What is Reddit's opinion of
Obsidian?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
➔ Obsidian website
By popularity on Reddit, this Service is:
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
From the about page:
> Like the cliché goes, we started Obsidian because Erica couldn't find anything that can satisfy her need to build a personal knowledge base. She has tried all kinds of software from TiddlyWiki to TheBrain; nothing felt right though. > Quarantine finally gave us the chance to start making it. After thinking about it some more, we decided on the three most fundamental directions of Obsidian: - Local-first and plain text; - Link as first-class citizen; - Make it super extensible.
One thing I do as the resident note-taker of the group is use https://obsidian.md/, and then just put the notes on GitHub as a wiki of sorts. People can technically make changes, but they don't.
It's also really easy to make links, since there's a fair bit of auto-complete. And if the file doesn't exist when you clikc on it in edit mode, it is created immediately and you cna start typing.
The fact that I can do [[God of War]] and have it turn into [God of War](../../Characters/Gods/God of War.md) makes it really easy to get it to just work.
Looks neat, but I personally use https://obsidian.md/, and find that it models my brain super closely - Specifically the quick [[wikilink]] style of linking to (even nonexistent) files.
I'll definitely have to give nb a look though, that's neato.
Obsidian https://obsidian.md/ is what Gray:has been using for a bit. I recently got into it and with a few plugins it's everything I hoped a notes app would be: mobile sync, easy text entry, notes aren't locked in (everything is in local markdown files) etc
I migrated my knowledgebase to Obsidian roughly a year ago and haven't regretted it for a moment.
I sync my notes using a git repository, though you could just as easily use syncthing, dropbox or pay for their built-in sync solution.
Obsidian has a paid publishing add-on as well, but I wrote obsidian-export to be able to build my own publishing pipeline which uses the static site generator Hugo.
Ditch Microsoft and check out Obsidian. It's a powerful, yet simple, way to create a knowledgebase. It's free, and it's file system based. That means you can use google/dropbox/one drive, etc to sync your notes. You can also pay for Obsidian's syncing service if you don't like those other services.
It is a desktop app, but they've just released their mobile app. I even use it as a player to make a wiki for my fellow players based on what we know.
There's a ton of user mods, but for D&D, the vanilla feature set works perfectly out the gate.
There's actually a fair amount of it out there, depending on what exactly you're looking for.
In addition to Campfire Blaze (which I have no experience with), I've listed three options below that have a free option or are entirely free. There's actually a fair number of programs along these lines, however, and no doubt others will recommend more options.
WorldAnvil has free and paid/subscription options and a range of features specifically for worldbuilding. However, it's online only and I believe the free tier doesn't allow for private worlds. While I haven't used it myself, it seems reasonably popular.
I've seen Fantasia Archive billed as a kind of free, offline WorldAnvil. I haven't used it or looked much into it.
Personally, I've been playing with Obsidian.md. It's not designed with worldbuilding in mind, but allows you to create a "vault" of plain text files that can link to each other and embed images. It's entirely offline and free for personal use. It's available for a wide range of platforms; I've been using the windows version.
Here's what I do:
- I take daily notes. These are just random thoughts and things I do throughout the day. It really helps me remember things. I use Obsidian because they have a plugin for daily/weekly notes and it's super helpful and quick to use. Some days I don't take any notes because I had a bad day or did nothing, that's okay. Just do it when you want to remember things later.
- At a certain cadence (weekly, monthly, whatever), I look at my daily notes and try to pick the most important things I did and transfer them to a "brag sheet". Here's more info about what is a brag sheet.
- When it's time to have performance review talks with my manager, I transfer stuff from my brag sheet into a drive document that are basically my achievements, what I did, what impact it had, etc, and I also include peer feedback on this document.
I really recommend for everyone to have some kind of journal, especially if you work at big companies like I do. I changed managers 2 times in the last year, and if you have no way to quickly transfer context between managers, your career progress will kind of "reset" because the new manager doesn't know you. All my managers really, really appreciated me keeping these journals, it helped them help me so much, and I got promoted every time I felt I deserved it. I'm preaching to the choir since you already do this, so this is more for the other readers.
For behind the scenes stuff, check here: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
You will have to do some searching, but wikis, blogs / cmses, note taking tools, chat tools (slack clones, etc), and more can all be leveraged for your gaming.
If you find some gems, it’d be great if you came back and told us about them!
I suggest looking into ghost for blogging, mattermost for chat, Joplin for notes.
There’s also Obsidian, which is free as in beer and local: https://obsidian.md/pricing
Learn and know the product well, use your PM skills to kick ass on the implementations (I assume you will be in there not just pre-sales?) and be very good at keeping your clients (internal/external) well informed and happy with you providing help for key decisions. Never let bad news ferment and own any issues. Make yourself invaluable but do not BE invaluable. Always make it so you can be removed easily from the equation (once a project is done) while making sure they know how valuable you are. Counterintuitive, but when doing re-orgs or turnarounds, the first thing I find and target to change are any one person dependencies (management perspective - this is a RISK to have). From your perspective, this also can limit your growth and new opportunities. If you are the only one who can do it right/well, you may be the only one doing that until you retire. Another golden key for me was to eliminate, automate and standardize everything I came across to reduce "work", increase output and have more available space on my plate. I then took on more. Do that judiciously and you'll learn more, get exposure to new things and become a "keeper". Oh and track EVERYTHING - accomplishments, challenges, team issues, etc. Journal it or use a note system (check out Obsidian.md for a nice easy and free tool if you like). If you ever end up redundant again - you'll have a nice track record to show and likely little idle time before the next gig. Best of luck
Couldn't agree more. Anki has genuinely changed my life. I used to have a really bad memory, but now I feel like I can memorize anything with SRS.
Have you looked into Obsidian btw? That's another tool I started using this past year that's actually changed my life (I'm really not exaggerating when I say that).
It's an open source version of Roam Research, but they have a massive ad-on ecosystem so you can basically add any functionality you want. It stores your notes as markdown files, so you can keep your notes wherever you want. I keep them synced through iCloud.
