Anyone using Obsidian for note taking and knowledge management?
@danielsantos You have hit on a popular topic with the denizens of Micro.blog. [Welcome!](welcome.micro.blog]
@danielsantos I'm trying to but I'm not fully happy with it. Or I understand the app not good enough.
@jean I imagined so. Note taking is one of my passions, although I’m very new to techniques and tools. So far I’ve experimented with Logseq and Obsidian, but ended up settling with the second, at least professionally
@danielsantos I’ve been on and off Obsidian over the last two years, but in the last couple of months I’ve taken to it quite seriously. The mobile apps and note synching features were the last pieces of the puzzle for me.
P.S. Welcome to Micro.blog!
@lmika The mobile sync of my Obsidian vault is top class and a time saver. It's well worth the subscription cost.
@danielsantos We have an occasional "roll call" for people to signal their interest in a topic. In May, note-taking was a very popular one. Feel free to add a reply to the thread.
@jean hey, nice to know! Thanks for sharing! As I’m a newcomer in micro.blog, this is golden information.
@V_ I see. I believe it’s all a matter of one’s use case. For me, (so far) Obsidian is a nice place to reunite all meeting notes and information on projects I’ve been working with. I don’t fear losing information any longer. What’s your use case?
@lmika thank you for the welcome! I feel you. I was unable to make up my mind between Logseq and Obsidian for quite a while. I like the outliner way Logseq has, but ended up with Obsidian in work, as it feels more polished.
@danielsantos Yes I am. I basically have Obsidian with me all the time and open permanently on the desktop. Use it for ’second brain’ stuff and also to try and collect a zettelkasten of sorts to help my own writing.
@lewism I keep it open during my working hours and, on the personal side, I try to use it to gather ideas to boost my writing. Ideas and general knowledge. Can’t fit in Zettelkasten though. I’ve been creating what I’m almost courageous enough to Kalil a wikilog and digital garden stub.
@danielsantos It sounds like we use it in a v similar way, whatevever we call that linked note bit! A couple of people might be worth following on here re note-taking @garo and @chrisaldrich.
@lewism yes, indeed. People usually refer to ZK or other similar popular methods a lot, but the important thing is what works best for each one. Thanks for the follow indications, I started following them both, and you :)
@danielsantos I use it... I love it... But to describe my application as knowledge management would be a definite stretch.
@JohnPhilpin I believe everyone out there using Obsidian is trying to practice knowledge management in their own way. But I agree, the mileage may vary and, tbh, calling what I’m doing KM is also a big stretch… lol
@danielsantos I'm using it for my "digitial brain". I try to do some Zettelkasten with it but I'm not following the process very closley. My biggest issue I have right now is to find my notes again. But this could also be helped by editing and sorting the notes more regulary.
@V_ I like the digital brain idea a lot. What I’ve been trying to do is to gather information over time and discover how the pieces fit together. My experience shows me I’m getting closer to a personal wikilog and to a commonplace book such as the one Da Vinci kept for himself than to a ZK. Also, ZK is a system devised by one person, Luhman. It worked for him fine, but strictly speaking, it is not for me…
@danielsantos I need to dive into the wikilog and commonplace book. I have not done much on the meta level of my note taking since the summer. And yes ZK is one system and in the end you need to use the system which works best for you. What I'm glad about my "system" right now is that I regulary take notes and that I have the notes digitaly so they are searchable. Creating notes is the first step off any system.
@V_ once I ran into the concept of wikilogging, it's quite impressive how it freed my mind. I tried implementing ZK many times only to be more frustrated than before everytime it failed me. I believe every person has their own time to think and process, and with that in mind I started to write more notes than ever. Taylor Hadden, btw, who is the one who introduced the wikilogging concept to me, has been developing his own notetaking tool, Tangent Notes.
@jean Wondering when we might hit critical mass for a tagmoji for this in the discovery section? Maybe something like 🗂️ or 📝? The second looks like it's in use for writing...
@chrisaldrich 🗂 = note taking apps and systems? It’s true that 📝 is already used for writing. I’d like to poll the note taking community for feedback.
@chrisaldrich @jean I second this. It would be very nice to have a tagmoji for PKM and it’s apps… I instantly thought about a brain 🧠, though.
@Microlorian thanks for the welcome message :) I’ve seen people talking about Reflect.app but looking at its features (and my personal Obsidian usage), I don’t think there’s anything Reflect does that I can’t mimic with plugins. Where does it excel for you?
@danielsantos @microlorian I’ve been actively avoiding Reflect because I’m afraid I will like it. Logseq has been working well for me for sometime and it would be nice to actually stick with a product long-term to maximise the benefit it can deliver!
