using it consistently, eventually forget to actually use it and it stops existing
6. Repeat
Would love a video on how to develop a proper "style guide" or naming scheme, or ... _something_ to create usage consistency that I can be confident with.
i feel this so hard, and have experienced a similar cycle. What has really helped me was being realistic with myself about what I actually care about writing down, because if you're writing stuff you don't actually care about, the whole environment will feel cluttered and you'll wonder why you're not feeling the benefits that people talk about. This realization alone should make the biggest difference. Prioritize your own feelings and experience over finding "the best" structure.
Real af
I think it strongly depends on how much time you spend writing a day.
My personal career has me doing a lot a lot of thinking which I need to write down, so Obsidian structure kind of emerges organically
I think if I was forcing myself to write stuff down it would be a lot harder
@@gunstorm05 YES!!!!
@@MrSomethingred I basically have the opposite problem: My personal career has me doing a lot of thinking that I have to write down, ship to a client, and then forget - most of what I need to remember is metadata that becomes outdated within a year or doesn't belong in obsidian.
2:32 "This video is not sponsored, I asked" made my day 😁
They KNOW they don't need sponsorships, they've bottled LIGHTNING :-D
@NoBoilerplate No publicity is bad publicity. Even Coca-Cola has commercials still.
I’m unimpressed how eager he is to trade away control. If you want me to trust you to tell me honestly if something is good or bad, you can’t do that while on it’s payroll
@@PokeNebula you literally can though. not all sponsors require sponsor approval before posting
@@cataliniancu5318But Coca-cola only has bottled soda not bottled lightning. 😁
"we're gardeners, not architects" is a banger of a line
Thanks, I stole it
From Brian Eno, perhaps?
@@NoBoilerplate yeah I feel like I just heard that for the first time last week
@@SpencerTwiddy Tiago Forte made a video about two years ago that proposed different notetaking archetypes, gardeners and architects were two among them (librarian the third):
/watch?v=f3dDVtJ2sec
And I swear I've come across an even older video that grouped notetaking approaches like that.
I started using obsidian from your first video, and have been using it since. I wish i had known about tag hierarchies earlier.
I now know at least 5 people that have switched to obsidian from my recommendations, so thank you for introducing me to this wonderful app.
Pleasure!
just checked out tag hierarchy. is there a way of doing them in the properties?
@@GameCyborgCh Just joining the tags with a / should do
tags: animal/dog/corgi
A small defense of folders: Even though yes, organizational folders shall not pass, but simply through the fact that your vault also exists embedded in a folderstructure designed to segregate what is inside and what is not, I do use folders for one technical purpose: Keeping my Vaults contents clean.
For most people, the hear of gold of their vault is and always will be the markdown notes, but these often have to exist aided by attachments, such as images and audio.
For that reason i personally chose to use folders to seperate the heart from the supports, and means I can quickly save and copy only the important part of my vault - the beating heart, not the 400+ Images or other more barbaric filetypes, or sometimes even notes from previous vaults I havent had time to 'modernize' yet.
Great Video nontheless, and I am beginning considerations of a version 4 of my vault based on the ideas in the video.
absolutely. I said "never voluntarily make a folder" deliberately to include such requirements :-D
@@NoBoilerplate I often share parts of my vault with co-workers, either for read-only purposes, or for them to actively collaborate.
Sometimes, I can make due with sharing just the PDF version, but if they need to contribute back, this is impossible, so I have things in certain folders that I have synced and accessible to my organization, so they can have access to them as raw notes - for them Folders is the only way, and for me, it helps me distribute without fear of leaking information others should not be able to see
@@DavidLitvakB i also do this! i also put my website in a folder inside my vault
NAMED LINKS!! Finally! Thank you! Been searching for this forever. Dont understand why its not a bigger topic in the community. Building your own knowledge graph has so much value.
I wish he touched on it, i don't know how to use them
IKR!
@@GAGONMYCOREY +1, I don't quite understand how to use them
Please share the syntax because nothing I have tried worked... 😞
@obiwanjacobi @GAGONMYCOREY what works for me is slightly different from the syntax in the video. And you need the juggl plugin for visualization.
part_of:
- "[[note A]]"
- "[[note B]]"
relates_to:
- "[[note C]]"
The importance of this video simply cannot be overstated. Watching on normal speed and you have earned a spot in my browser bookmarks. Thank you
I think I understand your issues with canvas, but it was just such a game changer for my own learning/organization. My brain works exactly like a flow of interconnected nodes with tiny bits of information. I just wish it had better integration with the rest of Obsidian.
Modelling things as inputs/outputs IMO is the perfect use for canvas. It helped me a lot through higher education in mathematics, since I could easily and visually organize where each requirement/input/assumption enters a process of, for example, deriving a theorem from two different theorems and a property.
I also really wanted canvas to work for me, for the same reason. There is a plugin that lets you update properties from canvas links and groups, but after the second time that borked my vault, I went back to plain text!
@@NoBoilerplate Consider giving the Excalidraw plugin a serious try. I find it to be significantly more optimized than Canvas.
Cons:
- Not markdown, and not using an open source format
- could use more integration with Templater & Datacore/Dataview
Pros:
- Software itself is Open Source
- has ability to run javascript scripts that allow you to seriously fine tune features
- has so many shortcuts, hotkeys, & aforementioned scripts, despite it being a “drawing” app, you can use your keyboard for a decent chunk of the workflow
- insane development by the plugin team lead by Zsolt. I feel like for every 1 well-tuned Canvas feature, there are 5 Excalidraw features. Features that range from insane pdf manipulation and annotation, to small-but-significant QOL features like flowchart shortcuts, etc.
