ERRATA - Confused? Watch my introduction to Obsidian here: th-cam.com/video/DbsAQSIKQXk/w-d-xo.html - 7:20 @S0mnambulist-667 says "You can rename headings while keeping link support. Right click the heading and choose "rename heading" and it will update all links." - Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!) - Patron vault zip here (thanks folks!) www.patreon.com/posts/121361085 - MD video source github.com/NamtaoProductions/namtao-com/blob/main/src/site/notes/No%20Boilerplate/NB43%20-%20Obsidian%20The%20Good%20Parts.md - Published web version www.namtao.com/No-Boilerplate/NB43---Obsidian-The-Good-Parts
I started using obsidian from your first video, and have been using it since. I wish i had known about tag hierarchies earlier. I now know at least 5 people that have switched to obsidian from my recommendations, so thank you for introducing me to this wonderful app.
A small defense of folders: Even though yes, organizational folders shall not pass, but simply through the fact that your vault also exists embedded in a folderstructure designed to segregate what is inside and what is not, I do use folders for one technical purpose: Keeping my Vaults contents clean. For most people, the hear of gold of their vault is and always will be the markdown notes, but these often have to exist aided by attachments, such as images and audio. For that reason i personally chose to use folders to seperate the heart from the supports, and means I can quickly save and copy only the important part of my vault - the beating heart, not the 400+ Images or other more barbaric filetypes, or sometimes even notes from previous vaults I havent had time to 'modernize' yet. Great Video nontheless, and I am beginning considerations of a version 4 of my vault based on the ideas in the video.
@@NoBoilerplate I often share parts of my vault with co-workers, either for read-only purposes, or for them to actively collaborate. Sometimes, I can make due with sharing just the PDF version, but if they need to contribute back, this is impossible, so I have things in certain folders that I have synced and accessible to my organization, so they can have access to them as raw notes - for them Folders is the only way, and for me, it helps me distribute without fear of leaking information others should not be able to see
I’ve started using Obsidian for the last 6 months, and after watching a startup guide I absolutely love it. At the moment I’m using it as something very simple, note taking, but it’s the nicest one I’ve ever used
Great Video! What I miss are some insights about how this system helps you to retrieve the right information. Actually I just use search to find the right notes. This helps me more than any fancy vault structure
I don‘t support Obsidian as it is not open source. I find it sad that people pour so much work into writing open source plugins and yet the core software is proprietary. I use Emacs with an org-mode setup and the concepts are still applicable, so I appreciate your videos
I love org-mode, and it's how I started out. However, for reasons explained in my previous Obsidian video, I had to move away. While I'd prefer obsidian were open source, because my data is in standards compliant markdown, I'm not worried at all. Also, as you say, nearly all the plugins are open source. Obsidian.nvim is what I reach for at the command line if I need it!
Personally I use Logseq. It may not have full feature parity to Obsidian, but I've never felt particularly left out. One minor gripe I have is that the markdown it produces is not 100% standard.
logseq has a lot of features out of the box tho that you might not need with no way to turn them off, for me its an advantage since it does everything i need without having to install a single plugin but i can understand if that is bloat to some (i guess the same reason why i prefer using jetbrains ide's rather than vscode or vim, convenience and stability)
I think I understand your issues with canvas, but it was just such a game changer for my own learning/organization. My brain works exactly like a flow of interconnected nodes with tiny bits of information. I just wish it had better integration with the rest of Obsidian. Modelling things as inputs/outputs IMO is the perfect use for canvas. It helped me a lot through higher education in mathematics, since I could easily and visually organize where each requirement/input/assumption enters a process of, for example, deriving a theorem from two different theorems and a property.
I also really wanted canvas to work for me, for the same reason. There is a plugin that lets you update properties from canvas links and groups, but after the second time that borked my vault, I went back to plain text!
NAMED LINKS!! Finally! Thank you! Been searching for this forever. Dont understand why its not a bigger topic in the community. Building your own knowledge graph has so much value.
This is *super* insightful. I've been using Obsidian for a few months now and I totally fell into the folders trap straight away :) What's interesting is that I'd previously been using Joplin, which is very much tags first and LOVED that but failed to carry it over. Love your channel, thanks for doing what you do!
@@NoBoilerplate I started watching you for Rust content, but everything else has been right on point for what I'm looking for. I look forward to what is to come!
The clarification here is fantastic, I haven’t had time to devote dedicated research to what you just handed to me free of charge. Thank you, thank you thank you. The first Obsidian video got me onto the application, this is the one that actually streamlines my ability to use it into something useful. I’m so grateful I didn’t have to do the research for this and you share it free of charge. I only hope I can give back to the world at large one day, the way you are today. I’m exceptionally grateful.
Yep, folders are such an antipattern, they force you to organize the information into single categories, even though the notes often belong into multiple! :D
I also just recently started using named links in the metadata and was amazed by how flexible it feels with no downside, like on a book note having: category: "[[Sources]]" medium: "[[Books]]" author: "[[Author's Name]]" And then having a dataview in each of those notes to have a list of all sources, a list of all books, or a list of all books by that author. Notes have the feeling of being in multiple folders since I dont have to pick one place that the note belongs. The whole vault started to feel much more like a home after i started doing this. Edit: Actually i lied, one downside is that dataview can lag for a couple seconds when listing over a hundred notes, mainly noticeable on my journal dataview which lists multiple years worth of journal notes. I'm hoping this gets fixed when Obsidian releases the native Dynamic Views feature
This is awesome, really good tips 👍 Have been fascinated by the idea of building a second brain / knowledge graph using open format tools for years and tried using obsidian couple years ago but never stuck to it. Time to stop procrastinating and give it another go
I don't think I have seen anyone use named links before, I have been building something custom for this myself so its really cool seeing I'm not alone with this. I am not 100% sold on markdown only but it does make sense, though I am fine with any open format as long as I can convert it freely. That said unnecessarily using complicated formats instead of tags or markdown should be avoided. I personally have my kanban boards use tags as the columns and the entries are documents that way I can have a simple todo list view of them and everything with the tag done can be checked, also filtering out done things is a nice thing to apply globally. Great video as always thank you
Have you tried the Kanban plugin? Really clever how it keeps it in markdown format, behind the scenes. My pitch for plain text markdown is at the start of this video: th-cam.com/video/WgV6M1LyfNY/w-d-xo.html
@@NoBoilerplate The Kanban plugin is nice but I was looking for something to apply a tag to the linked note for that card when i move the it from one column to the next, as I would like the data to stay on the linked note and not on the card. I usually have multiple kanban boards that share some tasks so keeping the lane info in the note would be a big thing for me. I wont argue against markdown its too good for that, my current plan is to replace tags with links to have the ability to write a document about what this tag is about, but the workflow is still a bit annoying right now especially with how i would need to workaround nested tags but maybe named properties could be the solution for that.
I accidentally discovered them when, out of habit, typed [[ before referencing a person's name in a property. Absolute game changer for referencing relationships (family, friends, family of friends, work hierarchies, etc.), but I never thought about using it to classify notes in a hierarchy directly like this.
I've built a personal KB of about 1000 pages of notes already in markdown (I started a few years back). Now it's time to consider putting that markdown into an Obsidian vault. Thanks for giving us such a great overview :)
Loved the video. I have been using obsidian for around 2 years and have been doing folder structuring. I have captured many ideas but I didn't really done any productive or haven't achieved much from the idea I have collected for so long. I will try to follow that named link approach and see if I can truly create a second brain.
I've used Obsidian extensively for the last 2 years to log what I do at work every day, keep one-off scripts, and keep work related photos/screenshots. The key feature if Obsidian that makes it useful for me is during weekly updates and performance review - I can instantly get an overview of what I've been working on (the built in graph) on a year-scale or daily-scale. I don't use tags, but links to pages with a project/theme as the title. It's not exciting, but very practical for recall (if you've been diligent about logging and categorizing).
I've been using Obsidian for by video game design notes and I immediately noticed the problem of folders. I wasn't sure what to do about it, so I just minimized the folders by keeping them to a single tier and trying to make mutually exclusive categories. I was linking in the basic wikilinks fashion, but not knowing about tags, I had an entire set of docs just to hold lists of links to similar sheets. I am going to implement a tag system based using PARA tags at the top, and then I will get rid of the list sheets and move everything into the root folder. Thanks for this comprehensive explanation!
Good video. From my own trial and error, I can confirm these to be the best ways to manage your vault, but I personally still moved on because Obsidian seems to be maintenance heavy no matter the system. I'm drifting towards multiple specialized apps because I see the value of their constraints, and for all the things that no specialized app can do (like help me remember what I have to do for the week), I use pen and paper. On the surface it may seem complex, but I see it like grammar. Very complicated upon analysis, yet languages are spoken effortlessly regardless, and that's how my system feels to me.
