I just began my obsidian journey, and to be frank, my learning journey. I think I did the right thing by actually looking up a note taking app to begin organizing my brain. I've been drifting in life and now I want to get my life together, and it starts with the brain. I need a tool like this to help to organize my brain in front of me. Thank you so much for all your work for the benefit of humanity. God bless
You are amazing sir! I'm a trained mathematician and find it absolutely necessary to have such a setup as you want, i think if in the future there was a virtual reality integration of excalidraw ( which i am yet to explore properly) we will have what you are speaking about, and would be a great day to us mathematicians as well!
I don't knew about this term "spatial thinking" but it is my subconscious habit now that whenever I got new idea or concept or any theory in my mind then I immediately started visualising it in the form of a movie. I automatically create a world and treat any idea or rule as a person. Then I automatically form a story to bind all it together to make a useful sense. And trust me I don't follow any conscious best practices to do it. I just do it automatically effortlessly. And I also now a days bring that movie on the obsidian canvas including pictures/gifs/videoclips from Pinterest, movies or from anywhere that tell the same story I got in my mind. I understand that human mind needs story to stabilize informations. I see stories as the most powerful information organiser ever existed for human mind. It just connect infinite things and make us remember all like magic if connections are done rightly which contributes in the story. After watching this video now I am consciously realising that location plays a special role in building a story. Now I will think more about it consciously and let's see what I come up to.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I agree. Some of this is just "radical common sense". Having terms to describe this such as "Spatial thinking" or what you refer to is mentioned as "Embodied cognition" - when you impersonate an idea in such a way that you or a person becomes an actor in the idea, are useful for sharing best practices and habits with each other so we can all improve our thinking processes.
@@VisualPKM I originally drew mind maps on my iPad using an app called Concepts, but I found it difficult to integrate with Obsidian. This was because I had to export my drawings as pictures and I have to constantly switch between two different apps, which was cumbersome. A few days ago, I saw one of your videos and learned that I could use Obsidian Excalidraw to draw my mind maps. It has been a wonderful experience ever since. 😄
@@maxli9629 Awesome! This is exactly the reason I started to develop the plugin. Working with an external app and constantly switching back and forth is a pain. Also I enjoy that I can pick up my drawing on any device where I have my Vault synchronized and it works just the same (be it iPad, Android, Mac, Windows, Chrome OS, Linux). It is such freedom to be able to edit my drawings in a single tool regardless of platform, and to not having to switch tools all the time!
Very good video. The premise for the video (the power of spatial thinking) is worth a thousand words! I've been using Excalidraw for a couple of months now and find the diramming capabilities much better than those in, say, Microsoft Powerpoint. A tool I use alot for presentations. However, the Excalidraw drawings in your videos are much more sophisticated than the ones I can create with Excalidraw for one important reason. You seem to have alot more graphical elemements than the standard shapes and connectors. Where/how do you acquire (or create) these additional graphical elements? How can the Excalidraw user community find them and make use of them? Such information would be a very useful addion for an Excalidraw FAQ...
Do you mean the Stencil Library on the right hand side? Many of those I drew myself, some of them I downloaded from the Excalidraw library: libraries.excalidraw.com/ Note, Excalidraw library is not 100% compatible with Obsidian. You need to download libraries to your device, then click ... in the stencil library in Obsidian and manually load the library files. You can download some of my libraries from ko-fi: ko-fi.com/s/7db954672e ko-fi.com/s/7b88c430c8 ko-fi.com/s/50b7c93b9b If it is not the library you had in mind, please describe in more detail and I'll try to help you find what you are looking for.
@@VisualPKM Yes and no. I have learned from your YTV how to install Stencil libs (thank you for that!) and use them. However, it seems the stencil libs you use are even better than the ones I can find in the library. Do you have an additonal source or do you make them your self on the fly?Second is the no. You seem to have a nother source of graphics beyond the stencil libs. Do you make those graphics yourself or do you source them from somewhere? I have a third question relating to using the pen interface. I have a Galaxy Tab S8 with a pen. Can you recommend some of your videos to watch on how to set up Excalidraw to use the pen interfce on that Android device? Thank you for creating such a wonderful tool and puting out so many great videos on how to use it and how to think differently using it!