They have a really good plugin that lets you connect Obsidian to Anki and write your Anki cards in Obsidian. My biggest pain point with Anki previously was writing cards (it's hard to keep track of which topics you've written cards for, etc.)
Now, I just do it with Obsidian. I'll write Anki cards while I'm taking notes on the book/video/whatever and Obsidian will automatically sync the cards to Anki.
If you're going from a baseline of having your notes in word documents (yikes) then sure notion is going to be an improvement.
There are much better pure notetaking alternatives, though. Writing in pure markdown with something like https://obsidian.md/ is a far, far more effective 'notes brain' than notion, for example.
I am not a handwriting notettaker at all (Obsidian.md all the way). However, writing by hand in the Supernote really helps to structure the ideas even though it's just a stream of consciousness. There is a distinct difference in outcomes from the handwritten brainstorming and the typed-in brainstorming. In my observation, the handwritten brainstorming gets you much closer to the results that you'd get if you had a real person to bounce the ideas off.
For such sessions i don't get hung up on the calligraphy and the text may look as ugly as I make it. The most important part is getting idea to the paper (screen) as fast as as close to what's in the head as possible. Typing does affect the thinking as I would subconsciously optimize for sentences that are easier to type in (less punctuation-heavy and, I assume, even different word choice as the muscle memory may run ahead of the thought process and fingers would type in some words that are commonly used together).
Re: hating the handwriting. I do hate mine too and am not interested in improving it for the sake of having pretty handwriting, but after some 3-4 hours with the Supernote I developed a certain techno-genic discipline. I recognize that I should write at least good enough for the OCR engine can understand me (I use the iOS app Handwriting Recognition and, lately, Google Vision). I found that using a 7mm dotted grid works the best for me. The 8mm grid makes my handwriting too large and the 6mm too dense. The good part is that i don't have to write like that all the time as for ugly handwriting is much better suited for free-flowing brainstorming sessions.
Not a current student but an alumnus, and I'll offer Obsidian as a note-taking + journaling alternative for tools like Notion or Roam
Been using Obsidian lately for noting down useful reference material + thoughts, but also redoing past uni notes
It's cross-platform software for managing a "vault" of markdown files. Basically to edit and manage your own private offline wiki or knowledge base. It also has tons of user-created plugins that do all sorts of cool stuff.
Are you looking for something online or offline? Are there any must-have features you want? What platform do you need (Android, iOS, PC, etc.)?
The three options below are just what I can quickly remember, there's actually a fair number of programs along these lines.
WorldAnvil has free and paid/subscription options and a range of features specifically for worldbuilding. However, it's online only and I believe the free tier doesn't allow for private worlds. While I haven't used it myself, it seems reasonably popular.
I've seen Fantasia Archive billed as a kind of free, offline WorldAnvil. I haven't used it or looked much into it.
Personally, I've been playing with Obsidian.md. It's not designed with worldbuilding in mind, but allows you to create a "vault" of plain text files that can link to each other and embed images. It's entirely offline and free for personal use. It's available for a wide range of platforms; I've been using the windows version.
Obsidian! I recently got into it and conveniently they have the iOS app now after completing a long beta. Some of the best features IMO:
1) It is simply an offline client application which reads a folder containing markdown files and metadata on your device, meaning you own all of your data and you are responsible for it;
2) The community plugin stack has fantastic support thus far, I really like the one for Mind Maps because that’s how I like organizing information;
3) You can theme it however you like, using either your own CSS, or a community provided theme;
4) The client is free on all relevant devices, the only things that cost are their device sync service and publish service. The former will make sure your notes are the same across your devices w/ backups. The latter will generate a static site (look up static site generators) which essentially displays the notes of your choosing on the internet as a static website.
I am really looking forward to the continued growth of the community and the platform as a whole. I’m also really interested to see how applications like Obsidian and Roam change the future of how regular people take notes and use documentation on their computers.
Link for the lazy: https://obsidian.md/
Obsidian.md is an excellent piece of software I use. Moved to Obsidian a few months ago from OneNote and I am sooooooo happy with it. The downside is that there are no good plugins at the moment for capturing directly from the web.
the best one I encountered and this is the one I personally use, is obsidian.md really the best one I could find, cross platform, easy to learn, GREAT community extensions, currently I don't have a single complain
Check out Obsidian! It’s an absolutely incredible (and free) app that lets you create rich, linked wiki-style notebooks. It stores everything locally on your computer (or phone, its on mobile too) as plaintext so you always own your stuff. You can also get add-on sync and publish-to-web support (for a price, base app is free).
There’s a toooooon of plugins from the community to have stuff like maps support too. It requires a little bit of markdown know-how, but it can help you with formatting stuff as well (and they have a more traditional WYSIWYG editor in progress)
Let me know if you try it out! I use it all the time for all sorts of stuff. Also check out r/obsidianmd
All my notes are in Markdown format in a folder synced to my Seafile server. Historically I just use VSCode to write notes but I've been trying out Obsidian and am liking it so far.
I used to use Evernote way back in 2014 but their applications kept getting more buggy with every release. So I switched to using plain Markdown files in a synced folder and never looked back.
I really liked Notion's features when I poked around it a year or two ago (just to see if I could steal some organizational ideas) but no offline and closed format are non-starters for me.
I use Obsidian to create plaintext notes. It allows you to install plugins, one of which is called “Obsidian to Anki” which creates flash cards from your notes.
There are various ways to set it up, but what works well for me is to have a line in my notes starting with “Q: “ treated as the front of the card and a line with “A: “ treated as the back of the card, and to use curly braces for cloze deletions. For example, this is note would result in two flashcards, one a regular question/answer card and the other a cloze deletion card:
This is just a regular note and will not be turned into a flashcard.
Q: What is the capital of France?
A: The letter “F”.
The capital of France is {the letter “F”}.
You can make use of their own service, Obsidian Sync ($4/month), to sync your notes to the cloud. Alternatively, you can put your folder with notes (vault) in iCloud/OneDrive/G Drive/whatever and sync it that way.
A mobile app is currently in a private beta which you can access by contributing $25 to Obsidian.
I do not mean this personally to OP, but I am amazed how many people don't get this. It is the main advertised "selling" point of obsidian. The first thing in big letters taking up the landing page of Obsidian.md says: "Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files."