I bounced on and off Obsidian for a while, but I eventually got tired of apps changing their business model and leaving me cold. I'm in control of Obsidian, if it's heavy, it's my fault. You won't find what you want on the other side of the fence. If you find yourself with heavy systems in other apps, you might find the problem is the systems you build, not the apps that built them.
07:21 you can definitely rename a note without links to that note using [[note|alias]] or [[note|heading]] breaking. it's also been that way for as long as i can remember, i think a few years at least
Finally i found you back on home page . I just saw that you were in my previous subscription list in which i completely removed almost all of my subscriptions.
I don't think I've ever clicked a TH-cam notification faster. Your first video on Obsidian made me _so_ excited to get started as it seemed like the perfect way to organise my ADHD-riddled brain. The problem I've found since has been porting all of my previous "stuff" in, as I've let perfection become the killer of progress and struggled to categorise my stuff into the right places. As a result I've now got yet another semi-operational org tool which isn't quite optimised enough for me to add my quick thoughts into, as I'm (paradoxically) worried they'll get lost. I've gone back to quickly noting things down in Keep, so now I've got even more stuff to port over. But Obsidian is different in that even after all this time, I'm still convinced it's the tool for me and I'm desperate to get back into using it properly. Perfection can come later. Thanks for a) lighting a fire under my backside once again and b) showing me some approaches I can take to make the process easier. I'm not being melodramatic, this is life-changing stuff. Thank you.
My pleasure! And give yourself time. I bounced on and off obsidian for a year before figuring it out. You should still use keep for an inbox, but build a daily process to scrape those fleeting notes into your obsidian system. Look into Zettelkasten!
I'm still probably going to use folders. They're a very easy organizational tool that makes it where I don't have to use search to find the note I want. I don't quite know why, but I just hate obsidian's search feature. Besides that, as long as I follow the 7 +/- 2 rule and never get it more than 3 layers deep, it'll stay reasonably manageable. Though I will admit it is only useful for organizing the sidebar.
if folders work for you, great! For me, the problem started because folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor. I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
I used to seldom take notes, and as such used to do what I was used to - organize the notes within folders. But recently, I have been taking a large amount of notes while playing ELDEN RING, so that I could play at figuring out the lore, interpersonal connections and such things by myself and have noticed how much I pushed myself away from using folders. I still have remnants of them in that Vault, but generally, it has become significantly easier to manage, as the capacity needed to 'keep the folder structure' could now be used elsewhere.
I finally managed to make the leap to Obsidian by using it to manage my playthrough of Book of Hours (the gameplay consists of cataloguing and curating a massive collection of knowledge and objects). I ended up making extensive use of named links in combination with the DataView plugin to keep track of what I should/could do next.
The main problem I keep encountering is the split between work and private projects, public and personal knowledge. - Yes, I could track the bugs and todo's of my projects in there, but I might as well dump a readme in the project folder and eventually move those into git issues. - Yes, I do like to note down personal TODO's, but I either do them right away, write them down to get remembered about them and if not, it's not important anyways and the same goes for work-todo's. Either do them right away or tag them in Outlook until further notice, I either need the context around that or Obsidian would just make me document my work, which holds up and is not really the intended purpose anyways.
My recommendation is EVERYTHING goes in obsidian. Sure, link to urls in other sites and apps, but the more you pull into your trusted system (work or play), the better everything will link together. One vault, one brain.
Obsidian templates (core plugin) are much more powerful than you probably realize. If you have a template that only has frontmatter properties, when you apply that to a note, it will update, just those properties. e.g. all my notes have a timestamp, but I also have "blog" posts and when I publish those, I like to update the timestamp to latest (among other things) so I use a template that just has those properties. I also use zettelkasten for a similar reason, this plugin essentially gives you an extra "create note" button, but one that lets you had a automatic template. And with this, I have no reason to use something like templater, which while cool, usually leads me to yak shaving too much.
My biggest problem is that my Obsidian usage is a no-holds-barred cage match between my autism and ADHD. I'm in a cycle that repeats every few months: 1. Get excited about it again 2. Start using it, but struggle to form any coherent systems of organization, down to the point of naming things inconsistently 3. Realize I've been wildly inconsistent in ways that would be a pain to go back and fix 4. Feel shame about the state of it, have trouble opening it at all 5. Never settle into using it consistently, eventually forget to actually use it and it stops existing 6. Repeat Would love a video on how to develop a proper "style guide" or naming scheme, or ... _something_ to create usage consistency that I can be confident with.
I use 2 top level folders: Notes and Utilities. Utilities has 2 sub folders: Attachments and Templates, to store those files respectively. Everything in Notes uses tags for organization.
A Quantum Leap reference will always make me hit Like. But you already turned me on to Obsidian last time. ""I right their wrongs, I fight their fights - geez, I feel like I'm Don Quixote." - The NoBoilerplate Guy
I think most "Obsidian best practices" videos assume we all have the same goals and workflows and that they are static throughout our lives. I never liked folders for the same reasons provided in the video until they finally became really convenient for my personal use case: I use quartz and obsidian to publish my notes to personal blogs/websites that I share with different people and don't want to overlap (compartmentalize). A folder for each and git push is just the most convenient way to do so. Similarly, for saving content from the web to read later (aggregation) and to practice writing and song writing in my free time (projects) I have different workflows and requirements that benefit from being modular. Tags and links are great, I've read about all their benefits and agree with the reasoning, but for me in these specific cases, dragging and dropping across folders "just works". I grant these probably aren't the most common reasons people come to Obsidian, but I do think stopping to think "What is the actual problem I'm trying to solve?" can save you a lot of unnecessary frustration from trying to fit your needs to the tool. In regards to concepts/knowledge I've actually been moving away from obsidian in pro of mind mapping on paper (admittedly heavily influenced by Justin Sung). I would lie if I said I've done deep research on it, but it does seem to me like linear notes aren't great for learning While obsidian does have links and a graph, it's still designed around paragraphs and the links are also limited on what information they can express. You can circumvent it, but at the cost of a lot of friction. Mind maps on the other hand: - Force you to summarize and group concepts (Summarize whole sentences and paragraphs into a couple words or basic symbols) - Better reflect the way we think (spatial rather than linear) and chunks of grouped concepts rather than paragraphs. - Make you focus more on WHAT the connection is, how important it is and how it related to the other concepts.
I sure dig a mind map, and paper! My remarkable 2 is my best friend, for capture. There's a limit on the complexity of paper. However, have you tried Zettelkasten? If I were an all-paper guy, I'd use that to get the benefits of both. Here's a fav ytuber of mine with a demo: th-cam.com/video/ugxcbsgjEHI/w-d-xo.html I *too* use quartz! However, I don't want my whole vault (ie brain) to be open source, but I also want PART of it to be. My solution is the Digital Garden plugin COMBINED with Quartz. www.namtao.com/No-Boilerplate/NB43---Obsidian-The-Good-Parts
i use folders for when two notes have the same file name but are different concepts entitely. the suggestions plugin still works because the file name is a real word and it indicates which folder the concept is coming from
That's a very reasonable take, but it actually never comes up for me. I create files by pressing ctrl O and then typing a name. If the name already exists, I keep typing
You're wrong about 2 and kinda wrong about the first. You can have multiple vaults open at once, that's just a normal feature, I have 5 vaults, but only use my main one regularly. I'd also recommend not having more than one vault if you can work it out - deeply linking is the genius part of any system like this, and to partition your life into multiple vaults seems counter-productive to me. You don't need an account, it's actually super refreshing how old-school Obsidian is: Unlimited Freeware. There's no account needed because your files are actually on your computer, not someone else's cloud. You can sign up for their sync or publish services, sure, but you can also stick your files in dropbox, icloud, a git repo or wherever! Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!) I'd take open data over open source for my brain any day of the week.
@@NoBoilerplate Oh, I seems they've updated some stuff. Amazingly fast response and I wasn't aware of the option to not use an account. Though personally I prefer my source open.
@NoBoilerplate thank you for the reply! I was joking, but on a more serious note if a person's note taking needs are limited and there's a desire to keep all systems thin, a markdown lsp works just as well and can be accessed inside of NeoVim
I love folders 😂 they help me organize the linking with folder note. I can after that create further linking. But it automates the core of it. I understand folders force you to categorize as only one thing, but that helps me to define the predominant category, then i can add more with links [[like this]]
You're talking about the Folder Note plugin? This kind of problem made me realise the issue with folders. Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor. I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
The thing is, if you really need a mind map-like structure, you can't put it into markdown format. So they did it the best way possible using json, which in my opinion is also universal and minimalistic enough. My use case for canvas is creating a genealogy tree. Although I highly prioritize .md format first for each person's file, it is also very beneficial for me to look at the full picture and find gaps to continue research. And it looks cool.
