Hack your brain with Obsidian.md
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- Опубліковано 4 тра 2024
- I have used many note-taking tools over the years, simple-note, notion, and extensively emacs org-mode, none have improved my thinking in the way that Obsidian has.
Today is a deep-dive into my second brain, and if you take my advice, YOUR second brain.
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🖊️ Corrections are in the pinned ERRATA comment.
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My name is Tris Oaten and I produce fast, technical videos.
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ERRATA
- 7:32 I say "Notion" but I meant "Obsidian" - woops!
- YES I am aware of Logseq - it's not up to my requirements yet, but I have been very impressed by the pace of development. The reason I'm so happy about using Obsidian, despite it being closed-source software, is that my data is in plain text, and I can move to another tool (perhaps Logseq) when they become mature enough for my needs!
- [[double square brackets]] are not in the original markdown spec, but have been adopted by nearly everyone (including github)
- The bold example is also italic, the nesting required to get this working from *within markdown* bamboozled me!
I'm to tried to try this now, but will definitely use this. TY. Really makes me wonder how many other awesome tools I am not using.
At 7:32 you say Notion but I think you meant Obsidian.
@NoBoilerplate What do you think about using a rote memorisation app like Anki to store your notes in? My thinking is that Anki will manage your memory for you with the SRS algorithm it uses. While actively improving your memory.
@@SynthSoundscapes That's *very* funny! Woops! Thanks, added
@@devanmcgeer9973 Love Anki, I used it when learning Chinese. OBSIDIAN HAS ANKI PLUGINS!!!
I'm busy developing note-taking software myself, this comes just in time to procrastinate doing that
Plenty of space for everyone! Steal all the good ideas, but don't reimplement logseq
@@NoBoilerplate What’s wrong with logseq?
If someone made an open-source equivalent to obsidian I would switch in a heartbeat
@@RobJess Dendron for VSCode. I didn't love it but at the core it's pretty similar. Probably less extensions though.
If it would be open source - clear advantage for some people (like myself).
As a person with ADHD, I installed Obsidian 6 months ago but still haven't used it
Obsidian is a big part of my ADHD coping mechanisms, here's my video about that: ua-cam.com/video/XUZ9VATeF_4/v-deo.html
I tried using notion for a while and it just didn't work for me. im gonna try out obsidian after this video but it's always hard to convert to a new software. I personally use apple notes. its surprisingly well organized
Fellow ADHDer and this appealed to me for a lot of reasons. If I have stuff scattered about in a ton of places I forget to do it. I love the idea of automating a to-do list and whatnot. It's part of the reason why I've never really found a "system" to grasp with all my tasks and management of just stuff I have to do. This SEEMS like it may be an answer if I can wrap my brain around it. But that feels like a task in and of itself. I guess it's something new to hyperfocus on for a bit now that I finally got neovim set up again after having to migrate it way from null-ls.
@@mandradonI have ADHD and started using obsidian around a year ago now, going from not taking notes at all to the polar opposite has actually changed my life,
When your giving it a shot for the first time **dont wrap your head around it**, just use it and discover all the different things you can do organically, it doesn't matter if old notes have some mistakes in them, my first time I used markdown tables for pretty much everything, honestly don't know why I didn't quit there tbh. (the upcoming visual markdown table editor should make them useable though)
Plugins are amazing too, if theres something you want obsidian to do, I can guarrantee you can make obsidian do it, it's just that some things are easier to do than others.
This
The only Obsidian video to actually convert me. The video itself was actually so engaging that the 12 minutes passed by in a second, perfectly paced and insanely informative!
Thank you!
Agreed. I want a part 2 going through typical workflows now.
I’m keenly interested but for this newbie there was a key piece of info I could not find.
How do I get Obsidian on my iPhone. I downloaded what I thought was it but it’s asking me to login and no option to create a login. What info am I missing please?
Also, thank you for this video. It may be a sanity saver. Being ADD and bipolar, I need a place to store thoughts and it would be great to see and access them in a relational manner.
@@RobJPhillips Make sure you've got the right one, obsidian should not require a login or an account apps.apple.com/us/app/obsidian-connected-notes/id1557175442
Everyone using Obsidian should also know that is has native support for Mermaid graphs. Just write a code block starting with ```mermaid and it will render as a graph. Very handy!
SO GOOD RIGHT
The reason I don't use them as much is that Advanced Slides doesn't work with mermaid as well as it should. But maybe it'll be fixed soon!
This comment sent me down a rabbithole. Holy cow Mermaid is amazing. I'm using Bing GPT-4 to generate timelines / flowcharts in mermaid. Thank you!
Mermaid is weird as shit
okay now you sold me. I have so much Mermaid graph that makes me unable to move on to anything other than VSCode right now for note taking (and yes, I do version control my notes, WTF right).
@@muhwyndham LOVE mermaid!
Watching your videos feels like scraping layers of plaque off of my brain. Such a refreshing change from the needlessly padded and empty videos I’m used to
I'm so pleased, this is an intentional choice on my part. Low animation is an accessibility feature.
Things I don't keep you engaged with: animations, memes, cutaways to unrelated video, screaming, lolrandom bits.
Things I try to keep you engaged with: A fast, well-polished script.
He's so much positive energy!
Wow, what a beautiful line!