- way more performant. I can embed many more Dataview queries and high res images in an Excalidraw drawing than Canvas for the same performance
Excalidraw takes a decent bit of learning to get to your liking, but it’s head and shoulders above the native Canvas feature.
I’ve started using Obsidian for the last 6 months, and after watching a startup guide I absolutely love it.
At the moment I’m using it as something very simple, note taking, but it’s the nicest one I’ve ever used
I've been using Obsidian since 2020, and am so excited to see more software people talking more about it! Thanks for this video!
More to come!
@@NoBoilerplate I started watching you for Rust content, but everything else has been right on point for what I'm looking for. I look forward to what is to come!
Yep, folders are such an antipattern, they force you to organize the information into single categories, even though the notes often belong into multiple! :D
easy != simple
@@NoBoilerplate Also easy and simple are path dependent objective functions.
would be great if obsidian could show tags as folders natively (there is a community plugin for that but I think it should be native to obsidian)
This video is now a must-watch for anyone trying out Obsidian imo. All the lessons you describe here are things I had to learn myself after struggling with Obsidian for over a year. I had built up a decent personal wiki, but my notebook never truly became a "second brain" until I ditched folders, and began using metadata on all of my notes. Your video has all the stuff I wish I knew at the start, and is almost never mentioned in any of the hundreds of "boost your productivity NOW with Obsidian!" videos on this site.
The clarification here is fantastic, I haven’t had time to devote dedicated research to what you just handed to me free of charge. Thank you, thank you thank you. The first Obsidian video got me onto the application, this is the one that actually streamlines my ability to use it into something useful. I’m so grateful I didn’t have to do the research for this and you share it free of charge. I only hope I can give back to the world at large one day, the way you are today. I’m exceptionally grateful.
I don't think I have seen anyone use named links before, I have been building something custom for this myself so its really cool seeing I'm not alone with this. I am not 100% sold on markdown only but it does make sense, though I am fine with any open format as long as I can convert it freely. That said unnecessarily using complicated formats instead of tags or markdown should be avoided. I personally have my kanban boards use tags as the columns and the entries are documents that way I can have a simple todo list view of them and everything with the tag done can be checked, also filtering out done things is a nice thing to apply globally. Great video as always thank you
Have you tried the Kanban plugin? Really clever how it keeps it in markdown format, behind the scenes.
My pitch for plain text markdown is at the start of this video: ua-cam.com/video/WgV6M1LyfNY/v-deo.html
@@NoBoilerplate The Kanban plugin is nice but I was looking for something to apply a tag to the linked note for that card when i move the it from one column to the next, as I would like the data to stay on the linked note and not on the card. I usually have multiple kanban boards that share some tasks so keeping the lane info in the note would be a big thing for me.
I wont argue against markdown its too good for that, my current plan is to replace tags with links to have the ability to write a document about what this tag is about, but the workflow is still a bit annoying right now especially with how i would need to workaround nested tags but maybe named properties could be the solution for that.
I accidentally discovered them when, out of habit, typed [[ before referencing a person's name in a property. Absolute game changer for referencing relationships (family, friends, family of friends, work hierarchies, etc.), but I never thought about using it to classify notes in a hierarchy directly like this.
i started using obsidian because of your other video and it's improved my experience trying to get a degree near-infinitely
My power has doubled since then. I now understand 2% of Obsidian :-D
It's not either tags or folders. I heavily use both. it's more a matter of preference.
I too used to use both, you certainly can make it work. But, for reasons outlined in this video, folders started to seem more and more the outlier.
tags sound cool but to me tags just seem to have UX i cannot unferstand. Folders user
@Somebodyherefornow Get the tag folder plugin. I love it.
@@NoBoilerplate They’re a bridge between the File System and Obsidian, they are on the outskrits. My PKMS operates at the OS level and Folders are direct links between my internal mental map and my 2nd brain.
Obsidian pigeonholed itself by focusing on .md, and Id be left reinventing the wheel creating the universality (specifically file extensions and Desktop Environment Scope) the OS allows for with little to gain for moving this functionality inside Obsidian Scope.
My course of action is integrating / better connecting Obsidian to the rest of my computer wherever I can, instead of trying to import all the features present at OS level inside of Obsidian.
Its so crazy, your video on obsidian is what got me to start using it so many years ago, and I was just thinking about your channel, (plus I just started using plugins in obsidian) and bam! Another video
Loved the video. I have been using obsidian for around 2 years and have been doing folder structuring. I have captured many ideas but I didn't really done any productive or haven't achieved much from the idea I have collected for so long. I will try to follow that named link approach and see if I can truly create a second brain.
I really think that an emerging structure from the bottom up is a better way to structure things
Been on the fence about picking up Obsidian for a while, but this video finally sold me on it. My last big project was 130+ pages of notes and I can't find ANYTHING reasonably.
I don't use Obsidian (not FOSS) but It's certainly an impressive app. And your videos on it are really good.
You're wrong about 2 and kinda wrong about the first.
You can have multiple vaults open at once, that's just a normal feature, I have 5 vaults, but only use my main one regularly. I'd also recommend not having more than one vault if you can work it out - deeply linking is the genius part of any system like this, and to partition your life into multiple vaults seems counter-productive to me.
