Tip: When you choose an app, title the first note "Why I chose this app". Then write a list of all the great reasons. This definitely helps me to stay with my app instead of being "lured by dopamine" to other shiny apps. I only have to read that first note to realize that I don't want them anyway.
@@gz6616 True. Updates could be necessary after a while. But at least one can still remember the basis on which one made the decision initially. If it is not enough anymore, one can make an informed choice to move on. Any of these options are better than repeated "app shopping". 🤷♀️🙂
I'm working on my first zettlekasten workflow and I had the idea the other day to do just that. I call it Proof to Self note for all the strategies and tools I pick to manage my adhd and 2nd brain system. An SOP note or documentation of workflow within the app will be my 2nd note.
I searched for the perfect app then got stuck in analysis paralysis. This video pulls me back to reality. The end itself. not the mean. Would like to see how you implement the Zettel in Obsidian. Thank you.
Artem I loved this video. Thank you. I'm on day 10 of learning about zettelkasten and obsidian. I'm on day 23,496 of walking around this planet.🌎I don't know how I stumbled on you but I'm glad I did. 🙏❤
I experienced that dopamine effect reading about notion vs. obsidian. I had to stop at some point because I was reading and taking notes less than devoting time to think of what software I wanted to use. I picked Obsidian. I don't use it fully, but still I'm working now on something. I'd love to watch more videos about your workflow with Obsidian. Thanks for your hard work.
I started using obsidian this week. Took about an hour to figure out how to use it (reading and watching overly complex videos). The learning curve is short and the payoff is amazing. In just 4 days I averaged a whole letter grade higher.
One very important factor is the element of being "distraction free". The change from word processors to minimal editors was a very productive paradigm shift. The same will be true for note-taking apps, in my opinion.
That's a great advice for all things in life: it is better to take a good decision in a short amount o time than take very long to try to make a perfect decision.
RU-vid algorithm led me to you. I've got to say, I am so glad it did! Very good information and articulation! I think you have a lot to offer - keep up the great work. Would love to see a video from you on implementing Zettelkasten in Obsidian!
Thank you for including the mindset aspect! I was getting stuck trying to choose an app for my Zettelkasten setup as well. Needing to future-proof my system is important to me as well, since I expect to be using it for a long time. I was considering whether to use Notion or Roam (which is how I found this video), but now you've convinced me to try Obsidian. Liked and subscribed!
OMGGGG, thank you for mentioning the issue with "finding" the perfect app and the time I take to follow videos, etc. I thought it was just me! Also, I appreciate the mention of how Obsidian is stored locally; even if the company goes down, my notes are safe and accessible. WONDERFUL and HELPFUL information. I'm using OneNote, which was great 7 years ago, but once I started my doctorate, I knew there must be something else out there!!! Thanks again for sharing your experience with all of us. Take care.
I have heard the lumberjack story many times before, but today I found out that I had only heard half of it, your tool doesn't need to be perfect, just proper to do the job. Great content, I'm going to start using obsidian.
You talking about your excitement when discovering new software and then watching tons of videos on someone else's workflow and how to adjust the features to make things "perfect"... made me feel like I was looking in a mirror, I do that all too often. It's the feeling of making progress, but not actually doing anything.
Agree with you on the local control. Also, I am the same. Chasing down that dopamine high, but Obsidian is it for me. Not going to move on from. Would be interested in your workflows, especially academic ones. Thanks for the video.
4:18 nah obsidian feels always new and exciting to me due to the ability to solve most surface level issues by either installing more plugins or editing content in the existing ones (templates with the use of templater); while this effect does still manifest it gets restricted to within the app which is a really good (though probably unintended) design decision Oh, you commented on this immedietally after lmao.
Very well thought, knowledgable and funny at the same time. I’m definitely guilty of analysis paralysis and FOMO. I’d love a step by step tutorials on setting up Zettelkasten in Obsidian if you can manage! A new subscriber :-)
I'd love tutorials for setup on Obsidian, too! I've been trying to make Notion work, but it's just not a great fit for what I'm wanting. Ready to make the switch for my notes.