@@ItsVasl you're too kind, have you listened to Lost Terminal? (ua-cam.com/video/p3bDE9kszMc/v-deo.html) I bring that energy there too - the little ai narrator that I play is a happy guy! 😁
@@NoBoilerplate yes I listen to lost terminal, its so underrated, I love it so much!
For real this is how all content on the web that isn't social media or straight up entertainment should work
Back links are definitely a gamechanger
The way you talk about things you like is addictive.
I'm like this in real life, my friends all think I've got stocks in everything I like!
Drugs are bad Emm khay.
The video is as useful and streamlined as the app. As a developer I was thinking about its flaws and what could be improved and I got shut up by the fact you can modify it as you want. This app is just insane. THANK YOU for the productivity boost
My pleasure, I couldn't do what I do without it!
I absolutely love Obsidian! I've been using it for a year now. It's absurd how long it took the industry to finally deliver a good note-taking app to us.
yes exactly, i don't know why it was so hard for the industry to actually make a functional note app like Obsidian.
using Obsidian, i realized the vision of the creator, his obsession with speed and blazing fast access.
i realized that he actually an avid notes taker himself, it was reflected in the Obsidian Feature and implementation
and obsess about things that actually improve the experiences, the guy had an ideal of what note taking should be.
that's what the other note taking app miss.
all of them just want to cash in
all other notes app are more concerned about bloating their app with the latest bloatware trend as possible,
who cares about the user, who cares if the notes was slow, took 1 minutes to load, laggy, and took 20Mb per notes.
just look at logseq, Obsidian closest competitor, even though they're attacking the same market,
their vision and implementation was really bad,
slow, buggy, glitchy.
Logseq look like they didn't even know what note taking really mean, they didn't had any principle in mind,
just throw a random feature and implement it haphazardly.
@@jensenraylight8011 they learned a lot with dynalist which is great too, just not offline-first
@@jensenraylight8011 I think up until this point, it was mostly people making quick apps for fun or companies acuiring them for profit (Trello + Atlassin). It is clear that the devs of Obsidian probably needed it themselves and saw no point in hoarding it or making profit, since having an incredibly useful tool supported by an open source community just ensures that everyone benefits.
I Just wondering, iam currently a computer science student, so could I use Obsidian to learn? I mean It feels like I would not do much higher order learning and wasting my time instead of making a Mindmap with just relevant information instead of whole text parts. Maybe in future in my Job I could use this for note taking, but for learning it looks suboptimal.
@@UberBossPure you might want to take a deeper look at ways to mindmap in Obsidian, canvas, or look here how other people use it for learning
I can't express how much i appreciate your videos. High quality information compressed into a objective and straight to the point manner. Nothing left to desire.
You're too kind, thank you!
Been using it about 2 years. For creative writing it's phenomenal. Coming to and from personal projects that will never see the light of day but exist literally just as a creative outlet you can get back on board with anything really fast using the map. Truly game changing for my notes. It was sort of like how big zim wiki was for me prior to that.
Not even a coder myself but you’re seriously one of the best informational channels I’ve seen! Plus this got me to give Obsidian a try and now I’m in the process of porting all my notes over, thanks so much for the recommendation!
Love this! I’ve had Obsidian for awhile now, but I was unaware of the vast majority of these features. Really awesome stuff! I would enjoy more videos about Obsidian, as well as other software.
For anyone thinking about switching to obsidian one of my favorite features is how easy it is to add new features as you need them. You don't have to start out using every feature you can pick them up and introduce them as you go.
Absolutely, It's truly whatever you make of it. I feel like I am only just scratching the surface!
So glad I came across this video! I struggled with note taking for my MS math classes (especially something like Statistics which has interlinked theorems, concepts that are referenced 3-4 'lectures' down the road). Started using Obsidian today and already see the power based on the demos you provided. Would love a deeper follow up!
Wonderful! Do note that Obsidian has perfect LaTeX support, for maths notation!
I've been passively looking for a markdown app for such a long time but it feels like all of them have annoying quirks, aren't actually markdown, or are behind a pretty steep paywall. I stumbled on this video a few days ago and I've been obsessed with this app ever since. Thank you SO MUCH for creating this video. This is exactly what I've been looking for.
I have been looking for something like this for the past 2 years! Thank you for bringing it to our attention!!
Fantastic!
If only all video guides/tutorials were presented like this. Concise, directed, dynamic pacing, plus energy in the voice!
Thank you so much! I'll probably do one or two more soonish!
This is really cool! The graph function is amazing as well... I'm going to try this out right now. I really appreciate your videos, they provide me with such useful information ♥
This looks great! I have been writing a DS/ML book in Markdown, and this seems like exactly the right way to go about it. My hesitation was that I don't want my hands to leave emacs, but I see that there's at least one emacs mode for editing the files. Woo! Gonna give it a try!
I would enjoy more videos from you about Obsidian! You have such an engaging style and pacing. I'm sold!
Thank you! I've a mind to do a deep-dive into how I use Obsidian day-to-day, maybe in a month!
The video is almost 3 weeks old but im glad this was in my recommended page. I've always wanted to start looking for note-taking software and this is exactly what I have in mind. Just wanted to say I appreciate the video and thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
Thanks for leaving the basic-syntax link on the screen for a while. It helps me type it out while listening!