I used to use it, but I’ve since shifted to using Obsidian, which I prefer by a mile. It has a really in-depth linking and media insertion feature, it’s free, uses markdown for formatting, and saves everything to your hard drive in plaintext so you don’t need an internet connection to use it.
Sorry, I should have linked it: https://obsidian.md/
It's a note-taking app with a lot of features and community behind its ability to work as a "second brain" which fosters the kind of connection-making creative process I was describing.
Personally, as I grow older, I find that I'm more inclined towards focused work (at least once I motivate myself to start lol) at the cost of creativity so Obsidian and the process has been really useful to grow those few moments of spontaneity (going down those rabbit holes and having epiphanies) into something more concrete.
It's mainly the ability to link and search across basically everything in Obsidian. I have it set up as a wiki, both for my worldbuilding and other notes, so it really is a reflection of my mind, and of my rabbit-hole diving into Wikipedia and other websites.
Notion - Unlimited blocks and pages. There are unofficial Linux apps available, but I don't know if they work properly. I love Notion because there's more than just blocks and pages.
Obsidian - Free second brain. Also available on Linux. I only use this for writing. You can do more but I don't want my writing system to be complicated.
I use a tool called Obsidian - there are others like Roam Research, Notion, etc. but Obsidian (and its Graph tool) works for me.
I liken it to digital gardening or interior design - when it's done well, you just have this really pleasant knowledge base you can meander through.
When I think back on how I did this before (essentially from memory or digging through my Google search history), I cringe, I feel like I wasted at least a decade of good learnings by not having a tool like this to capture it and organize it all in.
> If other parts interrupt, you typically ask if they can relent so that you can continue working solo. If they can't, then you work with that part instead. I find keeping notes about which parts are interrupting+where I left off helpful because it takes me non-trivial brain-power to interact with parts, and pen&paper can fill that role fine. Keeping notes about the time you spend will also be helpful too.
Yes! I find that keeping notes and some way a record for each part very helpfult. I try to orginize a folder for each part using Obsidian. Ofcourse, I fail to do this everytime but that's ok.
Obsidian is a note-taking and knowledge management app by the people who created Dynalist, a popular online outliner and one of my favorite tools. They think of it as “an IDE for your notes.” It lets you turn a collection of plain text files into a rich network of linked thought.
The knowledge management tool Obsidian allows mermaid blocks in its markdown files. Might be worth checking out if someone wants to get up and running fast to tinker with mermaid, since it has that live markdown preview like VS Code.
Standard Notes & Joplin are both Open Source & Client-Side encrypted by default. They also have no Licencing restrictions on what you can or cannot do with their software.
Obsidian I couldn't find their Source Code, & going through their EULA surrounding Licencing & "add-on services" makes me uncomfortable. Also looking at their Pricing page, it looks like you're paying $4 or $8 USB per month for "end-to-end encryption. Joplin & Standard Notes enforce client-side encryption by default on all their mobile applications. This means the contents of your Notes are invisible to the server storing & syncing them between devices. Therefore Standard Notes & Joplin can't spy on the contents of your notes. The same can't be said for Obsidian. And even if they claimed it to be the case, it isn't Verifiable if their Source Code isn't public.
So either use Standard Notes or Joplin. Both are equally reputable. Their syncing servers could also be self-hosted.
I use Obsidian to write it up as a wiki with links, tags, and index pages. The app has a plugin which allows you to view backlinks, outgoing links, and even a visualization of all related pages as a graph/web. It might be exactly what you are looking for. There are similar apps with the same features btw, in case Obsidian doesn't work for you.
Fair point. I tried putting my markdown into Obsidian.md, which can export to PDF natively, but when I copied and pasted it, the formatting got all messed up. I was suuuuper tired at this point and wasn't thinking clearly at this point. Better preparation would've solved all my problems.
Are you looking for something that works online or offline?
I've not tried it myself, but someone posted a program called Fantasia Archive a while back that's supposed to be like WorldAnvil, but free and offline. A less world-building oriented program that I have tried was Obsidian, which I found worked quite well.
I haven't used MiniDiary but maybe something like LifeoGraph could work for you. Design is not as polished but it has plenty of features and android support as well. Recently version 2 came out.
Another option could be a markdown editor. Like Obsidian.md for example. There you can create daily templates and write to them. But using this method you have to organize your own files etc based on your preferences. Because there is no encryption you can create your folder / markdown structure in Cryptomator vault or something like that to keep it secure.
Io uso Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/) che ti permette di prendere appunti in formato markdown e di fare dei collegamenti tra varie pagine di appunti.
Se però vuoi un ulteriore livello di organizzazione, che so filtrare gli appunti per giorno o argomento, allora Notion è la cosa migliore
I like using https://obsidian.md. The internal links help to organize my content. Instead of rewriting the same page content for a specific area, I can write [[Goblin Camp#Area 10]] which will set up an easy reference to the existing content.
The downside is that Markdown syntax sucks for any kind of table structure, so you might still wanna insert links to a Google spreadsheet.
Not sure if you require an online tool or not, but if you're a huge markdown fan you should also check out Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/). Electron-based local tool that uses Markdown but offers some similar functionality to Roam.
I tried to use RemNote and searched for other apps that were better. You should look into Obsidian.md or Dendro.cloud.
Obsidian is Roam but free. Also, here's a video explaining why Dendro is better for SRS.
I got on Roam right after Thomas Frank made his first video about it. I thought it was great, but that was the same weekend the service blew up overnight. Lots of people lost data. After that, I started looking for an alternative right away. What an absolute nightmare.
I especially hate being stuck in a browser window taking notes. It makes me feel like I'm on a google doc or something like that. I was born in 1995 and I ctrl-s like it's my only god. Roam and its webpage-only attitude just turns me off, knowing that no matter how much I ctrl-s, my data can still just disappear from under me.
​
Actually there are a lot of options that are duplicating Roam's features. I think Obsidian.md (recently into open beta) is worth a try, at the very least. It has daily notes, as well as a lot more customizability than Roam does. In fact, I'm pretty sure anything Roam can do, so can Obsidian. (Except perhaps the pomodoro.) No, it doesn't have a mobile app yet, but it saves files as plaintext markdown (.md) files in a plain directory, files can be synced and encrypted by any means, and both iOS and Android have reliable markdown editors. It's also a much cheaper service.