That's very reasonable. I built my own genealogy tree using named links, parent being the only one required to make the whole tree. Visualised with the juggl plugin or breadcrumbs it's perfect!
i have used google docs and also some other note taking apps but nothing clicked as much as a physical diary even though i mainly program games, i like to have a diary rather than some docs. but after watching your videos i decided to give obsidian a try and i am absolutely loving it, the mark down format is quick and easy to write and both understand. We dont need any fancy task taking apps, just a simple file is the ideal way to go.
wonderful! I love the daily notes feature, I have that window open at the side of my screen all day for quick note taking -it's the inbox into my system
it's painful, but worth it. I did it myself over the summer. Be careful to do it in small bits, and use the most powerful computer you have, renaming all the links takes time! :-D
@@NoBoilerplate Thanks! My "Wiki" notes are all in the same folder, regardless of topic, but all my manuscripts and notes are all folder-divided. My vault is 4+ years old, and there are a lot of orphaned nodes. Slow and steady, you're right.
There's a lot of hatred of folders in the obsidian community, but there's two usecases where they're invaluable: classes and types My notes are organized by type, so I have a source type, a person type, a writing project type, etc. Not to mention attachments and snippets taken from other places. Additionally, as a university student all my class notes come from classes with a pre-defined subject, and so each of my concepts go in a specified subject folder. Subject and type folders let me trivially query with a limited scope, such as by organizing every equation from every physics class into a class-organized list, which lets me make notes sheets without issue. This becomes useful specifically because of how limited the need for folders is: They're an extremely useful broad tool for organization data with a pre-defined structure. While tags and links are like chisels, the humble folder is a saw. Time is only lost when folders are used to try to organize data without an existing structure, in which case you fall into edge cases.
I love using obsidian as a notepad. Have been looking to get more organized for more then a decade. But even after years of trying to get more organised and using different systems I keep failing to get it to stick. Taking notes, i don't know if i'm any good at it. But i really struggle to maintain them. Tips on how to enter data in obsidian is good. But I'm looking for a more encompassing guide or think process, that would be nice. But still, thanks for the video. It's always a delight to see you pop up on my feed.
I really dislike having all the documents on the same level, so I do use folder for high level categories, or as a way to group specific documents. That already significantly cleans up the project, without compromising flexibility too much.
the flexibility to do what, exactly? Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor. I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
@@NoBoilerplate The flexibility to look at the files and see what the hell is going on :D If everything would be on the same level I'd go nuts. I understand that from within Obsidian the file-based hierarchies don't make much sense, but as a human that can look at the filesystem it really can make a difference. Keeping the top-level of the Obsidian project organized makes it more useful for me, rather than an endless list of files to no end.
Named links in Obsidian enable atomic notes to be reused across contexts without content changes. While Juggl offers local graph visualisation, it could be more powerful if node colours reflected their edge relationships to the central node (e.g., 'supports::' edges showing target nodes in green, 'objects-to::' edges showing targets in red) rather than static node attributes. This contextual colouring would enhance argument mapping by visually representing how each node's meaning shifts based on its relationships. My ontology for categorising logical and associative relationships between notes would benefit greatly from such dynamic visualisation. It's weird that this (not to mention named links in the graph view) hasn't been officially implemented.
I got used to properties from using LogSeq at work (I used it as a replacement for Obsidian because at my job Obsidian isn't cleared for use and it does like 90%ish of what Obsidian does functionally). Without folders as an option in LogSeq, properties are pretty much essential IMO for using it effectively. I still prefer Obsidian to LogSeq because it is way more ergonomic and has way better UX, but now I see the benefit of properties. LogSeq is so much more cumbersome for navigating the graph than Obsidian. But it did introduce me to the more freeform structure of having properties with lists of named pages as values. Actually in general I prefer most everything that refers to a unique entity in a property to be a wikilink, because I can store metadata and notes about it in that page as necessary.
No, I don't think it slows down with the size of vault (mine's 5k files), but it DOES slow down with too many plugins - I have... 40! But the great thing is that you can edit the files even on an old DOS computer, they're just plain text - very flexible!
> the three common organizational tools inside Obsidian you'll hear about - folders, tags, and links - function to build hierarchies strictly speaking, they function to build taxonomies
Just a few weeks ago, I had a dilemma with the Canvas plugin where I wanted to link to my created canvases but couldn't since it's not a md file and thus, you can't add metadata to it. My workaround for this is the Excalidraw plugin where you can switch to the usual Obsidian editing view, edit the metadata there and add links. In my use case - creating reference sheets for drawing - Excalidraw is good but it's not as easy to create mindmaps like in Canvas, which is quite a shame. Great video!
I have excalidraw installed (I've used it in a few previous videos) But it suffers from the same problem as canvas. Though Nicolevdh shows it can have text, too: th-cam.com/video/zmgqMZi6QL8/w-d-xo.html
It is far too early for me to even pretend to comprehend this. You're going on watch later Triss, I also should watch your first Obsidian video again, that's what made me start using it in the first place. Which reminds me, I need to start using that again.
I try to avoid folders as much as possible, but keeping the fact that I want to be able to move my vault around whenever, I try to keep a slight bit of folder in my vault, just so I can find a way in my vault just from the file browser.
I might not use obsidian but i was working on a note taking program anyway, so this video is still usefull for me,i can "borrow" some nice ideas from these videos😏 Ps:cool seeing you in the comment section replyng to every comment!
If you're going to steal any idea from Obsidian, please steal plain text data. Make your notes markdown files on disk, then you can use obsidian AND your own note taking application on the same data!
I do use folders simply because sometimes I have to find things manually, and that can be much easier to do when it’s been broadly categorised. However, I absolutely try to avoid using folders as faux metadata. I should be able to move my notes around into different folders without breaking any Dataview queries or stuff like that. Let the metadata be metadata, and let folders do their own thing
I may just be underusing tags, but I honestly can't fathom getting rid of folders, that feels crazy to me, lol. I'll have to try it out with doing it just with a small part of my vault first, and see how I like it.
If anything, most folks underuse links. I only have 4 tags in my system! Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor. I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
The best time for a full-vault refactor was a year ago, the second best time is today. Test out your new system with 2-3 test notes, make sure it works well, then dive in to your refactor
I'm literally adopting this framework right now. The hardest work is adding all the tags and hierarchy in. Besides that, if you set-up your links correctly you can legitimately drag your files out of folders after you're done tagging them.
I used Obsidian originally for my note taking for my D&D campaign. However, I switched to Joplin in my embrace of OSS I keep my vault synced to my Mega drive via the folder sync, and then the native mega clients keeps it actually synced
... you know neither youtube or mega are open source, right? ;-) To be serious: Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!) Joplin actually I dislike because it has a propriatory sqlite db. If you ever want to move from joplin, your data is VERY unportable, despite being in an open source application and db. Open Source is important, Open Data is vital.
Hello Tris. You sound a little more tired than in your first obsidian video. How are you doing? I hear this winter is hard on all of us. Please, do make sure to take good care of yourself :) see you next time! edit: also, apologies if this is uncalled for. I just hope you are doing okay
These are some really interesting points and ideas and I easily find myself using them, though I do have a question about folders. Tags *are* much better, but should I just not use folders at all and have every file/note on the root folder? Doesn't that make it so much more cluttered? With how I have it organized I can easily find what I'm looking for because I can just navigate the file tree and look under the related folders. Tags can also do that, along with a few other neat things, but aren't folders more convenient?
I don't even have the file browser visible. No clutter there, just quickopen every file you want, and navigate around using links. Try the breadcrumbs plugin - you can navigate between parents, children, and siblings using hotkeys - fast fast!
There's some great batch conversion plugins available, try in the obsidian community plugins, or at a pinch, convert your stuff into html, obsidian's great at importing that!
I've always wondered, how do you style your obsidian presentations? side by side images seem impossible to make. Maybe that would be a cool deep dive video
There's a screenshot of me actually making this video in the first few minutes of this video! Meta. I use either the grid or split element that advanced slides provides, easy peasy :-D Read the readme!
The issue of tags not appearing on the graph seems pretty big to me, the approach of having a note for a project with links to all those notes is great cause it creates a nice central node on the graph which visually separates your project which I like. Any workarounds for the tagging?
Tags do appear on the graph, but folders don't. My problem with tags is they have no content. So a tag like project/nb/obsidianparts has to ALSO have a note called project_nb_obsidianparts to contain the project data. Just link to the project note!
yeah the problem with this is mainly the amount of vendor lock-in you'll need to deal with if you ever need to leave obsidian for any reason. Not only that but also i'm not gonna lie, having a massive mess of notes appear when i try to access my vault through my OS to check something does not feel very good at all. That's really the biggest issue i have with using links and tags. They're a very high level solution to what is in my opinion a very low level problem. The thing is that categorization for me is important sure, but not nearly as important as keeping things simple and easy to remember. I made a very recent comment in your first obsidian video about how i'd just finished the process of moving to emacs org mode, because i wanted to try it out. What i really liked is that Org Mode's headings allows you to keep files fairly concise. Instead of creating multiple notes under a folder that fits that category. i instead just use one note for that category and structure new notes with headings. Since you can collapse headings and therefore shorten a lengthy file down to just the top most headings. What i managed to do with this is have only 3 org files, one with all of my projects and tasks, another with all of the important resources i need while i'm learning new things and finally an agenda note to keep track of important events. I've found this system fairly easy to work with, and what's great about it i think is this system is still usable even when accessing it through another text editor. It's allowed me to allow for a very simple and concise solution to a problem that i think most people tend to overthink, which is why you see so many people procrastinate with these kinds of apps.