All my scripts and the slides are available on github, copy and paste! github.com/0atman/noboilerplate/tree/main/scripts
Wow, I've used Obsidian before but got back to Notion since it was more capable but this single video showed me I can do everything I really need and keep my files locally, this is a game changer, please make a full series or at least another video, thank you!
Another video will certainly be happening at some point! But I only explained 1% of what obsidian can do! Check out other videos for more complex tips!
I could see this being incredibly useful for visualizing the connections between Skyrim mods for newcomers--they could see exactly what they need for the most popular mods and what they might want in addition!
Just wanted to drop in and say, THANK YOU for this video! I watched it a few months ago and decided to try out Obsidian. I can confidently say this software has made a huge positive impact on my productivity and effectiveness at work. It sounds corny, but having a personal wiki of information on topics relevant to my job (such as procedure lists, meeting notes, How-Tos, daily note files) has saved me a lot of time and made it much easier to get things done.
I've never been so throughly convinced to try a piece of software in my life. Thanks for sharing!
I've been using obsidian to take class notes for the past year and its tagging feature has made it so much simpler for me to look stuff when revising. That plug-in which allows you to use tags as folders seems like it'd really help me in the future, thanks a lot!
Fantastic!
I would love to see a video about your personal system for using Obsidian. I've just started using it, and I'm a bit tentative about how to organise my notes in folders given that many notes will eventually connect to each other with nodes. Would be awesome to understand how people use it successfully.
come chat in #obsidian on my discord if you like, it's not a solved problem, and everyone uses it a little differently!
I've been using Obsidian for a few months now and I love it. I'm so happy you made this video!
Glad you like it!
Thank you! Most informative, no BS, fast paced! Love it!
Thank you so much, that's my video style in a nutshell!
I start college in a week and will 100% give this a try. I think its genius how they implement new features without completely demolishing the markdown standard.
That's the real trick, right? The "kanban" plugin is based on H1, h2 native markdown, it's so clever!
I personally like tree sheets, as it is a bit of a hidden gem that describes itself as a free form hierarchical information organiser. Imagine an extremely flexible spreadsheet that starts with a single cell, that you can then expand out and nest tables within tables, each one with their own formatting and style. You then have different rendering options for your nest of tables to act like a flow diagram, bubbles or tables. You can even programme the sheet to perform certain actions allowing you to input data and get a desired output.
That's fun! I wasn't aware of TreeSheets until now!
The data is not stored in plain text, however, and honestly it's so nested I can't blame them - but I feel nervous about my brain being in such a format. TreeSheets also doesn't have anything like the features I need - there are many plugins for obsidian that build the features of TreeSheets, you could give it a go if you like!
@@NoBoilerplate That's fair, and I'm trying out Obsidian now.
Tree sheets was something I came across when I was trying to find good free mind map software, by laying out my ideas in a fluid manner. But other tools just seemed clunky or you had to pay. Then came Tree sheets as an obscure find buried a few pages back in my Google search. I tried it and thought it was a brilliant concept. It just jived with the way my brain works.
Love the concept of how you can just slap in cells at any time at any point you want and have an infinitely deep nesting, that you can just drill down into further and further detail on an idea. When you're done on a concept you can return straight back out to the surface and see your entire sheet again.
It to me is the digital equivalent of a mind palace. Every cell being a door that you can open into another table of cells, with many more doors. Each tailored just the way you need it for whatever the problem is that you're trying to tackle, or however you need to store the information.
As for the plain text. I know that it can export into other formats such as HTML, XML, indented text and CSV. However, the main problem is, like you stated in your video, should the platform you use die, your mind will go with it. Not really much of a concern with Tree Sheets as the software is fully open source.
It's one of those gems that really should get more love and attention then it has, thanks to a concept so simple, yet extraordinarily powerful.
But thanks for bringing Obsidian to my attention, as it is something that never came up when I was looking for good free note taking and mind mapping software.
Try out Dynalist, Logseq, or org-mode itself for that infinite recusion feeling. There are plugins you can use to get this in obsidian of course!
Thanks for recommending me Obsidian. I just started using it, and it has everything I want and is incredibly easy to use and understand. Will be a gamechanger for university and my job.
Thanks for the suggesto. I'm really liking it so far!
absolutely love obsidian! I started using it after watching one of your videos, and it's been a game changer!!!
the website publishing feature to easily share certain project with others is also super helpful
GAME changer!
I just recently stumbled upon obsidian after my OneNote just became way too cluttered and a mess to navigate. It takes a bit of work to get everything converted so it shows properly with the graph view, but it is so worth it. If you prefer a folder structure and want that structure to be reflected in the graph view, I can highly recommend the "Zoottelkeeper" Plugin. Great Video!
Wow one of the most informative videos I've seen on the subject although it gets pretty advanced really quick
I've been looking for something like this for a while now, thank you!
I started using obsidian about a year ago with the thought that I'd use it like what you're describing - a knowledge database - but I found that trying to mold my usage to that didn't really work, and I wasn't getting that much value out of it. What I did find is that using it as a more flexible calendar and daily journal has been life changing. I'll occasionally take notes about projects, or ideas, but 90% or more of my notes are just daily notes with info about my schedule, my appointments, and my reflections on the day. It's been liberating, and immensely useful to have a flexible, but simple way to organize my day-to-day life that I'm not worried will spirit away all my data if the company goes under. The polish present in the editor (autocomplete is so useful), the sync, and the plugin ecosystem that cuts down on busy work necessary to match my work flow are just the cherry on top.
nice! yes I always have my daily note on screen, with my schedule etc on!