I organize all my notes digitally, on the computer. I find it makes it easier to edit and reorganize things, not to mention simplifying sharing them. Currently I've been using Obsidian, but there's a lot of options out there.
I'm not "trying" to like it, I just didn't get into it.
https://obsidian.md/images/screenshot.png
That just looks like a big-o-fluster-cluck.
I write in markdown, a LOT. Several github repos and easily 100 md files. I just like the idea of having them all in one place easily accessible. I thought Obsidian was "the way", but after messing with it for a couple of days - nope.
However with fzf and some simple flags, I have instant access to them. So not really an issue.
I use Obsidian (https://obsidian.md) and their tags feature, and have so a large graph view setup for my clients. I find this (synced to git or their services) work well, especially with the add-on extensions. Their PDF viewer inside the application works well too.
If you're typing up notes, I highly recommend Obsidian. If you need it to sync up to your PC, I'd recommend using SyncThing/SyncTrayzor to keep your files synced across devices. Obsidian does have their own subscription version though.
I'm really blown away by how similar the Android app is to the desktop version and you can still use most community plugins with it.
That’s a fair question. I probably should have dropped a link.
Obsidian is a free Personal Knowledge Management System. Kind of like Notion but you own all of your own data. It’s super powerful and fairly future-proof. A lot of people are starting to use it as a “second brain” (myself included), and it turns out it’s really nice for campaign management. Or rather, it’s really nice for the way I manage my campaigns.
You can easily put together templates and populate notes using keyboard shortcuts, so it has a lot of potential for streamlining admin.
If you want to get really crazy you can get the graph view to show how your journey physically evolves across the Ironlands.
Check it out. It’s certainly one good option.
Obsidian+ Excalidraw extension is great.
EDIT: realized you want to actually just draw write over the text itself and I think for that I prefer something like Notability personally.
Maybe take a look at Obsidian. It is not a dairy app, more so a note taking/mind mapping software, but it is free and open source and from what I read it can be synced with criptomator, which ensures it's safety. It is available on Windows, Mac, Android and Linux.
If you just want to write notes and have them well searchable notion is such overkill that its not worth the terrible performance and fact your notes are basically stuck in there unless you mess about with exports to markdown, but notion supports things that are outside the markdown standard so they wont work when its exported. Not to take away anything from notion, but its not really 'for' note taking, its much more than that. If you just want notes, stick to something that works on markdown. Because your notes are totally portable to another markdown based app if you want to change.
https://obsidian.md/ or basically any other markdown organiser is far better.
Not VS code, but I've moved to OneNote from google docs and have enjoyed it so far. Used it for a CS course this summer and it was really helpful. The only downside is it's Microsoft so Onedrive only. Also, you might be interested in Obsidian notes: https://obsidian.md/ pretty sure you can backup obsidian notes to google drive.
It's really amazing to hear that and it's a thing I will write in my Journal in gratitudes list! :D
But I don't find myself that resourceful, compared to Obsidian community, to which I encourage you to join, no matter if you choose Obsidian, as there's a lot of knowledge related to PKM itself!
The insider build is available if you would like to support the devs and the development of Obsidian. There are different tiers starting at $25.00 https://obsidian.md/pricing
Hope this helps!
I recently was looking for a better solution for making design docs, and I found Obsidian. The basic premise is that it's an editor for Markdown files, that displays the files as a cross-linked wiki. It has some cool features like graph views, file browsers, and outline views by default, and I really appreciate that it leaves your actual documents as plain markdown files- it feels like that gives me control over my own data.
It also offers community plugins, which extend the functionality a lot- I've been using a plugin to automatically run github synching operations, so that the documentation stays synched across my various computers. I'm browsing the plugins and seeing there's also stuff that creates kanban boards and mindmap visualizations.
Also, it's free for solo devs (you need a business license if you are using it as a business with at least two people.)
I've found it really easy to use, I'd recommend checking it out and seeing if it does what you need.
Si querés potenciar el rendimiento de tu actividad intelectual, en caso de que no lo conozcas, te recomiendo adoptar un sistema como el r/Zettelkasten/, en mi caso utilizo https://obsidian.md/ Se trata de un sistema de notas que te permite usar links de todo tipo, internos y externos, ordenar las notas por capetas u otro criterio, insertar marca de tiempo a la creación de las notas, insertar imágenes y demás objetos. En mi caso además de utilizarlo como sistema de notas lo implementé como sistema para gestión de semillas y llaves privadas de criptomonedas dentro de un pendrive encriptado con LUKS, es un uso muy específico pero también sirve para eso porque es muy flexible para adaptarlo en la gestión de todo tipo de datos. También te permite exportar en formato pdf y muchas otras funciones. Pienso que si querés optimizar el rendimiento de tu trabajo sea cual sea, este sistema de notas te puede permitir eso y mucho más. Saludos y muchos éxitos!
Context: 2nd year PhD in I/O / personality psych in the UK so take this with a pinch of salt if not senior enough advice.
It's more of a recommendation around workflow and technology rather than motivation, but it was only a year into my PhD that I realised the former was inhibiting the latter.
Echoing /u/BrainlessPhD's advice I found gamifying reading and note-taking using the Zettelkasten method https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/ and this software https://obsidian.md/ transformed the way I read papers and made the "what notes can I get from this paper that will fit into my broader knowledge" a much more engaging and satisfying process. It feels like you're concretely building an understanding of your area rather than spinning your wheels and the 'granular modularity' (speechmarks because it sounds a little pretentious) aspect, along with the recommendation that everything is in your own words and own interpretation, means the notes are actually useful for writing way down the line.
It means that when you start to read something in your area you know you can just go in, extract what you need and take only the relevant information in a short of time rather than laboriously taking notes on the whole thing. When you read something completely new you know it'll take longer but you'll get a huge amount of individual notes out of it and you feel like you're expanding your horizons, and the linking system makes it much easier to see connections in seemingly disparate topics.
