Notion vs Obsidian // Databases vs Dataview 

I switched from Notion to Obsidian recently. With Obsidian, I spend less time creating the perfect system and can really focus on the content of my notes. Still, the Notion databases are a great way to organise our work and the Obsidian Dataview plugin looks very interesting, thanks for sharing!

As a PhD student I prefer Notion because of the ability to embed anything and the multiple integrations with other plateforms (GitHub, overleaf, slack, etc). It took me a week to build my perfect PhD page but it was totally worth it. Inside that page I also have a mind map/ “brain” view of my literature review since I embedded my Litmaps profile. In addition, collaborating with my supervisors is extremely easy via my notion page.

This was really interesting to me because when you were explaining I totally thought "oh, Obsidian seems like a better option," but when I actually sat down and compared, I found that Notion made a lot more sense for me and my note-taking style. :) Plus I love the cute customization options that (for the time being) Notion just has more of. Just shows how everyone's brain works differently! Thanks for the neat and comprehensive video. Now if only Notion had a thought-web template.......

You have a gift to explain things in a very simple and relatable way. Thank you for this amazing video 🙏

when you started creating custom “variables” and sorting the data automatically, I was sold a thousand times over. this honestly seems more flexible than Notion? in the way it can be modified on the fly, seemingly disparate data can be connected over time, etc. way too cool!

Nicole, thanks for all the Obsidian videos you have made. I watched and re-watched many of them and they really helped me get to know the program well and develop my own workflow. I have your Obsidian playlist bookmarked :) Your content is spot on, the videos are very well thought trough, shot and presented. The delivery is very natural and relatable. I like that your videos don't have all that PKM and productivity ideology included. I feel many of the RU-vid creators dealing with Obsidian are obsessed with it and it's really irritating when I hear another Zettelkasten mention. You deal with the practical side of productivity. Halfway trough this video I thought of writing a comment that maybe a blog post dealing with the dataview practicalities would be nice, but you already thought of that and are making videos about it. Can't wait :) Thanks again and keep up the good work.

Can’t wait for your Dataview deep dive! Your explanations are clear as a bell, which is much appreciated even to this dev.

Great little toe dip into Dataview. I’ve used notion for a couple years and switched to obsidian in Jan 22. I’m fairly technical and that’s helped a lot. Obsidian tbh has been harder to wrap my head around than notion as it’s far more open in terms of flexibility. Notion is great for building a system for beginners as it’s limitations can help decision making, however like you allude to it sucks when you want to add unplanned functionality. Obsidian, as scared as a blank page can initially be, is light years ahead of Notion purely because you really can build any system in it. I’m excited about it’s potential and the fact that my data is my data makes it all the sweeter. Thanks for your vids, they will help build our community and open data movement

"What if you just want a list of everything that you did in 2021?.... Then Notion would struggle with that" Nope. You just create a master list, then use linked databases and filters. Or you can group the master list by year. That way you have a nice and clear list of what you've done in each month. And that's what I really love about Notion. You can just pull up the same data and set it to view however you want. You can also create relations between two separate databases. That way things stay connected. However. As you've mentioned, it's all about finding the tool that matches the way you think. But we also have to keep in mind that one is to manage tasks, projects, and team collaborations. The other is a text-based system to store text-based content. Hence, why both of them serve different purposes and are built in entirely different ways.

As a dreadfully scatter brained creative type, Obsidian seems perfect as a tool to help me string my many interests together in a way that's free flowing like I am. This vid made it crystal what the best option is for the way I think and process information. Thanks so much for sharing this perspective!

I've recently discovered Obsidian and your channel. I love the concept of connecting things and growing a system. I'm just uhh... anxious (I guess) about not knowing where everything is, the fact of having an unorganized mess scares me😅. I know that's not what obsidian is encouraging with it's bottom to top approach, but I need the structure... *Starts panicking over how my brain works*

I like the way you’re presenting! After discovering obsidian your videos were very helpful and motivated me to just start using it. I love it and can’t imagine how I managed things without it before. It was a mess of notes over different tools

Love the explanation and how clearly you present the different functionalities and the logic behind them! As it happens, this only makes me happier to be using Notion, I feel uncomfortable when my notes lack structure personally, I like to know where to find things and for them to stay put lol

This is exactly the same way I feel about Notion since the first day I used it, but I just could not define it: you always feel that something is missing, and that your system is not good enough, and you allways try to make it better. The long story short, instead of focusing on what you must do, you waste so much time learning about the system and the software itself. I'm sad I did not discover this earlier, but at the same time I am happy I discovered it now, and I will use it from now on! Great videos about Obsidian, thank you very much for your efforts, you are doing an amazing job!

