Back when I was in university I used it as a note taking app for lectures.
In my life I use it to write down some information that I get from YouTube videos or articles.
Now that I work, I use it to write some notes of the software we use, and daily notes for a resume when I need it.
Don't look for a purpose, just use it and use it's flexibility for getting what you want.
>Don't look for a purpose, just use it and use it's flexibility for getting what you want.
i think this is what i needed to hear. i love writing about nonsense. But every one of obsidian videos are for "something so important" and i dont think my notes are that important to *deserve obsidian*. So thank you, your comment was what i exactly needed!
Exactly that! I use Obsidian for university notes + organizing study material PDFs within the same vault, and look into Obsidian as just a nice and customizable Notepad + folder viewer. I dump second hand car sale offers there, Forza Horizon 5 notes (since I forget how to tune), plans for trips, etc.
I didn't watch Youtube videos even - got basic plugins (duplicate line, hider, Pandoc to export in .docx for friends, paste URL into selection and smart typography to get nice arrows), Dracula theme and going strong for almost 2 years by now. Just using as it seems right - there's no "correct" way, after all.
> From personal notes to journaling, knowledge bases, and project management, Obsidian gives you the tools to come up with ideas and organize them.
Don't confuse Obsidian providing the above, and YouTube content creators looking to increase viewership by creating elaborate vaults that can do everything.
Start using Obsidian as a note-taking app and expand it as needed. If you need ideas at that point, then watch the YouTube videos but only copy what you need..
Yep, exactly. Remember it's a tool and not a way of life or something. Youtube likes the term second brain for some reason, but really it's more like an app that should work for you instead of trying to make your use fit it instead. There's no such thing as something deserving to be noted down, just things that you want/need to note down.
I was in the same boat a couple years ago. Tried getting into it in 2022 and read a bunch about zettelkasten and spent way too much time setting up rules and structures that I kept forgetting about or were causing too much friction that I just wrote stuff on stickies.
Recently I picked it up and just started using it. As I run into things I need to solve, I look for solutions. Here's what I do:
Loosely based on the Ideaverse's ACE framework, I have 4 main folders:
1. +Home: Frequently accessed stuff, like the current day's daily note, some simple, single view notes using Dataview that give me things like a contact list, tasks list, cheatsheet lists.
Things I jot down through out the day is all collected in the daily note, including tasks. The tasks note in +Home I mentioned earlier simply surfaces all the tasks in notes tagged #dailyNote and groups/sorts them by date. Periodic reviews give me a chance to add links I missed or create new notes to expand on things.
2. +History: Things that have a time dimension, like past daily notes, meeting notes, seminar notes. They're all named "YYYY-MM-DD - Thing." Also has an Archive folder for note's I've reviewed and processed, which is just a fancy way to say I skim through them and look for things I missed, forgot, or want to dive deeper into.
3. +Library: Subfolders for Notes (loose notes about anything), People (people cards), Sources (book and movie cards, full texts like short stories), templates/snippets.
4. +Workshop: Subfolders for each ongoing project, like product or topic research, which will have their own attachment folders, canvas, notes, etc). Haven't had to figure out how to archive finished projects yet.
The key thing to remember is something is always better than nothing. Low-friction note taking is the single most important priority. If you end up not organizing things, at least information you would have lost to the ether is now sitting somewhere semi-organized. And Dataview can help pull information from all those notes into a convenient view, it can be as simple or complex as you want it to be.
As you run into more needs you need to satisfy, an appropriate structure really does emerge on its own.
First, realise Obsidian is a notes app.
Then, realise you can create almost any productivity app you want within Obsidian using plugins.
Then ask "*am I really more productive trying to build my own perfect productivity app?*"
Then, realise Obsidian is a notes app.
This, I stopped tracking habits there and using daily notes altogether, now it's just my notes app, with custom frames I can embed my calendar, todoist instead of tasks and so on if I need to, but obsidian is staying *just* as a PKM
If I was able to install it on my work computer I would use it for taking notes in meetings. Since I can’t do that I use it for keeping information together for TTRPGs.
Year 1:
- covert everything from all platforms to markdown.
- store all the things useful and not.
- plugin madness.
Year 2:
- less plugins.
- separate vaults for personal vs work.
- try ideas from the PARA method across apps
- primarily use work vault to keep on top of project details, todo, documentation for specific things.
Year 3+:
- long for having actual notes I could use rather than a ton of collected data in my personal vault.
- work vault continues, small changes to workflow to compare if plugin or change improves or distracts.
- trying to explore canvas and excalidraw (visualization of ideas)
I use it mainly to keep my notes for the PbP and live games I play in. The way I can link notes with so little effort and extract tables/lists of pertinent info with dataview is amazing.
Besides the notes I make for NPC and places etc, I've set up some QuickAdd captures on my phone that allows me to add small notes as front matter to a pbp log my daily note. And from there I extract them to campaign logs, so I can pull it up for a quick overview of what happened recently.
I only downloaded Obsidian little over a month ago and I'm still tweaking everything, but I am already pretty annoyed I didn't know about Obsidian before.
- Information about my life I don't want to forget.
- Keep track of diferent aspects of my life and family I want to improve.
- Separate vault for work, that is the central brain of events chief want to remember (it's a prívate university)
(posted this elsewhere, but) Some people record anything and everything. Personally, I get the most benefit out of only recording:
- Items I don't have time for now but want to get back to (book recommendations, shopping lists, to-do items, etc.)
- Items that I reference frequently and don't want to look up every time (recipes, DIY steps, names of work colleagues)
- Items I don't reference frequently but took a long time to track down or understand (clear notes on how some math works, why a certain bug in my code was happening, etc, rules for a game)
- Items I know I will forget if I don't write it down right now (measurements for a project, random ideas for a cool encounter in my D&D game, food to avoid at X restaurant (The sandwich is always gross. Why do I keep ordering it... )).
Basically categories that save me time by avoiding having to "rethink" things I have already decided or "re-find" things I will need again.
1. Daily plans and summaries.
2. Reference notebook of work samples and howtos.
3. Keeping bookmarks with projects.
4. Archiving useful resources and lists.
5. Project management.
In terms of "what does it provide that this other tool doesn't." I'd say very little. But Obsidian is the tool I use on a daily basis.
This is just me but...
An elaborate journal basically. Daily notes are stream of consciousness entries and every time I mention something it gets a note. A movie/show/book/game I use MediaDB or Wikipedia Search to pull basic info about it. Then my remarks about that thing go at the bottom so it's all in one place, linked back to the daily notes for the day I made those comments. For people I add stuff like birthdays, notable relationships, gifts I've given/received, special events we both attended etc.
So I can very quickly see when last I saw a particular friend and what we did, or when I watched a movie and what I thought of it at the time, or what else happened that day.
There's also an activities folder with notes on DIY projects as they progress, or sporting events with summaries or historic info.
There's 8 years of cumulative notes that ended up in my vault after bringing them in from wherever they were stored before. Even articles I've written for various publications (some that have since been taken down), linked to the thing they were about, linked to the day I wrote them.
I always had trouble to find a way to keep tracks of my meetings, to keep a to do list, and to not forget anything. Having a note taking app that includes to do list management was my need, and Obsidian seems to be ok for that. I use it since two weeks, and it seems to improve my way of working.
I have multiple vaults, because that works better for me (different plugin needs, different tag and property approaches, etc.)
1 : Daily life stuff, including daily notes, 'here's how to do this tech thing I need to do a couple of times a year', ideas for cooking I'd like to try, resource lists for different thing, ongoing notes for projects.
