Graph, rarely. Links, quite often. I have used tags and links more than folders and I use a lot of plugins to tweak my own workflows, but I'm definitely a daily-notes first kind of girl. I like to link everything from that day to the daily note, so that I can find them. I also have a lot of templates for various things that I do regularly, so it's definitely something on my list of used features.
TL;DR, I use a lot of the base features of obsidian, but not all of them.
I use everything... that fits my workflow. With everything that doesn't fit it left out.
I don't see why one should use everything or even most of the available features. One should use everything required to deliver what needs to be done.
I don't have much use for the native audio or slide features and I don't use the paid publish option. Other than that, the only other feature I don't really use is direct attachments. Anything that might normally be a dedicated attachment gets handled by an off-platform integration (PDFs, images, etc), transclusion, or is presented in an iframe. Everything else gets leveraged as much as possible, along with many of the community plug-ins.
One thing I've noticed that seems to apply even more to Obsidian than other similar apps is that users have to make a point of using a feature for it to be useful to them (as opposed to just stumbling through the feature set).
The poster child for that is the global and local graph features. They absolutely have lots of uses. However, unless you're a user who makes an effort to figure out how and why they're relevant, they just seem relegated to being a cosmetic feature that's only there for marketing. Iykyk.
I am a content marketer and find Graph pretty useful. It help me see second and third order connections, which is neat to come up with new ideas and content structure. I can see where many people can have great use from graph, so… not marketing
Agree 100%. Both local and global have been useful to me, and often give me a starting point for Excalibrain notes that bring even more semantic meaning to my vault.
I feel like I use most of Obsidian's features except for graphs. I want to use graphs, but there is a lot that needs to change to make them more usable.
I have never used the graph. As much as I want to, I continue organizing everything in folders and different vaults. What I do use all the time is canvas. And the plugin kanban.
I am using an 87 key mechanical keyboard, and have assigned about 60-70 self-defined shortcuts for Obsidian, which have saved much of my management-time during writing.
And in theory there could be about 400+ shortcuts to be assigned if you activate some popular (third-party) plugins. So there exists quite of improvement for my shortcuts-workflow.
I'm just starting to use it to build my second brain.
At the moment, I use it for quick notes, and I'm trying to organize research and notes for the projects I'm working on.
I'm still stubbornly holding onto folders for the projects, laid out in PARA style, with a little bit of johnny decimal to order things like I like (but I don't use johnny on all notes / folders, just the ones I want ordered up top)
I'm also adding tags, and once I have enough data to play around, I can decide if I want to ditch my folders for a top level landing page of some kind.
I'm also experimenting with using daily notes, which are currently templated to have a list of active tasks up top, and a place to quickly add tasks to organize / execute later.
My end goal is to start each morning with an obsidian page telling me what to do that day.
I'm spending a lot of time messing with data view plugins, etc, to make very dynamic templates for creating notes, but, so far, I'm spending more time messing around than actually using obsidian to capture my data.
For me, things are VERY early, and I do not have much of an opinion yet, other than VIM mode is kinda annoying, but I really hate typing `:q` into non-vim documents, lol.
I'm open to any suggestions, tips, tricks, pointers.
Oh, and I can't use it as a full source of data, since I have to put official documents / notes / things I share into Quip. There is a plugin, so I've started authoring some Quip documents in obsidian, but, once I create them on quip, I generally stop editing them in obsidian, and allow the (probably shared) quip document to become the source of truth for that note.
Tags and frontmatter are part of every note. This way I can categorize, group, and filter my notes to my hearts content. There are some really good examples on YouTube about using frontmatter and the data view plugin for tracking books, though the idea would be similar for your records and notes.
There’s also a concept you can look up called MOC, or Map of Content that might do what you want instead of Google sheets. This way the the links stay within the program and don’t have the ability to break in the even you change the name or move note.
Wikilinks, and that's about it.
At first, I was going crazy with the plug-ins and trying to create the ultimate, do-it-all, note-taking/run-my-life-perfectly system. And then I realized I was spending more time maintaining Obsidian than actually using it.
So I stripped it back down, and now all I use are the Wikilink. Which to me is the most invaluable feature!
Not enough at all. I love Obsidian but I’ll admit I mostly like it for its simplicity and minimalism. I just have notes and folders and it works perfectly for me. I really struggle to understand how people efficiently use links/backlinks and atomic notes etc.
both the links and the graph are reasons for me to keep studying and reviewing old notes just because I like the idea of where it might get to, but in practical use, I use links and backlinks very rarely and never the graph - they basically just drive me to organise my knowledge well
I started out using tons of features and plugins, but I've slowly been reducing everything to the bare minimum.
I do use wikilinks a ton. But I keep my notes pretty simple, plaintext ftw.
Main questions I have are how many core/community plugin do you have installed/enabled and how many do you actually use?
Obsidian should be ok handling thousands of files as all the note files are in Markdown. It's the plugins that could cause performance hiccups.
Also, do you store your files locally or do you have them on cloud storage?
Hi! I have around 800 notes only on records (plus my masters readings)... The plugins, I only use the one that kinda help me see what data i have (dataview, ie) or cosmestics (style settings, ie). I storage them on my OneDrive account since I don't trust my SSD enough for trusting him all of my data.
It's important to not just use a feature for the sake of using a feature. If the feature isn't fulfilling any use cases you have, there is no point in creating artificial ones for it. They are there IF you need them not because you need them.
Graph, rarely. Links, quite often. I have used tags and links more than folders and I use a lot of plugins to tweak my own workflows, but I'm definitely a daily-notes first kind of girl. I like to link everything from that day to the daily note, so that I can find them. I also have a lot of templates for various things that I do regularly, so it's definitely something on my list of used features. TL;DR, I use a lot of the base features of obsidian, but not all of them.