As a long-time Notion user, I've been itching to get a better system for quick notes and the more free-flowing thoughts and ideas that I have, and trying to figure out how Notion and Obsidian would fit into that. I wasn't wanting a comparison of features, just a better idea of how I should approach knowledge management between the two systems, so this video was exactly what I was looking for - thank you! I will add that Notion's relational database features work well to structure and link ideas after the fact, as in your "everything I did in 2021" example. This is very much possible, but can be cumbersome and frustrating, which is why I've been looking more into Obsidian. Thanks for your helpful comparison and insights! I really appreciated your approach to this topic. Well done :)

the need to have a "predefinied filing system" is exactly why I've always struggled with note taking. Especially the fact can a note can belong to multiple categories. Seems like Obsidian is the way to go for me, thank you very much for your insights!

I really like that your videos are short but chock-full of great info. I am learning a lot, thanks Nicole! When I was trying to learn Notion, it occurred to me that instead of just using the tool, I have to design a data model, tables (databases, relationships), and an application. What I wanted to do was just to store and organize my notes, not design my own app. So I turned to other tools and found (and really liking) Obsidian.

感谢作者，获益良多。目前俩个工具都在使用中。 对我来说，notion就是一个轻量版excel和团队协作工具。obsidian才是笔记和写作工具，真正的第二大脑。 translate by google： Thank you to the author. Both tools are currently in use. To me, notion is a lightweight version of Excel and a team collaboration tool. The obsidian is the note-taking and writing tool, the true second brain.

Nicole is not only a great teacher, a great communicator, but the sound of her voice has also a calming and encouraging effect. I feel more intelligent just by watching the videos. 😂

You did such a great job explaining the differences. This is how I wouldve explained it if I used obsidian as well. However I still think notion is probably better. Having intentionality with how you organzie data is a true skill and I think not having that skill in obsidian would lead to less productiveness. I feel like I am able to learn more by chunking knowledge into my brain by being intentional about how I set it up in notion. While the nodes graph looks cool in obsidian... and it does kind of look like a neural network.. that doesn't mean it is actually more effective. Synpases are placed in the brain in chunks and in proximity of each other for efficiency, it's not a model of how learning works. I feel like not having a good grip on how to organize content will just lead to things getting messier, since you would... have to go back and search through all these notes to add tags to them. Obsidian does seem better for someone who has no idea what they want to build and just wants a place to put down notes randomly. But I think the real learning comes from actively understanding how to dichotomize content.

This video was pivotal in me switching to obsidian a couple years ago. I have been using it consistently over the past 2 years and haven't looked back!

I really enjoyed this! As someone who struggles with organization, finding an app that can help me store information in a way that is familiar to me has been a struggle. I eventually actually found Notion and Obsidian before even finding this video, but found Notion better to use. I find this interesting because I have ADHD, and my thoughts are often weirdly interconnected, so I initially thought that Obsidian's more brain-like structure would work better for me, yet Notion's organization turned out to be exactly what I needed in order to keep things stored. The problem for me is that if I am given an opportunity to do something later, I will never end up doing it. So the idea of not putting my thoughts into a category immediately means I will *never* categorize them, meaning I'll end up with a terrible jumble. So being forced to categorize by Notion actually helps me, and then being able to search and have linked databases allows me the connectivity that I need. Also, it's been PERFECT for running my D&D games.

This is an outstanding video for comparing Notion with Obsidian + Dataview. Thank you for creating and uploading this. I switched to Obsidian several months ago and would have loved to have found a video like this. I learned by poking around and experimenting, which in itself is helpful, but you do a great job showing how the two systems compare which will undoubtedly help people decide which of the two great services is best for them.