Thanks a ton for this. Been teaching myself to code over the past 2 months now, and one of my biggest banes was handwriting my notes.
This program allows me to type them out so much faster. If one of my pages gets too stuffed with info, I step back in the chain. Create a header note with a table of contents, and break my bloated note into several that branch from there. Which is something that is tricky to do with paper.
I also love that using tab and then typing creates collapsable blocks that you can demo code in. Then minimize it to save space until you need to read it.
Your channel is amazing and you are doing wonderful things for your community. Thanks so much from a guy with a dream to change careers and thus alter the course of his life.
-G
I'm delighted to hear this. Keep watching obsidian videos, get inspired by the 1200+ plugins, and it'll get more and more useful as you use it more and more. That's what happened to me!
I wouldn't have been able to change careers from programmer to UA-camr without running my life in Obsidian! You're in good hands :-)
I've been using Notion since I switched to software development. I did (and still do) basically the same - note taking on videos, interviews, organizing my knowledge in a tree-like structure and just for day-to-day work items (although here pen and paper sometimes wins).
What I lack in Notion is some tag system. Nested tags look promising in obsidian.
Another thing that I'm concerned is that it's not plain text. After several years of writing notes I feel that I don't wanna lose them and can spare some time into transferring to a new note-taking system, where I will host the data. Here I'm thinking of Google+Git+probably periodically duplicating to a separate hard drive.
Anyhow, all the best with changing your career! I wasn't sure I could do it but now I regret that I never thought of it earlier. Not that it's frictionless or I love doing it 24/7 but I definitely enjoy programming. Hope you also find it inspiring and fascinating. Cheers!
@@andriivelychko5828 I too switched from Notion, their export zip of markdown files was good to import into obsidian, but showed me just how bad their export was, and how trapped my data was in their cloud!
Google/git/hard drive - all possible thanks to the magic of plain text 😀
Finally a no nonsense explanation for beginners. Thank you so much!!!
Thank you so much for your help and info, it's been great to listening to you and all your arguments about Obsidian. I'll give it a try since today :)
I'm excited for you!
can we just appreciate how pretty the Obsidian UI is.... it's the sleakies i've seen of all the note softwares/platforms
SO pretty, and they recently hired the author of the most popular theme, Minimal!
As a Notion user who has previously tried Obsidian, your case for switching was way more eye-opening than I expected. It's amazing to see how a seemingly shallow note taking application can do when a user utilizes its features effectively.
1000+ plugins vs Notion's zero isn't nothing either :-D
Notion's great, I used it for years, but you can't beat community involvement!
@@NoBoilerplate that's true but the community involvement in Notion seemed to be around the features rather than inline with the features. At Notion it was always about creating the most aesthetic and pleasant templates that does a million things at once so that you don't need any other program (having a timer, tracker for tasks, counter, etc). In Obsidian, templates seem to be more individually driven rather than community driven, where everyone seems to like the Zettelkasten method of note taking and having variations of that system.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention! I've been wanting to get serious about a note taking app and was going to go with Notion until this video!
Notion is fine, caveats notwithstanding, and is dramatically better for simultaneous editing for a team, but there's still space in my life for a personal second brain that only inam allowed to see!
I read "build your second brain" and started using notion for that, after this video I migrated all my notes to obsidian and now I finally have a backup on github and still a device sync for desktop and mobile. Thank you for this video!
My exact path too! ENJOY!
Is that a book? Do you have a link?
Thanks for another excellent production!
Employed in the industrial/critical infrastructure sectors, I'm one of those who, after finding a solution either by scouring everything currently available to evaluate the "best", or after finding none by developing my own, will stay with the "tried-and-true" tools that I found to be vital or useful, often for decades.
When I pull my head out of the sand to review solutions for replacement, either due to compatibility or security issues, or to support new tech, I usually discover that things have (duh) changed radically, usually improving on my old, comfortable tools significantly, similar to how cell phones improved on the telegraph.
One of my favorite note taking tools has been Microsoft OneNote, an application that I believe to be underappreciated by most users, and to me the sole application keeping Microsoft relevant, since Windows is required to run it, which is also one of its shortcomings. Yes, there are "cloud" versions of OneNote which will run on non-Windows platforms, but these are poorly-mirrored parodies of the full "desktop" version, lacking many features in their current versions.
Based on your recommendations, it sounds like Obsidian is more than a worthy replacement?
More than worthy - especially combined with the excellent Excalidraw plugin, for perfect pen input!
I started using Obsidian a few months ago. Id wanted to find a program like this _for years_ for my various hyperfixations and projects that pop into my mind. Usually some form of world building, story writing, or game development project that I'm totally 100% definitely gonna finish *eventually*. I'd wanted some form of wiki-esque way to store the data because my brain just seemed to like how wikis worked, having spend years trawling through various wikis for things like the Ender Scrolls, or even Wikipedia, just consuming knowledge. As soon as I discovered Obsidian, after a couple days getting to grips with it, it went form a program I, frankly, never imagined finding, to one I cant keep closed for more than an hour when I'm on my computer. I'm about to start a research degree in the near future aswell, and I can see it being an essentual tool I use all throughout my studies for organising my notes and working through my project. I'm not even using like 1% of its functionallity by the looks of it, but I've already found it incredible useful.
oh PERFECT! just having obsidian installed makes me want to do a research degree!