@danielsantos I’m very slowly using it; started a media vault to track to read/read lists which I then sync out to other services, and another one that’s like a bad zettelkasten for personal stuff.
Do you use a particular system with obsidian or just roll your own?
@danielsantos @jean I would be against the brain emoji because not every note taker wants to build a second or outboard brain. Or think about it using the brain metaphor.
@jean @chrisaldrich 🗃️ is an emoji for an actual slip-box, which is a popular metaphor for memex/second brain/PKM, and maybe less ambiguous then just the folders?
@danielsantos I’m currently straddling between Obsidian and Roam, but I expect I’ll land on Obsidian when my Believer subscription runs out.
@danielsantos @jean I almost included the brain emoji, but I feel like it's far too closely associated with Tiago Forte's commercial/paid Second Brain courses and book, and doesn't have the feel of written (or even typed/digital) representation of note taking the way the card file box 🗃️ does historically. I've seen many in the zettelkasten space use the card file box emoji regularly and it generally doesn't have any negative connotations that I've seen or am aware of. I've also seen some in the digital gardening spaces make use of some of the plant-related emoji for their notes, but those generally have a more clear cut gardening use case on the web and might otherwise cause confusion. Some of the other logical choices of pens, pencils, and journals are already either in use for those topics or ought to be kept for them if necessary.
@danielsantos Many refer to zettelkasten pretty narrowly, but from a historic standpoint, it's a much broader tradition: boffosocko.com/2022/10/2...
@chrisaldrich thanks for sharing… personally, I tend to associate ZK with Luhman. But I’ll read your shared article later to broaden my perspective :)
@danielsantos Moved my Markdown notes into Obsidian (had previously used WikiLens in VS Code) last week. Seems good so far. The plugin ecosystem is quite good. I've been using PARA + Johnny Decimal for my notes organization for a long time.
@miljko @jean I liked 🗃️better than my own idea, which was the 🧠 brain. I didn’t think of the association with Tiago Forte’s commercial product @chrisaldrich brought up, honestly.
@Microlorian @canion They are very similar indeed. I started with Logseq because I love outliners such as Workflowy and Dynalist, as they make me structure my thinking better. I moved to Obsidian later because at the moment I find its UI and UX more polished. I guess I’ll move back to Logseq eventually, though.
@danielsantos @Microlorian @canion Whatever happened to Roam? This is how I got back into more formal note-taking, back in late 2019 (which feels like a century ago now). Obsidian and Logseq sprung up as offline, more privacy-conscious versions if I remember correctly.
(I ended up using DevonTHINK once they improved their iOS version sufficiently, but that's a different story)
@annahavron Every holiday season when there's some down time I think about going back to index cards in small cardboard boxes, Lila-style. Maybe this will be the year!
@canion yes, indeed! I’ve been using outliners for organizing my life, mind, work, whatever, since I didn’t even know it was called outlining. In fact I did it analogically with pen and paper years ago 😂😂
@danielsantos I have used Workflowy but am currently using a combination of Bear (for unrelated notes), Tinderbox and Obsidian for projects that have interrelated bits, and Mindnode for outlines displayed as maps. I like Workflowy but it's just not "big picture" enough for me.
I've given trying to find note nirvana.
@ddykstal Note nirvana would be an utopia. I’ve been using Obsidian but pondering a return to Logseq because their sync is in alpha right now. As for Workflowy, it woke the infinite outline drill down possibilities for me, but I then turned to Dynalist instead.
@canion yes!! And I used multicolor biros depending on the structure I wanted to build for my bullet points… those 4-color biros were something I fancied!
@danielsantos Almost everyone in the space exclusively associates ZK with Luhmann, in part because of the use of the foreign (unfamiliar) German word and the lost cultural memory of the use of card indexes as note taking tools or as commonplace books in index card form. Hopefully we can change this misperception which also opens up these practices to a lot more people with a lot less confusion.
@chrisaldrich I have lots to learn about PKM, ZK and notetaking. I gave up ZK for something lighter, in favor of my own mind health. Now I’m taking notes trying to create a commonplace book and a wikiblog. I’ve been reading some of your texts trying to learn more :)
@danielsantos I use Workflowy all day long. Apple notes is for temporary holds (shopping list I’ll delete once done, for example). Love the topic! Another vote here for note-taking as am official emoji tag topic. Also welcome to micro.Blog!
@danielsantos I’ve settled on Obsidian recently. I don’t have much of a “Workflow” right now. I have a few folders to organize by type of note. I keep tweaking things as needed rather than trying to follow any system up front.
@danielsantos @Microlorian @canion I tried using Logseq, and while I like the app, I struggle with writing in an outliner. I prefer the simple markdown files of Obsidian when writing.