Thanks Artem. I found your channel recently and I'm really enjoing your content. The dopamine effect you mentioned is spot on 👌🏻, really!.... worst thing is that it is very difficult to get rid of it and I keep wasting time trying, exploring new apps and polishing the current ones. For example, I keep bouncing between Logseq, Obsidian, Workflowy, and at the end I end up having notes stored everywhere in different apps and I can't access them later on easily... Also tried Craft, and now I'm just using Apple notes instead of that one 🤦🏻♂️... Something similar happened when setting up my developing environment (tried Vim and loved it, but then had to try Emacs of course, because, you know..., and ended up wasting months in that, just to come back to Vim..., and now I'm just using Sublime Text/VS Code Lol)... Same thing with Todo apps (Things3-Todoist-Goodtask-Analog-Something new-Things3-Todoist,... and the cycle repeats endlessly). Would love a video from you on how to tackle this addiction and really get some job done instead. Thanks again!
I felt VERY self-conscious when you started talking about how you spent weeks searching about apps and comparison videos and customizing them instead of actually doing what you wanted to do in the first place. I do this a LOT. I can still remember when I learned about the game Dwarf Fortress and I actually spent MONTHS reading about it and about how it was one of the coolest things ever and reading people's stories instead of actually learning how to play it. I tend to research and read/watch videos about the most insane things instead of doing the task I was supposed to do. I personally call this "productive procrastination", hahahh. It's productive because I usually study, think and learn instead of just scrolling through an Instagram feed, but it doesn't get the real job done, so it's procrastination. Anyway, I've been equally postponing my dream of starting to use Zettelkasten to increase my mental productivity. I decided to finally make it happen and, as expected, spent a full week just researching again about it and watching videos and installing some plugins, etc. The good thing is that I found this channel and I really like your content and your advice. I mostly copied your structure (I still felt the need to have an "ideas" folder for fleeting notes and a "projects" folder for creation), and decided to implement my beloved Cornell Notes system for taking book/course/video notes before committing them to the computer. I still strongly believe that hand-taken notes are far superior in terms of creating mental association, but I prefer to organize them digitally. The typing process is an extra step, but never a hassle because everything is pre-synthesized. I just wanted to add that, after getting kicked in the face by your examples, I decided to choose this video as my first zettelkasten process. My "literature notes" for the video are complete and I'm ready to start extracting ideas from it. I am also "preaching" about this system (and many of your videos) to many friends and students who suffer from not having a decent system for organizing their notes. Thanks again for the content!
Finally, I find a clear comparison among these tools! Thank you for sharing this information. I'd love to know how you take notes from books and link these notes among books with similar topics - Do you use Obsidian for that? A video about this process would be great :) THANK YOU!
Thanks for pointing out the mechanic of tool-learning compulsion i.e. dopamine. I have ADHD, and so this trap is massive for me, especially as it can *feel* productive, even though its not.
Thank you for another great video! You have a very good point there; not relying on some software company’s server. I have 13k+ notes in Evernote, but I feel like the app is a slow beast by now. Adding a new idea takes too long. The app is slow on all my platforms, although my hardware is quite new. I will have a serious look at Obsidian, thanks to you :)
This video hits directly into my heart , i am the 2nd lumberjack mentioned in the video. I will watch this video whenever i start to do after that dopomine hit again , thank you soo much for this ! I would give this video 10 likes if i could , but i guess my profile picture can compensate for that 🌚
Was going down the rabbit hole and found your video and the brief glimpse of obsidian and being offline was exactly what I thought was “correct” for this method Already subscribed, going to install obsidian tomorrow hehe bring on more videos
Very good video and thanks for the recommendations. In the last few days I have watched some of the videos you made and they are well made, especially the video about neural manifolds. I myself am majoring in mathematics and have to say it was one of the best and intuitive videos about manifolds I have ever seen. But just an advice/tip/recommendation: don‘t rush it when you want to convey something. You clearly know a lot and want to say it but sometimes you start to speak very hastily, for example in the middle of this video, but it got better near the end. Same goes for the hand gestures, don‘t overplay it. Otherwise very well made and I hope you continue doing such great videos.