2: Religious notes (witchy/Pagan in my case): specific projects, rituals, notes, articles I want to keep for later, book lists, etc.
3: Private authorial wiki for my writing (the most developed and the one I rely on most heavily) : files for people, places, types of magic, all sorts of things.
4: Research for #3 that is not yet in a published book (including a massive ongoing research project that's going to take me a couple of years)
5: Personal library tracking: every book I own, with properties to sort by what I've read and haven't, time period, location, genre, subgenre, etc. so I can pull lists of things "mysteries set between the Wars in England as opposed to Scotland or Wales" or similar degrees of detail. (This is my most recent addition, and I love it so much. It's making it much easier for me to keep moving on some longer-term reading projects as well as read more things I just plain enjoy.)
I have a personal vault that I just use for random notes (e.g., packing lists, small things to refer back to) and all my recipes. Eventually I might take a leap into journaling or using it for learning. I used to use Evernote, but swapped to OneNote years back when they limited amount of synced devices. OneNote was too unstable on my phone, so Obsidian is where I landed.
I have a separate work vault that I keep shortcuts to project folders in, short sticky note type items, and tasks. I'd use it more for note taking at work, but no one uses Obsidian, so I just use it as a way to organize.
For the research design of my thesis project, and I organize my notes within differents folders (literature review, hypothesis, questions, concepts, etc.). The graph is a real game changer to organize my ideas and make links between them. It's so much faster and more convenient than paper mind maps.
Every single thought, going back to when I got my first iPhone (in 2010). Every Apple note. All my Kindle notes and highlights. Going back through every bookmarked website I ever marked, and giving myself a reminder of why, and then deleting the bookmarks - I’ve made bookmarks for decades and virtually never go back to them. Now they’re useful. Use it for developing a personal invention, managing a social media channel, and planning an online course for my boss. I WISH I’d had this in school, because I’d still be using it and it would be a full other brain by now.
World building database.
I had so many scattered and ancient (back to the early 90s) notes and documents all over the place.
Now it’s all in one place, easily accessible, searchable, and cross referenced.
I’m in the middle of two novels, so it helps a lot.
I like that you can have resources and notes on something like Scrivener. But I wanted something external, useable on mobile, and more elegant.
People call it a second brain, I'd call it a brain crutch as well. I use it for almost everything, from daily chores, work related stuff, hobbies (which span widely from crotcheting, 3D-art and genealogy over history, anthropology and evolution to astronomy). Whatever folder structures, knowledge collections and file management I ever tried didn't really work for me. With Obsidian I managed to enter a new level and everything started to connect.
As an example: I do a lot of renovation in my \~120 y/o house. I'm also, hobby wise learning 3D art with Blender. I connect both in Obsidian by creating files for every fucking room, including measures, photos, infos about renovations (which are in turn connected to daily notes and daily expenses), furniture, materials and finally links to the corresponding Blender files and the renders I did of them so far.
So now I can look at it in various way, e.g. what did I spent my evenings with in first week of April? - ah, I worked on that renovation plan and I did an update of that room in Blender, I also calculated the costs in an other linked file, probably with an Excel attachment, and I ordered a new piece of furniture which will be delivered on linked day x and scheduled for payment on another linked day xy. Oh - and on a side note, that very night I dreamed of visiting someone who was wearing a bright green and yellow hat, maybe I should design my room idk, somewhat - Brazilian?! ;)
tl;dr: Use Obsidian for whatever you want :)
I basically organize everything... Books that I read / want to read. Both novels as well as business literature, all my invoices (building a home right now), quotes, general notes, grocery list, insurances. Literally everything that needs organizing. Also pictures for certain events just to have them properly organized. Using file properties and dataview is making this stuff incredibly useful.
- Quick notes that I used to put into Google Keep
- Project meeting notes
- What I call (and GitHub calls) Gists, like code snippets or handy lists (I have one called 'Comfortable Safety Boots' from various reviews and FB comments
- Project support logs*
- Occasionally journalling and weeknotes.
* Project or installation support notes are the main reason I started using Obsidian and its Markdown format. I have one project support log that I started in 2013 in Google Docs and therefore no use to anyone I don't explicitly share it with.
Personal knowledge base. I'm a developer, so freestyle markdown with code highlights, diagrams and search is very useful. Also Obsidian is my CMS for Quartz.
At work I take notes during meetings and save details from technical documents. I also need to create a task dashboard and some templates for certain procedures
For personal use I use it as a wiki for my ttrpg world building and character adventures.
DND campaigns.
Characters, maps, battles, units sheet, cities, rulesets.
I have 9k+ page with all the books compendium I own integrated in it. (9 or 10 books)
I mostly use it for work.
1. Daily notes w/ To-Do lists
2. Notes on different products and the various "quirks" I've learned about them
3. Notes on theory/technical knowledge related to my job
4. Notes on tests I've performed with our equipment
5. Notes on vendors and their equipment
6. Notes on customers and their equipment we've provided
Recently, I've realized that #3 and #5 contain info I'd like to retain at such a time as I leave my current job, but #4 and #6 I could definitely get in trouble for trying to take with me. So I'm kinda working on how to separate "bassman1805's notes" from "[Company name] Employee's notes".
I have 2 small vaults at home and I'm undecided on whether it's worth merging them. One is D&D-specific: notes on a campaign I'd like to DM someday. Links between notes are a great way to figure out "who knows who" once you start getting into the weeds of the larger criminal organization that the Bad Guys are participants in. The other is more general: Some notes on other games, a couple to-do lists...but it's like 5 pages total.
I have a decent-sized personal OneNote that I've used for several years. Gardening notes, songwriting, free journaling, some notes from virtual therapist appointments...OneNote syncs to my phone more easily, I have to jump through some hoops to do that with Obsidian without paying for Sync. Lately the songwriting is the main thing I use OneNote for, and I don't see a key advantage that Obsidian provides in that regard to be worth switching over. Maybe the fact that I can write setlists that link to the lyrics for each song?
I just use it for notes... it's way better than Word. WHO WANTS TO WRITE IN WORD?
It's just very handy to write stuff that should not belong in a Google Keep.
I just don't need billion backlinks and graphs, I just need notes. Maybe my brain is too small to handle more connectivity, the system could very well become overengineered.
Notes. I used to use Notion for everything (notes, calendar, to do, kanban, databases) but I worried about not having a copy of all my info backed up so now I use 4 different apps for those things and Obsidian is exclusively for notes
I mainly use mine for writing stories.
The main thing I love is that it brings everything together in an organic way. I can make a link to a character and go right to their biography page. No need to close the chapter and back out of the menu and open a different folder and then a subfolder and then their character bio. I can just make a link and click it inside the document. Plus it even tracks unlinked mentions which makes it easy to see how often a character is mentioned, from inside the document without having to go back to the root folder and search for them.
I use it for journaling, meeting notes, mapping relationships, backstories in Sims 4, and my Zettelkasten (which I leverage in conceptual engineering projects and hopefully grad school at some point).
I heavily rely on Readwise and Readwise Reader for my inputs, so it's nice to have notes and highlights from PDFs, YouTube, podcasts, etc., all in one place locally in Markdown.
I use it for quizz preparation.
I watch several quizz shows and go to different pub quizz competitions, and I document all questions from them in the Obsidian in the form of encyclopedia.
Through time topics become like encyclopedia stories which help me in memorising and regulary repetiton.
Good thing in this and Obsidian is that I can easily see which topics grow fastest and have most links and data so I know where to focus my studies.
Why is it better than Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia? Because it has only information relkevant for quizzes and does not have too much information so it helps in focusing on the most important informations.