Can you please recommend any resource or demos of named links? It is indeed a feature I have never heard about before, despite using Obsidian extensively for years (and I might even call myself a power user)
Deadlines are a surprisingly good motivation! I allow myself 1h of yak shaving per day, I have found I have to build it into my workflow, otherwise my brain rebels and I spend all day messing around. Give yourself a little treat! But set an alarm
There’s one valid use case for folders, and that’s separation of work and personal. I want all my work notes in my personal vault, since they’re relevant to my life outside of work. For example, I’m working on a work project using a specific tech stack, and I want to reference them when working on a personal project. However, I do NOT want my personal notes (journal entries, personal thoughts, sensitive documents, etc) on my work device. Separate them into folders, and turn on selective sync so that on my work device, my personal folder doesn’t get synced, but on my personal device I sync it all. Problem solved.
Sincere question: don't named links recreate the hierarchy/structure of folders, just more visibly on the graph view? Thank you for the informative and helpful video!
If you have 'up' links anyway, why not use folders to mirror that structure? You can have a note with the same name as its parent folder which also contains all the 'down' folders and notes. Using folders also helps with the naming issue as you can have notes with the same name specified by their path as you mentioned. Sure you could add the context to the name (e.g., "project-name_notes.md") but why do that when you already have the same functionality with folders (e.g., "project-name/notes.md")?
Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor. I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders.
You've not thought this through enough. You actually want your DATA to be open. Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!) Nearly all open source note taking tools are 1. vastly under-featured compared to Obsidian, and 2. based around a binary sqlite database, not plain text files.
Ive started building second brain recently and I'm relying quite heavily on folder structure - it gives sense of order for my programming theory notes. Is it beginner's mistake ? Im still connecting docs and notes via tags and links.
it's a beginner's mistake IMO, but if you're a beginner, you're allowed to! I sure did. My recommendation is play around with some test notes and folders and tags. Figure out which you want to use to build your system -the only wrong answer is "all of them at once"
Speak not to me of the deep magic, I was there when it was written. Ahem. To be serious: Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention like folder notes does. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor. I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
I use readwise for this, it's AMAZING. here's a great video on obsidian and readwise Funny story: the next version of obsidian has a web browser and booksmarks BUILT IN. I've been testing it for a few weeks, really great!
Trying to switch "anytype" and its best feature for me is sync locally with your devices in seconds. But still discovering.. If you have advice I would like to read or watch
I don't dig anytype because though the app is open source, the data is in a proprietary anytype format. I don't need to use any app to use my obsidian data, it's all plain text markdown!
Honestly, Obsidian like systems never quite worked for me, I feel like a simple top down directory structure better reflects the separations of different projects / fields and trying to organically link pages has always just led to less work being done.
I understand why you don't want to cover other tools, as the focus is on ways of thinking, not the particularities of tools you may not be as familiar with. However as someone who used obsidian for a while, and has now been using logseq for even longer, I think it's at least worth mentioning and flashing on screen that there is an entire ecosystem of graph-like local PKM software, and that viewers can explore this larger world of options if they have certain requirements. For example, logseq is open source and requires no license for use in a company, it does require a slight change in thinking but can absolutely do everything obsidian can.
My last video on obsidian dealt with that topic. This is on the good parts of obsidian. Also, logseq has gotten worse since my last video, the whole ai focus after getting funding really soured me to the project, sadly.
@@NoBoilerplate alright fair enough, but to be fair to the team, AI features aren't in the main branch and the AI branch has had no commits for 2 years. In that old branch, the AI features are off by default, supports local, privacy first AI hosting as well as "Open"AI's cloud offering, and when using "Open"AI, only the data you select gets transmitted, it never transmits your entire graph unless you go out of your way to manually select every single note. Anyway, I don't want to get caught up in criticism, love the video, thanks for the tips :)
Do you use a theme? I’m always switching between “default, as the creators intended” and using the Minimal theme to make everything just that much more clean.
Minimal is good, I stopped using it a few weeks ago because it was slowing down my machine for some reason, a bug probably fixed now. I'm currently on AnuPpuccin, but the most important theme feature I need is different colours for different heading levels. Everything else is gravey!
@@NoBoilerplate Been using AnuPpuccin for a good while now ever since i started using your channel and DreamsOfCode because i believe both of you used the CatPuccin themes in terminal and nvim. Big Fan
There is simply too much friction in these systems. Writing notes becomes a chore when there's metadata involved. Dumping things in a long text file is just so much easier and you can ctrl+f your way around. You'd have to have a very very special use case or particularly huge amount of "notes" or whatever to write down to justify all the metawork (pun intended).
oh totally sure, I have a file called inbox.md for just that purpose. And if that's all the complexity you need, you can stop there. But I'm running multiple youtube and podcast projects concurrently, my second brain needs to be as comprehensive as my first!
I have a note called Capture.md which I use for this. It is my "charting down a random idea quickly" place. Then, when I get the time, I will take that random bit out into it's own proper note.
ERRATA
- Confused? Watch my introduction to Obsidian here: th-cam.com/video/DbsAQSIKQXk/w-d-xo.html
- 7:20 @S0mnambulist-667 says "You can rename headings while keeping link support. Right click the heading and choose "rename heading" and it will update all links."
- Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!)
- Patron vault zip here (thanks folks!) www.patreon.com/posts/121361085
- MD video source github.com/NamtaoProductions/namtao-com/blob/main/src/site/notes/No%20Boilerplate/NB43%20-%20Obsidian%20The%20Good%20Parts.md
- Published web version www.namtao.com/No-Boilerplate/NB43---Obsidian-The-Good-Parts
at 07:01 you mistyped "wikilinks"
I like the blast resistance and the nether portal feature
sure, if you've got a flint & steel
@@NoBoilerplate as long as you can make fire with any of the intended mechanics, it should work either way :)
@@k_user_handle HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON XD
@@NoBoilerplate Actually It's always been like this, IIRC when the fire "block" is placed by any means it checks if it's inside an valid portal frame
@@k_user_handle still waiting for a lightning to hit the portal
2:32 "This video is not sponsored, I asked" made my day 😁
They KNOW they don't need sponsorships, they've bottled LIGHTNING :-D
@NoBoilerplate No publicity is bad publicity. Even Coca-Cola has commercials still.
"we're gardeners, not architects" is a banger of a line
Thanks, I stole it
I started using obsidian from your first video, and have been using it since. I wish i had known about tag hierarchies earlier.
I now know at least 5 people that have switched to obsidian from my recommendations, so thank you for introducing me to this wonderful app.
Pleasure!
just checked out tag hierarchy. is there a way of doing them in the properties?
A small defense of folders: Even though yes, organizational folders shall not pass, but simply through the fact that your vault also exists embedded in a folderstructure designed to segregate what is inside and what is not, I do use folders for one technical purpose: Keeping my Vaults contents clean.
For most people, the hear of gold of their vault is and always will be the markdown notes, but these often have to exist aided by attachments, such as images and audio.
For that reason i personally chose to use folders to seperate the heart from the supports, and means I can quickly save and copy only the important part of my vault - the beating heart, not the 400+ Images or other more barbaric filetypes, or sometimes even notes from previous vaults I havent had time to 'modernize' yet.
Great Video nontheless, and I am beginning considerations of a version 4 of my vault based on the ideas in the video.
absolutely. I said "never voluntarily make a folder" deliberately to include such requirements :-D
@@NoBoilerplate I often share parts of my vault with co-workers, either for read-only purposes, or for them to actively collaborate.
Sometimes, I can make due with sharing just the PDF version, but if they need to contribute back, this is impossible, so I have things in certain folders that I have synced and accessible to my organization, so they can have access to them as raw notes - for them Folders is the only way, and for me, it helps me distribute without fear of leaking information others should not be able to see
The importance of this video simply cannot be overstated. Watching on normal speed and you have earned a spot in my browser bookmarks. Thank you
I’ve started using Obsidian for the last 6 months, and after watching a startup guide I absolutely love it.
At the moment I’m using it as something very simple, note taking, but it’s the nicest one I’ve ever used
Great Video! What I miss are some insights about how this system helps you to retrieve the right information. Actually I just use search to find the right notes. This helps me more than any fancy vault structure
I don‘t support Obsidian as it is not open source. I find it sad that people pour so much work into writing open source plugins and yet the core software is proprietary. I use Emacs with an org-mode setup and the concepts are still applicable, so I appreciate your videos
I love org-mode, and it's how I started out. However, for reasons explained in my previous Obsidian video, I had to move away.