Downloaded it just now. Sounds exactly like what I need. Very excited about this.
Oh I'm so excited for you! You're going to have a really good time, welcome to the rest of your life!
Take it slow, I had a few tries to get into the swing of the app - and try out some plugins! ua-cam.com/video/3UMncGbocAU/v-deo.html
This looks super fun!! Thanks for sharing, Brother.
I've been using Obsidian for quite a bit now, nice to see it getting more attention.
Also, as far as the git plugin, they have pretty easy to follow instructions on how to set it up for mobile. I've heard that some phones can have issues with it, but I personally haven't, and besides, I mix my notebooks with stuff like Rnote files that means relying on Obsidian sync would be a bit weird in my case.
Very cool! Been somewhat trying to stick with org-roam for awhile, but some of these Obsidian features are really nice!
Hi Ken! Yeah, if you can keep your brain in plain text, org-mode is LOVELY, I used it for 2 years and wrote seasons of my podcast on it. GORGEOUS. I especially love org-babel, with Rust!
But there's SO MUCH you can do with obsidian
The highest respect to you Sir. I doff my hat for providing us with such actionable information, application and levels of forethought. It was the subject of obsidian that has brought me your way, however, all the other content you have here is astonishing. I’ll see you on discord and many thanks again ❤
Thank you so much. I’m loving it. It’s invaluable for uni, game dev and world building
i'm going to transfer from one note to obsidian. thanks! would love to see more content about your workflow with obsidian
There's so much on youtube about Obsidian, really great stuff - I may do a follow-up with my own personal system, if that'd be interesting to folks.
I tried Obsidian because everyone loves it, but here is the problem I encountered with it and pretty much every other note taking app: I basically never look at any of the notes I have written ever again. I created quite a few notes and felt good in that moment about it, but now they just lay there and are completely irrelevant to me. And then it very quickly feels like a huge waste of time to take the time and write the notes if they won't be relevant later. Sure, you can never predict what will be relevant in the future and by writing everything down you are prepared, but the time investment feels too big.
How do you handle that? How do you know what to write down? How are you keeping your brain alive?
Yeah I think this is the biggest hurdle for entry. The first Tip is really mundane but just use it as a scratchpad and fill it up with more notes. Someday the connections will emerge naturally. I mean you first brain does it all the time collecting seemingly unrelated Info and afterwards connecting it. Why should your second brain behave otherwise? The info is already stored but lays dormant it is still useful. Someday while writing a new Note you will get the itch and remember that you have Something relevant already written down and then you link it.
Second Tip: Dont fuss about a specific system or framework. Do the notetaking mostly freestyle for a while. Your system is never set in stone and your vault should represent that too. Keep it moldable so you have always the possibility to come back to your own notes. However if you like overview pages or Wikis than take a look at the concept of "Maps of Content (MOC)" from Linking your Thinking. It helps to Sort your own thoughts and make them navigateable from Basic Overview to more Specialized thoughts. Helped me a lot.
Tip 3: If you want to Journal then configure Obsidian in such way that the First Note upon start is the Journal entry for the current Date.
Tip 4: In my opinion people have the most success If they dont feel like having to take notes but act rather like its a hobby. If you feel like you want to make a specific Note more usable or beautiful then Just so it. You're still interacting with your vault and your brain then. Its still useful. People say its their "Zen Garden" and calms them. I think thats a stretch but notetaking should not be a burden to you. Just dont think of it as Work.
Tip 5: Set aside a small time just for processing your already written down notes. If you dont know where to start make a Challenge and use the official random plugin and roll a Note to process. The Community repository has already more advanced plugins for that If you fancy to just roll a Note based on different conditions (like without Tags or Backlinks)
Thats some of my ways to deal with that hurdle. Hope if helps!
Here's the galaxy-brain take:
Never create notes with ctrl+n - create notes with ctrl+o, the file open picker.
This means you never accidentally create two documents with the same name, you'd see it in the list and you could open it again.
Look up the "unlinked mentions" feature, for finding orphans.
Yeah I'm struggling to find out when I would actually use this.
I like to clear my head by writing notes when I have many concurrent thoughts. The act of actually expressing and writing it out once is usually enough to be useful to me even if i never go back and read it. Sometimes i do however :)
@@Anon.G Start with making one for your work (assuming you are a developer?) Any project you work on, any client you have, make a note for them. Deadlines, requests, meeting notes, etc. all go into your note. Make a habit of reviewing them at the start of your day and write them all down at the end of your day. That way you know you won't forget anything and can stop thinking about your work after you leave work.
Awesome! Thank you for showing up such a great tool!
I've been reading a lot of 19th century nonfiction literature from the Gutenberg site and have found so much inspiration in writing essays in that style.
I definitely will be using Obsidian to help me write more.
Beyond how freaking amazing it sounds to me for almost any human, from this, I think Obsidian *very* useful for me as someone with ADD, since my memory retention is worse than the average person. And for my future career as a mathematician. And now as a developer. And maybe in some product management I hope to be doing soon. It really seems to me there's SO much you can do with this.