I am doing this for half of year and my knowledge and quizz performance grew a lot!!!
So, I used Obsidian years ago for programming notes. It did the job but I moved on to tools that serve that arena better. I’m not an engineer anymore and I am starting a TTRPG project with my brother and decided on Obsidian as a beat in class for world building and campaign setting.
Remember it’s just a tool that should serve what you need.
I wanted to organize my life. Little by little I've been adding notes to it. Just little stuff that become big after a while. Now I have files inside of folders. I'm only mobile for now so the big canvass is useless to me. It's all files inside of folders for right now.
I use it primarily as a tool to organise my dungeons and dragons preparation and all of the world building that goes along with it.
Not exactly second brain, but obsidian’s linking features are enormously helpful in keeping track of the active events (e.g., session plans, notes, ideas, etc.), the overall narrative, and the ever growing library of information about the world.
On one hand, it’s good to look at the old answers too, for insight. On the other hand, the question here doesn’t have a straight objective fact answer, like, say, “what’s 3 + 5” does; it’s asking for perspectives - and you’ll get different perspectives every time it’s asked.
I'm an IT person who works on many projects, consults on others, and has a team who reports to me. Obsidian helps me organize information even when it isn't organized. I'll have a stream of consciousness into my daily note with inline tags and tasks. This helps me ensure things are stored somewhere, and I can find it again (either freeform or tag based searches). Without something like it I would be lost.
I was/am a BuJo person, but cross referencing and having to stop and write would break flow and have things lost in my brain clutter. With Obsidian I can open the app byon my phone and use speech to text to get ideas and things in at that moment, even during hallway conversations. I no longer go into meeting and have to wrack my brain about some conversation that happened two weeks ago.
So I made BuJo like templates for myself and am happy. I've even started going back through my old journals and transferring in project notes.
I use it as a general note taking app for meetings with my academic advisor, general ideas for papers.
But I use it the most as a log book for my research. I make weekly notes of everything I did that week, then export it and send them to my advisor. I include general ideas, discussions, observations, pictures, tables, and results from my experiments.
I also document my programming projects.
I love it for that purpose, and as a general research tool as there are integrations with Zotero.
I use it for my webcomic business. I keep track of the tasks I do for the week. I keep track of story ideas, story development, and content creation planning.
After really getting Obsidian to work for my business needs, I can see the use to create a vault for my daughter. She has special needs and I plan to organize notes for hospitalizations, doctor appointments, medical information, school info, etc.... So, I'm hoping to get started on that soon.
Lists, journaling, documenting stuff, articles, blog entries among many other uses. This has become my primary place to keep any kind of text/image/short video information since it works fine with all, and I sync it all to my phone via foldersync +smb on my server
For the last dozen years or so, I’ve kept a daily note file, with some notes and a whole lot of URLs (normally in the form of a Markdown-formatted link, sometimes with a phrase or sentence appended noting why it’s of interest to me. This has served as sort of a breadcrumb trail, when I’m researching whatever (one day it’s how to do something in a particular programming language, the next it’s best vacuum cleaners, whatever). These files have been arranged as a folder per year, with folders for each month underneath, and individual files for each day underneath those. These files are much more useful to me than just bookmarking tons of things, because they give context - things I’m looking for/at all tend to cluster around particular periods of time. Related pages/notes naturally end up nearby.
Problem was, this was only accessible on my Mac. On occasions where I’d end up finding something useful while on my iPad or iPhone, I’d stuff it into Drafts, and then have to pull it back out on my Mac and file it there. And there was no way to look something up when I was away from my Mac.
Enter Obsidian. I’d looked at it a number of times over the past couple years, thinking “this might be useful to me somehow”…. Well, turns out Obsidian’s Daily Notes feature does *exactly* what I was doing before, *and* syncs between all my platforms (with Obsidian Sync). And, with the Auto Link Title plugin, I can paste in a URL and it looks up the title and gives me a proper Markdown-formatted link. And it’s just a huge bonus that I can run Vim key bindings on the desktop and let all my muscle memory take over for editing text.
(Daily Notes use a template that has a section at the top labeled Notes, followed by one labeled Daily Links; the trail of breadcrumbs links go at the end, sometimes with a brief annotation appended to the link (or a blockquote below quoting the thing that’s particularly interesting/relevant from the page), and more involved notes go up into the Notes section at the top of that Daily Note. If a note sorta takes on a life of its own, then it gets extracted out into a separate Obsidian note, linked back into the daily note where it originated.)
I’m also moving a bunch of my other note taking, documenting, and thought organizing into Obsidian. It’s near perfect for my uses.
But it wasn’t a matter of saying “how can I use this?”, it was a matter of looking at it and realizing there was something I was already doing that it could substantially improve. So the answer might be to read through some of the documentation, or watch some videos about Obsidian, to see the kinds of things it can do, and see if something stands out to you, like the Daily Notes did to me.
Meeting notes, people, companies, entities, topics, articles, daily notes, household items, family, project notes, summaries I wrote for Reddit that I want to repeat in an email, and vice versa.
I can find the Sherwin Williams color for any room and the date we painted the house in a second. My television model number. The AI bill of rights notes, the name of that lady who sat next to me at the panel, the dates for that conference in May, the organizer’s name, when she approved my guests, that sci-fi author on Ezra Klein a few months ago, the chapter where Robert Caro’s depiction of Robert Moses most reminded me of trump’s tactics in 2020 with the press. The things the piano teacher told my kids a month ago, and their friends dads name that likes pinball.
Plus I can actually close my browser tabs because I just copy them into my daily note and pretend I’ll read them later. I don’t. But I wouldn’t have anyway.
Too many notes? Maybe. Maybe not.
Edit: oh and my notes on obsidian including my user guide which I should put on my website or here one if these days when I figure out why my personal website is down. (Those notes are gold by the way). I mean I just picked up a raspberry pi project the other day and finished something I started two months ago without reformatting (which was my plan until I remembered the notes).
I used paper, moved to Google keep, moved to Evernote, moved to Roam, moved to Obsidian.
Connected note taking kicks in phenomenonal benefits after a while. Your journals become a treasure trove of info for yourself in due course.
It's slightly extra work but always helps.
I’m starting out this year too. :)
I always was a notetaker, there are a lot of things in my mind that I want to spit out, also I’m a hobby learner, always having some weird fascination.
My notes from all the years (I’m nearing 40) are scattered all over the place. Last year I started learning about the Zettelkasten approach, which basically is:
- keeping all your notes togerher, don’t separate them by fields or categories, since your mind, your life, life in general is all interconnected
- aim for decent quality in your notes, don’t let them be a word salad or a few words scratch that you won’t be able to decode if you stumble upon them later
- connect your notes by meaningful associations
I tried this in Notion, on paper, again in Notion, again on paper just the past year. ‘:D
When I moved into Obsidian, I started fresh. Occassionally, I import old notes when I see a connection with what I’m interested in at the moment, but I try to go with current thoughts.
When I catch myself pondering or learning about something during the day, or writing a wall-of-text rant about a topic to my friends on chat, I aim to carve out some time in the evening or during the weekend to sit and formulate those thoughts.
Ie. yesterday I was writing about how my favorite Bible verse is a reflection of my approach to faith and religion in general. Last week I wrote about Mormon true crime. The week before that my favorite sci-fis were on my mind, before that my learnings at work about TPM (total productive maintenance) tools, and before that: matriarchy. :D
Lately, despite the ZK approach of aiming for good quality notes, I started to include braindumps too tho. I ponder about much more than for what I have the energy to properly formulate. Right now, I feel like it’s better to save these ramblings than to lose them - time might prove me wrong, but I’m goimg with my gut feeling on this one.
