Obsidian
Check out part I here
I talked a little bit about the basics of Obsidian in the last post, and I encourage you to take a look at it here.
The main thing I want to talk about here is that you can connect notes like you want with [[links]], So you can connect notes as you want.
Most of our note apps are mono-directional linked. That means you can link from note A to note B.
A -> B
Obsidian provides the ability to perform bi-directional linking through Backlinks.
It does not only take you from A to B like most notes app, but it also recognizes that if A includes B, it means that B is a part of A. This is very good when the complexity increases.
Individual, unconnected notes are useless, so Obsidian focuses on connections and links between notes, mimicking the billions of neural connections in your brain >
- Hause Lin
You can also put #tags on your notes and then search all notes containing certain tags.
You write markdown files in Obsidian.
Markdown
This was one of the first things that stood out for me when researching Obsidian. I used to write LaTeX while I was finishing my Computer Science degree so I knew the good thing that comes with plain-text formatting syntax.
If you get used to it it will improve your efficiency!
Think about when you have to write something in bold you have to select some pre-setup feature, but with markdown, you can easily just *bold* the text like this.
By formatting text like this, you can be very efficient and quick to write stuff down.
Markdown benefits
- Minimalistic - You will work in a simple and uncluttered workspace, with almost no extra buttons or stuff you have to pay attention to or use.
- Flow - When you don't have to constantly format your text by adding headings, bolding, or adding italics to text you can get to a good flow while writing
- Control - You really can use markdown in whatever editor you like. You can write notes in Obsidian and open your markdown files in VS Code for example.
With all this we can maybe start to look at Obsidian, I will tell you that the learning curve can be quite steep in the beginning.
Obsidian basics
Vault
You will have to create a Vault in the beginning. I would say that it is not bad to have two vaults, maybe one for testing things and another one for you to use. You could have separated vaults for work/school/personal life, but in my opinion, you should just have one for all of that.
Nick Milo has been doing some interesting stuff, not only in the Obsidian community, but he has been working on Linking your Thinking, and he uses Obsidian quite a lot. I recommend his Youtube channel for a lot of content, he also has a Obsidian vault you can download and play around with. But I recommend you spend some time working on your vault before using someone else's template.
Since no one thing works for all of us and your vault will probably change over time, you should start by playing around and adding to your vault.
I can tell you that I quickly saw that my system did not suit me well. So I changed it up and am always trying to improve it.
Now I have MOCs (Map of Contents) as my main notes and I generate notes from that corresponding MOC.
Here is a picture of my MOCs.
I have updated this quite a lot, I have at some time had more MOCs, fewer MOCs, and everything in between. So this is kind of a dynamic in my vault.
I do also have some 'smaller' MOCs under one of these main ones.
My general layout and workflow are continuously improving.
You can see those MOCs on the photo below. even though things look cluttered there is some kind of organization there!
My Vault
All of the notes that are single and not connected to anything in my graph view, will hopefully in some time connect to a MOC.
They are not connected either because I'm not sure where to put them or I want to add more to that note.
However, I can also filter by tags, see here below, and I'm quite sure that all of my notes have at least one tag, so even though they look like they are all alone they do fit close to one of these main MOCs.
Filtered by tags
These notes that do not have any blue-ish note that stands for a tag are all from the Day planner plugin. You can see more about it later, I use it sometimes to plan my day and I feel like I don't need to include any tags there.
Notes
One thing I like and have talked about is that I like the keyboard functionality of Obsidian, by adding keyboard shortcuts I can generate notes in no time.
I've made some templates for different kinds of notes.
These templates all have their specific frontmatter to help me sort them correctly.
Here are my current templates:
- Daily notes I have a pre-made checklist for some tasks I want to do every day, but I also add extra checkboxes for things I want to accomplish any given day.
- Blog posts I am aiming to continue to write more blog posts on this site, so I made a template that has the correct front matter. I use frontmatter for my website, here you can see this post frontmatter.