While I'd prefer obsidian were open source, because my data is in standards compliant markdown, I'm not worried at all. Also, as you say, nearly all the plugins are open source.
Obsidian.nvim is what I reach for at the command line if I need it!
Personally I use Logseq. It may not have full feature parity to Obsidian, but I've never felt particularly left out.
One minor gripe I have is that the markdown it produces is not 100% standard.
+1 for logseq, it also has excellent task management capabilities built in which is a major advantage for me compared to obsidian
and you can actually draw on the whiteboards (i hope obsidian adds this one day) which is really nice to use on a tablet
logseq has a lot of features out of the box tho that you might not need with no way to turn them off, for me its an advantage since it does everything i need without having to install a single plugin but i can understand if that is bloat to some (i guess the same reason why i prefer using jetbrains ide's rather than vscode or vim, convenience and stability)
I think I understand your issues with canvas, but it was just such a game changer for my own learning/organization. My brain works exactly like a flow of interconnected nodes with tiny bits of information. I just wish it had better integration with the rest of Obsidian.
Modelling things as inputs/outputs IMO is the perfect use for canvas. It helped me a lot through higher education in mathematics, since I could easily and visually organize where each requirement/input/assumption enters a process of, for example, deriving a theorem from two different theorems and a property.
I also really wanted canvas to work for me, for the same reason. There is a plugin that lets you update properties from canvas links and groups, but after the second time that borked my vault, I went back to plain text!
NAMED LINKS!! Finally! Thank you! Been searching for this forever. Dont understand why its not a bigger topic in the community. Building your own knowledge graph has so much value.
I wish he touched on it, i don't know how to use them
IKR!
This is *super* insightful. I've been using Obsidian for a few months now and I totally fell into the folders trap straight away :)
What's interesting is that I'd previously been using Joplin, which is very much tags first and LOVED that but failed to carry it over.
Love your channel, thanks for doing what you do!
I've been using Obsidian since 2020, and am so excited to see more software people talking more about it! Thanks for this video!
More to come!
@@NoBoilerplate I started watching you for Rust content, but everything else has been right on point for what I'm looking for. I look forward to what is to come!
The clarification here is fantastic, I haven’t had time to devote dedicated research to what you just handed to me free of charge. Thank you, thank you thank you. The first Obsidian video got me onto the application, this is the one that actually streamlines my ability to use it into something useful. I’m so grateful I didn’t have to do the research for this and you share it free of charge. I only hope I can give back to the world at large one day, the way you are today. I’m exceptionally grateful.
It's not either tags or folders. I heavily use both. it's more a matter of preference.
I too used to use both, you certainly can make it work. But, for reasons outlined in this video, folders started to seem more and more the outlier.
tags sound cool but to me tags just seem to have UX i cannot unferstand. Folders user
Yep, folders are such an antipattern, they force you to organize the information into single categories, even though the notes often belong into multiple! :D
easy != simple
@@NoBoilerplate Also easy and simple are path dependent objective functions.
would be great if obsidian could show tags as folders natively (there is a community plugin for that but I think it should be native to obsidian)
I also just recently started using named links in the metadata and was amazed by how flexible it feels with no downside, like on a book note having:
category: "[[Sources]]"
medium: "[[Books]]"
author: "[[Author's Name]]"
And then having a dataview in each of those notes to have a list of all sources, a list of all books, or a list of all books by that author. Notes have the feeling of being in multiple folders since I dont have to pick one place that the note belongs. The whole vault started to feel much more like a home after i started doing this.
Edit: Actually i lied, one downside is that dataview can lag for a couple seconds when listing over a hundred notes, mainly noticeable on my journal dataview which lists multiple years worth of journal notes. I'm hoping this gets fixed when Obsidian releases the native Dynamic Views feature
i started using obsidian because of your other video and it's improved my experience trying to get a degree near-infinitely
My power has doubled since then. I now understand 2% of Obsidian :-D
This is awesome, really good tips 👍
Have been fascinated by the idea of building a second brain / knowledge graph using open format tools for years and tried using obsidian couple years ago but never stuck to it. Time to stop procrastinating and give it another go
I don't think I have seen anyone use named links before, I have been building something custom for this myself so its really cool seeing I'm not alone with this. I am not 100% sold on markdown only but it does make sense, though I am fine with any open format as long as I can convert it freely. That said unnecessarily using complicated formats instead of tags or markdown should be avoided. I personally have my kanban boards use tags as the columns and the entries are documents that way I can have a simple todo list view of them and everything with the tag done can be checked, also filtering out done things is a nice thing to apply globally. Great video as always thank you
Have you tried the Kanban plugin? Really clever how it keeps it in markdown format, behind the scenes.
My pitch for plain text markdown is at the start of this video: th-cam.com/video/WgV6M1LyfNY/w-d-xo.html
@@NoBoilerplate The Kanban plugin is nice but I was looking for something to apply a tag to the linked note for that card when i move the it from one column to the next, as I would like the data to stay on the linked note and not on the card. I usually have multiple kanban boards that share some tasks so keeping the lane info in the note would be a big thing for me.
I wont argue against markdown its too good for that, my current plan is to replace tags with links to have the ability to write a document about what this tag is about, but the workflow is still a bit annoying right now especially with how i would need to workaround nested tags but maybe named properties could be the solution for that.
I accidentally discovered them when, out of habit, typed [[ before referencing a person's name in a property. Absolute game changer for referencing relationships (family, friends, family of friends, work hierarchies, etc.), but I never thought about using it to classify notes in a hierarchy directly like this.
There are few if any other channels that I get as excited about seeing a new video uploaded.
New logo. Nice. Much vibrant
I've built a personal KB of about 1000 pages of notes already in markdown (I started a few years back). Now it's time to consider putting that markdown into an Obsidian vault. Thanks for giving us such a great overview :)
Loved the video. I have been using obsidian for around 2 years and have been doing folder structuring. I have captured many ideas but I didn't really done any productive or haven't achieved much from the idea I have collected for so long. I will try to follow that named link approach and see if I can truly create a second brain.
I really think that an emerging structure from the bottom up is a better way to structure things
You are an exceptional teacher. I am excited to dig into your videos, including this one. Thank you for making them.
I've used Obsidian extensively for the last 2 years to log what I do at work every day, keep one-off scripts, and keep work related photos/screenshots. The key feature if Obsidian that makes it useful for me is during weekly updates and performance review - I can instantly get an overview of what I've been working on (the built in graph) on a year-scale or daily-scale. I don't use tags, but links to pages with a project/theme as the title. It's not exciting, but very practical for recall (if you've been diligent about logging and categorizing).
Great to hear!
I've been using Obsidian for by video game design notes and I immediately noticed the problem of folders. I wasn't sure what to do about it, so I just minimized the folders by keeping them to a single tier and trying to make mutually exclusive categories. I was linking in the basic wikilinks fashion, but not knowing about tags, I had an entire set of docs just to hold lists of links to similar sheets. I am going to implement a tag system based using PARA tags at the top, and then I will get rid of the list sheets and move everything into the root folder. Thanks for this comprehensive explanation!
Good video. From my own trial and error, I can confirm these to be the best ways to manage your vault, but I personally still moved on because Obsidian seems to be maintenance heavy no matter the system. I'm drifting towards multiple specialized apps because I see the value of their constraints, and for all the things that no specialized app can do (like help me remember what I have to do for the week), I use pen and paper. On the surface it may seem complex, but I see it like grammar. Very complicated upon analysis, yet languages are spoken effortlessly regardless, and that's how my system feels to me.
I bounced on and off Obsidian for a while, but I eventually got tired of apps changing their business model and leaving me cold. I'm in control of Obsidian, if it's heavy, it's my fault.
You won't find what you want on the other side of the fence. If you find yourself with heavy systems in other apps, you might find the problem is the systems you build, not the apps that built them.
The child tags concept is new to me and absolutely brilliant
07:21 you can definitely rename a note without links to that note using [[note|alias]] or [[note|heading]] breaking. it's also been that way for as long as i can remember, i think a few years at least
Finally i found you back on home page . I just saw that you were in my previous subscription list in which i completely removed almost all of my subscriptions.
I don't think I've ever clicked a TH-cam notification faster. Your first video on Obsidian made me _so_ excited to get started as it seemed like the perfect way to organise my ADHD-riddled brain. The problem I've found since has been porting all of my previous "stuff" in, as I've let perfection become the killer of progress and struggled to categorise my stuff into the right places. As a result I've now got yet another semi-operational org tool which isn't quite optimised enough for me to add my quick thoughts into, as I'm (paradoxically) worried they'll get lost. I've gone back to quickly noting things down in Keep, so now I've got even more stuff to port over.