Thank you so much! I'll try to slow it a bit the next time I record footage. The thing is, I naturally “hand-wave” a lot like this in everyday speech (especially when I get excited about something) so it is not an act for camera or anything like that ;) Maybe you are right and I need to be more mindful about them 😅
Thank you! loved the analogy ad dopamine hit comment. I am definitely the lumber jack with the super sharp axe but in my case, I don't really know how to wield it. I desperately need a second brain and know how to capture and store and then access 'stuff' but I lose things, can't remember where I put things and am painfully out of date
Amazing mindset! Thank you so much for share it. I usually keep stuck in this exactly search for "the perfect" in most of softwares... Now, I'm gonna just start! And see your use of obsidian will help a lot Thank you again
Это выглядит странно. Но после долгих просмотров законодателей в построении систем управления личной продуктивностью, обозревателей приложений и авторов вебинаров, было приятно найти автора, который упаковал все в несколько роликов. Спасибо. Арем. Obsidian set - это выше всяких похвал.
Artem, your videos have been so enlightening! Thank you so much for being in this space, and your video on your obsidian workflow helps make it less scary than when I first saw it! Thanks so much! (also, hate to be that guy and I know I'm totally missing the point here, but if you would have any comments on Zettlr, it would be nice haha)
Наконец в Русском сегменте "продуктивности" тоже появляются толковые исследователи, с родным Русским Английским акцентом) А то все приходится смотреть то Red gregory, то Danny hutcher , да Keep productive , да Bryan Jenks и скитаться между приложениями так и не остановившись на одном единственном) 😅👍
I just watched the previous video and learned about Zettelkasten. The whole time I was thinking it sounds a lot like TiddlyWiki. Sure enough there’s TiddlyWiki users doing it already! Since I’m already deep into TiddlyWiki I guess the next step is to see how others are implementing it.
Thinking of transitioning to using obsidian for my next academic year, there is nothing stopping you from using a Onedrive file as the repository for obsidian is there, granting some backup safety and enhanced accessibility to obsidian for free.
Nice take on the “sharpen the saw/axe “ illustration from covey’s book 7 habits. This plus reminding this is about notes and not software is very helpful. Got a subscribe. Look forward to seeing more.
Thank you, Artem. I’ve watched many similar channels lately, looking for three worth my subscription. I mention this because I just subscribed to yours. Cheers. 🧸
Lumberjack is one of my favourite parables! You are hitting the high note - thank you! I have not find a tool that works for me... hoping I can learn mem. Or will stay with Rocketbooks, OneNote, and Readwise. And paper! Subscribed!
Excellent video. After my journey to find the perfect note app, I found the best of all: TXT files combined with a good search app (ripgrep-all, the_silver_searcher and ack). Graphics, backlinks, tags, are implementations - elegant, yes, but - useless. If Luhmann was able to exclusively use small pieces of paper, wooden filing cabinets and pencils, why can't we exclusively use TXT files and a search app?! This was my revelation....
"If something happens to Notion" (or Roam for that mater), if you have backed up your data periodically (the smart thing to do) then you would have all your notes in your PC or on a cloud service in Markdown format. Even with Obsidian you should be making a backup and put it online or on an external drive in case your PC crashes and dies and you loose all your information. Its a double edged sword.
I have been using OneNote since 2006 and it served me extremely well but like you are mentionning, I never liked the fact that my files are not on my hard drive and I am still upset I wasn't able to export my file from the old OneNotes to the cloud version. Obsidian seems to have all the features OneNote has so I might give it a try especially since it might be possible to migrate my notes and possibly my old non cloud OneNotes.
Dude, everything in this video is me and the mistakes I made and lessons I learned along the way. Maybe I should RU-vid my decisions so I can see how others lives through them next time hahaha
I understand what you are saying about searching for the perfect app, just get started, any application will do if it works for your Slipnotes. My concern is the longevity and transfer-ability of my notes. If I place my notes in the application of my choice, am I guaranteed to always have access to my notes if something catastrophic happens? Should your determination of which app to use depend on keeping your notes on a database on a platform or should you always keep local files copies or do both?
I'd say it depends on your attitude towards Zettelkasten, namely, how serious you want to approach it. If you are just playing around to see whether such a system is even for you, you are testing if you can stick to it or not, etc (which is totally cool!), then don't sweat it - use whichever online/offline app you like. If, however, you have made a decision to commit to building an external brain as an investment and you know that you’ll probably keep doing it for a while - consider transitioning to a future-proof option now, to save time and nerves in the future.
