A few months ago I noticed that I was quickly approaching my 10GB sync limit for my daily driver vault. I considered deprecating some of the heavier files and images, but I was worried how it would affect the integrity of my vault. Instead, I took the opportunity to think to myself -- what would the perfect vault look like?
I began to write down some of the key philosophies and strategies I use in my driver vault which led to indispensable plugins, which led to more indispensable philosophies and on and on it went.
I've chronicled these results into a fully working vault template that includes templates, dataviews, macros, scripts, and powerful but simple and intuitive structural elements.
This vault is truly a condensation of all of my knowledge pertaining to Obsidian (the README is very long), so please do give it a go! I promise you'll like what you see!
Disclaimer: I use obsidian myself
People who use these things are fooling themselves. I used to fool myself. We're not really achieving or producing and we're certainly not "assimilating knowledge." What we're doing is procrastinating. We're wasting time. We're struggling at our current, real endeavors, and we turn to a scapegoat: "oh darn, it's my knowledge management system that needs work; oh, it's just my productivity system that's just not efficient enough". So we find a nice game, a tool game [1], to: (1) distract ourselves (2) give us the feeling of accomplishment - "I'm taking second brain notes in a fun new app - I'm learning!".
For me, the first step to actually getting things done wasn't to optimize my productivity workflow, it wasn't to find the perfect knowledge management app/system, it was to...get things done. When I became dissatisfied with my work, when I hit a difficult obstacle with my projects, I felt pain, and procrastinated to avoid that pain. There was no secret cure. I just needed to realize that playing with these tools and systems is not getting things done - it's just procrastination.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33135227
I built my own "digital notebook" and use it literally every single day for almost everything I do. When I'm in the middle of a project, I use it to take notes, write down questions, organize my thoughts, and save useful web links. It's hard for me to overstate how critical this to is to my day-to-day life. My notes ARE the thing I need most in order to "just get shit done."
Yes, there are "tool fetishists" in this space, just like you'll find in any career or hobby. They get their enjoyment out of tinkering with these apps and cataloging the hell out of their notes. I'm not one of those which is why my app has practically no curation abilities. But I also think it's in extremely bad taste to shame those who apparently enjoy it.
Honestly, this is probably a good description of your situation, but certainly not everyone's. I use Obsidian every day and nothing you've written resonates with me. I dump things into the tool. I find those things when I need them. I'm much, much more productive as a result. Plus the sync is the best I've ever used. Works flawlessly every time on my Linux desktop, my Surface running Windows, my Chromebook, and my Android phone.
Maybe your work doesn't require these tools?
Some years I use filing cabinets. Some years I use OneNote. Some years I use Markdown. It all depends on the collection of tasks I expect to be doing.
At the end of the year, I make everything (worth saving) a PDF, no matter what system I used - because they're very utilitarian. Then I decide if I'm going to keep using the same system. For the last three years, I've used self-hosted GitLab exclusively, even for non-code stuff.
I doubt I'll adopt Obsidian next year, but if you don't already have a system, it's probably as good as any.
I agree. A lot of personal systems like this are indeed unconsciously used to (1) and (2). This is especially the case when you try to implement a very complex+generic one like this vault. I can guarantee 90-99% failure, albeit you may learn something along the way !
Also, it is not a "BRAIN". It is worth stressing that because It is a bad and misleading name (almost as bad as PKM)
But you are generalizing too much. The problem is the "just" in your "it's just procrastination."
The thread is pointing to many benefits. For ME, it is not even about productivity anymore. It is about "healthier" work environment (in research-intensive activities).
More than that, It is not even about "ME" anymore. It about creating better tools and systems in the long term. Obsession and Fooling-ourselves (at the "MICRO" level) is exactly what feeds that larger MACRO evolutionary dynamics.
> We're not really achieving or producing
Speaking of fooling-ourselves, I feel that getting things done itself (at any cost) is also sometimes just a way to distract ourselves and give us the feeling of accomplishment, and also to "avoid that pain" (all three you cited). We may also be fooling ourselves at occasions here too in our rush to “producing” and "“producing” stuff. just saying…
Same with, say, ring binders: Having some is probably better than none, but if you have one hundred you have other problems.
Same for hammers, pans,.... Buying them won't magically teach you skills, but if you want to learn skills tools will help you.
If you go straight into OPs system you'll spend way more time trying to figure out how it works (and it might not even work for you) rather than getting actual work done
Start simple. Write a few notes. Maybe you need to draw things: add Excalidraw. Maybe some note structures are similar: consider Templater.