Thank you so much. I have never heard of Obsidian until this video, and I downloaded it while watching this (paused and re-watched parts multiple times).
I have a feeling it's going change my life for the better, significantly. I guess I'll have to wait and see. Also, I instantly subscribed when the video ended.
Thank you again for this introduction video!
And I'm definitely gonna check your whole video library!
Start with "hacking your brain with elaborate coping mechanisms" you'll get a lot out of that one I think ☺️
Obsidian has the LaTeX format built in for mathematical purposes.
I want something like this, but not just as note-taking software, but a whole file system. I really want a file system with a graph structure
@sensorer - IIRC, Git (the version-control software) has a graph structure - it uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG).
I think Plan 9's "Venti" archival filesystem may also use a similar approach.
@@gaius_enceladus I mean I need something like that to use instead of the default file system on Windows(or any OS for that matter), something I can just install and use with minimal friction. I want an ability to use the standard tree-like structure of a classic file system, but add different links if I want to(and an ability to view the graph in its full glory)
@@sensorer On windows and Linux distros (idk about Macintosh), you can create Shortcuts/links to different locations. You can link to folders or even files directly. It's been around for a very long time. I know that on windows these shortcuts can also be modified with commands on how to run a program, and also can link to webpages.
Now viewing this on the other hand is gonna be a little harder. I am sure there are some free open source projects for this sort of thing.
For example the program WinDirStat is a program that explores the file structure of the computer getting all the sizes of the various files. It will then have two displays. One is the basic folder view with there sizes. The other is a visual block diagram of blocks to represent the size and area of a file in the folder tree that they are located. I know that is not quite it but there is probably something out there that you are looking for.
Look up Xanadu by Ted Nelson, would’ve been so cool if that took over instead of Word, Notepad etc.
I mentioned TheBrain/PersonalBrain in another comment; it USED to do this, act as a replacement for file manager. It was *amazing*. Upon install, it would crawl entire storage and create a mindmap of all files. It as a hierarchical mindmap mirroring the original folder structure, but once generated it could be crosslinked and back-linked, incorporated into other 'brains', 'thoughts' added to it, etc, just like any other TB/PB 'brain'.
New versions can still _kind of_ do this, but not nearly as gracefully or powerfully as it used to.
Just tried Obsidian because of this video. I'm almost at the end of day one and I already love it! I have never been able to stick to a note-taking habit for various reasons, primarily friction and searchability. This addresses both of these and much more. Thankyou.
You're in for a real treat :-)
Just a few minutes in, and I'm already in love. Thanks!
I love obsidian, so happy to see a video on it!
It's about time I did one!
I use Obsidian as part of my diary and its fun decorating it and making the journal entries look pretty using the formatting syntax stuff.
The PASTELS!
Nice to hear someone using it like that! At first this seemed really complicated. I really just want a place to throw all my past journal entries from different platforms I've tried. Is I possible to put them into chronological order in Obsidian?
@@StrewthFroogals Yes indeed, search for videos on "obsidian" and "journal" or "day planner"
This is amazing, thanks for this video, I was looking for something like this
great, just tried it and find it already amazing; love your channel
Great to hear! and thank you!
Finally started tackling DS&A with this. So easy to just pick up and keep really organized markdown files for topics/subtopics. It's basically VSCode for note taking.
I started using Obsidian after watching a Ted Talk about mind maps and seeing Obsidian's catering towards that type of note-taking
Which vid?
As a student interested in many areas, this is EVERYTHING I've dreamed about! Specially the graph feature, I've imagined such concept before, but to know it exists in such a complete manner fills me with excitement. I'm downloading it now, hoping it's just as good as you showed it.
OH you are in for a TREAT! the plugins, oh the plugins... 1300 and counting, to do anything you could imagine!
If the graph makes you excited, try the ExcaliBrain plugin, which supercharges it!
Thanks for making this video. I watched it just as it came out and got me to start using Obsidian. It's become my most important tool.
So happy to spread the love, I basically run my life on obsidian!
The link graph looks amazing for maintaining a cohesive collection of notes.
Edit: omg the data view plugin. How have I not heard about this app before?
Right!? It's INCREDIBLE. My life literally would not be as organised if it weren't for this amazing app, and I'm not even using it very well! Check Nicole's website (penultimate slide) and her yt channel, she's SO good with it!
@@NoBoilerplate I think I will try anytype instead since its opensource. I am sure obsidian is great but prefer to support open source projects.
its very powerful
The Data View plugin seems like a dream come true.
@@MichaelMantion As fascinating as this seems, I immediately see two problems with this: 1. The source code isn't published. 2. There's no mention of how they finance their team.
This makes me wonder what this whole project is about, where they're coming from, how they'll keep the lights on, etc. I'll keep an eye on the project, that's for sure. But for now I think it's not a good call to draw people to it *just yet*. Almost everyone will be better off to stick to a well-established program like Obsidian for the time being. :)
This is the best video I’ve seen on Obsidian so far, concise and informative.
I’ve been using Obsidian for years now and love it, it’s grown a lot. And I learned a few things in this very short video, I’d be very keen to see more from you on the breakdowns of certain plugins and workflows.
Now it’s time for me to go update my todo structure, your method is superior to my own! #todo
Thanks!