You don't need an account, it's actually super refreshing how old-school Obsidian is: Unlimited Freeware. There's no account needed because your files are actually on your computer, not someone else's cloud.
You can sign up for their sync or publish services, sure, but you can also stick your files in dropbox, icloud, a git repo or wherever!
Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!)
I'd take open data over open source for my brain any day of the week.
@@NoBoilerplate Oh, I seems they've updated some stuff. Amazingly fast response and I wasn't aware of the option to not use an account.
Though personally I prefer my source open.
New logo. Nice. Much vibrant
I would so enjoy a how-to vid that shows standard use of this system. I'm having a hard time conceptualizing how i would use these features.
great video. didn't know about named links. my head is exploding- i have so many ideas now and i thought i understood Obsidian 🎉🎉🎉 thank you
I have also been incredibly frustrated with people who like the shiny graph that doesn't actually provide actionable information.
It's good for exactly one thing: Impressing newbies before onboarding them into the Obsidian Religion
Thank you for the video.
More examples for named links please.
I started using Obsidian for my Uni notes after your previous video. While I don't think my setup is optimal (each class is a seperate folder, with each week being a separate folder) linking to differnet concepts across classes is so helpful for intergrating knowledge. I study Psychology, and links are so useful for things like brain regions, the graph shows very clearly what areas are linked to what topics/processes. I'd already been using a very basic named link system, but only really using it as a "see also" section, building that into a full topology is a great idea. Same for tag hierarchies, how did I not know about that! Thank you for the amazing videos
Dont have time to watch the video, but I've been making obsidian blades for many years. It's actually a common material where I live. It's very easy to form a sharp edge. You can hit it with another rock, but I've even had success jusy throwing it up in the air and letting it hit concrete. It's best used for slicing and applications without very heavy use. It's quite brittle and trying to chop down a tree or something becomes difficult.
5:02 I think everyone should have a tag for Ein. He is such a good boi ❤
I also just recently started using named links in the metadata and was amazed by how flexible it feels with no downside, like on a book note having:
category: "[[Sources]]"
medium: "[[Books]]"
author: "[[Author's Name]]"
And then having a dataview in each of those notes to have a list of all sources, a list of all books, or a list of all books by that author. Notes have the feeling of being in multiple folders since I dont have to pick one place that the note belongs. The whole vault started to feel much more like a home after i started doing this.
Edit: Actually i lied, one downside is that dataview can lag for a couple seconds when listing over a hundred notes, mainly noticeable on my journal dataview which lists multiple years worth of journal notes. I'm hoping this gets fixed when Obsidian releases the native Dynamic Views feature
Alternatively you can also just use the Local Graph in those categories to e.g. see all books
This is awesome, really good tips 👍
Have been fascinated by the idea of building a second brain / knowledge graph using open format tools for years and tried using obsidian couple years ago but never stuck to it. Time to stop procrastinating and give it another go
Great Video! What I miss are some insights about how this system helps you to retrieve the right information. Actually I just use search to find the right notes. This helps me more than any fancy vault structure
Ok. The sneaky Cowboy Bebop reference sold me. Beside actual concept of hierarchy of tags I had no idea existed
One day I will have a Corgi and I will name him Ein.
You are an exceptional teacher. I am excited to dig into your videos, including this one. Thank you for making them.
I've used Obsidian extensively for the last 2 years to log what I do at work every day, keep one-off scripts, and keep work related photos/screenshots. The key feature if Obsidian that makes it useful for me is during weekly updates and performance review - I can instantly get an overview of what I've been working on (the built in graph) on a year-scale or daily-scale. I don't use tags, but links to pages with a project/theme as the title. It's not exciting, but very practical for recall (if you've been diligent about logging and categorizing).
Great to hear!
I don't think I've ever clicked a UA-cam notification faster. Your first video on Obsidian made me _so_ excited to get started as it seemed like the perfect way to organise my ADHD-riddled brain. The problem I've found since has been porting all of my previous "stuff" in, as I've let perfection become the killer of progress and struggled to categorise my stuff into the right places. As a result I've now got yet another semi-operational org tool which isn't quite optimised enough for me to add my quick thoughts into, as I'm (paradoxically) worried they'll get lost. I've gone back to quickly noting things down in Keep, so now I've got even more stuff to port over.
But Obsidian is different in that even after all this time, I'm still convinced it's the tool for me and I'm desperate to get back into using it properly. Perfection can come later. Thanks for a) lighting a fire under my backside once again and b) showing me some approaches I can take to make the process easier.
I'm not being melodramatic, this is life-changing stuff. Thank you.
My pleasure! And give yourself time. I bounced on and off obsidian for a year before figuring it out.
You should still use keep for an inbox, but build a daily process to scrape those fleeting notes into your obsidian system.
Look into Zettelkasten!
I was quite Zettelkasten heavy in my first few years of Obsidian, but then I ended up defining a way my personal notes work vs my notes for work (separate vaults, similar but separate systems).
That said, one thing I hated, was that I ended up making a lot of folders because I dabble in a lot of different tech and do a lot of different courses. I suffered an illness which severely impaired my working memory, I absolutely rely on my notes to survive - people at work think I am the most organised person, it has led to promotions before - however it is not that I am organised, but I simply won't remember anything if I don't write it down.
That said, I have a hierarchy of folders in my personal vaults I'd like to think of how to do away with.