But Obsidian is different in that even after all this time, I'm still convinced it's the tool for me and I'm desperate to get back into using it properly. Perfection can come later. Thanks for a) lighting a fire under my backside once again and b) showing me some approaches I can take to make the process easier.
I'm not being melodramatic, this is life-changing stuff. Thank you.
My pleasure! And give yourself time. I bounced on and off obsidian for a year before figuring it out.
You should still use keep for an inbox, but build a daily process to scrape those fleeting notes into your obsidian system.
Look into Zettelkasten!
Absolutely one of those "The empire strikes back" kind of sequels
Thank you! Also I left it on a cliff-hanger - how do you use this all in application.
I guess I have to write The Return of the Jedi
@@NoBoilerplate Well, I cannot wait for the "Named Links are your father" twist to pay off. So many tools, so little time...
I'm still probably going to use folders. They're a very easy organizational tool that makes it where I don't have to use search to find the note I want. I don't quite know why, but I just hate obsidian's search feature. Besides that, as long as I follow the 7 +/- 2 rule and never get it more than 3 layers deep, it'll stay reasonably manageable. Though I will admit it is only useful for organizing the sidebar.
if folders work for you, great! For me, the problem started because folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor.
I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
I used to seldom take notes, and as such used to do what I was used to - organize the notes within folders. But recently, I have been taking a large amount of notes while playing ELDEN RING, so that I could play at figuring out the lore, interpersonal connections and such things by myself and have noticed how much I pushed myself away from using folders. I still have remnants of them in that Vault, but generally, it has become significantly easier to manage, as the capacity needed to 'keep the folder structure' could now be used elsewhere.
I finally managed to make the leap to Obsidian by using it to manage my playthrough of Book of Hours (the gameplay consists of cataloguing and curating a massive collection of knowledge and objects). I ended up making extensive use of named links in combination with the DataView plugin to keep track of what I should/could do next.
The main problem I keep encountering is the split between work and private projects, public and personal knowledge.
- Yes, I could track the bugs and todo's of my projects in there, but I might as well dump a readme in the project folder and eventually move those into git issues.
- Yes, I do like to note down personal TODO's, but I either do them right away, write them down to get remembered about them and if not, it's not important anyways and the same goes for work-todo's. Either do them right away or tag them in Outlook until further notice, I either need the context around that or Obsidian would just make me document my work, which holds up and is not really the intended purpose anyways.
My recommendation is EVERYTHING goes in obsidian. Sure, link to urls in other sites and apps, but the more you pull into your trusted system (work or play), the better everything will link together. One vault, one brain.
Obsidian templates (core plugin) are much more powerful than you probably realize. If you have a template that only has frontmatter properties, when you apply that to a note, it will update, just those properties. e.g. all my notes have a timestamp, but I also have "blog" posts and when I publish those, I like to update the timestamp to latest (among other things) so I use a template that just has those properties.
I also use zettelkasten for a similar reason, this plugin essentially gives you an extra "create note" button, but one that lets you had a automatic template. And with this, I have no reason to use something like templater, which while cool, usually leads me to yak shaving too much.
My next obsidian video will be on how I use the Good Parts to build my hybrid zettelkasten/project management system
My biggest problem is that my Obsidian usage is a no-holds-barred cage match between my autism and ADHD. I'm in a cycle that repeats every few months:
1. Get excited about it again
2. Start using it, but struggle to form any coherent systems of organization, down to the point of naming things inconsistently
3. Realize I've been wildly inconsistent in ways that would be a pain to go back and fix
4. Feel shame about the state of it, have trouble opening it at all
5. Never settle into using it consistently, eventually forget to actually use it and it stops existing
6. Repeat
Would love a video on how to develop a proper "style guide" or naming scheme, or ... _something_ to create usage consistency that I can be confident with.
I use 2 top level folders: Notes and Utilities. Utilities has 2 sub folders: Attachments and Templates, to store those files respectively. Everything in Notes uses tags for organization.
very nice, just the bare minimum folders. I have a few folders that I can't get rid of (templates and attachments for example)
A Quantum Leap reference will always make me hit Like. But you already turned me on to Obsidian last time. ""I right their wrongs, I fight their fights - geez, I feel like I'm Don Quixote." - The NoBoilerplate Guy
Thank you! I absolutely said that, no need to look it up!
And well done, you're the first to notice the reference!
I just got obsidian and this video comes out toooo??? Mmmm this is perfect. +1 sub
you're going to have a *great* time!
I think most "Obsidian best practices" videos assume we all have the same goals and workflows and that they are static throughout our lives.
I never liked folders for the same reasons provided in the video until they finally became really convenient for my personal use case:
I use quartz and obsidian to publish my notes to personal blogs/websites that I share with different people and don't want to overlap (compartmentalize). A folder for each and git push is just the most convenient way to do so.
Similarly, for saving content from the web to read later (aggregation) and to practice writing and song writing in my free time (projects) I have different workflows and requirements that benefit from being modular. Tags and links are great, I've read about all their benefits and agree with the reasoning, but for me in these specific cases, dragging and dropping across folders "just works".
I grant these probably aren't the most common reasons people come to Obsidian, but I do think stopping to think "What is the actual problem I'm trying to solve?" can save you a lot of unnecessary frustration from trying to fit your needs to the tool.
In regards to concepts/knowledge I've actually been moving away from obsidian in pro of mind mapping on paper (admittedly heavily influenced by Justin Sung). I would lie if I said I've done deep research on it, but it does seem to me like linear notes aren't great for learning
While obsidian does have links and a graph, it's still designed around paragraphs and the links are also limited on what information they can express. You can circumvent it, but at the cost of a lot of friction.
Mind maps on the other hand:
- Force you to summarize and group concepts (Summarize whole sentences and paragraphs into a couple words or basic symbols)
- Better reflect the way we think (spatial rather than linear) and chunks of grouped concepts rather than paragraphs.
- Make you focus more on WHAT the connection is, how important it is and how it related to the other concepts.
I sure dig a mind map, and paper! My remarkable 2 is my best friend, for capture. There's a limit on the complexity of paper.
However, have you tried Zettelkasten? If I were an all-paper guy, I'd use that to get the benefits of both. Here's a fav ytuber of mine with a demo: th-cam.com/video/ugxcbsgjEHI/w-d-xo.html
I *too* use quartz! However, I don't want my whole vault (ie brain) to be open source, but I also want PART of it to be. My solution is the Digital Garden plugin COMBINED with Quartz.
www.namtao.com/No-Boilerplate/NB43---Obsidian-The-Good-Parts
i use folders for when two notes have the same file name but are different concepts entitely.
the suggestions plugin still works because the file name is a real word and it indicates which folder the concept is coming from
That's a very reasonable take, but it actually never comes up for me. I create files by pressing ctrl O and then typing a name. If the name already exists, I keep typing
I don't use Obsidian (not FOSS) but It's certainly an impressive app. And your videos on it are really good.
You're wrong about 2 and kinda wrong about the first.
You can have multiple vaults open at once, that's just a normal feature, I have 5 vaults, but only use my main one regularly. I'd also recommend not having more than one vault if you can work it out - deeply linking is the genius part of any system like this, and to partition your life into multiple vaults seems counter-productive to me.
You don't need an account, it's actually super refreshing how old-school Obsidian is: Unlimited Freeware. There's no account needed because your files are actually on your computer, not someone else's cloud.
You can sign up for their sync or publish services, sure, but you can also stick your files in dropbox, icloud, a git repo or wherever!
Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!)
I'd take open data over open source for my brain any day of the week.
@@NoBoilerplate Oh, I seems they've updated some stuff. Amazingly fast response and I wasn't aware of the option to not use an account.
Though personally I prefer my source open.
Just use text files - no syntax, no bloat
markdown IS plain text files, probably with most of the plain text syntax you'd be using anyway!
@NoBoilerplate thank you for the reply!
I was joking, but on a more serious note if a person's note taking needs are limited and there's a desire to keep all systems thin, a markdown lsp works just as well and can be accessed inside of NeoVim
Notes.Old.old.old.text
username checks out :D
I love folders 😂 they help me organize the linking with folder note. I can after that create further linking. But it automates the core of it.
I understand folders force you to categorize as only one thing, but that helps me to define the predominant category, then i can add more with links [[like this]]
You're talking about the Folder Note plugin? This kind of problem made me realise the issue with folders.
Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor.
I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
The thing is, if you really need a mind map-like structure, you can't put it into markdown format. So they did it the best way possible using json, which in my opinion is also universal and minimalistic enough. My use case for canvas is creating a genealogy tree. Although I highly prioritize .md format first for each person's file, it is also very beneficial for me to look at the full picture and find gaps to continue research. And it looks cool.
That's very reasonable. I built my own genealogy tree using named links, parent being the only one required to make the whole tree. Visualised with the juggl plugin or breadcrumbs it's perfect!
i have used google docs and also some other note taking apps
but nothing clicked as much as a physical diary
even though i mainly program games, i like to have a diary rather than some docs.
but after watching your videos i decided to give obsidian a try
and i am absolutely loving it, the mark down format is quick and easy to write and both understand.