@@deserthorsedude I wish I could draw as well to create drawings on the fly... There are many items that I created (mostly copied with some modifications) myself. I also use a number of other source which include a subscription for Flaticon.com and another with midjourney. Here's a video about using Midjourney to create "SVG" icons: th-cam.com/video/ZeqsDWBawdo/w-d-xo.html (I have some other videos as well in this space in case you are interested). There are two videos about "cheating": 1) th-cam.com/video/pQ-V6J3cCOY/w-d-xo.html 2) and converting SVG icons into excalidraw strokes: th-cam.com/video/vlC1-iBvIfo/w-d-xo.html The pen interface is a bit of a more difficult question... as Excalidraw is not really design primarily for using it with a pen. There are 4 videos you might want to look at: More Excalidraw-Obsidian Mobile Goodness th-cam.com/video/qbPIAZguJeo/w-d-xo.html, Obsidian-Excalidraw 1.8.25 - QoL Improvements: Scibble Helper and Multi-Link support th-cam.com/video/BvYkOaly-QM/w-d-xo.html, Link your sketches, a pen first knowledge mapping experience with Excalidraw - Obsidian 1.6.1 th-cam.com/video/_GfWailVKpc/w-d-xo.html, Obsidian-Excalidraw 1.8.12 - QoL Improvements: pens, pinned scripts, panning tool, and color picker th-cam.com/video/OjNhjaH2KjI/w-d-xo.html
Do you have to use excali-brain with the drawn version too? Or they're independent of each other? Does excalibrain link things for you in a similar or automatic customizable way to the graph view on obsidian?
This is a most helpful video. I look forward to seeing more views on how to use and leverage Excalibrain. Thank you. Where is your Patreon page so I / we can support your continuing work on these tools?
Anyone know the software used to create this mind-map style video walkthrough (around 5:40) of the ideas that transitions to different zoom levels of different topics? It's a great educational style & I'd love to use it for another topic.
It's all in the video description :) This is done in Obsidian.md using the Excalidraw plugin and the Slideshow script. About the script: th-cam.com/video/HhRHFhWkmCk/w-d-xo.html About Excalidraw in Obsidian: th-cam.com/video/o0exK-xFP3k/w-d-xo.html
I take it from your comment that you don't think Jordan Peterson is the right person to quote... Who would have you quoted about the value of writing instead?
@@VisualPKM Michel Foucault and his analysis of the genealogy of transformation (in ancient roman and greek cultures) from truth as a practice into a 'post-cartesian' truth as a pure knowledge. Descartes famously says 'cogito ergo sum', which Foucault reads as a marking point of a new separation between truth and a truth-practice, where thinking alone is enough to prove ones existence. This is a very late work by Foucault (he died only two years later) and it can be accessed through a transcript of his lectures: 'The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981--1982'. Aapart from the introductory lecture it's all about ancient greek and roman practices of knowledge, and yes, regular writing and notemaking was very important already for Stoics as one will learn there. I would assume @PausedRebel had an issue with Peterson with respect to the fact that along the lines of his more down to earth postulates from "The 12 Rules of Life" (I love it's rule 12., I definitely always pet a cat when I encounter one on the street (if it wants those pets and not runs away hehe)) he is a public figure advocating for a specific ideology which postulates that freedom of speech does encompass freedom to disrespect. In specific his rule 5. "Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them." is problematic with respect to his puplicly expressed opinions on respecting peoples gender pronouns. Another problem with Peterson I would argue is that while he is a great rhetorician, his writing (as is common with 'self-help' books) is very poorly attributed by him with respect to his sources and citations which sometimes take a form of an unattributed paraphrasing which borders (if not crosses as is also argued) the boundaries of plagiarism. While Foucault can also be disregarded by some with respect to his known leftist political allegations, I would argue for reading both and judging for ones own. Also most importantly, all of Foucaults books are heavily marked with 'links' to other works and his sources which allows you to take a much broader view of the discussed topic. In this sense the lectures I mentioned are a great place to look into the origins of how we think of knowledge and writing in western culture. They will also point you to a plethorea of specific readings of Socrates, neoplatonism, stoics and epikureans. Also lets take the quote of Peterson that you provided, "The best thing you can do is teach people to write, because there is no difference between that and thinking." I would argue it is a perfect example of his rhetorical skills, the first part of the sentence says a very agreeable thing, though even here you could say that if one is hungry a fishing skill might be more relevant than writing. Also you could argue that sometimes the best thing is to actually listen to what other people have to say instead of teaching them. The second part states that there is no difference between writing and thinking. Is that really so? Then meditation isn't thinking, neither is emotional processing of experiences nor teaching or acting consciously fromt he point of your knowledge. One might say here that 'I'm picky here', or 'thats not what he meant', but that is exactly what I mean - he is a great rhetorician, which means that he speaks generally agreeable truths, but he doesn't speak much 'on point', leaving a lot of vague blank spaces through which ideology leaks. The same blank spaces make his opinons hard to argue with, because he can always say 'that is not what I meant', which is a common rhetorical move in a modern political discussion, where we 'know' that someone actually meant 'something', but thanks to the words they used they can't be hold to responsibility for their own words. And responsibility is something Peterson talks a lot about. I really liked your video, especially the part about a hypothetical 3D notemaking software that you described by the end of a video, I working on an example of just that for a couple of years already, hopefully to be releasing soon, your idea of the npcs talking to you with the voices and ideas of your notes is very inspiring. This is a veeery long comment, but I really like your videos and your notemaking passion and I thought you definitely deserve some of my time since you spend so much of yours sharing your vast knowledge with us. I thought of myself relevant here because I both knew of something related to your question and that I am a transgender woman myself and know of the discussions surrounding Peterson, but I wouldn't assume everyone knows of his 'other side of moon'.
