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Introduction to Obsidian

bryanhogan.com

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Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#131

Post by crimsoneer »

torben-friis wrote: post #28
iammjm wrote: post #18

The aura of complexity/difficulty around Obsidian seriously baffles me, because to me Obsidian from the go felt like the most intuitive thing in the world: Create a note. Write some lines of text. Organize some of those lines into - bulletpoints, # Headings, or ## Subheadings. Turn an some idea into a [[note of its own]]. Add a #tag for better organization. Check out your notes in the list of your notes or directly i…

There is a subset of people that spend time developing complex setups as a hobby. It's the adult equivalent of the student who had school notes in perfect handwriting with 7 different colors and underlines. Nothing against it, you just need the warning early on to avoid the timesink if you want things done and follow the wrong guide.

As everyone has learnt the hard way, when you have a long to-do list, you will be tempted to suddenly spring clean your room, and it will make you temporarily feel productive... but it will not, in fact, shrink your to-do list.

Making an elaborate Obsidian setup is very much the same instinct.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#132

Post by wolvoleo »

forbiddenvoid wrote: post #96
wolvoleo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine really does help me, though I'm not very organised, I just dump my notes in a handful of folders and rely on the search function (which could be a lot better in obsidian, it always finds unrelated stuff first). Still it's magnitudes better than that crap they call onenote which I unfortunately am required to use at work. I'm really averse to meticulous organisation so a good search function is key. Tagging and c…

I know that it's just a super common distinction between pilers and filers, but I really struggle to comprehend the usefulness of just "dumping everything" in one place and hoping that search will sort it out. At a certain threshold, doesn't it just become impossible to remember what you do or don't have in that pile? When search fails, is it because it isn't there? Or is it because the search just didn't find it?

Yeah that's why the search needs to be really good.

I just don't have the mindset for painstakingly categorising stuff so that'll never happen. When I was younger I sometimes tried to do that but I always ended up giving up on it and just having a pile of outdated stuff.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#133

Post by iammjm »

bryanhogan wrote: post #51
iammjm wrote: post #18

The aura of complexity/difficulty around Obsidian seriously baffles me, because to me Obsidian from the go felt like the most intuitive thing in the world: Create a note. Write some lines of text. Organize some of those lines into - bulletpoints, # Headings, or ## Subheadings. Turn an some idea into a [[note of its own]]. Add a #tag for better organization. Check out your notes in the list of your notes or directly i…

Not defending some of the not that amazing Obsidian courses or similar out there, but it sounds like you already have a lot of pre-existing knowledge and an approach that works for you, so as I said in the post, keep using that! You know about markdown syntax, about #tags, about [[linking]], but a lot of people who first hear of Obsidian don't. Part of what inspired my post was to help people who don't need the extra…

Apologies, I didn't mean my post as an attack on your post, which was well thought out and reasonable. My post was meant as a general obsidian-related rambling in a general obsidian-related thread

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#135

Post by sReinwald »

pdpi wrote: post #102

One specific bit of advice in there that I disagree with is keeping just one vault. Rather, I find that having one vault per topic/project is the right approach. The reason for having multiple vaults is simple: I find that the usability of the one big über-vault drops off sharply if you're not disciplined in maintaining organisation, and a consistent workflow, and, if you're storing a bunch of disparate things in a s…

I keep one vault for almost everything because the cross-domain links are where the interesting stuff happens. I studied sociology, political science, and media & communication before moving into IT, and I'm still actively interested in all of it and especially how these topics intersect. Where does a note on Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality go? The social science vault? The IT vault? Both? With a single vault I don't have to answer that question - the note exists, and I can use it to make connections to AI, social media, or cultural trends.

Multiple vaults break this. You end up duplicating notes, or linking across vault boundaries (which adds friction), or just forgetting where you put something. That's trading one of Obsidian's strongest features for... tidier folders.

The one case where I do split things out is genuinely isolated project knowledge - like a D&D campaign I used to GM. 99% of those notes have zero connection to anything else. Separation makes sense there precisely because there's nothing to link.

One more thing: a lot of people solve the "big vault gets messy" problem with elaborate folder structures, but Obsidian's search (especially with Omnisearch) makes most of that unnecessary. I don't really organize my notes into careful hierarchies. I write them, link them, and search for them. The mess is fine. I am one with the mess.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#136

Post by severine »

In the last paragraph, OP mentions using Logseq "for short daily notes/journaling", which suggests both Obsidian and Logseq fall short in some ways.

As I'm currently contemplating using one of these tools, I'd love if you elaborated on that.

Great article, thanks.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#137

Post by btreecat »

sReinwald wrote: post #135
pdpi wrote: post #102

One specific bit of advice in there that I disagree with is keeping just one vault. Rather, I find that having one vault per topic/project is the right approach. The reason for having multiple vaults is simple: I find that the usability of the one big über-vault drops off sharply if you're not disciplined in maintaining organisation, and a consistent workflow, and, if you're storing a bunch of disparate things in a s…

I keep one vault for almost everything because the cross-domain links are where the interesting stuff happens. I studied sociology, political science, and media & communication before moving into IT, and I'm still actively interested in all of it and especially how these topics intersect. Where does a note on Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality go? The social science vault? The IT vault? Both? With a single vault I…

I just don't see myself needing to cross link my DnD, work, food, and home-lab nots significantly enough to not use separate collections.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#138

Post by kepano »

hadik wrote: post #127
kepano wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sync method are you using?

I have my vault saved in iCloud Drive and solely access it from a single device. We all know about iCloud Drive being known for being somewhat unreliable and sometimes causing sync issues, but I don't really see this type of bug being caused by it. I would be more suspecting if files were corrupted or changed in some other form than being replaced by other notes' contents. The kind of issue points to Obsidian as the…

Make sure to set your Obsidian folder to "Keep downloaded" on iCloud for every device. Otherwise iCloud automatically deletes files locally to save space on your device.

It's a terrible default and Apple doesn't provide any way for developers to detect if it's off.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#139

Post by kepano »

yoz-y wrote: post #126

I wanted to jump on the obsidian train but from what I understand I’d need to pay for their sync service to be able to use iOS and headless Linux right? All other sync methods seem to come with caveats. I’d use iCloud Drive but I was not able to mount it with rclone.

Not necessarily. There are dozens of syncing methods aside from Obsidian Sync (Git, SyncThing, etc) and you can create your own plugin to sync.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#140

Post by al_borland »

nout wrote: post #20

My suggestions to new users are: Start small, just create notes for whatever you want to (actually) remember and create impromptu TODO lists. Ignore the whole Knowledge Database / second brain thing. Learn the obsidian keyboard shortcuts really well. You can build a structure in your notes later when you actually see what's good and what needs automation.

I’d also say to ignore the graph interface. It makes for a cool tech demo, but unless you’re one of the 3 people zettelkasten makes sense for, it’s not all that useful and will encourage needless complexity while offering little to no benefit. I turned the feature off.
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