We dont need any fancy task taking apps, just a simple file is the ideal way to go.
wonderful! I love the daily notes feature, I have that window open at the side of my screen all day for quick note taking -it's the inbox into my system
I have so many folders... I need to do some reorganizing.
it's painful, but worth it. I did it myself over the summer.
Be careful to do it in small bits, and use the most powerful computer you have, renaming all the links takes time! :-D
@@NoBoilerplate Thanks! My "Wiki" notes are all in the same folder, regardless of topic, but all my manuscripts and notes are all folder-divided. My vault is 4+ years old, and there are a lot of orphaned nodes. Slow and steady, you're right.
There's a lot of hatred of folders in the obsidian community, but there's two usecases where they're invaluable: classes and types
My notes are organized by type, so I have a source type, a person type, a writing project type, etc. Not to mention attachments and snippets taken from other places. Additionally, as a university student all my class notes come from classes with a pre-defined subject, and so each of my concepts go in a specified subject folder. Subject and type folders let me trivially query with a limited scope, such as by organizing every equation from every physics class into a class-organized list, which lets me make notes sheets without issue. This becomes useful specifically because of how limited the need for folders is: They're an extremely useful broad tool for organization data with a pre-defined structure. While tags and links are like chisels, the humble folder is a saw. Time is only lost when folders are used to try to organize data without an existing structure, in which case you fall into edge cases.
Folders are great for archival, but not so good in my experience for *thinking*.
7:20
Note!
You can rename headings while keeping link support. Right click the heading and choose "rename heading" and it will update all links.
Ha! Wow I did not know that! I'm also, sadly, absolutely not going to be doing that all the time XD
(added to ERRATA comment)
I love using obsidian as a notepad. Have been looking to get more organized for more then a decade. But even after years of trying to get more organised and using different systems I keep failing to get it to stick.
Taking notes, i don't know if i'm any good at it. But i really struggle to maintain them.
Tips on how to enter data in obsidian is good. But I'm looking for a more encompassing guide or think process, that would be nice.
But still, thanks for the video. It's always a delight to see you pop up on my feed.
I really dislike having all the documents on the same level, so I do use folder for high level categories, or as a way to group specific documents.
That already significantly cleans up the project, without compromising flexibility too much.
the flexibility to do what, exactly?
Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor.
I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
@@NoBoilerplate The flexibility to look at the files and see what the hell is going on :D
If everything would be on the same level I'd go nuts.
I understand that from within Obsidian the file-based hierarchies don't make much sense, but as a human that can look at the filesystem it really can make a difference.
Keeping the top-level of the Obsidian project organized makes it more useful for me, rather than an endless list of files to no end.
Named links in Obsidian enable atomic notes to be reused across contexts without content changes. While Juggl offers local graph visualisation, it could be more powerful if node colours reflected their edge relationships to the central node (e.g., 'supports::' edges showing target nodes in green, 'objects-to::' edges showing targets in red) rather than static node attributes. This contextual colouring would enhance argument mapping by visually representing how each node's meaning shifts based on its relationships. My ontology for categorising logical and associative relationships between notes would benefit greatly from such dynamic visualisation. It's weird that this (not to mention named links in the graph view) hasn't been officially implemented.
Agreed I know juggl can style nodes, but I'm not sure if it can do edges...
I got used to properties from using LogSeq at work (I used it as a replacement for Obsidian because at my job Obsidian isn't cleared for use and it does like 90%ish of what Obsidian does functionally). Without folders as an option in LogSeq, properties are pretty much essential IMO for using it effectively.
I still prefer Obsidian to LogSeq because it is way more ergonomic and has way better UX, but now I see the benefit of properties. LogSeq is so much more cumbersome for navigating the graph than Obsidian. But it did introduce me to the more freeform structure of having properties with lists of named pages as values. Actually in general I prefer most everything that refers to a unique entity in a property to be a wikilink, because I can store metadata and notes about it in that page as necessary.
you should check out obsidian.nvim!
Do you find it getting slow when you have a lot of notes?
No, I don't think it slows down with the size of vault (mine's 5k files), but it DOES slow down with too many plugins - I have... 40!
But the great thing is that you can edit the files even on an old DOS computer, they're just plain text - very flexible!
Love this video! I've been using obsidian for a while and discovered how useless folders are on my own.
Great to hear!
> the three common organizational tools inside Obsidian you'll hear about - folders, tags, and links - function to build hierarchies
strictly speaking, they function to build taxonomies
Wow I just installed obsidian yesterday after watching your previous video
You're going to have a great time!
Just a few weeks ago, I had a dilemma with the Canvas plugin where I wanted to link to my created canvases but couldn't since it's not a md file and thus, you can't add metadata to it.
My workaround for this is the Excalidraw plugin where you can switch to the usual Obsidian editing view, edit the metadata there and add links. In my use case - creating reference sheets for drawing - Excalidraw is good but it's not as easy to create mindmaps like in Canvas, which is quite a shame. Great video!
I have excalidraw installed (I've used it in a few previous videos) But it suffers from the same problem as canvas. Though Nicolevdh shows it can have text, too: th-cam.com/video/zmgqMZi6QL8/w-d-xo.html
@@NoBoilerplate Thanks for the video link! I will check it out
ironic that no boilerplate has a boilerplate intro
Boilerplate is unnecessary code, my intro is the bare minimum to convey what I'm saying.
i appreciate the bottom progress bar
Me too!
I named my Obsidian vault with a human name, because I knew there wouldn't be a single title that could describe it as a whole :)
It is far too early for me to even pretend to comprehend this. You're going on watch later Triss, I also should watch your first Obsidian video again, that's what made me start using it in the first place. Which reminds me, I need to start using that again.
I bounced on and off Obsidian for about a year, you'll get there :-)
I get a different kind of high when I hear the words 'My name is Triss, and I focus on fast, technical videos'.
same
I try to avoid folders as much as possible, but keeping the fact that I want to be able to move my vault around whenever, I try to keep a slight bit of folder in my vault, just so I can find a way in my vault just from the file browser.
I might not use obsidian but i was working on a note taking program anyway, so this video is still usefull for me,i can "borrow" some nice ideas from these videos😏
Ps:cool seeing you in the comment section replyng to every comment!
If you're going to steal any idea from Obsidian, please steal plain text data. Make your notes markdown files on disk, then you can use obsidian AND your own note taking application on the same data!
That's very cool. It's like a next-generation document/records management system with more powerful metadata. Thanks.
I do use folders simply because sometimes I have to find things manually, and that can be much easier to do when it’s been broadly categorised.
However, I absolutely try to avoid using folders as faux metadata. I should be able to move my notes around into different folders without breaking any Dataview queries or stuff like that. Let the metadata be metadata, and let folders do their own thing
I may just be underusing tags, but I honestly can't fathom getting rid of folders, that feels crazy to me, lol. I'll have to try it out with doing it just with a small part of my vault first, and see how I like it.
If anything, most folks underuse links. I only have 4 tags in my system!
Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor.
I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
Finally a new Obsidian video 🎉
ikr! I think I might have another one in me as well, a sort of 'application of the good parts'. Stay tuned!
@@NoBoilerplate yes please
How would you change to this method from a folder-oriented method? I have plenty of notes already done in that way, and I feel overwhelmed about it
The best time for a full-vault refactor was a year ago, the second best time is today.
Test out your new system with 2-3 test notes, make sure it works well, then dive in to your refactor
I'm literally adopting this framework right now. The hardest work is adding all the tags and hierarchy in. Besides that, if you set-up your links correctly you can legitimately drag your files out of folders after you're done tagging them.
I used Obsidian originally for my note taking for my D&D campaign. However, I switched to Joplin in my embrace of OSS
I keep my vault synced to my Mega drive via the folder sync, and then the native mega clients keeps it actually synced
... you know neither youtube or mega are open source, right? ;-)
To be serious: Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!)
Joplin actually I dislike because it has a propriatory sqlite db. If you ever want to move from joplin, your data is VERY unportable, despite being in an open source application and db.
Open Source is important, Open Data is vital.
What calendar plugin was that, i have tried soo many, and they always bug out after more than a few months of work.
Day Planner. I always have it on the side of my screen!
Hello Tris. You sound a little more tired than in your first obsidian video. How are you doing? I hear this winter is hard on all of us. Please, do make sure to take good care of yourself :) see you next time!
edit: also, apologies if this is uncalled for. I just hope you are doing okay
I wish i figured out about tag hierarchy before i built my entire d&d campaign around folder, damn.
I'm planning my game for tonight right now in obsidian!
