This is a quick note on how I use Obsidian.

Big caveat, I want to use Obsidian more, but I still find a pen and paper todo list more practical for me personally.

General Ideas

• The cool graph that it provides is actually not helpful. It just looks cool.
• It's easy to go crazy on customization and plugins. Explore but don't weigh down the core experience too much
• Get the mobile app if you haven't already
• Vim mode is always a good idea 😄
• If you like Obsidian and want to see it stick around, buy a license and/or use their sync engine. I do both and am happy with the results.
  • Obsidian Publish seems cool, but a little pricey

Problems I'm Having

• Input speed is slow compared to something like Neovim
  • Bogs down with a lot plugins or a bad behaving theme
  • Currently debugging my own setup

General Structure

Atomic Notes (When Possible)

When I say atomic notes, what I mean is to have notes with as singular focus as possible. Let linking, tags and folders organize your notes instead of having multi-level headers in one document. Obsidian was built on the idea of Zettelkasten. While not a requirement to use Obsidian I recommend at least reading about it.

Period Notes

Notes for each day, week, month, etc. are really great for organizing your thoughts. I do this in both Obsidian and my paper notebook. Something like the Periodic Notes plugin is a must for me.

Todo Items

I like todo checkboxes (- [ ] and - [x]). WIth the right set of plugins, Obsidian can be handy todo list.

Link! Link! Link!

Obsidian is best as a linked database of notes. Link out to things with double brackets as much as possible.

Plugins

Don't go ham on plugins. Just use what you need. I went ham and it really slowed down the editor. It's still not as fast as I would want it to be, but I've got it in a working state for now.