- Books
- Daily Notes
- Excalidraw (for plugins)
- Files (for images/pdfs)
- Finance
- Health and Life
- Professional
- Projects
- Scripts (for plugins)
- Shows (Quickadd shows I watch)
- Tech (this has many folders inside, like Angular, Blender, Godot, CSS, Courses, Rust, Linux, Neovim etc)
- Templates
and then just flat files that haven't been organised anywhere yet or are files that I have used Dataviews to make my own living files
- Dashboard (reference to other things I am interested in, such as Tasks and Meetings with people)
- Shows to watch/favourite/watched
- Notes I need to digest or are actively being worked on, such as a health log, or my government residence application
I will watch this again, and try to look into it, but I almost have a pit in my stomach thinking of how to tackle this onslaught of folders I've made for myself.
It's only 354 files and 42 folders.. but that's just in one vault.. my work one is triple the size
07:21 you can definitely rename a note without links to that note using [[note|alias]] or [[note|heading]] breaking. it's also been that way for as long as i can remember, i think a few years at least
The thing is, if you really need a mind map-like structure, you can't put it into markdown format. So they did it the best way possible using json, which in my opinion is also universal and minimalistic enough. My use case for canvas is creating a genealogy tree. Although I highly prioritize .md format first for each person's file, it is also very beneficial for me to look at the full picture and find gaps to continue research. And it looks cool.
That's very reasonable. I built my own genealogy tree using named links, parent being the only one required to make the whole tree. Visualised with the juggl plugin or breadcrumbs it's perfect!
I've built a personal KB of about 1000 pages of notes already in markdown (I started a few years back). Now it's time to consider putting that markdown into an Obsidian vault. Thanks for giving us such a great overview :)
There are few if any other channels that I get as excited about seeing a new video uploaded.
Absolutely one of those "The empire strikes back" kind of sequels
Thank you! Also I left it on a cliff-hanger - how do you use this all in application.
I guess I have to write The Return of the Jedi
@@NoBoilerplate Well, I cannot wait for the "Named Links are your father" twist to pay off. So many tools, so little time...
How I use Obsidian: open a daily note and write stuff down. Create folders for work and personal with notes for recurring topics. Use the search bar to find notes. No links, no tags, and the only plugin I use is Remotely Save to sync all my data across windows/Mac/iOS. I'm a year in and it saves me tons of time and prevents me from solving a question twice.
Fantastic tool, isn't it!
My Obsidian vault has a sort of landing page that contains a quote from one of your videos:
"There appears to be no subject that, if explained deeply enough, isn't truly fascinating"
I'm honoured! May I suggest another one "One thing at a time, most important thing first, start now" (I don't know where that's from, but it's GOOD!)
The child tags concept is new to me and absolutely brilliant
I finally managed to make the leap to Obsidian by using it to manage my playthrough of Book of Hours (the gameplay consists of cataloguing and curating a massive collection of knowledge and objects). I ended up making extensive use of named links in combination with the DataView plugin to keep track of what I should/could do next.
Folders can be used with an index note, and they are good capture locations and share points to collaborate. If you don't collaborate, and you don't bring in things from outside Obsidian (or use tools not in Obsidian), there is no real need for them. But if you do engage in either of these use cases, use the Obsidian Folder Notes plugin and it improves the mental model of folders.
I've been using logseq for a little over a year now and I love it. I've moved pretty much all of my note taking and journaling there. (I'm pretty sure it was because of your old obsidian video actually. I did some more research into it and decided I personally preferred logseq)
I personally really like the daily journal focus of logseq. I personally rarely use pages besides those, with the exception of writing projects, and instead I take daily notes and tag them with the relevant tags.
I've been using Obsidian for by video game design notes and I immediately noticed the problem of folders. I wasn't sure what to do about it, so I just minimized the folders by keeping them to a single tier and trying to make mutually exclusive categories. I was linking in the basic wikilinks fashion, but not knowing about tags, I had an entire set of docs just to hold lists of links to similar sheets. I am going to implement a tag system based using PARA tags at the top, and then I will get rid of the list sheets and move everything into the root folder. Thanks for this comprehensive explanation!
I've been using obsidian for a few years, i think inspired by your earliest videos. i too fell prey to the folder falacy XD. slowly but surely unfoldering
Finally i found you back on home page . I just saw that you were in my previous subscription list in which i completely removed almost all of my subscriptions.
I love folders 😂 they help me organize the linking with folder note. I can after that create further linking. But it automates the core of it.
I understand folders force you to categorize as only one thing, but that helps me to define the predominant category, then i can add more with links [[like this]]
You're talking about the Folder Note plugin? This kind of problem made me realise the issue with folders.
Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor.
I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
Would love to see chapters on the videos to make thing easier to find!
Will do!
Wow I just installed obsidian yesterday after watching your previous video
You're going to have a great time!
I wish i figured out about tag hierarchy before i built my entire d&d campaign around folder, damn.
I'm planning my game for tonight right now in obsidian!
I just got obsidian and this video comes out toooo??? Mmmm this is perfect. +1 sub
you're going to have a *great* time!
I spent the last few months to work on my Obsidian Vault and arrived to almost the exact same conclusions ❤ Only difference is that I still use Todoist for quick task tracking, the keyboard navigation and input is so much better.
My biggest question right now is what to do of folders. I agree they're awful. But they're good for organizing non-markdown files like PDFs or data files I have on other sources.