Thank you! I might do a follow-up in a month!
A friend recommended I try Obsidian a few years ago and it didn't quite stick. I ended up using Notion. I think I still prefer Notion for short term / quick notes that I want available on all devices (and can quickly share with people) but now that I'm trying to piece together large amounts of MD documentation at work, this video came out at the right time to make me choose Obsidian. The initial familiarity helped I think, but the topics covered here finally helped me to "get" how I should be using Obsidian. Thanks for the push!
Try the `make.md` extension, it gives you a load of Notion's polish!
I love how you share your enthusiasm with us. Your videos give me insights on various things productive, without being bored. However, I find one thing, that frustrates me.
I had a hard time finding the specific things you're pointing out, and I often spent half of the time searching for them. Putting simple motion graphics, or just graphics, to help direct our attention should help people like me find things and understand the video better.
I do hope this doesn't discourage you to keep on creating helpful videos. I wish you the best!
Thank you so much for this suggestion. Good idea, I will add arrows indicating where the viewer should look. No animation is a feature of my videos - I'm trying to cater for everyone: and some people find animation difficult.
I will add highlights to future videos as you suggested - thanks!
@@NoBoilerplate Awesome!
Obsidian is great 😃
Apart from using it in the obvious role of general planning, note-taking and journaling, I have begun a large experiment with the link and tag system. I am cataloguing places, people and most importantly childhood memories in a massive sprawling database to try and see what structures form from linking them. It is basically a huge reflective journal made of lots of little notes. Has been a very therapeutic experience so far. Don't know how long I will keep it up for but will be interesting to see if anything stands out as the database matures.
This sounds interesting - what are the categories you are using?
@@htp8913 My current system is mainly using tags for categorization, and then linking notes together.
My main tag categories are currently:
Memory - Anything related to the recollection of an event, and thoughts and feelings at the time
Reflection - How I feel/felt about a topic
Person - People present in things I record
Location - Self explanatory
Things - Objects, media etc
I've been using Obsidian since I've heard of it last year. I never really liked taking notes, as my brain doesn't really work like that, with obsidian though, I am able to file away complex ideas and progress on these for bigger projects, taking out the danger of forgetting specifics and basics while keep relying on my brain for the hundreds of connections between information.
I also found a flat hirarchy of Markdown files as well as index to other files, also flat hirarchy, the best way to store Company knowledge and general files, so I did that for my startup as well. 🎉
This is new. I haven’t thought in this way, but you are right. Using Obsidian made a subtle but noticeable change in how I think.
Cheers Tris, some very useful features there!
Diagnosed ADHD a year or so ago (ASD because well why not) and I am trying to get the brain pings organised. Back links, pallets and network graph with hanging links looks fantastic for keeping things organised.
Very much trying the externalising the brain (in one place), focusing on that concept has been very helpful. Love your videos, find them chilled, informative, interesting and useful!
Ah, a fellow autiehd! I'm excited for you to try out obsidian, it's been a game changer for organising my life!
just don't forget to use the damn tool. I started quite a few times and I keep forgetting.
@@SebastianSipos I have got into a good habit of using Wikimedia Server for technical reference and nextcloud notes for brain pings. Only had to go through one note, Google keep, random files 'organised' in unrelated areas of my file system etc to get there!
Gives me some hope but I feel you! 😂
@@NoBoilerplate Found out I had ADHD last year, also found myself resonating with you a lot, recently started suspecting I had autism as well. Found out recently you had autism. Seemingly all my friends have autism. Perhaps I should find out more. Also obsidian seems really cool. I'm gonna try it out and see how it goes :)
I really like mochi cards. It allows you to take notes and make flash cards with markdown
, then study them using spaced repetition. Great for remembering a lot of information efficiently. It also has tags and two way references
Cool! There's loads of spaced repetition plugins for obsidian!
@@NoBoilerplate I've just tried obsidian after watching this video and it is amazing, thanks!
OMG this app is so powerful. Seriously, thanks for pointing it out.
I wrote a similar system that takes my javascript apps and draws a graph connecting them all together by function, showing loops etc. which you can trace thru in real time.
This is like that but for notes. Love it.
I envisioned a system like this not too long ago. Never got to do any research but it's awesome seeing something like this existing.
I love it when I think I have a great idea and the universe gifts it to me by having someone else do the work! XD
As an org-mode user what you said about sync really hit hard. It bothers me too and I even thought about writing something that fixes it but haven't had the time yet.
The video was again very nice to watch. Keep it up
If org mode had a good mobile story, I'd still be using it. Obsidian learned from org and surpassed it!
Same.
I wanted really hard to like org. and even just plain text is mostly fine to me but...
Getting it on other devices just fell flat on its face...
Also emacs is heavily reliant on keybinds that most non-PC computers don't support...
ie, ctrl and alt on Android
I think this video confirms my brain is too smooth for note programs
I've heard people talk about Obsidian but none have sold me on it like you have. I'm an organized mess who is comfortable using OneNote but I've been itching to get off it. I'm going to give Obsidian a try, thank you for the wonderful and informative walkthrough.
My pleasure! You're going to have a GREAT time!
This is brilliant! I've always wanted to have something like the graph feature depicted here. Now I don't have to make one myself!
