How Obsidian Has Raised My Game

Maybe it can raise your game too

I always like to keep an eye open for apps that might help me, and I’ve been teetering on the edge of Obsidian for a while.

I looked. Then looked away.

It isn’t the most intuitive of apps, which is touted as “a second brain” and it does need an element of tech-savviness to really get to grips with it.

However, I do like markdown and I used to use Bear as my go-to note-taking app.

Then I switched back to Evernote after they appeared to get their s**t together. Then they lost their minds and started adding calendar sync and task management!

Excuse me! (I guess that’s a whole other story!)

So, being in the Apple ecosystem, I went in with Apple Notes (and Reminders). It’s good. It’s functional, but I want something a little more.

I looked again, at Obsidian, but it still felt a little techie! Not for the ‘everyday’ person. Was I wrong?

I have been watching copious (great word!) amounts of YouTube videos and I’ve read some great articles, some of them right here, including this one from Ellane W 👇

And this one from Nicola Fisher 👇

I took a deep breath and hit ‘Download’…

Out of the box, Obsidian is free to use. I have it installed on my work MacBook, my personal MacBook and the new app is also on my iPhone. It’s all synced via iCloud.

A huge benefit is that the files as standard markdown, text files, that can be opened in any text editor. They sit in a folder in my iCloud. There’s nothing proprietary about them. Brilliant!

It’s very flexible. I can certainly do everything I need. It also has a lot of customization. That’s not always a good thing, because you end up playing with it rather than using it. (Oh! Is that just me?)

I’m still working on the organization – I prefer to use tags, rather than folders, and I think that will work here.

In Apple Notes, and Evernote before that, I just created a couple of folders, one for Personal notes, and the other for work.

Using tags means you don’t need to think about a home for each note.

I’ve noticed that the search capability is very strong, which is useful, but I’m also really pleased with the back-link functionality.

Notes are linked together and create a network, which can be viewed in a visual representation of all your notes, and how they are related.

Plugins

There is also an abundance of plugins available, to further enhance the functionality. Like adding a Calendar view.

Hold on! Wasn’t that one of my complaints about Evernote?

The one plugin that I think will be the most useful is the Kanban board. Having the ability to add notes and tags, that are linked via this board could make it quite powerful for work.

At the moment I haven’t delved too deeply into other plugins. I really want to master the basics first.

Drafts

I’ve written a story about Drafts before, and I have created Actions within Drafts so that I can write in one place and then send the words to Obsidian later.

That’s working very well.

I wrote a story a while ago about the perils of app switching. How changing apps can be counter-productive as you waste time setting it up and “playing” with a new toy!

Certainly, that’s happening right now, but I believe if I get it right then Obsidian will be in use for a while to come yet.

If you’re looking for a new, platform-agnostic home for your notes, that will take your note-taking to a new level, then I’m going to recommend you look at Obsidian.

At the very least, take a look.

Thank you for reading

👉🏻 Click here if you’d like to receive my articles directly into your inbox

👉🏻 Sign up with this link for access to everything on Medium, and you’ll support me directly with a portion of your fee, it won’t cost you a penny more.

👉🏻 If you’d prefer, please buy me a coffee to show your appreciation. 20% of payments received will be donated to Cancer Research UK.