Trying Obsidian for the First Time

Introduction

If you’ve been looking for new methods of taking notes on your computer, you’ve probably heard of Obsidian. Obsidian logo
It claims to be a “permanent second brain”, putting emphasis on it’s unique methodology for note organization and customization. If you’re interested in switching up your digital note-taking, I hope my experiences can provide some insight towards the benefits of using the program. Scrolling through home page
In this video, I hope to showcase my own personal 7-day experiment with using Obsidian as my main note-taking application. Will the features overwhelm me, or am I going to start the cultivation of a new, digital brain?

First Week

Day 1 - Amazement

I was blown away by all the features and customizability Obsidian has to offer
If you’re not familiar its features, I’ll give you a rundown on some things that caught my eye when I first started using it:
- Seeing as I’ve spent the past few months looking at a completely black screen when typing notes, the themes on Obsidian have been mesmerizing to work with Clip of google docs, then clip of switching between themes
  - I’ve always been a fan of vaporwave and outrun aesthetics, and to see a theme that perfectly complemented my tastes instantly hooked me Clip of 80s neon theme
- Anyways, a more functional feature I am eager to experiment with is the easability of linking notes within notes Clip of creating a linked note
  - Paired with the easily accessible and intricate search bar, I feel like Obsidian would make navigation way easier compared to having to individually open each document in Google Docs Clip of search bar with options for searching
- To add on to the accessibility and flow of the app, there are countless customizable hotkeys that provide immense quality of life changes Clip of hotkeys
  - For example, I’m able to switch between the different panes open using alt and WASD, which saves the hassle of having to constantly switch my hand between my mouse and keyboard Clip of me switching between panes
  - Furthermore, I’m able to instantly close and create notes within a few key presses Clip of closing all tabs
As I’m typing up this script, interacting with the program and discovering all of the intricate features it provides feels euphoric; the customizability of Obsidian has given me an abundance of tools to work with to help take my note taking and information organization to a completely new level Showcase of plugins
The only problem I have with having a md-based note format is the integration to include stylus inputs from my laptop notes

Day 2 - Conversion

I haven’t done much note taking yet, but I’ve been able to use Obsidian for writing an assignment I have for my english class. The customizability of the panes paired with my hotkey for switching about them have made it easier to traverse through text compared to a linear layout like the docx format I was used to. I’m able to create a main hub or good copy for my project, with my brainstorming and ideas organized into seperate notes, which looks and feels productive lmao navigating through my comparative essay links
Although Obsidian’s convenience lies in the note taking experience, I’m gonna try and transfer all my stuff from Google Docs into one vault. This probably isn’t the best idea, but I’ll keep making adjustments as I see fit. Scrolling through my google docs notes

Day 3 - Integration

And so I went to work, unefficiently copy pasting all my relevant documents into Obsidian. Whether it be anime reviews, book summaries, or english essays, I put everything in here with the hopes that somehow connections can be miraculously made from such distinct categories Importing notes into obsidian
Here’s what my web looks like after importing everything Day 3 web
Upon further consideration, I should probably think of a smart way to organize all the different material I have in here. Should I separate references from ideas? Previous works from ongoing projects? I’ve already spent quite a bit of time today, so tomorrow I’ll spend more time organizing and thinking about how to approach this. Day 3 web + think emoji With my extensive experience in minecraft and terraria storage organizing, I think I’ll come up with something. Clip of minecraft storage and/or terraria storage

Day 4 - Structure

Today, I spent some time researching different Obsidian workflows I could incorporate into my vault, and luckily for me, I came across this post on the Obsidian forums. The OP had made a zip file for different storage templates, so I decided to download it myself and see if any of them were fit for me. The two that piqued my interest were the PARA and IMF models, and as of writing this, I’ve imported the IMF template into my Obsidian vault and am planning on transferring my recently imported documents into it. Clip of scrolling through post and zip file content Credit to nickmilo for popularizing this concept Scrolling of his yt channel
The IMF structure uses 3 methods for organizing notes:
- First is the I, which stands for index. The index acts as a main hub for the entire organization system, and helps transition into the second level, which are maps of contents, also known as MOC. Index
- MOCs separate and organize the concepts that comprise your note system. To organize the notes and ideas within these concepts, fluid frameworks are used to appropriately organize the different notes and concepts within your MOCs. MOC template
- After finding a promising structure, it’s time to personalize it to my liking.

Day 5 - Flow

Despite it only being 5 days since the switch, I’m starting to better utilize the program through its various features and hotkeys. I made some notes for the different kinds of computer gates I’m making and learning about wile taking the infamous nand2tetris class. Let’s take a look, shall we? First off, I have some characteristics of the note, like the status and connections it has with other notes Screenshot of computer gates note (credit to Bryan Jenks for the idea, I would highly recommend his Youtube channel for Obsidian and Zettlekasten knowledge). Scrolling through Bryan Jenks YT Next, I have the title, some quick notes for the purpose of the gate as well as any ideas that popped into my mind. Lastly, I have the code I made to create the gate, and a truth table to showcase the functionality and scenarios of the gate. Screenshot of computer gates note There’s 16 of these gates I have to create, and having to reformat every note would be tedious, so I created a template for these gates, and press a simple hotkey to choose this template upon the creation of a new note. Showing template and using it Aside from taking notes, I also spent some time decluttering and reshaping the template I had downloaded yesterday for my own needs. After creating a simple MOC for my youtube channel, I just couldn’t help but fantasize how organized my notes could actually be. Day 5 web