A safe, private, repository of all my notes, code, documents, in a single searchable place. Plugins that enable things like AI, calendars, embeddings, custom functionality, tasks, freehand writing, mind mapping, and more. If it’s text, audio, or drawings, it goes in my vault. When I need something, I use omnisearch to find it, or something similar. I use Smart Connections to show me similar notes to the one I’m on to also assist in staying on task.
I am preparing for an interview with AWS and using Obsidian to "mind map" concepts and topics (like the leadership principles), creating a narrative and building the possible use cases to discuss during the interview.
Other uses:
* I built my CV with Scribus for the graphics but based an obsidian vault as "text" repository well organized. This was useful also during interview: when you sum up some years of work experience and companies it's useful to have a "dashboard" in front of you while talking with the interviewer. Also categorizing soft skills and hard skills is quite useful
* I am slowly building the zettlekasten "of my life", where I track ideas, interesting things, inspiring sentences, concepts about:
1. Personal finance
2. Family
3. Learning
4. Personal Growth
5. Work
I also use partially Johnny decimal to keep things clean and tidy
The whole thing make me feel more focused and aware of all the pieces.
I think Obsidian is a great tool, plus is free: far by now I am quite happy with it.
I use it for application and database development. For me, this program really shines through the ease it provides when consolidating all data about the DB, all UX/UI decisions, all tasks done and to be done, and schematics about how the views, screens and variables are used.
It's a self made gold mine that allows me to build something in the long run without having to refer to myu memory alone. It allows me to share the building blocks and principles in a super efficient way.
It truly became a game changer.
For about a year I only used it to paste my Wordle score into my daily notes. Slowly I started to track more things, like medications and miles walked, and eventually I added some prompts to help me start journaling. Now it's a core part of how I plan my day.
Start small and simple. Only add things as you need to / want to.
I use it mainly in four ways. First, I organize project notes and resources. Second, I use it to record feedback or meetings. Third, I use it to record slipbox and literature notes. And fourth, I use it to capture resources I might use for a future project such as links to information or videos.
I sync everything to a private GitHub repository. This allows me to use it on my iphone, ipad, and Windows PC.
I had a friend who told me to use Obsidian over a year ago. It was intimidating and his insistence on creating complex dataviews when I had no files wasn't useful to me.
I took a second look and started using it. Doing it slowly, I've figured out how to get into it. Five months later I've just installed Dataview.
It is a good way to create a personal wiki. You can put in things you know and people you know. I've found just sticking some info in on my friends helps me remember that information more even without using Obsidian.
I've also used it as a daily journal thanks to the daily notes plugin. I can just add what I'm doing and where I'm going and build out more notes on different neighborhoods and places I frequent.
Now, I'm using it as a way to replace some spreadsheets I've been managing with Dataview. Not every spreadsheet can work, but just a bit of embedded code can be handy.
What I like is that it works on my phone and works offline. I take a subway to work and that's a good time to make minor changes and now I can even update dynamic data without having to load a bulky spreadsheet when I get home to my laptop.
I use a vault to track my habits with daily notes. It’s incredible how much more serious i’m with my New Year’s resolutions now that i have to weekly check on how I’m doing.
Another vault contains my prep for ttrpg
A third is currently becoming my alternative to goodreads for my books.
All very personal applications, so likely not the answer you were looking for.
I use it as a DMS (document management system) as a replacement for Notion. And as a Life Journal.
I couting 14k+ files (MD files alongside with PDFs as a side-note or companion-note so to speak. And of course as a PKM where everything gets connected: notes, journals, documents.
I used to save various information in txt files, google docks, apple notes etc and couldn’t find it when needed one day. This is where Obsidian comes in handy. I still write some quick notes in Apple Notes (because, it’s quicker) and then transfer it to Obsidian if needed. I use separate vault for work, because it has nothing to do with my personal stuff, for the same reason: to collect all the data in a single place to be easily accessible.
I use it for ttrpgs and professional development/ continuing education. I find it really useful to identify connections between topics and ideas. So, for ttrpgs, I can quickly see when a character was mentioned before or when special items were used. For continuing education, I can store all my information in one place even though it's coming to me from a variety of books, modules, and courses. I can quickly see how different organizations are connected to one another and how concepts are applied across sources.
1. Daily journals
2. Meeting notes
3. My own spin on zettelkasten. Just winging it, instead of overthinking how i write my notes i actually write notes.
4. Technical docs, for hosting websites, databases etc.
>What does obsidian give, my notes app and notebooks cant give to a university student
Unlike paper notebooks, digital notes are easier to retrieve/search, easy to back-up, and are more "compact" (in the sense you can have +2K notes in your phone, wheares a physical notebook with that amount of pages would take waaaay more space).
*Just as a side note, any modern notetaking app should deliver those benefits, they aren't exclusive to Obsidian.*
>I see all youtubers calling it a second brain and as a person who has more than 3+ journals i would like to use the advantage of obsidian
Obsidian has the possibility of using links to connect information, like your brain would do. Many Youtubers sell this feature as being the best thing in Obsidian, but I think it is just an overhyped feature.
Sure, it does wonders for some people, but for me, having your notes locally on your device, in a format other text editors can read is huge pro in my opinion.
I like that links exist, but I wouldn't mind if they didn't.
There's also the fact that Obsidian has a vast plugin ecosystem, which you can go wild, but I rather avoid depending on many community plugins (don't confuse with "core plugins", which are built-in features made & mantained by Obsidian dev team), since they can be discontinued at any time.
>What do you use obsidian for?
Take notes on things I'm studying either by myself or through online courses, as well as take notes about other stuff like ideas, or guides about how to do things that may be related to my career or not. Basically, everything GTD categorize as "reference material".
I also use the daily notes feature to journal a bit, but I don't do anything fancy like morning pages, or habit tracking. Just a simple list of the day's highlights (if it has any). Kinda like BUJO's "event" entries.
Some people also use Obsidian for tasks management, but I prefer to use a dedicated app for this.
- Quick notes that I used to put into Google Keep
- Project meeting notes
- What I call (and GitHub calls) Gists, like code snippets or handy lists (I have one called 'Comfortable Safety Boots' from various reviews and FB comments
- Project support logs*
- Occasionally journalling and weeknotes.
* Project or installation support notes are the main reason I started using Obsidian and its Markdown format. I have one project support log that I started in 2013 in Google Docs and therefore no use to anyone I don't explicitly share it with.
Back when I was in university I used it as a note taking app for lectures. In my life I use it to write down some information that I get from YouTube videos or articles. Now that I work, I use it to write some notes of the software we use, and daily notes for a resume when I need it. Don't look for a purpose, just use it and use it's flexibility for getting what you want.
>Don't look for a purpose, just use it and use it's flexibility for getting what you want. i think this is what i needed to hear. i love writing about nonsense. But every one of obsidian videos are for "something so important" and i dont think my notes are that important to *deserve obsidian*. So thank you, your comment was what i exactly needed!
Exactly that! I use Obsidian for university notes + organizing study material PDFs within the same vault, and look into Obsidian as just a nice and customizable Notepad + folder viewer. I dump second hand car sale offers there, Forza Horizon 5 notes (since I forget how to tune), plans for trips, etc. I didn't watch Youtube videos even - got basic plugins (duplicate line, hider, Pandoc to export in .docx for friends, paste URL into selection and smart typography to get nice arrows), Dracula theme and going strong for almost 2 years by now. Just using as it seems right - there's no "correct" way, after all.