Might not be what you're looking for, but it made a huge difference for me at any rate. This guy has lots of YouTube tutorials (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC85D7ERwhke7wVqskV_DZUA) but feel free to DM if this is of any interest and I'd be happy to answer any questions.
You could take a look at Obsidian, it is free, offline - so no worries about accidentally syncing it. You can sort the notes by name, creation or modification date, has quite a few ways of searching the notes (by searching for a word in the notes content, by tag). It is nothing fancy like Notion for example, but it seems from your description it might just suit your needs. It has also some markdown capabilities, mind-map like features, linking. And it is also lightweight on the machines resources.
I use Obsidian.md and take notes on everything I do all day every day. Sort of like a Bullet Journal but digital. Obsidian automatically cross-references everything I put in brackets, so I can write: "- spoke with [[Marty Jones]] about the [[New House]]" and this line will appear where I wrote it in today's note, but also in an automatic Marty Jones note and New House note.
I rarely go back in my notes, when when my mind blanks it's saved me to be able to go back and refresh my memory. It seems just writing it and knowing I have it safely written down does something to help me remember in the first place.
Thanks for taking time share your thought about the post.
Ya I agree with the visual noise part. The thing is I use obsidian for my note taking. Since every heading is it's own topic. What I did was I dumped entire markdown into the reddit. Removed the paragraphs that I don't need. So there are many line brake. I add so much info 'cause i thought it would be better if i show how i come up with the idea. I guess it killed the whole point of simplicity.
Yes saving space was one of the reasons why i build a layering system. I feel like i should wait few weeks build a actual demo rather than dumping every possible use case in a long article or video.
Again i want to thank you for going through and letting me know what i was doing wrong.
Good to see that you're doing project management. I've been slacking on that front. I just play it by ear.
I rely heavily on my digital Zettelkasten inside of Obsidian. It's my go-to tool for thought-- for note-taking, knowledge management, synthesizing concepts, etc. It's extremely powerful as a knowledge engine and learning in any domain. Highly recommend it for anyone with polymathic dispositions.
As for how I manage my interests, I just interleave 3-4 books at a time. Some are closely related, others are not. I try to get coverage of my core interests (film/art, complexity/systems science, music, and some philosophy) at least every 1-2 days. No hard and fast rules. I just like to hone my intuition.
It's not a wiki, but look into Obsidian. It's comprised of locally stored text files that support markdown editing and links between pages, which can replicate wiki functionality. It's what I use for my worldbuilding.
I wanted to use a wiki to organize a campaign, but I ended up using a lighter-weight "second-brain" app called Obsidian. This is NOT Obsidian Portal, it's a different thing:
It's free, quick to learn, the files are stored locally, and you just write in basic markdown with a little HTML if you want (I use HTML comments for tags so they're invisible on the rendered notes). You can even insert images or links to other non-markdown files, and you can split your viewport so you can reference a PDF or a previous file for whatever you're working on.
My favourite thing about it is that links between markdown files are "first-class citizens", the whole thing is built around the links that things have to each other. You can get a graph overview of all your content and how it links to each other:
I have been using it to build a campaign and a little world in a new system. Because it's a new system, I'm also building a bestiary of the monsters from the book as I add them to the sessions and some mechanical notes as well. Like if a monster can inflict the poisoned condition, I have it set up so when I mouseover the word "poisoned" in the monster stat block, it shows me what "poisoned" does mechanically. And when the campaign is done, I can easily separate the core stuff from my homebrew stuff and re-use all those notes or hand them off to someone else to reference.
It's great. I highly recommend it.
There's no way to automate bi-directional and backlinks in Notion the way you can in Roam and Obsidian.
But there is a MANUAL way to achieve it.
I assume you know you can create a link to any Page AND any Table entry (row) by typing "@" and then continuing to type the name of the Page or Table row?
The larger your Notion setup the longer it may take for the specific Page or Table row to show up.
So let's say you have a Journal that either consists of nested Pages, or is a Table.
- If it's nested Pages, at the bottom of each Journal Page you would just create "@" links to the other Journal Pages you wanted to connect to that Page.
- THEN, you would have to go to each of those linked Journal Pages, and make an "@" link back to the new Journal Page you just created...That's the very manual part of this process.
- If your Journal was in a Table, you would use Relationships to link to other Table entries...and yes, as you said, each Related Property can only relate to one other Table so you'd have to create Relation Props for each other Table.
- BUT, if you DIDN'T want/need Relationships and just wanted to be free to link to ANY other Table entry (including in that same Table) and ANY other Page (which you can't do in Relationship Props anyway) you would just open the Table Entry's detail and in the Content area below the props, you just use the "@" links to link to any other Table entry and any other Page.
Does that all make sense?
Yep, it's a totally manual hack... But so many highly functional processes require these manual hacks in Notion.
I've tried Tiddly Wiki and while it wasn't for me, it is the most what you want i think: A private wiki.
Obsidian Md is more my speed, like a super slimmed down OneNote/EverNote. Aka it's small notes in folders, with tags, and hyperlinks.
Also Obsidian Md is not a host, nothing is in cloud (by default). Can be Pro or Con honestly
Oh man... I've just started moving to a new platform that I started using initially for studying, but it works great for writing too.
The platform is called Obsidian Notes (https://obsidian.md).
It's a markdown editor with lets you string ideas together using tags and references so that you can easily see how things are connected together. Works amazingly for me as most of the stuff I write is snippets of story which I then merge together later. I'm not much of a linear writer, so it's awesome to have something to help me keep track of which snippets connect to eachother.
Before starting to move to Obsidian I was using GitHub and Typora to organize things and keep stuff backed up in the cloud. For Obsidian I've gone with setting up the "vault" in a synchronized Google drive folder on all my devices, that way I can access it anywhere and it's always backed up to the cloud ASAP!
This is a bit out of left field, but I use a tool called Obsidian.md
It's a markup editor, but it can basically do everything Scrivener can do, but also do things like create connections, wiki entries, links within itself, etc. There's a bunch of plugins too.
I switched to it after the sync between my two computers on Scrivener crashed and I lost a whole book. The markdown files it creates are basically .txt files which can be read by anything, rather than Scrivener's proprietary software.