---
title: 'Building my second brain with Obsidian pt. II'
date: '2021-07-05'
tags: ['PKM', 'growth']
draft: true
summary: 'How I use Obsidian'
---
Frontmatter
- Source This is a note containing content I find something and want to store something from it in my vault. This can be from any source, article, website, podcasts, whatever.
- Note This is just a general note, I use this when I'm not completely sure what I should group this as, I like to start with this and sometimes change it later.
- Books I recently started to write down notes from the books I read, so I made a template where I can fill in the author and much more.
- Projects I almost constantly get good or not-so-good ideas about projects I could do. Even though I will not do anything with them I like to store them all in one place.
- Weekly Reviews I try to write a short weekly summary at the end of every week. This is mainly to see how I've managed to do things I want to improve this week. Or just anything. I do not do this every week, but I've felt that this is very handy when I want to use it.
I have also added a keyboard shortcut to add templates. So I can get myself a note with one of these templates in no time!
Formatting
Here I have added photos on some of the text formatting.
On the left side, you will see the markdown code, and on the right side, you will see the note in preview mode.
Links
To create a link I will make something for demonstration.
I simply make a link like this [[Alarm Clock]] and "Control + Click" on that link to create the note.
Then I can simply add some text to the newly created note. You can see on the right side that the graph view for this note shows us all of the notes that are linked to this one.
Images
![]()
This is the syntax for you to add images to Obsidian, in the [] you can put in alternative text for the image and ing the () a path to the images.
I have a special folder in my vault where I put all of my images.
usually, I don't add an alt text, since this is just for my personal use. But I encourage you to always add alt text to images if it is for others to see.
Graph View
This graph view is quite important for me!
For the first, I love to see my second brain grow, but I also use it quite a lot to go over my notes, I like to spend some time and filter out some tags and go through my notes.
Plugins
The plugins are also a big reason why I got drawn to Obsidian.
There are some 'default' plugins you can add to your vault and then there are also community plugins. Which general users like you and me could create.
By having its user being able to generate plugins for other users the community will grow a lot and the software can improve so much.
I recommend you to try some plugins and see if you like them, but here is a list of some plugins I use a lot:
- Advanced Tables
- Daily Notes -> This one is a core plugin from the Obsidian team.
- Day Planner
- Hot Keys ++
- Sliding Panes
Mobile app
The Obsidian team recently launched a mobile app. I think it is still in beta testing, if not, I'm sorry.
For this app to work you have to back your vault up in the cloud and access it on your phone.
Since I have an iPhone I uploaded it to iCloud and sync it to my phone that way.
There is more solution and you can also pay for an Obsidian sync service.
Community
There is an Obisidan forum with tons of content. This is a place where you can dive deep into Obsidian. They also have a discord group.
I have found a lot of high-quality content on the forum.
Conclusion
I love Obsidian, for real! It is a long time since I've been as excited to spend time to just dive into something so much.
I almost have to stop myself to change my whole vault every other week. I want to get some consistency in my use and develop a good system for my second brain. So I mainly try to improve tiny things at a time, give me some time to try them out.
I want to do a lot of things, but I want to get more notes in my vault to see how it will look.
That is one reason why I have so many unlinked notes, for the time being, I want to keep them unlinked and gradually link them to the correct MOCs.
I also would love to try experience building a plugin. For what you might ask? I ask the same, I have no idea at the moment, it would just be fun to try it out.
Since the Obsidian team released their mobile app I've just gotten more on the Obsidian train.
For me, that was the only thing I felt like was missing, not that I'm constantly writing notes on my phone, it is more accessible to my vault. Like I mentioned earlier I use Obsidian to plan my workday as much as I can and make a lot of checklists, memos, and whatnot, so it is very nice to have access to that on my phone!
If you have any questions for me regarding my Obsidian vault, plugins, how I use it or just anything. Don't hesitate to ask!
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