This was a fantastic video to illustrate the differences between these tools, and how different people might use them. Some look at Notion's hierarchical page-in-page structure and find it limiting; for me it feels organized. Some look at Obsidian's interconnected graph view and consider it freeing; for me it looks like chaos and makes me want to scream. It's great that there are tools which can accomodate the different ways in which people think!

That’s the best description of the Notion v Obsidian differences that I’ve heard…top-down v bottoms-up. I recently bailed on Notions and now I have a better idea of how to approach Obsidian for my personal use. Thanks…and you’re really really good at this!

Thank you so much for such great, vivid and substantial comparison.

For the longest time I kept going back and forth between them. Just recently I've found a happy medium and am using them both. Essentially, I'm using Notion to catalog and collect information from books, videos, articles, etc because I love sticking them in lists/tables/galleries. It's basically my raw info archive. Then I use Obsidian to take notes on them so I can take full advantage of Obsidian's tagging feature. So far so good. :) Also, your graph view is beautiful. I look forward to the day mine starts looking like that :D

thanks for this short but deep, insightful explanation of differences between those 2 tools. the best comparison I have ever seen and saves me a lot of time from further reviewing other comparison videos. thank you again.

How do you think Notion’s ability to link pages, blocks and databases compares to obsidian? I haven’t seen anyone discuss this. Most channels act as if notion can’t link content. Idk why? Is it that inconvenient?

Omg SO glad I found your video after not vibing with the Notion videos I’ve been watching. I don’t need to be more meticulous to be better at project management jobs - I need to encourage my brain to be more creative and stop fitting into boxes while still finding a way to organize it all. Thank you!!!!!

You put a lot of care and thought into your videos, and it really shows - thank you! Trying to wrap my head around dataview 😵 This is a helpful step 🙏 Thank you, Nicole!

This is exactly the video I needed! I started with Obsidian a few weeks ago and I was wondering what can I do with Dataview - now it's crystal clear. Thanks Nicole!

Thank you so much for the video! It was well structured and i like how you show examples of each program. I also like your voice - it has a very calming effect :)

This is exactly the kind of overview I needed - the database vs. dataview. I'm definitely more in the camp of Obsidian then. Started using Notion a bit but haven't delved into it much, seemed way too complex.

Thank you so much for your video. I started with Notion 2 years ago and was excited about the structuring possibilities. Unfortunately, Notion often got in my way because I had to change the whole folder system because I liked another one better. I've been using Obsidian for 2 weeks now and I'm thrilled. Your videos help me a lot to get along with this quite special program and to get a foothold. I wish I had known before that my chaotic brain does not get along with the rigid folder structure of Notion...

Revisiting this a few months after making the switch from Notion to Obsidian. I have found Obsidian to be so much more practical and it has really increased my organization and productivity. Thanks for getting me started!

I'm glad I found this, was trying to find a new way to organize and take notes that wasn't so structured like Notion so I think Obsidian is exactly what I was looking for!

Nicole, thanks so much for all you do and for this video. Years ago I thought I had found the perfect tool -- Notion -- after playing around with so many others like The Brain and DevonThink, among so many more. I put off using Obsidian because I am not a programmer and I thought the complexity would slow me down. What actually slowed me down is exactly what you were describing in this video -- in Notion having to know what you want at the very start. Add to that the desire to over-customize, over-add tags, over-organize, and spending hours making changes that really kept me from doing what I wanted to do. Obsidian is kind of down and dirty, and I love it. I make a note, if there's a connection I connect, if I want to categorize something I add a tag. I'm still in the process of learning and falling off the bike, but your videos are my training wheels and they make it less painful and much more enjoyable. Plus, you infuse joy without "over hype" and faux excitement.

you can have one page in three folders in Notion, you just use a link. And earlier today, I decided that I would just use one database for everything in Notion. This view of Obsidian sounds interesting, although somewhat daunting. In some ways, things sound native to obsidian that are hacks and adaptations in Notion. But I suspect I'm best served in Notion for now, waiting for the moment where I grow out of it. I've been trying this api stuff in Notion, and it's always so limited. You have amazing tools... that can only interact in a very limited fashion. I hope I end up in Obsidian.