Oh, and it's free.
There are many apps. Notes works for many. If you’re a keyboard user then fn+Q will open a new note.
Personally, I use a couple of tools along with Notes. Drafts (https://getdrafts.com/) for quick notes with markdown. I can easily format my notes from the keyboard and convert them to docx, pages, or html formats. My evergreen notes get transferred to an app called Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/). This is cross platform and allows me to easily create and view links between notes for long term use. However, these are just two examples and fit my workflow. There are many more options out there.
You're in luck! Seems that there a lot of tools coming up in the note taking area.
I personally use obsidian.md which is markdown driven and there's a surprising amount of plugins that work great for code notes. Other than that people are really fond of Notion though I'd argue it's geared towards non-techy people more as it's a bit restricting at places and doesn't have a native client.
So I used to use Onenote for note taking but found that I reached a point where my needs my notes far exceeded the capabilities it had (It was only designed for simple notes and hasn't really evolved since). So now I've split that over Notion and Obsidian, each are a little more targeted to specific use cases and offer much more functionality.
In general I use Notion for notes about my presonal life. Things like personal finances, book lists, book notes, workout schedule, online shopping lists, recipes etc... The template and database functionalities in Notion are extremely useful for these kind of things, and it's really worth learning how to properly use it. There's a ton of YouTube content on how people have set up their notion for themselves, so have a look :)
When it comes to more serious note taking, for work and research, I'll use Obsidian. Obsidian is basically a markdown interpreter (rather simple text editing language used in github readme files for example), and it encourages you to think at a much more horizontal level. You spend little to no time thinking about the hiearchy of your notes, and much more about making links between notes directly. It also has great support for inline pictures/pdf files and splitscreen editing modes, and the Graph mode it offers gives a great overview of your notes and all the links between them. For anyone needing to take notes for work/research purposes it's a great tool, you can check it out here https://obsidian.md/.
In general I think what I love about Obsidian and Notion is that, where Onenote provides a very rigid set of options, they provide you with a set of tools that allow you to customize your personal knowledge management to your liking. I'd highly recommend having a look at them! And of course, Todoist remains the backbone for me in terms of todo list management :)
I ended up spending a lot of time understanding the specific ISO standards that applied to the topic, mainly high level reconition, but specifically:
ISO 15408 - Common Criteria
ISO 17788 - (Maps to NIST 800-145) Criteria for cloud computing and the 6 basic characteristics
Broad network access
Measured service
Multitenancy
On-Demand self service
Rapid elasticity and scalability
Resource pooling
ISO 17789 Cloud computing architecture CCRA
ISO 27001 Guidelines on Information Security Management Common for people getting an ISMS to get certified for this standard and ISO 27002
ISO 27002 Issues pertaining to building information security controls. Common for people getting an ISMS to get certified for this standard and ISO27001
ISO 27018 Guidelines for protecting PII in the public cloud
ISO 27034 Application Security Controls (ASC)
ISO 27050 Standard for issues with eDiscovery
ISO 28000 Standard for issues related to security of supply chain
ISO 31000 Provides guidelines on risk management.
Also knowing the data lifecycle the software development lifecycle and for me the difference between Risk Response (Accept, Avoid, Mitigate, Transfer) and Risk Management (Minimal, Low, Moderate, High, Critical)
If you haven't got onto it, I recommend https://obsidian.md for the note taking, I was able to link a whole bunch of concepts between each other which was good when noting the concepts I didn't know.
I fvcking LOATHE EN's new-er/new-est versions. I used to be their biggest fan but obviously someone/some team wants to make the app more and more "Windows-10"-ish (or maybe MacOS-ish, idk. It was my main note app for like 10 years (years!!!) but then they started forcing us to get the new "improved" versions. If I accidentally had auto-update on I would have to uninstall the crappy new version and reinstall the version I liked via APK. Eventually, bizarrely and frustratingly, even that became impossible, for some inexplicable reason. Long-ish ago I switched to Notion, which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND, they have an "Import from Evernote" option. I still use EN (in a way that they claim shouldn't be possible, namely using the desktop site on Android), but it's like 2% of my time/note-taking activity now, in contrast to the ~100% it used to be. I plan on escaping EN entirely in the near future, but I'm away from my PC for a few weeks and I haven't 100% figured out the logistics yet. In addition to Notion I even more highly recommend Obsidian. Obsidian has changed my life, it is both awesome and beautiful. https://obsidian.md/
Https://Obsidian.md to find out more. By the way, you don't need to use the paid sync option if you're using something like Syncthing to sync your folders. There is a slight learning curve to getting everything set up, so those who want an easier route I suggest Google Drive.
Create a new vault in Obsidian and you can make a note for each character and link them in various ways so you can see all the connections in the graph view.
​
Then make it public so we can all enjoy it!
I have used SN, Evernote, Joplin, Simplenote, Onenote, Google Keep, Apple Note, and now using Obsidian.
It’s very good (for me) and secure (because you store on local but you can sync using icloud or dropbox or their $5 sync service).
Really looks like joplin but it’s something that i prefer obsidian than joplin.
obsidian.md allows you to do hyperlinked notes. It also has a mindmap plugin.
This allows you to make a (not-hand-drawn) mindmap with recursive mouseover capability that can show any number of details, as much as you are willing to enter.
Well you kind of already have a starting point, that you want it to be a wiki. That is how I organize my worldbuilding notes as well, which btw I use Obsidian for.
How I manage inspiration and original thoughts is that I split up my notes into the official, canon wiki pages, and the rest as a workspace.
I basically note down anything that sounds interesting, usually from diving into a rabbit hole on Wikipedia or another website, in this workspace. Since it's a wiki, I can link to other ideas that sound similar or could make up different scenes in a plotline.
Eventually, I start having concrete ideas, coming up with places, characters, other concepts...I create a new page for them in the official section and link back to my ideation notes, just to keep a clear paper trail.
It comes and goes as a cycle of vagueness, then bursts of creativity as you connect ideas and come up with concepts, then dies down as you refine an idea, and starts up again. I would say to get started, take concepts you personally enjoy -- a genre, a specific story, certain tropes, real-life history and culture -- and branch out from there.