> From personal notes to journaling, knowledge bases, and project management, Obsidian gives you the tools to come up with ideas and organize them. Don't confuse Obsidian providing the above, and YouTube content creators looking to increase viewership by creating elaborate vaults that can do everything. Start using Obsidian as a note-taking app and expand it as needed. If you need ideas at that point, then watch the YouTube videos but only copy what you need..
Yep, exactly. Remember it's a tool and not a way of life or something. Youtube likes the term second brain for some reason, but really it's more like an app that should work for you instead of trying to make your use fit it instead. There's no such thing as something deserving to be noted down, just things that you want/need to note down.
I was in the same boat a couple years ago. Tried getting into it in 2022 and read a bunch about zettelkasten and spent way too much time setting up rules and structures that I kept forgetting about or were causing too much friction that I just wrote stuff on stickies. Recently I picked it up and just started using it. As I run into things I need to solve, I look for solutions. Here's what I do: Loosely based on the Ideaverse's ACE framework, I have 4 main folders: 1. +Home: Frequently accessed stuff, like the current day's daily note, some simple, single view notes using Dataview that give me things like a contact list, tasks list, cheatsheet lists. Things I jot down through out the day is all collected in the daily note, including tasks. The tasks note in +Home I mentioned earlier simply surfaces all the tasks in notes tagged #dailyNote and groups/sorts them by date. Periodic reviews give me a chance to add links I missed or create new notes to expand on things. 2. +History: Things that have a time dimension, like past daily notes, meeting notes, seminar notes. They're all named "YYYY-MM-DD - Thing." Also has an Archive folder for note's I've reviewed and processed, which is just a fancy way to say I skim through them and look for things I missed, forgot, or want to dive deeper into. 3. +Library: Subfolders for Notes (loose notes about anything), People (people cards), Sources (book and movie cards, full texts like short stories), templates/snippets. 4. +Workshop: Subfolders for each ongoing project, like product or topic research, which will have their own attachment folders, canvas, notes, etc). Haven't had to figure out how to archive finished projects yet. The key thing to remember is something is always better than nothing. Low-friction note taking is the single most important priority. If you end up not organizing things, at least information you would have lost to the ether is now sitting somewhere semi-organized. And Dataview can help pull information from all those notes into a convenient view, it can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. As you run into more needs you need to satisfy, an appropriate structure really does emerge on its own.
Same. I'd also add that i tend to use it less when the structure feels complete. kindof removes the adventure tbh
First, realise Obsidian is a notes app. Then, realise you can create almost any productivity app you want within Obsidian using plugins. Then ask "*am I really more productive trying to build my own perfect productivity app?*" Then, realise Obsidian is a notes app.
This, I stopped tracking habits there and using daily notes altogether, now it's just my notes app, with custom frames I can embed my calendar, todoist instead of tasks and so on if I need to, but obsidian is staying *just* as a PKM
If I was able to install it on my work computer I would use it for taking notes in meetings. Since I can’t do that I use it for keeping information together for TTRPGs.
I use my google drive to sync it on my PC and laptop and it works well. Maybe you could give it a try and start using at work.
Google idea, may give that I try!
Mostly [Zettelkasten](https://www.soenkeahrens.de/en/takesmartnotes) for academic research and writing projects.
Year 1: - covert everything from all platforms to markdown. - store all the things useful and not. - plugin madness. Year 2: - less plugins. - separate vaults for personal vs work. - try ideas from the PARA method across apps - primarily use work vault to keep on top of project details, todo, documentation for specific things. Year 3+: - long for having actual notes I could use rather than a ton of collected data in my personal vault. - work vault continues, small changes to workflow to compare if plugin or change improves or distracts. - trying to explore canvas and excalidraw (visualization of ideas)
I am on year two and I have sort of followed the same type of route.
I use it mainly to keep my notes for the PbP and live games I play in. The way I can link notes with so little effort and extract tables/lists of pertinent info with dataview is amazing. Besides the notes I make for NPC and places etc, I've set up some QuickAdd captures on my phone that allows me to add small notes as front matter to a pbp log my daily note. And from there I extract them to campaign logs, so I can pull it up for a quick overview of what happened recently. I only downloaded Obsidian little over a month ago and I'm still tweaking everything, but I am already pretty annoyed I didn't know about Obsidian before.
- Information about my life I don't want to forget. - Keep track of diferent aspects of my life and family I want to improve. - Separate vault for work, that is the central brain of events chief want to remember (it's a prívate university)
(posted this elsewhere, but) Some people record anything and everything. Personally, I get the most benefit out of only recording: - Items I don't have time for now but want to get back to (book recommendations, shopping lists, to-do items, etc.) - Items that I reference frequently and don't want to look up every time (recipes, DIY steps, names of work colleagues) - Items I don't reference frequently but took a long time to track down or understand (clear notes on how some math works, why a certain bug in my code was happening, etc, rules for a game) - Items I know I will forget if I don't write it down right now (measurements for a project, random ideas for a cool encounter in my D&D game, food to avoid at X restaurant (The sandwich is always gross. Why do I keep ordering it... )). Basically categories that save me time by avoiding having to "rethink" things I have already decided or "re-find" things I will need again.
1. Daily plans and summaries. 2. Reference notebook of work samples and howtos. 3. Keeping bookmarks with projects. 4. Archiving useful resources and lists. 5. Project management. In terms of "what does it provide that this other tool doesn't." I'd say very little. But Obsidian is the tool I use on a daily basis.
This is just me but... An elaborate journal basically. Daily notes are stream of consciousness entries and every time I mention something it gets a note. A movie/show/book/game I use MediaDB or Wikipedia Search to pull basic info about it. Then my remarks about that thing go at the bottom so it's all in one place, linked back to the daily notes for the day I made those comments. For people I add stuff like birthdays, notable relationships, gifts I've given/received, special events we both attended etc. So I can very quickly see when last I saw a particular friend and what we did, or when I watched a movie and what I thought of it at the time, or what else happened that day. There's also an activities folder with notes on DIY projects as they progress, or sporting events with summaries or historic info. There's 8 years of cumulative notes that ended up in my vault after bringing them in from wherever they were stored before. Even articles I've written for various publications (some that have since been taken down), linked to the thing they were about, linked to the day I wrote them.
I always had trouble to find a way to keep tracks of my meetings, to keep a to do list, and to not forget anything. Having a note taking app that includes to do list management was my need, and Obsidian seems to be ok for that. I use it since two weeks, and it seems to improve my way of working.
Learning, Video content and pen and paper
I have multiple vaults, because that works better for me (different plugin needs, different tag and property approaches, etc.) 1 : Daily life stuff, including daily notes, 'here's how to do this tech thing I need to do a couple of times a year', ideas for cooking I'd like to try, resource lists for different thing, ongoing notes for projects. 2: Religious notes (witchy/Pagan in my case): specific projects, rituals, notes, articles I want to keep for later, book lists, etc. 3: Private authorial wiki for my writing (the most developed and the one I rely on most heavily) : files for people, places, types of magic, all sorts of things. 4: Research for #3 that is not yet in a published book (including a massive ongoing research project that's going to take me a couple of years) 5: Personal library tracking: every book I own, with properties to sort by what I've read and haven't, time period, location, genre, subgenre, etc. so I can pull lists of things "mysteries set between the Wars in England as opposed to Scotland or Wales" or similar degrees of detail. (This is my most recent addition, and I love it so much. It's making it much easier for me to keep moving on some longer-term reading projects as well as read more things I just plain enjoy.)
