Obsidian

Obsidian is where I store my knowledge. I use it as a tool for writing, for storing information and knowledge, and for remembering. The main point of using obsidian is that it is living on your personal computer, can be treated as a good tool for writing quickly and also can be integrated with a lot of different tools, which probably is a huge advantage.

Pros and Cons

The best thing about Obisidian is its ease of customization. The second is how easy it is to store and share the files. It's all markdown anyway, so fixing them is not that big of a deal. I think Obisian is not good as a tool for sharing knowledge and collaboration. It is meant to be a single-user tool. Furthermore, I find it less than useful for writing plain text.

Obsidian for the curious new user.

Starting obsidian can be a bit difficult, where the amount of customization and possibilities make it difficult to grasp your head around. The advantage of obsidian, however, is that you don't need a lot of knowledge to get started. My journey in obsidian started very simply and expanded. Here are some learnings from this journey.

1. Start with something simple and expand from there. I started working mostly using the daily notes feature to create a small overview of things I wanted to do each day. From there on, I expanded and removed unnecessary items. Then, I started working more on a personal knowledge base.
2. Experiment with Templates Templates are the natural next step in learning obsidian. By using templates, you can quickly determine what you need.
3. Make Obsidian a routine for your daily workflow. I combined Obisidian with my Alfred workflow to quickly jot down notes from the day or things I wanted to do. I work a lot on noting down thoughts and use these notes together with tags and some routines to expand. Combined with daily notes, I could quickly write down ideas or others and store them in the Obsidian Vault
4. Get familiar with markdown. Learn the markdown syntax; it will help you get started quickly. Also, get familiar with hotkeys in Obsidian to get quickly up and running.
5. Enjoy and Explore One of the coolest things in Obsidian is the plugins, templates, and workflows that can make your life easier and make Obisidan even more powerful.

Remember, I would reiterate that Obsidian is an awesome tool for working by yourself, but it is not optimal for collaboration. Sharing my notes, posts, and articles was usually difficult (So I made my own webpage to share with others quickly). It is also a bit of a challenge to get up and running, especially if you want to customize early. Copy-pasting templates might be useful, but there are usually some bugs or issues that will leave you debugging for a long time if you copy another person's template. Take it easy, make it a habit to jot down what you learn, and then add on as necessary.

The Digital Garden

Obsidian was a good place to write and record the information. To easily share what I have written, I wanted to create a website where it is easy to navigate and find the things I wanted to share; I made a docusaurus static website. It also helps me revise as I can visit the website on my phone and see what I have written with Fresh Eyes. I feel like this is a good way of recording what I have done and the migrations have been a success for the most part.

Plugins

Plugin Name	Checked	Used	Comment
dataview	Yes	Yes	Very cool, but not something one should start with. It is super powerful when you learn it, but it is only effective when you have gained some knowledge and skill using obsidian. I only started using it proactively after I had worked with Obisidain for about a year. I use it for understanding what articlese I have not finished and what I can work more on.
homepage	No	No
calendar	No	No
table-editor-obsidian	No	No
Periodic-notes	Yes	Yes	This is a good add-on, I use it probably every day.
obsidian-dice-roller	No	No
obsidian-dictionary-plugin	No	No
obsidian-kanban	No	No
obsidian-languagetool-plugin	No	No
obsidian-linter	No	No
quickadd	Yes	Yes	Very very good plugin, must have. Makes it so much easier to add new articles based on templates or other.

Obsidian is the tool I use for storing information and writing down the experiences and knowledge I accumulate.

I strive to write something in Obisidian every day, following my [[Personal#Workflow]] where I strive to create, update and enhance at least once.

Daily notes

I use obsidian daily notes to describe my day, and how I feel, and create a TODO list for today. I use the workflow for Obsidian ([[Alfred#Alfred Workflows]]) in Alfred to capture my workday and small notes to myself. It is also used as a way for me to remember small things and recap my day. At the end of the day, I write a review of the day and score the mood, productivity, and overall score for the day. The score is between 1 and 10 and is meant to follow a normal distribution, with 5 being a completely average day. The review is helpful to me as I can use it to unwind and look back and reflect on what I did well and what could be improved.

I find the daily notes to be a helpful and interesting way for me to structure my day, by setting aside time to write down what I have to focus on that day, I prioritize the day and set a clear goal and structure.

Weekly review

Every Sunday, I try to write down a recap of the week, how the week has been and what I have improved on, and what I need to improve for next week. I also create a weekly goal list that should reflect what I wish to accomplish the next week.

Plugins

QuickAdd This is mostly for plugging in templates, I have not experimented a lot with either capture or macros. I like the ability to quickly create notes based on predetermined templates and paths. Periodic Notes are Useful for my weekly and monthly reviews. Dataview: Good for getting an overview when you have a large knowledge base.

Links

• Some Obsidian Hacks
• Obsidian Guides
• Some obsidian and some other shortcuts as well as Alfred
• Nicole van der Hoven has some of the best guides on Obsidian; take note that she has a very advanced setup.
• How to set up a folder for images and other attachments.

Thoughts

• Obsidian is a powerful tool but is limited in collaboration, especially in larger teams. It is at its most potent when you can easily create and enlarge your view and allow the plugins to enable you to improve your notetaking little by little.
• It is not great as a collaboration tool, but the format with markdown files physically makes it hard to sync. And lack of oversight means that I would recommend other tools for working together.
• Don't be afraid to reduce the templates to a bare minimum. It is easy to add new stuff but usually a harder exercise removing things.
• Sometimes the upgrades make it difficult to fix stuff. I had a lot of issues when I made the web-pages. I had to make scripts to make a header at the front of each book review with the title to get the format right.
• Embrace the fact that you will make a lot of changes, and don't let an imperfect start stop you from adding to the value.
• • I find the daily and weekly notes to be quite good at making me more focused on the tasks. The daily works more as a journal with some tasks, while the weekly serves as a reminder and review of where I am meant to be.
• I feel like the more I work in Obsidian, the more I try to simplify and focus on the text above other things.
• Tags are cool, and I try to add as many as possible.
• Obsidian has a lot of ways of publishing the notes, but it does cost a lot.
• The more I work on my digital garden, the more I appreciate limiting the templates to the bare minimum. All my templates have gradually been made more concise and less obtuse. This makes it much more accessible to write things in small batches.
• Properties are awesome, but you should strive to keep them simple. However, do not despair; it is quite easy to make simple scripts to add properties to the YAML properties that you can use to update multiple files together. Also, here, the templater plugin and templates are your friends.