Hello u/TechnocraticCitizen, you might also be interested on a knowledge base program.
There are a few paid and free alternative worth looking into. One of the most popular paid knowledge base service is Roamresearch.
On the free side, you have OneNote from Microsoft Office and Obsidian.
I have been using Obsidian for the past 6 months and I can tell you it's the only Knowledge base I need. Simple setup, simple markup language to use, graph view, easy and simple way to link pages and more.
I hope you find this helpful or at least interesting.
Zettelkasten using Obsidian. I write "initial" succinct notes only consisting of key ideas then expand and connect them later when processing. When processing I don't have my textbook/reference with me and just use my notes. Using my notes I expand and connect it by explaining it using my own words and connecting it with other topics, forcing me to understand the topic at hand. How you write your short notes and connect your zettels is up to you. Zettelkasten isn't for everyone, but it works for me. I don't know how it will work up with you.
When you're reading a textbook, I suggest following the tips in this video.
I'm not sure if these are exactly what you're looking for, but Roam Research and Obsidian are good note taking apps these days. I haven't used Obsidian, but I know Roam now has a desktop app and you can always download all your notes if you want to move to another app later. I assume Obsidian has a similar capability.
I use notion and it's available both as an app and in browser it has lots of features I actually love using it you can try it if you want
There's also another note keeping tool called obsidian it's an app (I don't know much about it but have heard it's really good and aesthetic from a friend of mine who uses it daily)
Bonus: I don't know if you're using flameshot if no : It's really an amazing screenshot tool, it has many features (blur, add text, highlight, cloud upload in 1 click and few others)
Obsidian.md is another great note taking tool. I started using it and its great. There is an entire discord server that has a dedicated academics and note taking channel on it. You can also install "plug-ins" that add features to the application. They just released the iOS/android apps as a companion for the windows/mac/Linux application. It is a markdown language tool but its definitely a strong platform if you get the hang of it. In college I used OneNote and had the organization as follows: Notebook = Semester Term > Notebook Section = Subject/class > Section Page = Class/Chapter notes. I also had a surface pro so I hand wrote and typed my notes depending on the class and preference.
Pro Tip, focus on simplicity and essentials first before branching out to other helpful features on whatever tool you use. Like you mentioned, you may end up in a tangent that ends up wasting your time or distracting you from actually taking in the content of the lectures. Once you get the hang of the notes, add a small feature a little bit at a time. Preferably test it out on an easy class you are great at or during the break. Not during Finals! lol
Obsidian (Wiki), and Krita or Affinity Designer (Bit on the expensive side, (£49.99), but there's a 30 day trial, and I believe that affinity's software is well worth the price)
You would basically need to develop a clone of Obsidian, but including some functionalities that are specific for DnD like dice rollers, smart tables, a way to easily track initiative and spell slots and maybe some way to easily incorporate the game rules. (Some of this can already be achieved with plugins. Here's an example of how I use obsidian for my campaign)
Specially now that they released the mobile app, it is really hard for me to think about anything that a new competitor could do to improve on what they offer, in terms of a worldbuilding tool, unless you were to provide the syncing across devices for free or were to buy a licence to include all the rules and spell descriptions inside the app.
I love rambling, please ramble at me more. I need to talk to Beau watchers in much more depth. if you feel like Reddit stalking me and commenting on any of the stuff I've said, I very frequently say things in the hope that others can provide useful input. in particular, the two major queries I'm looking for right now are:
- good evidence summarizing the history of the rise of the Nazis, in a way that can be shared with someone who has heard both left and right wing summaries and currently believes the Nazis claims that the Reichstag fire and beer hall putsch were actually left-wing events
- overviews of who is currently doing good work, such as the suggestions you just made. If you have any more stuff like that I would love to hear it.
also, something that I'm recommending to everyone who's doing work on this: check out the note taking app https://obsidian.md and the zettelkasten method. I suspect that those have a disproportionate effect on being able to organize thinking, which I think is critical given the kind of race against time we are in right now.
I have a few book recommendations I would mention but I don't think they are that unique in the content you've encountered (I have previously linked these and given more detail, don't have time right now): - blueprint for revolution - escaping the rabbit hole - mistakes were made but not by me
I would love to keep in touch with you and any other beau folks who'd like to. (I'm aware he has a discord, I'm trying to be at least a little anonymous on reddit at the moment and I worry that won't be possible on a Patreon discord.)
I'm using Obsidian, which is kind of like Roam. However, it uses the standard file system and Markdown text files, with internal links linking documents together and easy access to backlinks. I keep it backed up with GitHub (Obsidian has a free third party plugin that does the committing/pushing/pulling automatically), though it works fine with iCloud/Dropbox/OneDrive/etc. (since it's basically text files in folders).
I'm actually planning a novel with it, with world building being one part of the project.
Available free for all operating systems (mobile apps are currently in beta). Supported by a very active forum and Discord.
I started using TiddlyWiki but it broke on me very quickly. Since I work in Markdown anyway, it's a natural fit for me. Obsidian's Markdown editor and preview are pretty decent.
It's a software, found on this website: https://obsidian.md/
It's based on markdown files that live in a folder on your PC, which obsidian calls a "vault". It's basically a text editor with features for exploring the markdown files stored in your vault, and the ability to use some non-standard markdown features to get more out of it (embedding notes or parts of notes in other notes is a big feature I personally like a lot).
For resource collection and knowledge management, I’ve been using Obsidian and Typed. If you collect many general resources, Obsidian would work well, but if you collect resources for a specific purpose (i.e. writing) give Typed a try.
I went through a similar process like you, and I ended up using these two great tools.
Links: Obsidian - https://obsidian.md/ Typed - https://typed.biz/
>I have used Anki its very useful, and was using it but now i am using rem-note as it combines note-taking with flashcards. But if you don't collect your notes digitally, Anki is more preferable . I would say use any SRS system apps and you'll be good to go.
Use Obsidian.md with Obsidian-to-Anki plugin. In particular, you can use the daily notes feature to make quick flashcards for GK.
