Summary

The author has decided to stick with Obsidian for their Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system over Tana, despite the latter's AI features and potential, due to Obsidian's cost-effectiveness, portability, support for free-form writing, and cross-device functionality.

Abstract

After a period of indecision that stunted the growth of their PKM, the author concluded that Obsidian is the more suitable platform for their needs. Despite Tana's innovative AI capabilities, which include transcribing and summarizing content, the author values the personal engagement with their notes. Obsidian's free use and reliance on Markdown files, which ensure data portability, were significant factors in the decision. The author also appreciates Obsidian's ease of writing sentences and paragraphs, which is crucial for capturing their thoughts and feelings on topics. Tana's current lack of a mobile app also limited its utility for the author, who frequently works on an iPad. While acknowledging Tana's potential, the author is committed to continuing with Obsidian and enhancing their PKM system.

Opinions

The author believes that the 'Personal' aspect of PKM is undermined by over-reliance on AI for summarizing content.
Tana's AI features, while impressive, are considered too automated, removing the valuable friction that encourages deeper reflection when manually organizing notes.
The potential cost of Tana after its beta phase is a concern, especially since the author prefers using specialized best-in-breed apps rather than an all-in-one solution.
Obsidian's use of local Markdown files for data storage is highly valued for its simplicity and the security it provides against data loss.
The author finds Tana's structure, similar to Roam's, conducive to quick notes but less suitable for continuous writing, which is essential for their note-taking process.
Tana's lack of a mobile app is a significant drawback for the author, who needs to access and update notes on the go.
Despite the decision to stay with Obsidian, the author is excited about Tana's future development and recognizes its appeal to others with different needs.

I may be excited about Tana — but I’m sticking with Obsidian

Towards the end of last year, I wrote an article on my first impressions of Tana.

I have been playing around with ever it since — to the point that I found myself trying to decide whether to move my PKM over to the new platform or keep it where it is in Obsidian.

Trying to decide between the two platforms led to the worst scenario: the growth of my PKM being stunted as I ended up committing to neither platform while I tried to decide which one was right for me.

In the end, I determined that I was going to stick with Obsidian. Below are the main five reasons behind that decision.

AI

The fact that Tana has introduced AI into its platform may seem like a real strength when compared to Obsidian, but bear with me.

First up, the AI has been well implemented and seeing this tweet where the platform is able to transcribe and then summarise the key points of a video blew my mind when I first saw it.

On reflection though, I was reminded what the ‘P’in PKM stood for. “Personal” means that I should be deciding what they take away from any media. Relying on an AI platform to determine the key takeaways not only undermines the point of generating something which is supposed to be relevant to me but also means that I’m a lot less likely to think about how something relates to me and the other notes I have in my system.

In short, the ability to simply press a button and have a ton of notes generated for me is too ‘easy.’ In my opinion, the real value of a PKM is finding friction which forces you to take the time to really think about how one note relates to another.

Price

At the moment, the full functionality of each app (except for end-to-end encryption in Obsidian) can be used without any cost.

However, the Tana development team have been very clear from the beginning that, once their app comes out of beta, they will be charging for it. How much it will cost has not been confirmed, but they’re talking about $10/month — which is not a small outlay.

Tana is justifying the price by saying their app will replace other subscriptions, but I don’t think that will be the case for me. I tend to like using best-in-breed apps where possible. So, technically, while I could keep my To-Do list in Tana, it won’t be as easy to manage as using Things3 (my current task management tool), which is set up specifically for the task.

Obsidian, on the other hand, is free to use and is a best-in-breed note-taking app, which is precisely what I need it to be.

Portability

One of the first things that attracted me to Obsidian was that it was essentially a piece of software that sits on top of a load of Markdown files which are stored locally.

If, for whatever reason, Obsidian was to disappear, I’d still have all of my notes which could be opened in any other half-decent text editor.

That niggled at me each time I would carry out some cool functionality in Tana because the Tana platform is right at the other end of the spectrum.

While it’s not impossible to get your data out of Tana, doing so is far from easy. The outputted files would require quite a bit of parsing to be able to open notes in another program.

Free-Form Writing

Tana is a lot like Roam in as far as every line is listed as a separate bullet point. The has several advantages — not least that each line has the potential to be its own separate searchable node, which was a big draw for me.

While that structure lends itself well to writing quick notes (say from a book or a meeting), it makes it very hard to write out sentences and paragraphs following those notes.

Those paragraphs tend to be the most important part of my notes because they make up my thoughts and feelings on a particular topic.

Being a Markdown editor, writing these paragraphs is much easier in Obsidian. I can still make bullet points if I want to (albeit they can’t be tagged or searched in the same way as they can be in Tana) but the additional functionality of free-form writing ensures that my own thoughts are fully recorded.

Cross-Device

Tana is a desktop app with a preference for being used as a Progressive Web App through Google Chrome. Unfortunately, there is currently no mobile version of the app.

Indeed, trying to access Tana on a mobile device generates a warning that content may get lost if edits are made outside of the desktop.

For someone who works around half of the time on his iPad, this would severely limit my ability to generate/update notes while on the move.

Conclusion

Tana is a very exciting tool and I look forward to seeing how it develops over the next couple of years. However, the decision about where to place my PKM was starting to paralyse the growth of my system as I continued to put the decision off.

Having worked through the pros and cons, though, it was clear which platform was right for me. I’m excited not just about getting my PKM back on track, but also about pushing forward with Obsidian.

There’s a lot of work to catch up on — but that’s probably the topic for another article!

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