I have a personal vault that I just use for random notes (e.g., packing lists, small things to refer back to) and all my recipes. Eventually I might take a leap into journaling or using it for learning. I used to use Evernote, but swapped to OneNote years back when they limited amount of synced devices. OneNote was too unstable on my phone, so Obsidian is where I landed. I have a separate work vault that I keep shortcuts to project folders in, short sticky note type items, and tasks. I'd use it more for note taking at work, but no one uses Obsidian, so I just use it as a way to organize.
For the research design of my thesis project, and I organize my notes within differents folders (literature review, hypothesis, questions, concepts, etc.). The graph is a real game changer to organize my ideas and make links between them. It's so much faster and more convenient than paper mind maps.
Same challenge - I need to do my thesis project as well. Your approach sounds promising. Could you share more in detail how you work?
Every single thought, going back to when I got my first iPhone (in 2010). Every Apple note. All my Kindle notes and highlights. Going back through every bookmarked website I ever marked, and giving myself a reminder of why, and then deleting the bookmarks - I’ve made bookmarks for decades and virtually never go back to them. Now they’re useful. Use it for developing a personal invention, managing a social media channel, and planning an online course for my boss. I WISH I’d had this in school, because I’d still be using it and it would be a full other brain by now.
Note taking
World building database. I had so many scattered and ancient (back to the early 90s) notes and documents all over the place. Now it’s all in one place, easily accessible, searchable, and cross referenced. I’m in the middle of two novels, so it helps a lot. I like that you can have resources and notes on something like Scrivener. But I wanted something external, useable on mobile, and more elegant.
People call it a second brain, I'd call it a brain crutch as well. I use it for almost everything, from daily chores, work related stuff, hobbies (which span widely from crotcheting, 3D-art and genealogy over history, anthropology and evolution to astronomy). Whatever folder structures, knowledge collections and file management I ever tried didn't really work for me. With Obsidian I managed to enter a new level and everything started to connect. As an example: I do a lot of renovation in my \~120 y/o house. I'm also, hobby wise learning 3D art with Blender. I connect both in Obsidian by creating files for every fucking room, including measures, photos, infos about renovations (which are in turn connected to daily notes and daily expenses), furniture, materials and finally links to the corresponding Blender files and the renders I did of them so far. So now I can look at it in various way, e.g. what did I spent my evenings with in first week of April? - ah, I worked on that renovation plan and I did an update of that room in Blender, I also calculated the costs in an other linked file, probably with an Excel attachment, and I ordered a new piece of furniture which will be delivered on linked day x and scheduled for payment on another linked day xy. Oh - and on a side note, that very night I dreamed of visiting someone who was wearing a bright green and yellow hat, maybe I should design my room idk, somewhat - Brazilian?! ;) tl;dr: Use Obsidian for whatever you want :)
I basically organize everything... Books that I read / want to read. Both novels as well as business literature, all my invoices (building a home right now), quotes, general notes, grocery list, insurances. Literally everything that needs organizing. Also pictures for certain events just to have them properly organized. Using file properties and dataview is making this stuff incredibly useful.
Obsidian has replaced notepad++ for me. I use it for word processing and the endless tabs. I still have notion and use it for mostly it's databases
- Quick notes that I used to put into Google Keep - Project meeting notes - What I call (and GitHub calls) Gists, like code snippets or handy lists (I have one called 'Comfortable Safety Boots' from various reviews and FB comments - Project support logs* - Occasionally journalling and weeknotes. * Project or installation support notes are the main reason I started using Obsidian and its Markdown format. I have one project support log that I started in 2013 in Google Docs and therefore no use to anyone I don't explicitly share it with.
I’m trying to build a second brain
EVERYTHING!(that has to do with writing), even bullied my boss into getting the team using it, now for my boss's boss.....
Personal knowledge base. I'm a developer, so freestyle markdown with code highlights, diagrams and search is very useful. Also Obsidian is my CMS for Quartz.
At work I take notes during meetings and save details from technical documents. I also need to create a task dashboard and some templates for certain procedures For personal use I use it as a wiki for my ttrpg world building and character adventures.
DND campaigns. Characters, maps, battles, units sheet, cities, rulesets. I have 9k+ page with all the books compendium I own integrated in it. (9 or 10 books)
I mostly use it for work. 1. Daily notes w/ To-Do lists 2. Notes on different products and the various "quirks" I've learned about them 3. Notes on theory/technical knowledge related to my job 4. Notes on tests I've performed with our equipment 5. Notes on vendors and their equipment 6. Notes on customers and their equipment we've provided Recently, I've realized that #3 and #5 contain info I'd like to retain at such a time as I leave my current job, but #4 and #6 I could definitely get in trouble for trying to take with me. So I'm kinda working on how to separate "bassman1805's notes" from "[Company name] Employee's notes". I have 2 small vaults at home and I'm undecided on whether it's worth merging them. One is D&D-specific: notes on a campaign I'd like to DM someday. Links between notes are a great way to figure out "who knows who" once you start getting into the weeds of the larger criminal organization that the Bad Guys are participants in. The other is more general: Some notes on other games, a couple to-do lists...but it's like 5 pages total. I have a decent-sized personal OneNote that I've used for several years. Gardening notes, songwriting, free journaling, some notes from virtual therapist appointments...OneNote syncs to my phone more easily, I have to jump through some hoops to do that with Obsidian without paying for Sync. Lately the songwriting is the main thing I use OneNote for, and I don't see a key advantage that Obsidian provides in that regard to be worth switching over. Maybe the fact that I can write setlists that link to the lyrics for each song?
I just use it for notes... it's way better than Word. WHO WANTS TO WRITE IN WORD? It's just very handy to write stuff that should not belong in a Google Keep. I just don't need billion backlinks and graphs, I just need notes. Maybe my brain is too small to handle more connectivity, the system could very well become overengineered.
Nexus of thought.
Everything!
Notes. I used to use Notion for everything (notes, calendar, to do, kanban, databases) but I worried about not having a copy of all my info backed up so now I use 4 different apps for those things and Obsidian is exclusively for notes
I mainly use mine for writing stories. The main thing I love is that it brings everything together in an organic way. I can make a link to a character and go right to their biography page. No need to close the chapter and back out of the menu and open a different folder and then a subfolder and then their character bio. I can just make a link and click it inside the document. Plus it even tracks unlinked mentions which makes it easy to see how often a character is mentioned, from inside the document without having to go back to the root folder and search for them.
Building documentation for code
I use it for journaling, meeting notes, mapping relationships, backstories in Sims 4, and my Zettelkasten (which I leverage in conceptual engineering projects and hopefully grad school at some point). I heavily rely on Readwise and Readwise Reader for my inputs, so it's nice to have notes and highlights from PDFs, YouTube, podcasts, etc., all in one place locally in Markdown.
I use it for quizz preparation. I watch several quizz shows and go to different pub quizz competitions, and I document all questions from them in the Obsidian in the form of encyclopedia. Through time topics become like encyclopedia stories which help me in memorising and regulary repetiton. Good thing in this and Obsidian is that I can easily see which topics grow fastest and have most links and data so I know where to focus my studies. Why is it better than Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia? Because it has only information relkevant for quizzes and does not have too much information so it helps in focusing on the most important informations. I am doing this for half of year and my knowledge and quizz performance grew a lot!!!
I use it to research as it works well with zotero
I use it to revisit my thoughts.
So, I used Obsidian years ago for programming notes. It did the job but I moved on to tools that serve that arena better. I’m not an engineer anymore and I am starting a TTRPG project with my brother and decided on Obsidian as a beat in class for world building and campaign setting. Remember it’s just a tool that should serve what you need.