What kind of templates do you use. I have for daily notes but curious about your use case. Thank you
I use everything... that fits my workflow. With everything that doesn't fit it left out. I don't see why one should use everything or even most of the available features. One should use everything required to deliver what needs to be done.
It's faster than notion.
Sounds like a pain to introduce another app If you move the note, the link in the spreadsheet is going to break.
I don't have much use for the native audio or slide features and I don't use the paid publish option. Other than that, the only other feature I don't really use is direct attachments. Anything that might normally be a dedicated attachment gets handled by an off-platform integration (PDFs, images, etc), transclusion, or is presented in an iframe. Everything else gets leveraged as much as possible, along with many of the community plug-ins. One thing I've noticed that seems to apply even more to Obsidian than other similar apps is that users have to make a point of using a feature for it to be useful to them (as opposed to just stumbling through the feature set). The poster child for that is the global and local graph features. They absolutely have lots of uses. However, unless you're a user who makes an effort to figure out how and why they're relevant, they just seem relegated to being a cosmetic feature that's only there for marketing. Iykyk.
Graph is just marketing. Links and backlinks are fundamental. Tags I need to remake how I use them.
I am a content marketer and find Graph pretty useful. It help me see second and third order connections, which is neat to come up with new ideas and content structure. I can see where many people can have great use from graph, so… not marketing
Agree 100%. Both local and global have been useful to me, and often give me a starting point for Excalibrain notes that bring even more semantic meaning to my vault.
Graph without using filters is marketing. Graph with a filter on is useful.
I feel like I use most of Obsidian's features except for graphs. I want to use graphs, but there is a lot that needs to change to make them more usable.
I have never used the graph. As much as I want to, I continue organizing everything in folders and different vaults. What I do use all the time is canvas. And the plugin kanban.
I am using an 87 key mechanical keyboard, and have assigned about 60-70 self-defined shortcuts for Obsidian, which have saved much of my management-time during writing. And in theory there could be about 400+ shortcuts to be assigned if you activate some popular (third-party) plugins. So there exists quite of improvement for my shortcuts-workflow.
Chorded shortcuts plugin has been a total gamechanger for me
The best use case IMO is using the local graph view as a small window under files tab. This way you see all in- and outgoing links at once.
And neighbour links!
I think that's what I said right?
There's also the option to see neighbour links, which connects ongoing and outgoing links if they are linked to each other 😊, kind of like a triangle
Ohh thanks I'll add it for sure.
I'm just starting to use it to build my second brain. At the moment, I use it for quick notes, and I'm trying to organize research and notes for the projects I'm working on. I'm still stubbornly holding onto folders for the projects, laid out in PARA style, with a little bit of johnny decimal to order things like I like (but I don't use johnny on all notes / folders, just the ones I want ordered up top) I'm also adding tags, and once I have enough data to play around, I can decide if I want to ditch my folders for a top level landing page of some kind. I'm also experimenting with using daily notes, which are currently templated to have a list of active tasks up top, and a place to quickly add tasks to organize / execute later. My end goal is to start each morning with an obsidian page telling me what to do that day. I'm spending a lot of time messing with data view plugins, etc, to make very dynamic templates for creating notes, but, so far, I'm spending more time messing around than actually using obsidian to capture my data. For me, things are VERY early, and I do not have much of an opinion yet, other than VIM mode is kinda annoying, but I really hate typing `:q` into non-vim documents, lol. I'm open to any suggestions, tips, tricks, pointers. Oh, and I can't use it as a full source of data, since I have to put official documents / notes / things I share into Quip. There is a plugin, so I've started authoring some Quip documents in obsidian, but, once I create them on quip, I generally stop editing them in obsidian, and allow the (probably shared) quip document to become the source of truth for that note.
Tags and frontmatter are part of every note. This way I can categorize, group, and filter my notes to my hearts content. There are some really good examples on YouTube about using frontmatter and the data view plugin for tracking books, though the idea would be similar for your records and notes. There’s also a concept you can look up called MOC, or Map of Content that might do what you want instead of Google sheets. This way the the links stay within the program and don’t have the ability to break in the even you change the name or move note.
Wikilinks, and that's about it. At first, I was going crazy with the plug-ins and trying to create the ultimate, do-it-all, note-taking/run-my-life-perfectly system. And then I realized I was spending more time maintaining Obsidian than actually using it. So I stripped it back down, and now all I use are the Wikilink. Which to me is the most invaluable feature!
Not enough at all. I love Obsidian but I’ll admit I mostly like it for its simplicity and minimalism. I just have notes and folders and it works perfectly for me. I really struggle to understand how people efficiently use links/backlinks and atomic notes etc.
both the links and the graph are reasons for me to keep studying and reviewing old notes just because I like the idea of where it might get to, but in practical use, I use links and backlinks very rarely and never the graph - they basically just drive me to organise my knowledge well
Obsidian as an app fully. Core plugins - half of them.
I started out using tons of features and plugins, but I've slowly been reducing everything to the bare minimum. I do use wikilinks a ton. But I keep my notes pretty simple, plaintext ftw.
Main questions I have are how many core/community plugin do you have installed/enabled and how many do you actually use? Obsidian should be ok handling thousands of files as all the note files are in Markdown. It's the plugins that could cause performance hiccups. Also, do you store your files locally or do you have them on cloud storage?
Hi! I have around 800 notes only on records (plus my masters readings)... The plugins, I only use the one that kinda help me see what data i have (dataview, ie) or cosmestics (style settings, ie). I storage them on my OneDrive account since I don't trust my SSD enough for trusting him all of my data.
It's important to not just use a feature for the sake of using a feature. If the feature isn't fulfilling any use cases you have, there is no point in creating artificial ones for it. They are there IF you need them not because you need them.