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!
@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.
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!
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
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.
@@ItsVasl you're too kind, have you listened to Lost Terminal? (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p3bDE9kszMc.html) I bring that energy there too - the little ai narrator that I play is a happy guy! 😁
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.
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!
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).
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
The confusion is that the name of the product 'sync' is the same as the word 'sync' - not your fault! Obsidian Sync (capital S) costs $10 monthly, but obsidian can be synced for free because it's just operating on plain text files. So you put your vault inside whatever you already use (dropbox, google drive, icloud, nextcloud, syncthing, git, etc) and sync it for free that way. My recommendation is to sync it like that while you get used to it. Once you're sold and want to support the devs and get an even better sync experience, time to get obsidian sync!
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.
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 RU-vidr 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!
@@velandrii 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 😀
@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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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!
@@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. :)
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!
I think it is a bit confusing to talk up Obsidian's markdown compliance and the portability of the notes. All of that goes out the window when you start pulling in things like dataview and templater, not to mention embeds and references and even hashtag style tags. Other markdown tooks won't know what to do with those, and it makes publishing notes more difficult if you want to make your own website. Of course you can not use those features, but then Obsidian is not as ahead of the competition. I can't say I've really found a notes app I'm completely happy with. There are about five different ones I wish I could combine various features of.
I think it is worth mentioning, because the more proprietary the format, the harder it is to convert to another format or to make new software that renders that format. So, by being more standardized (comparatively), the risk is lower than other software. Then again, standardizing markdown itself is still in-progress. But every bit helps.
I've found Joplin pretty good overall and I'm able to sync with ALL my devices (phone, desktop, laptop, etc.). Joplin also has plugin that give it some similar functionality as Obsidian (maybe not the best implemented) but I suppose it comes down to how you organize your notes/thoughts. For me Obsidian just felt like a big hurdle to get to grips with, where as, Joplin just felt like it fit my style of note taking better.
@@scotthiland5521 Joplin doesn't do it for me because the files are stored in a sqlite db, not plain-text markdown on disk. Having your life in plain text is HUGE for flexibility, and if joplin did it, I wouldn't need to use the bad joplin mobile app, I could choose to edit them in whatever program I liked, but alas.
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 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 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.
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!
@@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 :)
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!
@@_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"
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!
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?
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!
Did you do any research on the subject using popular search engines or discuss the subject matter out loud near any mobile devices connected to the internet?
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.
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 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!
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
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!
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?
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.
@@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’d also like to point out how flexible obsidian is regarding the workflow. I also use it frequently and enjoy it, yet nearly nothing I do matches what you showed in this video: I don’t use the graph view much, I never use daily notes, etc. Even still, obsidian easily handles the workflow I have! I highly highly recommend it even if you don’t follow the workflow shown in this video
Me too! I never go to the graph view, I have even disabled it. Daily notes also don't work for me, neither creating a bunch of small notes with tiny subjects all linked up (I prefer accessing my subjects via the headings side panel). When the need to divide a note comes, obsidian gives us all the tools necessary. It is awesomely adaptable
It's funny you mention this, because my usage also differs, but I use it almost exclusively with Daily Notes, and the calendar plugin to replace my calendar/reminders, and to be a place where I can reflect on my daily life. I'll make "meta-notes" that exist with no content only to backlink to the daily notes that are related (for example, a "library" note that I will link to whenever I mention the local library in my daily notes). It's satisfying to see just how many ways a general purpose tool can be used by people who have different needs for it.
Absolutely, I don't even use this simple workflow, I tried to explain the basic out of the box experience, and then invite folks to expand on that with extensions!
Same, that big graph seems to be entirely for getting people excited about obsidian! I think the 'local graph' might be handy, I've never used that before, and I've stuck it in the corner of my window for testing
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!
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.
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!
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.
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!
Obsidian is amazing. I just started using it 2 months ago, and I finally feel like I can invest in content automation. I'm working on python scripts to concat note videos, reduce background noise, and basically automate content generation. It integrates with all my notes, making it super flexible and easy to work with. I feel like I'm just scratching the surface still.
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! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3UMncGbocAU.html
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.
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!
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.
Interesting how taking notes in Obsidian promotes breaking down concepts to independent elements, similarly how one might approach decoupling classes in OOP.
I was a bit turned off by the pricing for obsidian sync: it is just storing text files after all. But I then found the obsidian git extension. I simply made a private github repo where I can keep everything for free and with a service I already use. Once I set it up on my phone, laptop, and computer, it syncs everything quietly behind the scenes. I want to keep my notes private, but if I didn't, I could add github pages to the repo so anyone can see all my notes. Overall a very useful tool, thanks for sharing!
love the git plugin! If you ever have difficulties with it, some have reported that Syncthing is even more streamlined, though you must run your own server with it...
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."
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.
Thanks to you, im now using this to develop my personal checklist for Penetration Testing. Been procrastinating it for a while but having something new to try out like Obsidian is my perfect footway to do so. Currently 2 pages in, it all looks SO pretty too :D
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 ♥
Obsidian is excellent, and the community plugins are fantastic. You can build your own Obsidian platform with those plugins that fit best for your personal requirements!
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
I'm a compulsive note-taker which also values UI/UX design, and so when I migrated from (now completely broken) Simplenote to Obsidian (and from macOS to Fedora Linux respectively), I immediately felt a tangible freedom. Coming from Simplenote, I thought "simple minimalist text is perfectly fine", but Obsidian's live preview text over markdown has helped and inspired me to create more detailed notes pertaining to my work and hobbies. The best part of Obsidian? Community plugins; local sync to all devices via Dropbox, contextual typography, native GNOME theme etc. Obsidian can be as simple and complex as you want it to be.