So I have the concept of main tag vs secondary tag. The main tag is a property and represents the reason why I created the note. Having this tag automatically moves the note to a folder with the same structure. And I can replicate this structure on other filesystems to find my files easily.
I often use both folders and tags, mixing Zettlekasten and PARA note taking methods
What a great video!
Obsidian has replaced Google Keep, Scrivener and all other writing software and the Google Suite. I use folders and [[ links ]] to reference and jump around my 400 files so far. It's amazing to use within a novel writing situation to jump or bring up any notes I have on the world, a character or even loose ideas for this project that I may need quickly to avoid breaking my concentration.
i use folders for when two notes have the same file name but are different concepts entitely.
the suggestions plugin still works because the file name is a real word and it indicates which folder the concept is coming from
That's a very reasonable take, but it actually never comes up for me. I create files by pressing ctrl O and then typing a name. If the name already exists, I keep typing
@@NoBoilerplate Various Complements is the plugin name for the suggestions (for clarity).
Good video. From my own trial and error, I can confirm these to be the best ways to manage your vault, but I personally still moved on because Obsidian seems to be maintenance heavy no matter the system. I'm drifting towards multiple specialized apps because I see the value of their constraints, and for all the things that no specialized app can do (like help me remember what I have to do for the week), I use pen and paper. On the surface it may seem complex, but I see it like grammar. Very complicated upon analysis, yet languages are spoken effortlessly regardless, and that's how my system feels to me.
I bounced on and off Obsidian for a while, but I eventually got tired of apps changing their business model and leaving me cold. I'm in control of Obsidian, if it's heavy, it's my fault.
You won't find what you want on the other side of the fence. If you find yourself with heavy systems in other apps, you might find the problem is the systems you build, not the apps that built them.
@@NoBoilerplate I partially agree, though there's a bit of a false dichotomy. I may not use Obsidian, but I still have control of all of my data. I use Calibre for book management, regular .md files for ephemeral book notes (see below for permanent ones), CSV for finance/transactions and paper/calendar for my tasks.
But in regard to the main issue, this is where I totally disagree. If entropy is the natural state of things, then systems must require maintenance. Some systems require more maintenance than others, but so long as we're in the paradigm of systems, I feel that we're bound to polish the axe without cutting down trees (in the extreme case, anyway).
The alternative is to improve your current brain rather than trying to build a second one. Build habits that develop your working memory and review to the point that the organization you require can all be in your head rather than on paper. We already have to depend on our first brain anyway: no system can be used competently without some working memory. So might as well go all the way in is my current stance; surely the connections we build there will be stronger and longer lasting than the ones we build on Obsidian.
i appreciate the bottom progress bar
Me too!
Just a few weeks ago, I had a dilemma with the Canvas plugin where I wanted to link to my created canvases but couldn't since it's not a md file and thus, you can't add metadata to it.
My workaround for this is the Excalidraw plugin where you can switch to the usual Obsidian editing view, edit the metadata there and add links. In my use case - creating reference sheets for drawing - Excalidraw is good but it's not as easy to create mindmaps like in Canvas, which is quite a shame. Great video!
I have excalidraw installed (I've used it in a few previous videos) But it suffers from the same problem as canvas. Though Nicolevdh shows it can have text, too: ua-cam.com/video/zmgqMZi6QL8/v-deo.html
@@NoBoilerplate Thanks for the video link! I will check it out
A Quantum Leap reference will always make me hit Like. But you already turned me on to Obsidian last time. ""I right their wrongs, I fight their fights - geez, I feel like I'm Don Quixote." - The NoBoilerplate Guy
Thank you! I absolutely said that, no need to look it up!
And well done, you're the first to notice the reference!
the screenshot at 2:23 suddenly made super interested in learning obsidian XD
I also used Obsidian for a lot of times, and in most parts, it is a great software and tool, but I think it comes short in some aspects. (edit: formatting)
1. *The note-taking is not atomic* : By atomic, I mean things like LogSeq, where each "block" (or paragraph if you will) is a stand-alone thought or remark on what you are working on. This is more related to using it as a study note-taking app (which is often seen out there), but not limited to it. I think this underlying approach incentivized by Obsidian's design falls short when trying to consolidate information in your brain, as notes (in my way of viewing them) are more of a "brain relieve" mechanism and logic test about the way you conceptualize what you are studying, and not some sort of copy-pasta about what the content is _supposed_ to mean (sorry if I worded it weird). For instance, if I just write down everything I see online about a concept (like, idk, the French Revolution or something), I'm not really making this note about my thinking process, and it will be just like any other Wikipedia page (and considerably worse at that).
2. *The Yak Shaving* : I didn't know this phenomenon had a name, but what you said was really on point. With so much potential for customization and tailoring, I've found myself multiple times simply procrastinating on the actual work rather than actually taking notes and watching classes.
3. *Jack of all trades, master of none* : As you said, you can do basically anything inside Obsidian, even browsing if you really wanted to. But, ultimately, as a markup writing and indexing tool, it was not tailored to be a web browser, task management system, CRM, database center, and coffee brewer, despite there being a plugin for each of those (not the coffee one *yet*). Likewise, the experience inevitably fails when managing so many things in one place not tailored for any of them while increasing the base logic for the flow of information ("Should I add my task as a kanban note, a task for the task plugin #1492, or as `- [ ]` in my daily file?"), and when you eventually want to simplify it, you have a bunch of notes with specific markup language aimed to be rendered by the coffee brewer extension-which you found ultimately useless for _actually_ having things done.