Just for people, if you want an open source alternative there is logseq, which i personaly use, it's basically like obsidian with a roam research / workflowy flavor
Logseq is good, and perhaps if they continue development a possible alternative in the future, but it's not where I need it to be yet. The native sync is in alpha, which is a good start, but I need far far more features.
The nice thing about all my data being in portable markdown is the moment logseq does what I want, I can switch trivially!
and zettlr, no?
Does Logseq provide tags that are organized like folders?
Is obisidian free and opensource?
@@_modiX it provides tags, they act almost like traditional backlinks, the way they act changes if you install a specific plugin for tags, for hierarchical / folder organisation, you can use "namespaces"
Fun fact: if you put your obsidian on your free 15gb google drive account and synch that account on your desktop, putting any obsidian notes in it will synch them over the network.
Very useful if you switch machines.
another plain text superpower! Works just the same with dropbox, icloud, git, nextcloud, etc etc - we all have at least one of these!
I am loving Obsidian, thank you so much for this.
This is some high quality content !
i never have used any note taking apps before and this single video was enough to make me check out obsidian !
Keep up the great work ;)
Thank you!
Very good video, did not know about DataView. I've used Obsidian now for about 4 month and really love it. I only use it for work as of now since the calendar plugin is amazing that let you make notes connected to a date. Perfect for me as a developer with daily standup in the morning and I can make notes in the end of the day to know what i will do the next day or even weeks in advance.
And as you say, perfect that it's only text files and you can store it in a cloud-provider so you'll always have a backup incase something happens to the computer.
The mindmap I never really understood what the purpose was, but I don't work with connecting documents. I like the tags for that if I encounter the same subject several times and want to group them.
Oh you simply MUST try some of the community plugins! Dataview is the #2 most popular plugin, and I recommend seriously considering the top 10 in 'community plugins', and then scrolling the top 50, to see if any jump out at you.
I've been using obsidian for a lot of different things, school notes, and DND. I just love all the backlinks, easy to sort notes, and easy to just start typing.
Love using it for DND - try Nicole's videos for her take on DMing with obsidian
I am in love with Obsidian. Your videos have informed quite a bit of my daily life (37 yo, ADHD flaring up like mad). Note taking tools have been the bane of my existence. But being able to organize my (plain text!) notes and sync them to all my devices is just amazing. It truly has become a second brain for me. I am scared to explore the plugins, though, as it feels like a bit of a rabbit hole waiting to pull me in.
Thank you for your videos. They have changed my life in a very positive way.
Hey, I'm 37 too! I'm so glad 😁
Omg! This looks REALLY useful! Thank you!
I’ve tried using various tools for a second brain system in the past but could just never get it to work. Even with the Obsidian, I always just ended up with a bunch of random notes with very few links between them. It usually felt quite forced when I did try to add a link.
However, Obsidian has been an absolutely fantastic program for my daily journaling. I love that I own my data rather than it being stored in the cloud on someone else’s computer, and as a markdown editor it’s just fantastic.
At one point, when I still had aspirations of maintaining a second brain in digital format, I had a note for all the people I knew, and I would link each person’s note if I had something to mention about them in my daily journal. It was a nice little reference I could use to remind myself when I last spoke to someone in person and what we spoke about, but it ended up feeling like a bit of a chore so I stopped trying.
Now I just it as my daily (or at least most days) brain dump and it’s great for that. I made myself a template that works for me and it feels great to do at the end of the day. I would love to actually be able to make the second brain thing work though and I envy anyone who has managed to do so. It honestly feels like the holy grail of digital note-taking and productivity, but perhaps it’s just not for everyone.
Ah I sympathise, it took me a few tries to start using obsidian well, and I'm still figuring things out!
BTW look up the 'unlinked mentions' feature - you don't need to link to notes at the time, if that's a chore, you can retroactively link them in bulk!
@@NoBoilerplate Does it support creating keyword links?
org-mode radios I found to be partcularly useful
@@Mallchad aha, I didn't know about radios, that's cool. YES these are called "unlinked mentions" in obsidian.
What are keyword links?
@@NoBoilerplate Awesome, thanks :D
Keyword links are my generic name for exactly that. A function that sweeps texts for keywords and automatically links them to the appropriate place. It's roughly what you'd call it in programming too since keywords and symbol names get auto-linked to their definition
@@Mallchad nice! Well it's got all that and a BUNCH more - try the MAKE.md plugin, plus add `omnisearch`, which is like c-x and ripgrep rolled into one!
I'm looking forward to training a LLM on every note I've ever written, and getting a model of my own brain which I can offload cognitive tasks into. Asking it stuff like "Would I enjoy this movie?" or "Explain this topic in a way I would understand."
There are already 10 plugins for obsidian that do that. I'm not even joking.
@@NoBoilerplate lol
Daaamn this thing is well designed. Thanks for showcasing it
You bet
I am really thankful to you for this video. You convinced me to use Obsedian.
Great to hear!
Obsidian looks awesome! Too complex for me personally though lol! I spent a long time trying to get the tags folder plugin working and I just couldn't manage it lol. Somehow managed to disconnect every node in the graph using tags which was cool though unintended! I'm going to keep using notepad for now, but one day when I'm more clever I'll try obsidian again! Awesome video!
I bounced off obsidian a few times too! It's ok, give it another go when you want a comprehensive system - my advice is to just use the basic features when you do!