That was a great comparison. Keep in mind that it bearly scratches the surface on both tools, especially with the wide variety of plugins in Obsidian. For example, there is the tasks plugin for extensive task management (including query code especially for tasks, i.e. "tasks not done due after today due before in one week"). Or a plugin to give you notion-like database functionality. Or todoist integration, if you wanted, etc.

You've sold me on Obsidian! I've probably watched a dozen vids on it and your explanations really made it click.

In Notion, you don't have to know where you want to put things. Why can't you just create an "_Incubation" or "_Unsorted" folder(s) at the top to hold your notes that you don't know yet where to put them? You can decide later. And you can just use the Wiki feature to get the hyperlinked/interconnectivity in Notion.

You continue to deliver super content on PKM. I love the way you think and analyze things. Thank you so much for sharing your insights - they are great and reflect exactly my thinking too! It is rare in this time of the Attention Economy to find someone like you who delivers so much in such a short period - via RU-vid!

Great video - I’ve been using Obsidian for over 6 mo now, and whilst I never got into Notion, I share why you like Obsidian. It’s really about how to bring structure to unstructured data - and obsidian does that brilliantly as you get across with your example. Thanks !

I'm just starting out with notetaking and organizing. You're video helped convince me that Obsidian is the right choice. Thank you for making these wonderful tools accessible to the less tech-savy. You're an absolute delight!

Best soft soft tutorial for beginners on RU-vid! I'm an absolute beginner and all the other tutorials I've found on RU-vid have been so

Wow, the first half of this video perfectly encapsulated my way of thinking, and why Obsidian is better for it. The half dozen or so videos I watched prior that explicitly did that comparison didn't do nearly so straightforward a job. I'm binging your videos because you've done a great job of really maintaining a "how my brain works" perspective, even when in tutorials. And your production quality is excellent. Thank you for it!

For who want to use notion: It's possible to cross reference pages in notion between folders and also in databases, you can't move pages between folder because it's not necessary if you just cross link.

You brought up a very good point which is "how is your brain working". Your way to do things bottom to top is basically impossible to grasp for me; because I cannot conceive to make a note about something without knowing what that "something" actually is for. So in my case, I don't think in terms of taking notes and arrange them later; I think like I have a topic I want to take notes of, so I already know what is going to be as far as "category" before I even put my pen on the paper (metaphorically speaking). When you structure your thought before you start to work, you focus on what you want to do. This is what engineers and other people usually do before starting to work. While for creatives, the approach of Obsidian make more sense: you get an idea, have no clue what is all about so you jot it down and go from there. Eventually you need to retrieve that idea and tie it to other ideas; which is simplified by adding tags, so everything is interconnected and you can query that idea easily from the ton of items you have in your backlog. So in the end it is basically a matter of how does your brain work in the end, and what kind of work are you doing, when you sit down and decide to take a note of. For some, the rigid approach of structured thoughts from the beginning like Notion is much more akin to them, while for others, the freedom to think about anything at a later time, and focus on the moment of that thought you jot down, is more akin to them.

I had several attempts switching from Notion to Obsidian. Two times were real pain, since I wanted to use the Obsidian as is. But finally I have discovered the power of plugins, especially the dataview. It changes everything! Now I have pages generated automatically. Pages that summarize all my notes, projects and other stuff by tags and much more. I am still in process but now I really start realizing how easier is it to save a note in Obsidian. Just open and type anything. Put tag "inbox" if you are not sure where to put the note, otherwise I have notes, projects, profiles, etc.

I'm just moving into Obsidian from Notion and other note taking apps. This video was super helpful, thank you so much!

Something that helped me make the switch to obsidian was realising that the way I organise files eg on iCloud didn’t match how I was trying to organise them on notion. I’m a dump everything into downloads and search for what I need type person, not a crest a folder for everything and have a meticulous naming system for my files type person. Using tags,links and now this video helping me jump into the data view plugin just matches how my brain naturally works in a way that notion never did. I found I was always hunting for the “perfect” database or note style and would get annoyed when I needed certain categories for some notes eg wanting a web link that I wouldn’t for others within a data base. I don’t need the textbook page on a database entry for a website, but if they’re all part of learning a certain Korean grammar point, I’m going to have that field sitting there anyway and it just got too cumbersome and confusing for me so I ended up just..not taking notes because I couldn’t work out a system. In obsidian, I’ve already taken so many notes in just a few days even though I don’t really know what I’m doing. But every day I learn a new skill or new piece of markdown and the notes from that day onwards have extra data or connection added to them.