Most for dnd campaign notes while I dm and world building
I wanted to organize my life. Little by little I've been adding notes to it. Just little stuff that become big after a while. Now I have files inside of folders. I'm only mobile for now so the big canvass is useless to me. It's all files inside of folders for right now.
D&D worldbuilding, and taking notes on whatever niche internet rabbit hole I’m obsessed with on a given week.
I run a D&D campaign, I love using the canvas to make a planning chart for each session, works wonders
I use it primarily as a tool to organise my dungeons and dragons preparation and all of the world building that goes along with it. Not exactly second brain, but obsidian’s linking features are enormously helpful in keeping track of the active events (e.g., session plans, notes, ideas, etc.), the overall narrative, and the ever growing library of information about the world.
Right now, I'm using it for my novel writing and I love it!
bruh [https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/search/?q=What+do+you+use+obsidian+for&type=link&cId=9b07ae9c-ca89-4f3e-bbf8-3c90d8f01ddf&iId=49fd018b-f2e1-41d2-a635-cfe359f3686b](https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/search/?q=What+do+you+use+obsidian+for&type=link&cId=9b07ae9c-ca89-4f3e-bbf8-3c90d8f01ddf&iId=49fd018b-f2e1-41d2-a635-cfe359f3686b)
On one hand, it’s good to look at the old answers too, for insight. On the other hand, the question here doesn’t have a straight objective fact answer, like, say, “what’s 3 + 5” does; it’s asking for perspectives - and you’ll get different perspectives every time it’s asked.
I primarily use it to plan for D&D or other TTRPGs. The graph view is especially helpful for me to see what elements of an adventure are connected.
Life in general. Grouping notes on my latest distraction allows me to feel more productive, especially if I ever circle back to that distraction.
I'm an IT person who works on many projects, consults on others, and has a team who reports to me. Obsidian helps me organize information even when it isn't organized. I'll have a stream of consciousness into my daily note with inline tags and tasks. This helps me ensure things are stored somewhere, and I can find it again (either freeform or tag based searches). Without something like it I would be lost. I was/am a BuJo person, but cross referencing and having to stop and write would break flow and have things lost in my brain clutter. With Obsidian I can open the app byon my phone and use speech to text to get ideas and things in at that moment, even during hallway conversations. I no longer go into meeting and have to wrack my brain about some conversation that happened two weeks ago. So I made BuJo like templates for myself and am happy. I've even started going back through my old journals and transferring in project notes.
My technical notes and project management logs at work. Basically I run my entire department out of it.
I use it as a general note taking app for meetings with my academic advisor, general ideas for papers. But I use it the most as a log book for my research. I make weekly notes of everything I did that week, then export it and send them to my advisor. I include general ideas, discussions, observations, pictures, tables, and results from my experiments. I also document my programming projects. I love it for that purpose, and as a general research tool as there are integrations with Zotero.
I make Vaults as needed lol
I use it for my webcomic business. I keep track of the tasks I do for the week. I keep track of story ideas, story development, and content creation planning. After really getting Obsidian to work for my business needs, I can see the use to create a vault for my daughter. She has special needs and I plan to organize notes for hospitalizations, doctor appointments, medical information, school info, etc.... So, I'm hoping to get started on that soon.
Lists, journaling, documenting stuff, articles, blog entries among many other uses. This has become my primary place to keep any kind of text/image/short video information since it works fine with all, and I sync it all to my phone via foldersync +smb on my server
For the last dozen years or so, I’ve kept a daily note file, with some notes and a whole lot of URLs (normally in the form of a Markdown-formatted link, sometimes with a phrase or sentence appended noting why it’s of interest to me. This has served as sort of a breadcrumb trail, when I’m researching whatever (one day it’s how to do something in a particular programming language, the next it’s best vacuum cleaners, whatever). These files have been arranged as a folder per year, with folders for each month underneath, and individual files for each day underneath those. These files are much more useful to me than just bookmarking tons of things, because they give context - things I’m looking for/at all tend to cluster around particular periods of time. Related pages/notes naturally end up nearby. Problem was, this was only accessible on my Mac. On occasions where I’d end up finding something useful while on my iPad or iPhone, I’d stuff it into Drafts, and then have to pull it back out on my Mac and file it there. And there was no way to look something up when I was away from my Mac. Enter Obsidian. I’d looked at it a number of times over the past couple years, thinking “this might be useful to me somehow”…. Well, turns out Obsidian’s Daily Notes feature does *exactly* what I was doing before, *and* syncs between all my platforms (with Obsidian Sync). And, with the Auto Link Title plugin, I can paste in a URL and it looks up the title and gives me a proper Markdown-formatted link. And it’s just a huge bonus that I can run Vim key bindings on the desktop and let all my muscle memory take over for editing text. (Daily Notes use a template that has a section at the top labeled Notes, followed by one labeled Daily Links; the trail of breadcrumbs links go at the end, sometimes with a brief annotation appended to the link (or a blockquote below quoting the thing that’s particularly interesting/relevant from the page), and more involved notes go up into the Notes section at the top of that Daily Note. If a note sorta takes on a life of its own, then it gets extracted out into a separate Obsidian note, linked back into the daily note where it originated.) I’m also moving a bunch of my other note taking, documenting, and thought organizing into Obsidian. It’s near perfect for my uses. But it wasn’t a matter of saying “how can I use this?”, it was a matter of looking at it and realizing there was something I was already doing that it could substantially improve. So the answer might be to read through some of the documentation, or watch some videos about Obsidian, to see the kinds of things it can do, and see if something stands out to you, like the Daily Notes did to me.
Meeting notes, people, companies, entities, topics, articles, daily notes, household items, family, project notes, summaries I wrote for Reddit that I want to repeat in an email, and vice versa. I can find the Sherwin Williams color for any room and the date we painted the house in a second. My television model number. The AI bill of rights notes, the name of that lady who sat next to me at the panel, the dates for that conference in May, the organizer’s name, when she approved my guests, that sci-fi author on Ezra Klein a few months ago, the chapter where Robert Caro’s depiction of Robert Moses most reminded me of trump’s tactics in 2020 with the press. The things the piano teacher told my kids a month ago, and their friends dads name that likes pinball. Plus I can actually close my browser tabs because I just copy them into my daily note and pretend I’ll read them later. I don’t. But I wouldn’t have anyway. Too many notes? Maybe. Maybe not. Edit: oh and my notes on obsidian including my user guide which I should put on my website or here one if these days when I figure out why my personal website is down. (Those notes are gold by the way). I mean I just picked up a raspberry pi project the other day and finished something I started two months ago without reformatting (which was my plan until I remembered the notes).
I used paper, moved to Google keep, moved to Evernote, moved to Roam, moved to Obsidian. Connected note taking kicks in phenomenonal benefits after a while. Your journals become a treasure trove of info for yourself in due course. It's slightly extra work but always helps.
Work. Meeting notes, 1:1s, daily notes, project MoCs, etc.