4. *No great integration with other tools* : This is a fixable issue if the devs were to focus on it, but the lack of some quality-of-life features can be really annoying; like not having a widget for adding a quick thought to your daily note, even though loading into your vault takes a significant amount of time for a simple fleeting thought when you have 30+ extensions that need to be loaded. Also, maybe a more immediate issue, like not having support for files that would be very appreciated in a "vault," like EPUB, for example.
5. *No self-host/web version* : All of these are personal, but I find it extremely annoying having to switch between programs for taking notes on something, even though my browser (kudos to Zen) has split-view capability.
What I *do* think Obsidian really shines at is making wikis for your specific project. Maybe a writing project, with notes for the characters, locations, etc., all interlinked between themselves! Any project that relies on a robust basis of information, with maybe a need for hypertext, I think Obsidian really shines!
Btw, this is not an attempt to undermine your video-I just thought about sharing my view on it as well 😁
I use 2 top level folders: Notes and Utilities. Utilities has 2 sub folders: Attachments and Templates, to store those files respectively. Everything in Notes uses tags for organization.
very nice, just the bare minimum folders. I have a few folders that I can't get rid of (templates and attachments for example)
Obsidian templates (core plugin) are much more powerful than you probably realize. If you have a template that only has frontmatter properties, when you apply that to a note, it will update, just those properties. e.g. all my notes have a timestamp, but I also have "blog" posts and when I publish those, I like to update the timestamp to latest (among other things) so I use a template that just has those properties.
I also use zettelkasten for a similar reason, this plugin essentially gives you an extra "create note" button, but one that lets you had a automatic template. And with this, I have no reason to use something like templater, which while cool, usually leads me to yak shaving too much.
My next obsidian video will be on how I use the Good Parts to build my hybrid zettelkasten/project management system
I used to seldom take notes, and as such used to do what I was used to - organize the notes within folders. But recently, I have been taking a large amount of notes while playing ELDEN RING, so that I could play at figuring out the lore, interpersonal connections and such things by myself and have noticed how much I pushed myself away from using folders. I still have remnants of them in that Vault, but generally, it has become significantly easier to manage, as the capacity needed to 'keep the folder structure' could now be used elsewhere.
That's very cool. It's like a next-generation document/records management system with more powerful metadata. Thanks.
I got used to properties from using LogSeq at work (I used it as a replacement for Obsidian because at my job Obsidian isn't cleared for use and it does like 90%ish of what Obsidian does functionally). Without folders as an option in LogSeq, properties are pretty much essential IMO for using it effectively.
I still prefer Obsidian to LogSeq because it is way more ergonomic and has way better UX, but now I see the benefit of properties. LogSeq is so much more cumbersome for navigating the graph than Obsidian. But it did introduce me to the more freeform structure of having properties with lists of named pages as values. Actually in general I prefer most everything that refers to a unique entity in a property to be a wikilink, because I can store metadata and notes about it in that page as necessary.
you should check out obsidian.nvim!
thanks... there goes my afternoon testing nested/tags
I've always wondered, how do you style your obsidian presentations? side by side images seem impossible to make. Maybe that would be a cool deep dive video
There's a screenshot of me actually making this video in the first few minutes of this video! Meta.
I use either the grid or split element that advanced slides provides, easy peasy :-D Read the readme!
@@NoBoilerplate wonderful, thank you
I might not use obsidian but i was working on a note taking program anyway, so this video is still usefull for me,i can "borrow" some nice ideas from these videos😏
Ps:cool seeing you in the comment section replyng to every comment!
If you're going to steal any idea from Obsidian, please steal plain text data. Make your notes markdown files on disk, then you can use obsidian AND your own note taking application on the same data!
The main problem I keep encountering is the split between work and private projects, public and personal knowledge.
- Yes, I could track the bugs and todo's of my projects in there, but I might as well dump a readme in the project folder and eventually move those into git issues.
- Yes, I do like to note down personal TODO's, but I either do them right away, write them down to get remembered about them and if not, it's not important anyways and the same goes for work-todo's. Either do them right away or tag them in Outlook until further notice, I either need the context around that or Obsidian would just make me document my work, which holds up and is not really the intended purpose anyways.
My recommendation is EVERYTHING goes in obsidian. Sure, link to urls in other sites and apps, but the more you pull into your trusted system (work or play), the better everything will link together. One vault, one brain.
I'm still probably going to use folders. They're a very easy organizational tool that makes it where I don't have to use search to find the note I want. I don't quite know why, but I just hate obsidian's search feature. Besides that, as long as I follow the 7 +/- 2 rule and never get it more than 3 layers deep, it'll stay reasonably manageable. Though I will admit it is only useful for organizing the sidebar.
if folders work for you, great! For me, the problem started because folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor.
I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
i wish i could like this video twice just because of the cowboy bebop reference
Finally a new Obsidian video 🎉
ikr! I think I might have another one in me as well, a sort of 'application of the good parts'. Stay tuned!
@@NoBoilerplate yes please
I love using obsidian as a notepad. Have been looking to get more organized for more then a decade. But even after years of trying to get more organised and using different systems I keep failing to get it to stick.
Taking notes, i don't know if i'm any good at it. But i really struggle to maintain them.
Tips on how to enter data in obsidian is good. But I'm looking for a more encompassing guide or think process, that would be nice.