@@Amuntsen Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I learned a lot by reading it! As for the quote from Peterson, I tend to agree with him in that unless we are able to articulate our thoughts those thoughts are not really clear to ourselves. However, as also underlined in the video, I don't believe that writing is the only form of articulation or that it is the most effective way of articulation... btw nor is spatial thinking. You can articulate thoughts in many ways for example through music and arts in general.
I just began my obsidian journey, and to be frank, my learning journey. I think I did the right thing by actually looking up a note taking app to begin organizing my brain. I've been drifting in life and now I want to get my life together, and it starts with the brain. I need a tool like this to help to organize my brain in front of me. Thank you so much for all your work for the benefit of humanity. God bless
Good luck! Obsidian has a bit of a learning curve, but once you learn it, it becomes addictive :)
You are amazing sir! I'm a trained mathematician and find it absolutely necessary to have such a setup as you want, i think if in the future there was a virtual reality integration of excalidraw ( which i am yet to explore properly) we will have what you are speaking about, and would be a great day to us mathematicians as well!
You are always inspiring and helpful. I love Excalibrain.
I don't knew about this term "spatial thinking" but it is my subconscious habit now that whenever I got new idea or concept or any theory in my mind then I immediately started visualising it in the form of a movie. I automatically create a world and treat any idea or rule as a person. Then I automatically form a story to bind all it together to make a useful sense. And trust me I don't follow any conscious best practices to do it. I just do it automatically effortlessly. And I also now a days bring that movie on the obsidian canvas including pictures/gifs/videoclips from Pinterest, movies or from anywhere that tell the same story I got in my mind. I understand that human mind needs story to stabilize informations. I see stories as the most powerful information organiser ever existed for human mind. It just connect infinite things and make us remember all like magic if connections are done rightly which contributes in the story. After watching this video now I am consciously realising that location plays a special role in building a story. Now I will think more about it consciously and let's see what I come up to.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
I agree. Some of this is just "radical common sense". Having terms to describe this such as "Spatial thinking" or what you refer to is mentioned as "Embodied cognition" - when you impersonate an idea in such a way that you or a person becomes an actor in the idea, are useful for sharing best practices and habits with each other so we can all improve our thinking processes.
Fascinating. People learn in different ways. just like people take notes (those that learn or are taught how to take notes) in different ways.
although there is this: th-cam.com/video/rhgwIhB58PA/w-d-xo.html
OMG, 11:14 Great minds think alike
This is exactly what I learned from a how-to study course: Remove liner note-taking and use spatial representation and drawing!
Awesome! And are you using Obsidian Excalidraw in the process or just paper and pencil, or some other tool?
@@VisualPKM I originally drew mind maps on my iPad using an app called Concepts, but I found it difficult to integrate with Obsidian. This was because I had to export my drawings as pictures and I have to constantly switch between two different apps, which was cumbersome. A few days ago, I saw one of your videos and learned that I could use Obsidian Excalidraw to draw my mind maps. It has been a wonderful experience ever since. 😄
@@maxli9629 Awesome! This is exactly the reason I started to develop the plugin. Working with an external app and constantly switching back and forth is a pain. Also I enjoy that I can pick up my drawing on any device where I have my Vault synchronized and it works just the same (be it iPad, Android, Mac, Windows, Chrome OS, Linux). It is such freedom to be able to edit my drawings in a single tool regardless of platform, and to not having to switch tools all the time!