Day 6 - Seamless

I like to spend an hour every day in the morning reading, and for today’s session I was hoping to finish the book How To Take Smart Notes. Picture of book and state author Well, the thing is, I only had a few more pages until I was completely finished the book, so I still had ample time to spare. I thought to myself, “self, wouldn’t it be a good idea to, you know, practice the stuff you just learned about?'' Reverb, zoom out of me reading it on calibre And so I did. I went to my personal knowledge management MOC, created a wiki-link called note-taking and note-systems, and slowly added more categories depending on the different topics of my notes. Creating note taking note It was my first time taking decent digital notes, but I’m really satisfied with the end result. Being able to use the wiki-links and previews made it easier to navigate through the notes, and I managed to create a decent-looking and functional format for every new note. I really enjoy how ideas can just be briefly listed like this, but easily expanded by opening the note in a new pane. Showcasing note-taking note branch

Once again, I spent some more time deleting irrelevant categories and grouping orphan notes. Here’s what it looks like now. I still have some progress to go, but once this is is over, I can put more emphasis on making abstract connections and making it cozy. maintenance, day 6 webgraph
Tomorrow’s gonna be my last day for my one-week experiment, so hopefully I can finish customizing my vault for a desirable end result.

Day 7 - Contentment

I’ll skip talking about the note-taking I did today, as it was nothing special.
After some further tweaks and organization, I was finally able to end up with this beautiful web I can call my second brain. Here’s a quick overview. Day 7 graph

Obsidian Overview

Layout

The structure of my vault is still pretty basic and empty, but it’ll only expand as I continue to read more and take more notes. As for the overall layout, I like to have my graph in the top left for aesthetic purposes, with the search bar and starred notes in the bottom left. As for the rest of the screen, the amount of panes I have open depends on the kind of writing I’m doing, but I tend to just keep it on preview mode as I don’t mind the hash tags and square brackets. screenshot of ui

Organization/Structure

As for the organization, I mostly kept the categories from the IMF template, with the introduction of a concepts MOC.
- The rest of the categories themselves are pretty self-explanatory, and are quite empty considering I had just started taking note-taking seriously a week ago. going through my index
When looking at my notes in the graph view, there’s the occasional group of interweaving notes, but most of the time it’s stuff I lazily shoved into a single category. Hopefully, I can start making connections to these different notes later on. new web with emphasis on bundled notes

Note Layout

For each layout of my notes, I use this simple template that allows me to create connections, tags, and list references. I haven’t really been creating tags that often, but I’m planning on adoping Bryan Jenk’s approach to using tags and links.
That’s really all there is to it. After spending a week using Obsidian as my all-in-one note-taking platform, I think it’s about time I share my opinions about the program. using note template

Reflection

Personal Benefits

Prior to using Obsidian, I wasn’t too fond of taking notes. I find physical notes to be too tedious to navigate through, and as a result, I rarely come back to a note again after writing it. Binder with notes Using google docs to write general notes for the different books I helped me remember the ideas I learn, but the lack of connections and idea organization has led to writing the same ideas over and over again. Typing on google docs Fortunately, Obsidian solves both these problems. Obsidian image The various methods of note retrieval helps reduce the friction of finding previous ideas, and the flexbility and accessibility of taking notes makes it easy to create and build upon whatever ideas and topics I come across. Show ctrl + o, search bar, opening from graph Instead of writing the same idea over and over again, I can dig deeper into the text I’m reading to add further expand my notes and enhance my understanding of the topic. Linking notes

Benefits

I think the selling points of this app are its accessibility, customizability, and durability Accessibility

Creating and connecting new notes is as simple as creating a wiki-link from an already existing note, importing a template with the press of a hotkey, and then typing whatever comes to mind. Customizability
If you like to creatively organize your notes, Obsidian will be a treat to use. Having to learn the different typing and formatting conventions might be a bit daunting at first, but if you’re planning on using this in the long-run, it’s definitely worth the effort. There’s also still plenty of other features that I probably haven’t mentioned, not to mention the different community plugins you can add to your vault. Some plug-ins enhance already-existing features like tables and templates, while some add new things like calendars and mind maps. Durability
If your vault has a good structure, Obsidian could easily be the last note-taking tool you use for the rest of your life. In the off-chance that you do want to switch, all the notes taken are in mark-down format in your computer storage, so it won’t be hard to transfer them onto a new program. I personally like to store them on the cloud for safety purposes, but am planning on saving a back up every week on my computer just in case.

Recommendation

I enjoy using Obsidian as it promotes creative organization and idea connectivity, but your note-taking preferences may be completely different. On top of hearing my personal opinion, it’s probably best if you just download it and try for yourself. You don’t have to fully commit and move all your notes like how I did within my second day of using the app, but I would recommend you spend a day or two taking notes on a certain topic to see if the user interface and features help complement your personal preferences. You may not see it as your all-in-one storage like I do, but you can still use it as a tool to help plan out projects or connect ideas.
Anyways, that pretty much wraps up my one-week experience with using Obsidian. If you have any questions, I’d recommend you go to their forums page or watch other Youtubers like Bryan Jenks and Linking Your Thinking, as thats where I copied my organization and structured ideas from. If you found my advice helpful be sure to like and share this video, and subscribe for more content like this. Stay mindful.

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