great video with clear explanation! I have used both, Obsidian has absurd learning curve which means, spending far more time perfecting how something may look or feel rather than concentrating on the note itself. There are basic things that it still cannot do but it is powerful in many other ways. Notion on the other hand is far quicker, stays away from hindering your thought process. I loved your video especially cause it happens to be the difference between SQL and NoSQL

wow, I was impressed about how you manage to create tables within Obsidian, I changed obsidian to Notion recently because the iCloud Drive sync wasn't working on my devices. Great video BTW

I tried it year ago. Didn't like it maybe my approach were wrong. But now your explanation has inspired me once again. I'll try it now. Thanks

Really well done! I watched many videos on the justification, and you said “Bottom-up”. I need both for my book and content creation. Thank you!

Thank you for your sharing, it help a lot when I confused in how to choose the right tool in different situation.

Dataview concept, mind blown 💡 this is what I exactly wanted.. Good stuff Nicole. Thanks !

I'm glad I've found this channel. Incredible insight! Thank you for this.

wow.. thank you.. Ive NEEDED this for many decades and tried a few times but the whole 'making a database' thing just never happened.. I love the idea of actually having one but i have a hyperconnected superfluid for a brain so they changed on each line.. this looks like ti will finally help me to cross pollinate my creative worlds.. sooo exciting...

Very helpful from the mindset and technical aspects. Easy to understand your specific example. Thanks a bunch! Just a sidenote that I think the syntax has changed, perhaps with a newer version of Obsidian? This is the syntax which worked for me: ```dataview TABLE type as "TYPE" where date=2022 ```

Omg this is the exact video I needed to watch - I can still see how Notion might be better for specific databases I’d want to keep but I’ve been trying to find the best way to use Notion as a real planner/calendar/personal database for years and I always get frustrated bc almost all systems have this rigidity of needing to build top down. Downloading obsidian immediately and super excited to see how I can build a system that actually works w the chaos of my brain so I don’t have to rely on a spurt of motivation for an organization overhaul every few months that starts from scratch

Nice job articulating the foggy areas in a way that really puts them into focus!

Hello Nicole, thanks for your videos! I have a question, which app did you use for the explanation at 6:18 ? thanks

Hi Nicole, I discovered your channel independently of Sly Flourish, but really awesome that you are there. Really looking forward to your Dataview video. I can see that it is immensely powerful, but I'm a bit daunted by the syntax etc.

Can't help but notice that you might possibly maybe be a tiny bit biased in the 'choosing which is better for you' section... I have been a notion user for the last 2 years, I've been trying to switch to Obsidian because I want control of my files and offline editing, but just about everything I like about notion seems to be more of a hassle or just downright missing from obsidian.. Maybe my experience with Notion has been better because I knew what I wanted from the start, but it has been working for far more than a "very specific and limited use case". (for anyone wondering, I keep most things in a single database, then filter it with views based on tags. Kind of like with dataview but way more intuitive imo). We have different use cases, and that's fine, but I feel you were not very fair to Notions strengths and versatility.

Thank you so much for this video and the Dataview for Beginners, as a non-programmer this has been super helpful. Also do you mind sharing what light theme are you using? It is very comfortable to the eye, I have a pretty annoying astigmatism and is hard to find good non-dark themes

Great video! I just got SilentNotes to capture thoughts and tasks during the day and remembered that I'd downloaded Obsidian quite a few months ago and hadn't done much with it. This is the second video I found comparing Notion vs. Obsidian (a friend in the gaming industry recommended I look at Notion) and it was quite helpful. I'm looking forward to checking out your other Obsidian videos!

Thank you. This is the first video that has made the benefits clear to me. I appreciate you!