@@VisualPKM Thanks for all your great work!
Very good video. The premise for the video (the power of spatial thinking) is worth a thousand words! I've been using Excalidraw for a couple of months now and find the diramming capabilities much better than those in, say, Microsoft Powerpoint. A tool I use alot for presentations. However, the Excalidraw drawings in your videos are much more sophisticated than the ones I can create with Excalidraw for one important reason. You seem to have alot more graphical elemements than the standard shapes and connectors. Where/how do you acquire (or create) these additional graphical elements? How can the Excalidraw user community find them and make use of them? Such information would be a very useful addion for an Excalidraw FAQ...
Do you mean the Stencil Library on the right hand side? Many of those I drew myself, some of them I downloaded from the Excalidraw library: libraries.excalidraw.com/
Note, Excalidraw library is not 100% compatible with Obsidian. You need to download libraries to your device, then click ... in the stencil library in Obsidian and manually load the library files.
You can download some of my libraries from ko-fi:
ko-fi.com/s/7db954672e
ko-fi.com/s/7b88c430c8
ko-fi.com/s/50b7c93b9b
If it is not the library you had in mind, please describe in more detail and I'll try to help you find what you are looking for.
@@VisualPKM Yes and no. I have learned from your YTV how to install Stencil libs (thank you for that!) and use them. However, it seems the stencil libs you use are even better than the ones I can find in the library. Do you have an additonal source or do you make them your self on the fly?Second is the no. You seem to have a nother source of graphics beyond the stencil libs. Do you make those graphics yourself or do you source them from somewhere? I have a third question relating to using the pen interface. I have a Galaxy Tab S8 with a pen. Can you recommend some of your videos to watch on how to set up Excalidraw to use the pen interfce on that Android device? Thank you for creating such a wonderful tool and puting out so many great videos on how to use it and how to think differently using it!
@@deserthorsedude I wish I could draw as well to create drawings on the fly... There are many items that I created (mostly copied with some modifications) myself. I also use a number of other source which include a subscription for Flaticon.com and another with midjourney. Here's a video about using Midjourney to create "SVG" icons: th-cam.com/video/ZeqsDWBawdo/w-d-xo.html (I have some other videos as well in this space in case you are interested). There are two videos about "cheating": 1) th-cam.com/video/pQ-V6J3cCOY/w-d-xo.html 2) and converting SVG icons into excalidraw strokes: th-cam.com/video/vlC1-iBvIfo/w-d-xo.html
The pen interface is a bit of a more difficult question... as Excalidraw is not really design primarily for using it with a pen. There are 4 videos you might want to look at: More Excalidraw-Obsidian Mobile Goodness th-cam.com/video/qbPIAZguJeo/w-d-xo.html, Obsidian-Excalidraw 1.8.25 - QoL Improvements: Scibble Helper and Multi-Link support th-cam.com/video/BvYkOaly-QM/w-d-xo.html, Link your sketches, a pen first knowledge mapping experience with Excalidraw - Obsidian 1.6.1 th-cam.com/video/_GfWailVKpc/w-d-xo.html, Obsidian-Excalidraw 1.8.12 - QoL Improvements: pens, pinned scripts, panning tool, and color picker
th-cam.com/video/OjNhjaH2KjI/w-d-xo.html
Awesome!
Do you have to use excali-brain with the drawn version too? Or they're independent of each other? Does excalibrain link things for you in a similar or automatic customizable way to the graph view on obsidian?
Yes, ExcaliBrain works automatically similar to graph view in Obsidian, but provides a more structured graph.
Sorry, what book did you quote in the beginning?
This is a most helpful video. I look forward to seeing more views on how to use and leverage Excalibrain. Thank you. Where is your Patreon page so I / we can support your continuing work on these tools?
Thank you! I have plans with ExcaliBrain, if only I could find the time to work on it...
You can find me on ko-fi: ko-fi.com/zsolt
Anyone know the software used to create this mind-map style video walkthrough (around 5:40) of the ideas that transitions to different zoom levels of different topics? It's a great educational style & I'd love to use it for another topic.
It's all in the video description :) This is done in Obsidian.md using the Excalidraw plugin and the Slideshow script.