Obsidian is not that future proof as you think. That's because markdown files have conventions of syntax only for basic stuff, like bold, italic etc. There's no universal syntax for highlights, for example. Or for backlinks, which is bad news for note takers. When you open a MD file, the backlinks are inserted with Obsidian convention for backlings (i.e, [[note]] format), which is of course not recognized by any other software I know. To use these backlinks you'll have to write scripts that convert the Obsidian format to other formats, which is not easy to do I guess, I'm not a programmer. That's why I think Obsidian is as bad as Notion when we're talking about future proofing. You can export the notes from Notion to MD format too, but you lose a lot of syntax that MD doesn't support. So those files won't be recognized by any other software. You'll have to fiddle with the API and stuff, or again write a script. Which gets us back to the same problem that Obsidian has.
I have been thinking abt focusing on use either notion or obsidian for my second brain, I like the connection between devices in notion but I also like the simplicity and grph view on obsidian. I really want to use obsidian as my second brain but I'm scared If my device suddenly broke or stolen, does it means storing on the obsidian is having more risk than storing it online like on the notion ?
I was looking for an app to do a project on and my priorities were: - it has to run on my smartphone - I have to have control of my data - it has to be transportable across devices - I prefer open source software So I went for Tiddlywiki which works for me and I get to tinker with the system too.
The problem with obsidian is 1. Sync is expensive $8 compared to $2 with bear. 2. No web app 3. Publish is an extra fee they should have included it in the $8. 4. It’s an electron app can be laggy sometimes. 5. Not open source which they claim. If you’re on iCloud you can sync. 6. The phone app is mediocre.
ikr, if publishing was inside that 8USD package I would consider paying for sync. Altough I would kick Publishing out if I could get more storage space on the cloud, 10GB per vault is nothing compared to the unlimimted storage from Notion and Roam, and to the 1TB I get with OneNote (since I have a microsoft subscription). Also, in order to get Obsidian to its fullest capacities, many plugins have to be installed (I had to install a plugin to make tables, and still tables do not look too good nor feel intuitive) when in other apps those features come pre-installed. I guess its one of those things where no app is perfect, and anyone who tells you otherwise does not know what they are talking about. One must choose the one which pros' outweight the cons, taking into account personal needs and use cases.
Also, would like to recommend Joplin. Similar to Evernote, can sync across your devices for free (assuming you handle your cloud storage), only issue is you have to learn a little bit of HTML, for instance to highlight something you have to put and -_-
@@AndresIbanezVasquez I used Joplin for like a year. It does a good job, it's not as polished as obsidian. There are not as many plugins as obsidian. I think for those that don't mind the polish, emacs org-roam looks promising.
"What if I take notes in the wrong app and the headings are not properly stylized?! It would be a disaster!" Glad to know I'm not the only one who suffers intense episodes of customization-optimization paralysis.
Search for the perfect app: go analog. The whole point of this system is mind mapping. By searching through an imperfect analog system, you see cards you’re not looking for and refreshing and strengthening the synapse that links the memories. Digital can’t do that. It’s just a organization method in digital. You lose all the benefits that make the system revolutionary
Wow! It’s nice to hear that it works for you! I’ve actually tried emacs a couple of times, but the learning curve was a bit too steep. I guess, I’m more of a GUI fan
4:13 yes you are right here but theres a external problem to all the apps out there THEY ARE SO BADLY DONE There is so much choise too that you cant find a well program/coded note_takiing app easely. BEFOR i knew about your obsidian setup with the zettle kasten methode i was hopeless to find a good app ... sync on all device ... managin tthem, etc Most ofthem cantbe use alone due to feature lack ....everyone of them have this big problem (fucking phone apps garbage store for everyone to make bullshit) It was way to much just to take simple notes here and there .... so it wasnt even worth using an app to take some notes .... Evernote is good (the best i knew) but Inever use it either because much missing usefull option and or configurations and i found trello witch i used a lot for note taking andproject managing ! still now for ongoin projects since I found the zettle kasten and obsidian methode YOUR OBSIDIAN SETUP VIDEO ... ALL OTHER app goes to garbage and now im just and only using obsidian in tendem with CodeEditors and other usefull things so versatil and modulable its perfect i dont need trello too anymore as there are plugin doing the same in obsi you said really good point about cloud and monthly cost app (...like wtf xD ... at some point ... ) Obsidian Is REALLY GREAT