I've been using obsidian for a couple months and feel a little dumbfounded that the files really are just simple .md files being created. My assumption was Obsidian used some sort of DRM notebook file that would be hard to sync otherwise. After this video I'm gonna get this setup with my iPad + iCloud, thanks!
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!
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.
It does support Right-To-Left text direction (e.g. Arabic, Persian, Kurdish...), but unfortunately you can't have two tabs at the same time; one in RTL and the other in LTR, you have to choose in the settings either everything in RTL or LTR. I hope they fix that.
turns out, this is what i was looking for in my life. you convinced me to finally start writing stuff down as my ADHD brain just cant keep it itsself and this might be the best way to do it. i was actually looking for exaktly something like this back when i was still in school, if i had only known about obsidian back then
The second best time to have learned about it is today, I'm excited for you :-) Did you know I have adhd (and autism!) Here's my video on that ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XUZ9VATeF_4.html
What I find really appealing with Notion is their databases system which allows to save structured data and operate on it. Seems like logseq and Obsidian don't provide something like this and it's definitely the feature I use most on Notion. Maybe Obsidian with structured frontmatters and dataview? But nothing is enforced and it looks tedious to maintain, not sure how to handle templates etc.
You're part of the way there. Dataview is the number one plugin for obsidian for a reason! Frontmatter metada + built-in templateing and a few other plugins you can reacreate ANYTHING notion has. But better than that, with 1014 plugins, probably someone's already made a pretty plugin that does what you want! EDIT: found it: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9oaEOFPxT9g.html
This is exactly the same reason I chose Notion over Obsidian. The native database "widget". I like to use it to define a table for some abstract topic (e.g. programming languages) then i can create a field for each concrete instance of the abstraction (e.g. rust and C++). i can organize the topic into subtopics using nested items. This lets me have a quick way to search and compare features. Admittedly its probably a pretty specific use-case.
@NoBoilerplate I literally just had RU-vid recommend this video and was going to reply with it here! Eager to try it out and get the other benefits of Obsidian you mentioned! Thanks for the great video and recommendation, you're work is superb!
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.
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!
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 watched this video when it came out, having already heard of Obsidian, and thought it seemed very useful. Did I actually use it? Of course not, that would be too sensible. I finally started using it in the past week and OH MY, it is every bit as useful as you said it was! Currently using it to plot out videos for the revival of my RU-vid channel, while trying not to get distracted by all of the other potential uses!
Fantastic! I also had just the same problem when first starting out - I bounced back and forth between obsidian and my old tools for a month or so. Never looking back now!
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!
I just installed the "Open Vault in VSCode" extension and I can just navigate my notes in VSCode, cmd+p to find files, use my keyboard shortcuts to quickly edit and navigate like I do with code, and I am IN LOVE WITH OBSIDIAN
I'd absolutely love more hack-your-brain videos! Suggestion for a video: training an advanced LLM/AI (a.g BabyAGI, MemoryGPT, etc.) on your own ways of viewing things, so you basically "clone" your brain. So you can have "internal" debates/conversations, give "yourself" tasks to do, etc., with an AI version of you. And it would learn from your training data, whatever you can provide it, and the input from you, and improve over time. I'd appreciate combining/connecting HuggingFace models for a simpler video, too.
@kresimircosic126 yeah I know they can work well but I've only had decent experiences with obsidian and to some extent vscode (i don't use it cause I prefer other text editors). the discord electron app is quite terrible on linux (i remember it being pretty decent on windows a couple years ago)
open source LLMs and Obsidian are going to be amazing when we can finally get a bit bigger token limits or easier more effient ways of creating embeddings with our obsidian notes etc. can't wait.
I've been hesitant to switch to Obsidian, even though it seems great, the main reason being: it being closed source. I've been using Joplin for quite sometime now (which is open source), however it isn't as powerful as Obsidian. I guess what I'm trying to say is: If it's good enough for you, it's good enough for me. Excellent video as always 😊
As long as your data is in plain text, you can use what you like! Joplin doesn't do it for me because the files are stored in a sqlite db, not plain-text markdown on disk. Having your life in plain text is HUGE for flexibility, and if joplin did it, I wouldn't need to use the bad joplin mobile app, I could choose to edit them in whatever program I liked, but alas.
I watched this video smugly as a die-hard TiddlyWiki user. Surprised I didn't see it along your path somewhere @ 2:51. The entire program is an open-source self-editing html file. Its flexibility has allowed me to tailor it as a playful "personal website" rather than a series of notes within a proprietary interface. Changed my life. I could ramble about it all day, but I'd suggest giving it a close look and checking out examples of what people have been able to do with it.
I'm amazed! This is exactly what I need! The past 3 months I've been crafting my perfect mind-dump-db, project-planner, daily to-do and 'keep-track-of-everything-in-a-sensible-way-tracker' within Notion. I loved it, but I soon came across it's limitations. This solves that! Great vid!
I also got super into Obsidian semi-recently, a lot of it for documenting project development and generating user guides for automation I’ve developed. Coolest features I’ve found are the PlantUML add-ons (insanely useful for any sort of quick graphs, tree maps, network diagrams, etc.) and the ability to render out your entire notebook as a set of HTML files so other people who aren’t familiar with Obsidian can essentially have an (almost) 1:1 navigation experience as the in-app vault. It’s an absurdly powerful documentation tool, can’t believe I held off on trying it out for so long.
@@NoBoilerplate Mermaid is awesome and it keeps getting better, but for now I think there’s a little bit more flexibility in what you can create and how you can style it in PlantUML.