About the script: th-cam.com/video/HhRHFhWkmCk/w-d-xo.html
About Excalidraw in Obsidian: th-cam.com/video/o0exK-xFP3k/w-d-xo.html
@@VisualPKM Thank you for the fast reply! Excited to dive in and learn more.
This is why digital zettlekasten is not the real zettlekasten. Is missing the spatial component.
Imagine quoting Jordan Peterson of all people on a lecture about knowledge.
I take it from your comment that you don't think Jordan Peterson is the right person to quote... Who would have you quoted about the value of writing instead?
@@VisualPKM Michel Foucault and his analysis of the genealogy of transformation (in ancient roman and greek cultures) from truth as a practice into a 'post-cartesian' truth as a pure knowledge. Descartes famously says 'cogito ergo sum', which Foucault reads as a marking point of a new separation between truth and a truth-practice, where thinking alone is enough to prove ones existence.
This is a very late work by Foucault (he died only two years later) and it can be accessed through a transcript of his lectures: 'The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981--1982'. Aapart from the introductory lecture it's all about ancient greek and roman practices of knowledge, and yes, regular writing and notemaking was very important already for Stoics as one will learn there.
I would assume @PausedRebel had an issue with Peterson with respect to the fact that along the lines of his more down to earth postulates from "The 12 Rules of Life" (I love it's rule 12., I definitely always pet a cat when I encounter one on the street (if it wants those pets and not runs away hehe)) he is a public figure advocating for a specific ideology which postulates that freedom of speech does encompass freedom to disrespect. In specific his rule 5. "Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them." is problematic with respect to his puplicly expressed opinions on respecting peoples gender pronouns.
Another problem with Peterson I would argue is that while he is a great rhetorician, his writing (as is common with 'self-help' books) is very poorly attributed by him with respect to his sources and citations which sometimes take a form of an unattributed paraphrasing which borders (if not crosses as is also argued) the boundaries of plagiarism.
While Foucault can also be disregarded by some with respect to his known leftist political allegations, I would argue for reading both and judging for ones own. Also most importantly, all of Foucaults books are heavily marked with 'links' to other works and his sources which allows you to take a much broader view of the discussed topic.
In this sense the lectures I mentioned are a great place to look into the origins of how we think of knowledge and writing in western culture. They will also point you to a plethorea of specific readings of Socrates, neoplatonism, stoics and epikureans.
Also lets take the quote of Peterson that you provided, "The best thing you can do is teach people to write, because there is no difference between that and thinking." I would argue it is a perfect example of his rhetorical skills, the first part of the sentence says a very agreeable thing, though even here you could say that if one is hungry a fishing skill might be more relevant than writing. Also you could argue that sometimes the best thing is to actually listen to what other people have to say instead of teaching them. The second part states that there is no difference between writing and thinking. Is that really so? Then meditation isn't thinking, neither is emotional processing of experiences nor teaching or acting consciously fromt he point of your knowledge.
One might say here that 'I'm picky here', or 'thats not what he meant', but that is exactly what I mean - he is a great rhetorician, which means that he speaks generally agreeable truths, but he doesn't speak much 'on point', leaving a lot of vague blank spaces through which ideology leaks. The same blank spaces make his opinons hard to argue with, because he can always say 'that is not what I meant', which is a common rhetorical move in a modern political discussion, where we 'know' that someone actually meant 'something', but thanks to the words they used they can't be hold to responsibility for their own words. And responsibility is something Peterson talks a lot about.
I really liked your video, especially the part about a hypothetical 3D notemaking software that you described by the end of a video, I working on an example of just that for a couple of years already, hopefully to be releasing soon, your idea of the npcs talking to you with the voices and ideas of your notes is very inspiring.
This is a veeery long comment, but I really like your videos and your notemaking passion and I thought you definitely deserve some of my time since you spend so much of yours sharing your vast knowledge with us. I thought of myself relevant here because I both knew of something related to your question and that I am a transgender woman myself and know of the discussions surrounding Peterson, but I wouldn't assume everyone knows of his 'other side of moon'.
@@Amuntsen Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I learned a lot by reading it!
As for the quote from Peterson, I tend to agree with him in that unless we are able to articulate our thoughts those thoughts are not really clear to ourselves. However, as also underlined in the video, I don't believe that writing is the only form of articulation or that it is the most effective way of articulation... btw nor is spatial thinking. You can articulate thoughts in many ways for example through music and arts in general.