1. I have a Daily Note which is my starting point of the day. Aside from some TODOs and some daily reflections, it also contains an image map of things that are currently important. This map gets updated (in a template) once every couple of weeks, depending on where my focus is. Currently it links to a big project for a customer, my running progress, a webdav tool I'm working on, and a book I'm reading.
2. Many of my note templates automatically include a dataview query which spits out a list of related notes. E.g. for People that will be a list of recent meetings and mentions. For Programming related notes there's a list of notes that link to it, like for Java I have ~200 other notes that point at Java, from Method References to Apache Commons libraries.
3. Lots of links. This makes the local Graph View somewhat useful for rediscovery. This includes links to things that don't exist yet (and may never exist). Like I'm probably not going to create a note about Mitochondria, but several notes link to it.
Some more serendipitous discovery might be nice. I've experimented with various Related Notes plugins, most are garbage which find similarities where none exist because they can't tell the note structure apart from its salient content.
First, a disclaimer. I’ve worked with Ankur, and he is a brilliant, super-organized, and methodical engineer.
Personally, I’m on the other end of the spectrum. I’m still up for a good organization, and I do my own simplified version of PARA[1] + Johnny Decimal.[2] However, I’m beginning to tend more and more towards how Steph Ango uses Obsidian[3] while still maintaining simplicity and ways to walk out when needed. I’m either listing a list of files based on keywords, either via the Open command or the Search feature. I, sometimes, use a Universal Search Extension for Obsidian, but I can live without it.
My final thoughts, especially on the UX, are that, eventually, when it becomes commonplace to run a local LLM, I should most likely be just using Spotlight/Alfred or something to open, search, link, and all of that while I just keep adding contents into their own ”boxes” that I have categorized at the gate while filing the documents/content.
I’m not sure if I can even explain what I’m thinking, but the above is a precursor to what I believe will happen soon enough.
Lots of Obsidian talk here. As someone who started with the OG https://zim-wiki.org, I tried Obsidian and never found it compelling enough to switch.
I did, however, with Logseq.
On the surface they're deeply similar -- but Logseq's native handling of outlines -- including collapsing and and expanding on the fly (org-mode does this as well, but you know) is absolutely killer. It's the first one to kind of reliably "free" me from the whole "every note is a page" thing that causes lots of friction.
I think it could go well to solving op's problem as well. Quick expanding and collapsing and easy search helps me to poke around older knowledge in a fun and useful way.
(actually, I didn't "switch," I still keep day-to-day important stuff in zim, but for that storing and exploring old knowledge, I'm now all about logseq).
For me, the goal of PKMs is to store information for later reference.
I know that some people use them to learn, however I've never found this method to be useful for me, so I just stick to spaced-repetition (Anki) to help me learn the relevant facts.
Done this way, I have two "stores" of information. In Obsidian I put information I don't want to memorize or at least not long term, like work related topics (terminology, the domain, etc), project planning, project details, roadmaps, and in Anki I put information I care about learning long term, like facts about X technology or language, vocab, etc.
Point is, i think obsidian is not the right tool for learning. SRS sounds like a better fit. I'd suggest taking the effort to learn how to make good clozes (card type).
The author's wishlist for an Obsidian homepage could be done with a custom plugin. That's the beauty of Obsidian, you don't have to wait, you can extend the software yourself.
The LLMs are quite good at writing one-off Obsidian plugins, in my experience.
I have been using Obsidian for 5 years and I strongly agree with this. My solution is just occasionally clicking random notes in my vault and reading them, 5-7 notes at a time. I do this a couple of times in a month
There's also a core plugin for opening a random note. I believe it adds a command prompt (or whatever they call it) option and a little die icon on the left side.
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1. I have a Daily Note which is my starting point of the day. Aside from some TODOs and some daily reflections, it also contains an image map of things that are currently important. This map gets updated (in a template) once every couple of weeks, depending on where my focus is. Currently it links to a big project for a customer, my running progress, a webdav tool I'm working on, and a book I'm reading.
2. Many of my note templates automatically include a dataview query which spits out a list of related notes. E.g. for People that will be a list of recent meetings and mentions. For Programming related notes there's a list of notes that link to it, like for Java I have ~200 other notes that point at Java, from Method References to Apache Commons libraries.
3. Lots of links. This makes the local Graph View somewhat useful for rediscovery. This includes links to things that don't exist yet (and may never exist). Like I'm probably not going to create a note about Mitochondria, but several notes link to it.
Some more serendipitous discovery might be nice. I've experimented with various Related Notes plugins, most are garbage which find similarities where none exist because they can't tell the note structure apart from its salient content.
Personally, I’m on the other end of the spectrum. I’m still up for a good organization, and I do my own simplified version of PARA[1] + Johnny Decimal.[2] However, I’m beginning to tend more and more towards how Steph Ango uses Obsidian[3] while still maintaining simplicity and ways to walk out when needed. I’m either listing a list of files based on keywords, either via the Open command or the Search feature. I, sometimes, use a Universal Search Extension for Obsidian, but I can live without it.
My final thoughts, especially on the UX, are that, eventually, when it becomes commonplace to run a local LLM, I should most likely be just using Spotlight/Alfred or something to open, search, link, and all of that while I just keep adding contents into their own ”boxes” that I have categorized at the gate while filing the documents/content.
I’m not sure if I can even explain what I’m thinking, but the above is a precursor to what I believe will happen soon enough.
1. https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/
2. https://johnnydecimal.com
3. https://stephango.com/vault
I did, however, with Logseq.
On the surface they're deeply similar -- but Logseq's native handling of outlines -- including collapsing and and expanding on the fly (org-mode does this as well, but you know) is absolutely killer. It's the first one to kind of reliably "free" me from the whole "every note is a page" thing that causes lots of friction.
I think it could go well to solving op's problem as well. Quick expanding and collapsing and easy search helps me to poke around older knowledge in a fun and useful way.
(actually, I didn't "switch," I still keep day-to-day important stuff in zim, but for that storing and exploring old knowledge, I'm now all about logseq).
I know that some people use them to learn, however I've never found this method to be useful for me, so I just stick to spaced-repetition (Anki) to help me learn the relevant facts.
Done this way, I have two "stores" of information. In Obsidian I put information I don't want to memorize or at least not long term, like work related topics (terminology, the domain, etc), project planning, project details, roadmaps, and in Anki I put information I care about learning long term, like facts about X technology or language, vocab, etc.
Point is, i think obsidian is not the right tool for learning. SRS sounds like a better fit. I'd suggest taking the effort to learn how to make good clozes (card type).
Yet as far as I know, the only thing an Obsidian account really unlocks, is a graph search. Which would seem like a missed opportunity
The LLMs are quite good at writing one-off Obsidian plugins, in my experience.