Summary

The author has integrated Obsidian into their daily workflow using Drafts and QuickAdd for efficient note-taking and organization.

Abstract

The author has been enhancing their productivity by incorporating Obsidian into their daily routine, utilizing two key integrations: Drafts for capturing and processing notes, and QuickAdd for swiftly creating and appending to documents within Obsidian. Drafts serves as a versatile tool for writing and then transferring content to Obsidian vaults, with the help of custom actions. QuickAdd, a community plugin, streamlines the process of note-taking, particularly for team member interactions, by providing templates and a seamless workflow that doesn't disrupt the user's focus. The author emphasizes the efficiency and productivity gains from these integrations and expresses satisfaction with the current setup.

Opinions

The author is a proponent of Drafts, valuing its ability to capture thoughts and ideas quickly and its versatility through various actions.
Obsidian's integration with Drafts is considered beneficial for managing different vaults for work and personal life.
QuickAdd is highly regarded for its ability to quickly add notes to team member documents without interrupting the user's workflow.
The author finds QuickAdd particularly useful for running weekly reviews with team members due to its template feature and formatted layout.
The author is content with the current state of their workflow integration but is open to discovering additional use cases to further enhance productivity.
The author encourages readers to subscribe to their articles, join Medium for full access, or support them by buying a coffee, with a portion of the proceeds going to Cancer Research UK.

Integrating Obsidian Into My Workflow

Efficiency is key

Over the last few weeks I’ve been further integrating Obsidian into my daily life.

To do this I’ve made use of two different integrations.

First. I use Drafts.

Drafts

Those of you who have read past stories of mine will know that I’m a big fan of Drafts; an app that just lets you capture your thoughts, ideas, quick bites of information or full-blown documents, and then you decide what to do with them later.

You Must Use This App To Capture It All

A single place to write everything. I mean, everything.

medium.com

Drafts sits in the dock on my iPhone, so it’s easily accessible and it opens up in a blank new note, ready to go.

I can either decide what to do with the document straightaway, or come back to it later.

For Obsidian, this means that I can do all my writing in one place, and then send it, via an Action, to my selected Obsidian Vault.

Screenshot of the Draft Action to post to Obsidian

I have two Vaults; one for Work and one for Personal.

I created two versions of the Drafts Action, each pointing to the relative Vault.

NB: I also use Drafts to write my daily journal, and then use an Action to post to Day One.

Drafts is so versatile, here are some other Actions I use:

Ask ChatGPT and get the answer straight into a Draft doc
Post to Mastodon (used to be Twitter, but… you know!)
Save as a Google Doc
Add a task to Things 3

There are others that I don’t always use and, if I’m being honest, there are so many I sometimes forget they exist! Which is OK, as long as I remember and make use of the ones I need to use on a regular basis.

QuickAdd

The other integration I use is a Community Plugin, in Obsidian, called QuickAdd.

This, in conjunction with Templater, helps me to quickly create, or append to documents in Obsidian.

Here’s a simple use case.

I need to keep notes for each team member, especially if I’ve mentioned something specific, or if I pass some work on to them, then I want to keep a record.

I created a document for each team member, within my Work Vault.

Each one is set up in the same way, see the screenshot below.

It’s quite basic, with a simple date/time format added to the entry.

Each note is added to a folder which, in this case is called Notes.

There is a Hotkey for this, which is mapped to a key on my Stream Deck.

When I press that, a list is presented on screen, with each of the team members.

After I select one, the following dialogue is presented.

I just add my note and click OK.

This is just a single line. It can’t do carriage returns to create paragraphs, but this is intended for a quick note. Anything more in-depth will be added directly to the note.

The beauty of this… it doesn’t interrupt my flow. I can simply add the note in the background, without switching out of any other app or document I’m working on.

I also use QuickAdd to run my weekly reviews with each team member.

This is slightly different, as there is a template involved

A new document is created, along with the date and time, and a formatted layout with relevant sections.

The mechanics remain the same, meaning it’s quick to launch and prepare for the meeting.

As time progresses, I’m sure I’ll find more use cases, that will help improve efficiency and productivity.

However, at this time, I’m in a good place with how things fit together, and for now I’m happy.

Thank you for reading

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