My Notion-setup is pretty similar to what you are describing with Obsidian + dataview. I have a single place for notes and ideas. Inside each note I have a property ield for context. It might be a meeting, media, note or what have you. It also includes bunch of other data, like date, people involved and so forth. I can then make queries to that database based on various criteria.And if I come up with a new idea, I can easily add more property fields. I would really like to use Obsidian over Notion, as there are many aspects in Obsidian that appeal to me. But I use Notion largely for personal tracking, and doing that in Notion is quite hard. I mean things like expense-tracking, various metrics (workouts, weight etc.). In notion I can have a dedicated databases for each, which I can the filter and query as needed. And I also like to do daily tracking, which feed data to weekly tracking, which feed data to monthly tracking, from there to quarterly tracking and finally to yearly tracking. Doing that in Obsidian seems very difficult. Believe me, I tried to make it work. Although it was a year ago, maybe I should give it another shot.

You made me switch to obsidian! Your examples are concise and you are very articulate. Thanks very much 😊

For anyone trying this in 2024, the Obsidian layout has changed and Dataview now cares about data types. For example without defining date as a number, 2024 will be a string. So either click on the symbol next to the date field and set it to number or make it like the person example and put quotes around the text you are searching for ```dataview TABLE date as "Date" where contains(date,"2024") ```

Hi Nicole! Thank you so much for your effort in making these videos. Obsidian is new to me, but in combination with the data view, it is simply amazing. There are so many uses for this! Learning this setup right this minute. Subscribed.

Don’t forget that you can still create relations for different databases in Notion and why it so far worked for me.m but really enjoying to see how dataview in Obsidian works. So far I enjoyed the top down structed flow with Notion but I am slowly seeing that when data reaches a certain level it becomes complicated.

I haven’t used notion for very long and have liked what others have made using but now looking at obsidian, I’m thinking of trying it out. It does seem to work like my brain works. Thank you for a wonderful video and explanation

Thanks for the good overview of the two systems. =) I keep most of my notes in Evernote. But it's an almost perfect digital analogy for the piles of papers on my desk. New stuff gets put on top, and then slowly gets buried until it gets fossilized. I tried playing with Notion, but got overwhelmed by the need to write a project proposal to decide on the database structure before I can actually put content in. Then after on-boarding a little bit, write another project proposal to modify the database structure. Oh, and then start a project to format the pages... Obsidian sounds like it might help keep relevant stuff available while not needing to hand-carve the box it's going into.

Dataviews solve my problem. The problem is, Notion and Obsidian are two completely different applications. Notion is centered around note-taking and collaboration whereas Obsidian looks like a documentation tool. I'd love to be able to use Obsidian like Notion; in the browser and collaboratively.

"So on one hand, we have Notion with a very organized, structured hierarchy of data that, while you're creating it, encourages you to decide on what's important." I think the problem with notion is not "hierarchy of data" , in Notion database everything is too compartmentalized in the sense all your notes/data entry look like atom in which u need to manually link it to other note(be it other database or same database ) .On the other hand , the process of finding connecting is automated in obsidian , you just need to manually approve the connections . The linear view of Notions or the compartmentalization can be a strength as you said " personal Wiki around a very small narrow area of expertise" It is the supreme if u wanna zoom in and have a clear target about your studies . TQ for your insights , i guess i will continue use Notion for my law studies and literature notes whereas obsidian for general knowledge managements.

This is exactly what I was hoping to learn, thank you so much for sharing!

Databases with relations in Notion are great and can help to build nice clean system of notes. But I encountered with the speed issue in Notion. I'm building my database with 8 relations and couple of formulas and the database is already lagging. Do you have experience with the speed in Obsidian?

Great video, Nicole, thanks for laying out the differences! I'm switching over from Notion to Obsidian now and getting all that content over is harrowing, but I'm already loving how much easier it is to get from note to note.

Basically, I agree with your analysis. However, by using a master database and a "multi-select" property for tags you can achieve a very similar working structure. Moreover, you do not have to use all these cryptic hashtags, brackets etc. which do render texts sometimes barely readable. That said (and do not get me wrong), Obsidian is a really great tool and you describe the way how to work with it perfectly.

I LOVE how you explain things so simply!

Hi Nicole and many thanks. Please make an extensive review on Dataview (for non programmers). I am still confused between Regex and Dataview results. THANK YOU!!!