These are some really interesting points and ideas and I easily find myself using them, though I do have a question about folders. Tags *are* much better, but should I just not use folders at all and have every file/note on the root folder? Doesn't that make it so much more cluttered? With how I have it organized I can easily find what I'm looking for because I can just navigate the file tree and look under the related folders. Tags can also do that, along with a few other neat things, but aren't folders more convenient?
I don't even have the file browser visible. No clutter there, just quickopen every file you want, and navigate around using links.
Try the breadcrumbs plugin - you can navigate between parents, children, and siblings using hotkeys - fast fast!
I have also been incredibly frustrated with people who like the shiny graph that doesn't actually provide actionable information.
It's good for exactly one thing: Impressing newbies before onboarding them into the Obsidian Religion
I use folders for general separation of files, not to specifically separate every tiny little thing.
if it's working for you, that's all good.
Great vid!
Now I just need a couple weeks of time to convert my thousands of notes to the good format 😅
There's some great batch conversion plugins available, try in the obsidian community plugins, or at a pinch, convert your stuff into html, obsidian's great at importing that!
I've always wondered, how do you style your obsidian presentations? side by side images seem impossible to make. Maybe that would be a cool deep dive video
There's a screenshot of me actually making this video in the first few minutes of this video! Meta.
I use either the grid or split element that advanced slides provides, easy peasy :-D Read the readme!
@@NoBoilerplate wonderful, thank you
The issue of tags not appearing on the graph seems pretty big to me, the approach of having a note for a project with links to all those notes is great cause it creates a nice central node on the graph which visually separates your project which I like. Any workarounds for the tagging?
Tags do appear on the graph, but folders don't.
My problem with tags is they have no content. So a tag like project/nb/obsidianparts has to ALSO have a note called project_nb_obsidianparts to contain the project data.
Just link to the project note!
yeah the problem with this is mainly the amount of vendor lock-in you'll need to deal with if you ever need to leave obsidian for any reason. Not only that but also i'm not gonna lie, having a massive mess of notes appear when i try to access my vault through my OS to check something does not feel very good at all. That's really the biggest issue i have with using links and tags. They're a very high level solution to what is in my opinion a very low level problem. The thing is that categorization for me is important sure, but not nearly as important as keeping things simple and easy to remember.
I made a very recent comment in your first obsidian video about how i'd just finished the process of moving to emacs org mode, because i wanted to try it out. What i really liked is that Org Mode's headings allows you to keep files fairly concise. Instead of creating multiple notes under a folder that fits that category. i instead just use one note for that category and structure new notes with headings. Since you can collapse headings and therefore shorten a lengthy file down to just the top most headings. What i managed to do with this is have only 3 org files, one with all of my projects and tasks, another with all of the important resources i need while i'm learning new things and finally an agenda note to keep track of important events.
I've found this system fairly easy to work with, and what's great about it i think is this system is still usable even when accessing it through another text editor. It's allowed me to allow for a very simple and concise solution to a problem that i think most people tend to overthink, which is why you see so many people procrastinate with these kinds of apps.
Can you please recommend any resource or demos of named links? It is indeed a feature I have never heard about before, despite using Obsidian extensively for years (and I might even call myself a power user)
The Breadcrumbs plugin is where you should start your quest :-)
1:21 Bruh how do u overcome that and have a successful TH-cam channel...i suffer from this too and i stg i never get anything done.
@@MURD3R3D likewise! I’ve been burnt out of obsidian with 3 separate vaults as proof.
Deadlines are a surprisingly good motivation!
I allow myself 1h of yak shaving per day, I have found I have to build it into my workflow, otherwise my brain rebels and I spend all day messing around.
Give yourself a little treat! But set an alarm
There’s one valid use case for folders, and that’s separation of work and personal.
I want all my work notes in my personal vault, since they’re relevant to my life outside of work. For example, I’m working on a work project using a specific tech stack, and I want to reference them when working on a personal project.
However, I do NOT want my personal notes (journal entries, personal thoughts, sensitive documents, etc) on my work device.
Separate them into folders, and turn on selective sync so that on my work device, my personal folder doesn’t get synced, but on my personal device I sync it all. Problem solved.
Sincere question: don't named links recreate the hierarchy/structure of folders, just more visibly on the graph view? Thank you for the informative and helpful video!
they sure do, but with more flexibility - you can have as many parents as you want, put your note 'inside' two folders.
If you have 'up' links anyway, why not use folders to mirror that structure? You can have a note with the same name as its parent folder which also contains all the 'down' folders and notes.
Using folders also helps with the naming issue as you can have notes with the same name specified by their path as you mentioned. Sure you could add the context to the name (e.g., "project-name_notes.md") but why do that when you already have the same functionality with folders (e.g., "project-name/notes.md")?
Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor.
I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders.
As things go on, my Second Brain must be open source
You've not thought this through enough. You actually want your DATA to be open.
Yes, obsidian is closed source (like the website you're viewing right now) but my data is open, and there's nothing like it available yet. When there is, I can use the same files tomorrow as today! (I actually use obsidian.nvim concurrently with obsidian, works great!)
Nearly all open source note taking tools are 1. vastly under-featured compared to Obsidian, and 2. based around a binary sqlite database, not plain text files.
@@NoBoilerplate I do want my Data to be open, and I do agree that there's nothing like Obsidian.
Ive started building second brain recently and I'm relying quite heavily on folder structure - it gives sense of order for my programming theory notes.
Is it beginner's mistake ?
Im still connecting docs and notes via tags and links.
it's a beginner's mistake IMO, but if you're a beginner, you're allowed to! I sure did.
My recommendation is play around with some test notes and folders and tags. Figure out which you want to use to build your system -the only wrong answer is "all of them at once"
4:04 have you used folder notes?
Speak not to me of the deep magic, I was there when it was written.
Ahem. To be serious: Folders don't have a canonical note, just like tags, so you have to adopt some kind of folder/index.md convention like folder notes does. This clunky behaviour belies their imperfect metaphor.
I want the single source of truth to be in the contents of the notes, not outside them. My options, for this way of thinking, do not include folders
How do you integrate your second brain to the internet. I want to store a lot of external links, but I havent found a good way...
I use readwise for this, it's AMAZING. here's a great video on obsidian and readwise
Funny story: the next version of obsidian has a web browser and booksmarks BUILT IN. I've been testing it for a few weeks, really great!
Trying to switch "anytype" and its best feature for me is sync locally with your devices in seconds. But still discovering.. If you have advice I would like to read or watch
I don't dig anytype because though the app is open source, the data is in a proprietary anytype format.
I don't need to use any app to use my obsidian data, it's all plain text markdown!
Honestly, Obsidian like systems never quite worked for me, I feel like a simple top down directory structure better reflects the separations of different projects / fields and trying to organically link pages has always just led to less work being done.
The World Wide Web and Wikipedia has entered the chat
I understand why you don't want to cover other tools, as the focus is on ways of thinking, not the particularities of tools you may not be as familiar with. However as someone who used obsidian for a while, and has now been using logseq for even longer, I think it's at least worth mentioning and flashing on screen that there is an entire ecosystem of graph-like local PKM software, and that viewers can explore this larger world of options if they have certain requirements. For example, logseq is open source and requires no license for use in a company, it does require a slight change in thinking but can absolutely do everything obsidian can.
My last video on obsidian dealt with that topic. This is on the good parts of obsidian.
Also, logseq has gotten worse since my last video, the whole ai focus after getting funding really soured me to the project, sadly.
@@NoBoilerplate alright fair enough, but to be fair to the team, AI features aren't in the main branch and the AI branch has had no commits for 2 years. In that old branch, the AI features are off by default, supports local, privacy first AI hosting as well as "Open"AI's cloud offering, and when using "Open"AI, only the data you select gets transmitted, it never transmits your entire graph unless you go out of your way to manually select every single note. Anyway, I don't want to get caught up in criticism, love the video, thanks for the tips :)
Do you use a theme? I’m always switching between “default, as the creators intended” and using the Minimal theme to make everything just that much more clean.
Minimal is good, I stopped using it a few weeks ago because it was slowing down my machine for some reason, a bug probably fixed now.
I'm currently on AnuPpuccin, but the most important theme feature I need is different colours for different heading levels. Everything else is gravey!
@@NoBoilerplate Been using AnuPpuccin for a good while now ever since i started using your channel and DreamsOfCode because i believe both of you used the CatPuccin themes in terminal and nvim. Big Fan
There is simply too much friction in these systems. Writing notes becomes a chore when there's metadata involved. Dumping things in a long text file is just so much easier and you can ctrl+f your way around. You'd have to have a very very special use case or particularly huge amount of "notes" or whatever to write down to justify all the metawork (pun intended).
oh totally sure, I have a file called inbox.md for just that purpose.
And if that's all the complexity you need, you can stop there. But I'm running multiple youtube and podcast projects concurrently, my second brain needs to be as comprehensive as my first!
I have a note called Capture.md which I use for this. It is my "charting down a random idea quickly" place. Then, when I get the time, I will take that random bit out into it's own proper note.