But still, thanks for the video. It's always a delight to see you pop up on my feed.
I have so many folders... I need to do some reorganizing.
it's painful, but worth it. I did it myself over the summer.
Be careful to do it in small bits, and use the most powerful computer you have, renaming all the links takes time! :-D
@@NoBoilerplate Thanks! My "Wiki" notes are all in the same folder, regardless of topic, but all my manuscripts and notes are all folder-divided. My vault is 4+ years old, and there are a lot of orphaned nodes. Slow and steady, you're right.
Named links in Obsidian enable atomic notes to be reused across contexts without content changes. While Juggl offers local graph visualisation, it could be more powerful if node colours reflected their edge relationships to the central node (e.g., 'supports::' edges showing target nodes in green, 'objects-to::' edges showing targets in red) rather than static node attributes. This contextual colouring would enhance argument mapping by visually representing how each node's meaning shifts based on its relationships. My ontology for categorising logical and associative relationships between notes would benefit greatly from such dynamic visualisation. It's weird that this (not to mention named links in the graph view) hasn't been officially implemented.
Agreed I know juggl can style nodes, but I'm not sure if it can do edges...
4:08 so for folders I mostly use it for 2 things - broad categories, and secondarily, automatic naming. I find it just easier to name notes based on when I add it to a folder with templater.
So I have a school folder, and in that I have folders for each semester (just as an organizational tool, I want the date format to not have the year out front I probably shouldnt do this but yk) and in that I have a folder for each class. Once I make a new note in one of those folders it is automatically given the class name (based on the folder) and the date to name the file itself.
All that being said I should probably apply some things in this video, ill still use the folder trick but perhaps purely for automatic naming, and start using tags instead for most other things. Im gonna have to do a lot of redoing my vault....
I do use folders simply because sometimes I have to find things manually, and that can be much easier to do when it’s been broadly categorised.
However, I absolutely try to avoid using folders as faux metadata. I should be able to move my notes around into different folders without breaking any Dataview queries or stuff like that. Let the metadata be metadata, and let folders do their own thing
I use obsidian specifically as a resource for writing my novel, I even write said novel in obsidian itself. I don't fully agree that folders are "Bad Obsidian" when you're use is a more mechanical focus like mine. I use folders to organize my information, and keep the writing and worldbuilding sections isolated from each other, but usually written side by side. It can be argued that I'm not using obsidian to its fullest potential, but I do want to say that there are situations where Obsidian's Folder's aren't simply an out of meta legacy feature, and instead a feature for flows that don't operate cohesively.
You can think of it like this
Properties are tags under the parent tag "properties"
This is the n'th time you've gotten THIIIIS close to convincing me to abandoning OneNote. Being beholden to Microsoft servers and OneDrive syncing has been only mostly reliable, but the ability to Section, Page, Subpage, and still have Links, write text anywhere, put pictures and links anywhere, draw all over anything anywhere like a real notebook has been such a useful UX for me.
Obsidian has some plugins that come close but I have too many "mood board" style one-note pages I'm having a hard time going full-send into this.
Today's video was a dang good sell on using Obsidian for some of my story-telling projects, as it's kind of irritating having to "folder" some pages, especially Characters, in my Onenote by being trapped by Sections/Pages... Like does a page belong in World Building, or Story, or Characters? It's actually all of them, and using tags to make it exist in all three of these at once is the only way to solve that problem.
But now I'm still stuck because of all the other Good Parts of OneNote, and how to my knowledge there's no thing quite as simple to use and quick to serve as equivalent in Obsidian.
i used obsidian for 3 years and everything this man says is the truth
Everybody can end up doing some yak shaving, but if you are constantly looking for new tools to solve your organization problem, constantly creating a new task management procedure that will definitely solve all your problems and, two weeks later, it’s sitting unused, you may be fighting an unknown battle with ADHD. For 25 years in my career, that’s what happened to me. It’s not a “sickness”, it’s a brain structure to prioritize different things.
No, everybody does not have ADHD today; you just hear about it more because we are better at diagnosing it and we are all so connected socially. And, no, everybody is not a little ADHD; if these things don’t cause regular and significant problems in your life, you are not an ADHD human, you are just a typical human. No shame in that.
yeah the problem with this is mainly the amount of vendor lock-in you'll need to deal with if you ever need to leave obsidian for any reason. Not only that but also i'm not gonna lie, having a massive mess of notes appear when i try to access my vault through my OS to check something does not feel very good at all. That's really the biggest issue i have with using links and tags. They're a very high level solution to what is in my opinion a very low level problem. The thing is that categorization for me is important sure, but not nearly as important as keeping things simple and easy to remember.
I made a very recent comment in your first obsidian video about how i'd just finished the process of moving to emacs org mode, because i wanted to try it out. What i really liked is that Org Mode's headings allows you to keep files fairly concise. Instead of creating multiple notes under a folder that fits that category. i instead just use one note for that category and structure new notes with headings. Since you can collapse headings and therefore shorten a lengthy file down to just the top most headings. What i managed to do with this is have only 3 org files, one with all of my projects and tasks, another with all of the important resources i need while i'm learning new things and finally an agenda note to keep track of important events.
I've found this system fairly easy to work with, and what's great about it i think is this system is still usable even when accessing it through another text editor. It's allowed me to allow for a very simple and concise solution to a problem that i think most people tend to overthink, which is why you see so many people procrastinate with these kinds of apps.