This. I'm a hardcore Obsidian user both at work and at home, and I started both vaults from absolutely nothing - no user scripts, no organisation, literally no plan at all. Since then, they've evolved and optimized in radically different ways. Taking someone else's "system" is just a way to fool yourself into thinking you can be more productive than you are; you have to find that for yourself and what works specifically for you.
My personal vault is geared much more toward organizing creativity, with a little bit of task-oriented stuff and technical documentation, while my corporate vault is heavily schedule based and contains mostly tactical information, meeting notes and thoughts, etc. For it to be a "second brain", you need it to model your brain - and I work very modally. I have a "work mode" and a "non-work mode" that order things pretty differently, and it shows in the hierarchies and organization of both vaults.
Hypothesis: people who've obsessed over "knowledge gardens" tend to be great at sustaining documentation
1: There's a good chance this is already a term with a different meaning. If that's the case I don't mean to rip it off, it's just what sounded good at the time.
On the other side, as we are already using computers, we might sometimes want to explore and get lost in this forest of problems and possible solutions and have some fun.
After all, as Douglas Adams put it:
“(..) a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer.”
[0] https://gameweld.medium.com/fractal-tasks-and-the-journey-th...
Thoughts that were dissipating into the ether now increasingly get written down there, which frees up mental bandwidth for other things, which has translated in increased motivation to actually do the things I'm writing about.
I'd tried doing similar things with Apple Notes and Bear in the past, but it never stuck very well and I didn't find myself revisiting notes too often. Something about Obsidian has worked better so for though and I'm not sure what it is.
That said, I could see easily getting lost in the weeds and "overmanaging".
I like it when people feel good about what they do, spend a few minutes each weekend and then in months or even years, they publish it. Or just publish as you go on. I also like "work-in-progress" in the wild.
- Look at the endless threads in /r/fitness discussing the 0.01% gain of getting the exact rep range right vs likely just going to the gym.
- you can browse /r/language for days and prepare yourself fully for the day you actually begin ... learning a language
It's a type of productivity illusion, I think there is just a greater overlap of this community with HN.
That being said, I highly recommend obsidian to anyone, it's a great place to journal, and capture ideas. But just start typing, and don't worry too much about organization (ironically this is the biggest benefit of the tool).
I probably spend 15 minutes total writing in Obsidian each week. I'm not writing down things that I don't have difficulty remembering or things that are very easy to search for online. Obsidian is a place for me to store info that I might want later but would have difficulty finding/remembering again.
I hate that I needed to install flatpack for it but that is literally my only complaint. Sadly, it can't replace a text/code editor lime sublime which is where I dumped a lot of non-note knowledge. If only sublimetext copied some of this stuff for markdown.
In school,I never, ever took notes unless threatened. I mention that to show you how even someone like me liked Obsidian.
All people is far too strong of a claim I think, though if you'd said (or in fact mean) many I might agree.
Is systems attract people who feel they need a better system surprising though? Or is it surprising we hear most from those who go on to spend much of their time talking about systems?
I think there are many who have and use a second brain effectively, but perhaps most don't know that term.
A ha, found it on another website:
> Obsidian is a Markdown-based note-taking and knowledge base app.
https://help.obsidian.md/How+to/Format+your+notes
While TiddlyWiki is both a Wiki and a personal knowledge database, I am also using it as a basis for my personal website about ADHD[2].
[1]https://tiddlywiki.com/
[2]https://romankogan.net/adhd/
having spent a decent amount of time looking at this stuff, my biggest recommendation is to try things out for a bit, and find habits that stick. I found a way to make note taking addicting, and other people i’ve got on the band wagon have found it addicting as well so I think logseq is a worthwhile thing to try out. I haven’t put it together yet, but I would like to put together the workflow (more like a mindset, less workflow) that I follow.
Good luck to those looking for a way that works for them for taking notes! I would love to hear about what people have tried, I have a lot of ideas to share.
well done.
may an audience manifest around your knowledge of knowledge.
Let's help and propagate more of this idea -- share your personal obsessions -- I might just get inspired.
I like that. Is that a quote or original?
Disclaimer: after 10+ years of vim and too much time customizing it, I ended up with LunarVim an I'm very happy with it.
I feel like there's a huge amount I don't know about Obsidian after reading just a few files in this repo.
I'm obviously still going to try because this looks amazing. Great work!