I am finishing up my MA right now and starting my PhD in the fall, so I have been really analyzing my workflow and bujo habits to optimize before the program starts. I dislike how daily logs and more "mundane" stuff can clog up my bujo so I do all of that digitally (through obsidian.md, which I cannot recommend enough). My bujo can then be solely dedicated to important meeting or class notes, brainstorming, a two-page monthly spread that I do, and then more journal and reflection pages (I try to write at least a sentence a day).
For my dissertation research and larger projects I have a dedicated commonplace notebook (this is super useful if you are in the humanities like me but might be less useful for hard sciences or other fields--I don't have any experience with commonplace notebooks in those fields). If you don't know, a commonplace notebook is essentially just a dedicated notebook for you to log quotes, write reflections, and brainstorm ideas in terms of connecting thinkers or texts together. I find this dedicated space to be really fantastic, and then I always scan my old notebooks and digitize them into my obsidian "brain." (Once again, I cannot speak highly enough of obsidian and their backlink system, they also have a feature to automatically organize notes by Zettelkasten, so that might be of interest for you.)
Good luck with whatever you decide! I have really enjoyed developing my workflow but it will undoubtedly change down the line, hopefully for the better haha!
https://obsidian.md, that’s their website,
For now they have a fully functional desktop app for windows & Mac OS, the Android & iPhone app are currently in beta so not yet fully published on AppStore
What I like about it includes: - your notes are stored in markdown, a simple markup language that’s almost indistinguishable from regular text, - notes can be organized &or linked through hashtags, keywords, back links, etc, - it comes with graph view inbuilt, this enables you visually see how your notes connect, which topics or notes you work on more than others - a lot more amazing features - plus your knowledge base is stored wherever you want it stored, on your local drive or your personal cloud service
It solved the networked thoughts issue for me, I’m optimistic as it’s still in early development, so should be more robust in future
Though with ADHD in the picture, there’s a ton of features that I can’t get from any app out there,
I’m so frustrated I’m learning programming in part to be able to build such tools for ADHD folks like me
I opened a Miro (basic, free) account so that my players would have an "evidence board" they could use together. I hope they exploit it.
However, for my campaign personal notes, I am using Obsidian (https://obsidian.md), which has some advantages, namely "I own my data" and "free". It's still under-development (beta-y), but it works well, using Markdown as your text base, internal-wiki-like linking, on-the-fly tagging, and graphing).
Hi and thank you! Obsidian uses the default folder structure for it's notes (e.g. '~/Documents/zettellandschaft/*' in my case). It is currently in an early beta-stage but mobile apps are planned. BUT: You can use apps like Markor on Android to view and edit your notes and sync them via Syncthing. If you want, you could export them as html as well and upload them onto a server or export them as pdf's and view them this way.
Multiply devices is no issues. There are two ways to manage it.
Obsidian offers a sync feature for $4 a month. Or you can do what most people do and use Dropbox, Onedrive, Google Drive etc to store the notes. Just choose your cloud storage folder when making your vault.
I highly suggest looking at the Obsidian Forums as there is a lot of information there and people are happy to help.
I would suggest you download it and try it. It’s free, there is not sign up or commitment. If you change your mind you can just copy anything you’ve done into Notion.
I have the same reservations you have regarding online service hosting my content. At one point I used Evernote, but seen the writing on the wall. Ultimately the 'pro' options along with monthly subscriptions are a non-starter as far as I am concerned. I have many .txt files along with .pdf etc, dropbox acts as my sync/backup. I have looked at https://obsidian.md and from first glance looks exactly like what i have been searching for, Thank you. It's unfortunate that the monthly subscription is the model many developers are using. This just means either the free version or no version will be used by myself. I have no problem paying for value, but a subscription for a content management app is about as smart as Evernote was.. there is no value added. I pay for dropbox because it backs up data from many locations and is accessible by almost any app. Dropbox Paper is about as smart .. only paper files created in dropbox can be used there and have to be exported to be used / saved in the general file folder. So once again, very good idea, but ruined... I just want my files, held on my computer, synced / saved online to be accessible on any device I chose. I don't even care about special formatting as .txt is fine. Markup would be nice since it would give me ability to add formatting and links etc. Anyway, thank you for suggestion :)
I'm a big fan of Mermaid diagrams. They're text based, and supported by several apps including Obsidian. They're not always the easiest to insert earlier steps in if you have lots of parallel steps from that point or to it, but with aliases it becomes quite easy.
I set up an entire structure to keep campaign and session notes for a long-term, sandbox campaign in the manner recommended by Kevin Crawford in Red Tide. Kind of proud of the structure.
However, I have a short attention span, and my interested has already migrated to Obsidian.md . I'm using it just to take notes so far, haven't set up anything nearly as ambitious as what I did in Notion. However, Obsidian just feels so much more lightweight and future-proof.
Obsidian.md is really good. Super easy to learn, supports stuff like, tagging, linking, templates and other stuff to organize your knowledge and thought base and even has a cool graph view of your notes, which allows you to see all the notes you did connected by links, which is super convenient. A lot of stuff is customizable, custom themes, markdown for note writing. And it's fully free. Some people call it a lightweight version of notion. I've used it to create a little knowledge base, where I can quickly find and refresh on everything I've learned in uni or on youtube, and it worked wonders for me.
You could use the desktop OneNote app that comes bundled with Office 365 and it has a local backup option as a legacy feature.
If you want total long-term, local control of your notes, Obsidian is very good. Though it will take file attachments, it wouldn't have mark-up capability. So you could embed the pdf into it but need to mark up with a specific app. https://obsidian.md/
I had forgotten about Mendeley; it is such a great tool. Thanks for the reminder!
If you want to jump into a rabbit hole you could check out the Zettelkasten (/r/Zettelkasten) methodology. It's basically a semi-structured note-taking process that results in a wiki of your notes, with the promise of engendering new ideas by non-obvious connections -- I started using the tool Obsidian to start, though there are many options (the subreddit is a great place to start).
Try Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/). It's free, has Markdown formatting for text, LaTeX formatting for equations and hyperlinks like a wiki (including backlinks). You can include files, use tags and audio. There are Windows, Linux and Mac versions.