Beautiful & very amazing video thank you very much!! at 6:05 that situation is a "little bit" false however, you can simply create a new field in one of the object called 2021, which will make a page called 2021. All items with the 2021 fields will also populate on that 2021 page automatically. I DONT want to prove you wrong or discredit what you said however, it's just a tiny mistake in your video I thought I would point out. I'm using both Notion and Obsidian myself! for the exact reason you mentioned at the beginning!

Hey Nicole, thank you for your very good presentation! How do you sync obsidian? With the pay-option... maybe with git? Do you have some tricks for that? Warm regards

NI Nicole ! I really like your videos, I've watched a bunch of them. You explain very well and it's very pleasant to watch. I think I'm in the same situation as some people here : I'm using Notion for work and personal, I like it mostly for the task management and for the notes that are more "solid" or not evergreeen notes. But I get really frustrated with Notion with the lack of flexibility, as you said sometimes you start writing a note but you don't know where to put it. And/or I take daily notes with maybe relevant informations but it's quite impossible to find them afterward, or really difficult. And it seems that Obsidian offers that flexibility, especially with the use of hashtags. I often find myself wanted to switch to obsidian but afraid to have to do it all again, export all my notes and everything from Notion to Obsidian. Maybe I should use both at the same time (I double the work but ..) and see how I feel about it. Anyway, again thank you very much for the great contents you're creating.

Thanks Nicole, I have used Notion for most things and find it's information management style intuitive and easy to understand, but it's good to know there is an alternative out there which may be more suitable for other types of knowledge aggregation. Good video, Thanks !

It looks great when you do it, Nicole, lol ... I look at my blanc and empty Obsidian install, listen to the sound of crickets for a bit and go nah... I don't know where to start!

I feel like one of Notions big benefits is that everything is in one place. In my opinion the vault system is quite intimidating, especially since if you have little experience, it can seem like you’re messing up your actual files. At the same time, for people that have that experience that can also be a benefit tho.

Thank you so much! I am glad I found this video. I was wanting to start a second brain in notion. But after seeing your videos, Obisidian will be way better to store and retrieve everything in my life! Now on to installing Obsidian :)

Your videos on Obsidian are briliiantly informative, thanks

Wow, this is the first video that made me understand the advantages of Obsidian over Notion. Awesome, thank you!

Very very nice point of view, this is a great insight to help people choose: I have been using Notion for a few months in a very no-professional way (I keep track of my interests, notes, project drafts...) but I am very curios in exploring Obisidian, and your "key view" is really helplfull to approach the tool in the write manner. I thing that Thiago Forte did something similar to yours (grouping possible users of this kind of tools in: Architect, Gardener and Explorer), but this video is very effective. Thx

Even with the new features in Notion, I still use both it and Obsidian for now. Notion for daily planner and general life info, and Obsidian as my commonplace book for thoughts, quotes and whatnot.

Since you can organize notion anyway you like, mine is totally organized in related databases, this way I can relate each note to different areas and as many tags as I want, using a master tag database and an areas database. I really like this way to organize my "second brain", Obsidian looks much more confusing.

Each system has it's own charm I assume. These days I mostly use Obsidian rather than notion because of the fact that you've mentioned in this vid. Bottom up approach is more natural to common person like me rather than top down style which I should come up with some core ideas at the first place and making a solid structure at the beginning is quite demanding. But I could utilize Notion when I need to store some solid chunk of data. And making them connected top down way with all kinds of property means a lot when it comes to scholastic learnings like some majors in college.

Notion's Databases are supposed to be their headline feature yet every single timeI try to use them I want to jump out a window. What /I could do in 5 minutes in Google Sheets often takes me hours or days to figure out in Notion, and that's if I'm lucky and it is doable. Often times what I want to do isn't even doable! I use Notion because it gives me the ability to mix text and tables and links in a wiki style that lets me organize everything but I feel like I'm fighting it more than I'm using it. Definitely looking for something - heck anything - else at this point so going to try Obsidian. I've used it a bit for plain text notes but that's about it.

Right from the start - I think you are right, notion isn't the right tool; and you can have the "same" content with different attributes on different pages. You can follow the second brain approach and tag your notes (yt watch, yt create...) and can use them even booth. Just create a DB-view on the specific Subpage and filter by tag. Same with every note, thought, sketch...

Great work, very insightful, I speciailly find the concept of dataview very exciting