I really dislike having all the documents on the same level, so I do use folder for high level categories, or as a way to group specific documents.
That already significantly cleans up the project, without compromising flexibility too much.
the flexibility to do what, exactly?
Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor.
I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
@@NoBoilerplate The flexibility to look at the files and see what the hell is going on :D
If everything would be on the same level I'd go nuts.
I understand that from within Obsidian the file-based hierarchies don't make much sense, but as a human that can look at the filesystem it really can make a difference.
Keeping the top-level of the Obsidian project organized makes it more useful for me, rather than an endless list of files to no end.
@@_DRMR_ the obsidian-tagfolder plugin solves that issue imo. it lets you view all the notes categorized into hierarchies on the sidebar like with folders, except it uses your tags for the hierarchy instead.
@ Hmm, I'm not sure I'd like that. I still don't like the concept of storing all files into a single high level folder. Call me old-fashioned 🤷♂
Sorry, but I have to disagree re: folders. Folders may be rigid, but that's exactly why they are powerful. With note apps, folders are the hardest PKM structure at our disposal. Folders give us confidence and certainty. File navigation cannot just break like links and tags can. There are many good use cases for folders. Retrieval through Divide & Conquer. Separation of concerns. Encoding knowledge clusters. In general: a cleaner vault. Folders aren't a curse. They just have to be used deliberately and with restraint.
Clean Vault = Empty Brain.
Clutter is thinking.
Cleanliness is feelings.
@@mastermenthe I have to disagree or at least qualify this a bit. When I said "clean vault" I didn't want to indicate that we need elaborate folder hierarchies. We don't. What we want is to remove all friction that might trip up our thinking. Clutter is not thinking. Collisions of potent ideas are very valuable but not all files in a vault qualify for this process of creativity and knowledge building. Take for example template files. Do you want your vault and mind cluttered with templates while you are journaling or writing or thinking? I suppose not. You want a hard shell for your system so that you can contain the chaos. I have 7 top-level folders. One is called "The Keep." It has no subfolders. Most of my files go there. But I also have a top-level folder for lifeless records like templates, as these should not partake in the chaos.
Can you explain named links further or recommend some resources that might help me conceptualize them in better detail? Love your videos, by the way!
I may just be underusing tags, but I honestly can't fathom getting rid of folders, that feels crazy to me, lol. I'll have to try it out with doing it just with a small part of my vault first, and see how I like it.
If anything, most folks underuse links. I only have 4 tags in my system!
Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor.
I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
There's a lot of hatred of folders in the obsidian community, but there's two usecases where they're invaluable: classes and types
My notes are organized by type, so I have a source type, a person type, a writing project type, etc. Not to mention attachments and snippets taken from other places. Additionally, as a university student all my class notes come from classes with a pre-defined subject, and so each of my concepts go in a specified subject folder. Subject and type folders let me trivially query with a limited scope, such as by organizing every equation from every physics class into a class-organized list, which lets me make notes sheets without issue. This becomes useful specifically because of how limited the need for folders is: They're an extremely useful broad tool for organization data with a pre-defined structure. While tags and links are like chisels, the humble folder is a saw. Time is only lost when folders are used to try to organize data without an existing structure, in which case you fall into edge cases.
Folders are great for archival, but not so good in my experience for *thinking*.
I try to avoid folders as much as possible, but keeping the fact that I want to be able to move my vault around whenever, I try to keep a slight bit of folder in my vault, just so I can find a way in my vault just from the file browser.
I agree, Ein is a good doggie.
A crap... and now I hear the opening playing in my brain.
It is far too early for me to even pretend to comprehend this. You're going on watch later Triss, I also should watch your first Obsidian video again, that's what made me start using it in the first place. Which reminds me, I need to start using that again.
I bounced on and off Obsidian for about a year, you'll get there :-)
i have used google docs and also some other note taking apps
but nothing clicked as much as a physical diary
even though i mainly program games, i like to have a diary rather than some docs.
but after watching your videos i decided to give obsidian a try
and i am absolutely loving it, the mark down format is quick and easy to write and both understand.
We dont need any fancy task taking apps, just a simple file is the ideal way to go.
wonderful! I love the daily notes feature, I have that window open at the side of my screen all day for quick note taking -it's the inbox into my system
I don‘t support Obsidian as it is not open source. I find it sad that people pour so much work into writing open source plugins and yet the core software is proprietary. I use Emacs with an org-mode setup and the concepts are still applicable, so I appreciate your videos
I love org-mode, and it's how I started out. However, for reasons explained in my previous Obsidian video, I had to move away.
While I'd prefer obsidian were open source, because my data is in standards compliant markdown, I'm not worried at all. Also, as you say, nearly all the plugins are open source.
Obsidian.nvim is what I reach for at the command line if I need it!
Personally I use Logseq. It may not have full feature parity to Obsidian, but I've never felt particularly left out.
One minor gripe I have is that the markdown it produces is not 100% standard.
+1 for logseq, it also has excellent task management capabilities built in which is a major advantage for me compared to obsidian
and you can actually draw on the whiteboards (i hope obsidian adds this one day) which is really nice to use on a tablet
logseq has a lot of features out of the box tho that you might not need with no way to turn them off, for me its an advantage since it does everything i need without having to install a single plugin but i can understand if that is bloat to some (i guess the same reason why i prefer using jetbrains ide's rather than vscode or vim, convenience and stability)