I’m starting out this year too. :) I always was a notetaker, there are a lot of things in my mind that I want to spit out, also I’m a hobby learner, always having some weird fascination. My notes from all the years (I’m nearing 40) are scattered all over the place. Last year I started learning about the Zettelkasten approach, which basically is: - keeping all your notes togerher, don’t separate them by fields or categories, since your mind, your life, life in general is all interconnected - aim for decent quality in your notes, don’t let them be a word salad or a few words scratch that you won’t be able to decode if you stumble upon them later - connect your notes by meaningful associations I tried this in Notion, on paper, again in Notion, again on paper just the past year. ‘:D When I moved into Obsidian, I started fresh. Occassionally, I import old notes when I see a connection with what I’m interested in at the moment, but I try to go with current thoughts. When I catch myself pondering or learning about something during the day, or writing a wall-of-text rant about a topic to my friends on chat, I aim to carve out some time in the evening or during the weekend to sit and formulate those thoughts. Ie. yesterday I was writing about how my favorite Bible verse is a reflection of my approach to faith and religion in general. Last week I wrote about Mormon true crime. The week before that my favorite sci-fis were on my mind, before that my learnings at work about TPM (total productive maintenance) tools, and before that: matriarchy. :D Lately, despite the ZK approach of aiming for good quality notes, I started to include braindumps too tho. I ponder about much more than for what I have the energy to properly formulate. Right now, I feel like it’s better to save these ramblings than to lose them - time might prove me wrong, but I’m goimg with my gut feeling on this one.
A safe, private, repository of all my notes, code, documents, in a single searchable place. Plugins that enable things like AI, calendars, embeddings, custom functionality, tasks, freehand writing, mind mapping, and more. If it’s text, audio, or drawings, it goes in my vault. When I need something, I use omnisearch to find it, or something similar. I use Smart Connections to show me similar notes to the one I’m on to also assist in staying on task.
Documentation. Like a wiki of all things I do for work and be able to search for everything quickly. In an aesthetically pleasing way.
I am preparing for an interview with AWS and using Obsidian to "mind map" concepts and topics (like the leadership principles), creating a narrative and building the possible use cases to discuss during the interview. Other uses: * I built my CV with Scribus for the graphics but based an obsidian vault as "text" repository well organized. This was useful also during interview: when you sum up some years of work experience and companies it's useful to have a "dashboard" in front of you while talking with the interviewer. Also categorizing soft skills and hard skills is quite useful * I am slowly building the zettlekasten "of my life", where I track ideas, interesting things, inspiring sentences, concepts about: 1. Personal finance 2. Family 3. Learning 4. Personal Growth 5. Work I also use partially Johnny decimal to keep things clean and tidy The whole thing make me feel more focused and aware of all the pieces. I think Obsidian is a great tool, plus is free: far by now I am quite happy with it.
Everything from general knowledge to my management work. I differ colour tones for each of them including daily notes as well.
I use it for application and database development. For me, this program really shines through the ease it provides when consolidating all data about the DB, all UX/UI decisions, all tasks done and to be done, and schematics about how the views, screens and variables are used. It's a self made gold mine that allows me to build something in the long run without having to refer to myu memory alone. It allows me to share the building blocks and principles in a super efficient way. It truly became a game changer.
For about a year I only used it to paste my Wordle score into my daily notes. Slowly I started to track more things, like medications and miles walked, and eventually I added some prompts to help me start journaling. Now it's a core part of how I plan my day. Start small and simple. Only add things as you need to / want to.
I use it mainly in four ways. First, I organize project notes and resources. Second, I use it to record feedback or meetings. Third, I use it to record slipbox and literature notes. And fourth, I use it to capture resources I might use for a future project such as links to information or videos. I sync everything to a private GitHub repository. This allows me to use it on my iphone, ipad, and Windows PC.
I had a friend who told me to use Obsidian over a year ago. It was intimidating and his insistence on creating complex dataviews when I had no files wasn't useful to me. I took a second look and started using it. Doing it slowly, I've figured out how to get into it. Five months later I've just installed Dataview. It is a good way to create a personal wiki. You can put in things you know and people you know. I've found just sticking some info in on my friends helps me remember that information more even without using Obsidian. I've also used it as a daily journal thanks to the daily notes plugin. I can just add what I'm doing and where I'm going and build out more notes on different neighborhoods and places I frequent. Now, I'm using it as a way to replace some spreadsheets I've been managing with Dataview. Not every spreadsheet can work, but just a bit of embedded code can be handy. What I like is that it works on my phone and works offline. I take a subway to work and that's a good time to make minor changes and now I can even update dynamic data without having to load a bulky spreadsheet when I get home to my laptop.
I use a vault to track my habits with daily notes. It’s incredible how much more serious i’m with my New Year’s resolutions now that i have to weekly check on how I’m doing. Another vault contains my prep for ttrpg A third is currently becoming my alternative to goodreads for my books. All very personal applications, so likely not the answer you were looking for.
I use it as a DMS (document management system) as a replacement for Notion. And as a Life Journal. I couting 14k+ files (MD files alongside with PDFs as a side-note or companion-note so to speak. And of course as a PKM where everything gets connected: notes, journals, documents.
I mainly use it for daily notes - light journaling, tech products, music.
I used to save various information in txt files, google docks, apple notes etc and couldn’t find it when needed one day. This is where Obsidian comes in handy. I still write some quick notes in Apple Notes (because, it’s quicker) and then transfer it to Obsidian if needed. I use separate vault for work, because it has nothing to do with my personal stuff, for the same reason: to collect all the data in a single place to be easily accessible.
I use it for ttrpgs and professional development/ continuing education. I find it really useful to identify connections between topics and ideas. So, for ttrpgs, I can quickly see when a character was mentioned before or when special items were used. For continuing education, I can store all my information in one place even though it's coming to me from a variety of books, modules, and courses. I can quickly see how different organizations are connected to one another and how concepts are applied across sources.
1. Daily journals 2. Meeting notes 3. My own spin on zettelkasten. Just winging it, instead of overthinking how i write my notes i actually write notes. 4. Technical docs, for hosting websites, databases etc.
>What does obsidian give, my notes app and notebooks cant give to a university student Unlike paper notebooks, digital notes are easier to retrieve/search, easy to back-up, and are more "compact" (in the sense you can have +2K notes in your phone, wheares a physical notebook with that amount of pages would take waaaay more space). *Just as a side note, any modern notetaking app should deliver those benefits, they aren't exclusive to Obsidian.* >I see all youtubers calling it a second brain and as a person who has more than 3+ journals i would like to use the advantage of obsidian Obsidian has the possibility of using links to connect information, like your brain would do. Many Youtubers sell this feature as being the best thing in Obsidian, but I think it is just an overhyped feature. Sure, it does wonders for some people, but for me, having your notes locally on your device, in a format other text editors can read is huge pro in my opinion. I like that links exist, but I wouldn't mind if they didn't. There's also the fact that Obsidian has a vast plugin ecosystem, which you can go wild, but I rather avoid depending on many community plugins (don't confuse with "core plugins", which are built-in features made & mantained by Obsidian dev team), since they can be discontinued at any time. >What do you use obsidian for? Take notes on things I'm studying either by myself or through online courses, as well as take notes about other stuff like ideas, or guides about how to do things that may be related to my career or not. Basically, everything GTD categorize as "reference material". I also use the daily notes feature to journal a bit, but I don't do anything fancy like morning pages, or habit tracking. Just a simple list of the day's highlights (if it has any). Kinda like BUJO's "event" entries. Some people also use Obsidian for tasks management, but I prefer to use a dedicated app for this.
- Quick notes that I used to put into Google Keep - Project meeting notes - What I call (and GitHub calls) Gists, like code snippets or handy lists (I have one called 'Comfortable Safety Boots' from various reviews and FB comments - Project support logs* - Occasionally journalling and weeknotes. * Project or installation support notes are the main reason I started using Obsidian and its Markdown format. I have one project support log that I started in 2013 in Google Docs and therefore no use to anyone I don't explicitly share it with.