Keep exploring at brilliant.org/Nicolevdh. Get started for free, and hurry-the first 200 people get 20% off an annual premium subscription. THEME: Minimal (light mode) PLUGINS: Excalidraw, Advanced Slides, Outline (core), Note Composer (core), Note Refactor, Backlinks (core), Strange New Worlds, ExcaliBrain
That intro is SOLID GOLD. Every time I see these note-taking / productivity / time management methodologies crop up I think "but I could just do it my way, though". The only thing they're good for is maybe taking inspiration to start out if you're super lost. And ultimately, I don't kid myself- I do this because I think it's fun. Any moments where I start putting two and two together unexpectedly are just a bonus. (If anything, I think the biggest benefit of Obsidian is that it's a physical manifestation of a mind map- I'm more likely to remember whatever is in there because I can mentally "locate" it amongst all the other stuff I put in there. AND I have it all forever because it's all offline.)
It's been a week since I installed Obsidian. After reading and watching videos about how people use it, I'm trying not to make the mistake of creating a rigid structure, and make it very simplified, and most importantly, write down one thing only in one place. Very nice app. I've found it in your channel.
I think that's a great approach! I do wonder how long people stick to these stricter methodologies, on average, because none of them worked for me. Welcome to the Obsidian community! :)
Great video. I, like you, dropped Obsidian initially. Your fervor for the program low-key convinced me to give it one more go, and I have not regretted my decision at all. I thank you and my reconsideration for a huge uptick in productivity.
Some people's full-time jobs is coming up with methodologies - love it! THat's exactly what 99% of the Obsidian videos on note taking feel like "Here's a super-duper complex system I use to take a note that lets me record one idea per hour." Crazy stuff.
Much respect, Nicole, for your production discipline and appreciation for the clarity, fluency and benefit that comes through to the viewer. I have seen way too many videos that remind me of 5th grade piano performances at the annual school talent show where the kid goes, "Oh, wait. Sorry. OK." And then plinks on until the next pause.
You’re kinda the person i’m mostly seeing in the last weeks of work on Obsidian and i love your energy and approach. Thanks for being such generous in your sharing! 💖
New Obsidian user here, the app caught my attention in another video, but your content convinced me to choose it. I did not want to roam around TH-cam finding random tips from productivity influencers who do not actually use what they endorse. Also your teaching style is gold. Enjoying the app so far.
I've been trying to get into obsidian for almost a year, but I felt awkward using it, and forcing myself into something that wasn't working. Your videos have really helped me to stick with it and learn it properly. Thank you!
I love obsidian, it has everything I need. I can import and export, I can use my tablet and my laptop, they sync seamless, I can sync my kindle reading and I can link my notes. I can do quick capture in google keep and use frames. Your videos have made it so much better with plugins and themes. Thank you.
I loved your summary at the end. (I'm still laughing). I had wondered what 'Strange New Worlds' was but hadn't quite got that far in my journey yet. This was a really great look at different ways of working with notes. Thanks!
Another great session from Nicole. Thank you for being authentic, candid and practical. And your delivery is efficient, but your don't talk over us non-technical folks. Your closing comments 😆💯
Really glad I found your channel. Mixing your perspective on taking notes with those of others. Like you comment in the beginning on using methodologies. Btw, glad you enjoy Swedish!
A summary tool I use is WordTune Read. It provides summaries and videos. The summaries of videos are very good, and it transcribes most of what is said in a video. I use the summaries in my notes, highlight the ones I think are most important, and create a link to my own notes on a subject. The article summaries are good, sometimes it leaves out important points.
Yours is some of the best content out there, love it! Almost, fell out my chair laughing with your comment at the end of this video...yep, that pretty much sums up one's fixation on methodologies! Keep up the great content!
Great! I'm really learning a lot, and yes, I took my notes from this video I neeed to put in practice a lot of things :p Keep the good stuff, I really like your videos :D
I'm seem a lot off your videos, I'm trying to applying it to learning new languages, programming languages - this is hard for me, and notes that i take everyday like my journal, but i want to connect everything - cause that's how my mind work. Its a lot of tools and some are paid. Your videos are very helpful
The joy of using Obsidian significantly increased when I abandoned what wasn't working; the adoption of anyone (everyone?) else's comprehensive methodology. It was a PKM hampster wheel of frustration resulting in falling farther behind in my work which requires a lot of note-taking for project management. The "falling behind" part was solvable in the short term by devoting more hours to digging out, though often by trying some new comprehensive method back in the wheel. The frustration was chipping away at my love for writing, so I hit reset and reverted to keeping my Obsidian notes in project folders as my only structure. That alone eased some of the pain. In the day-to-day routine of creating actionable content from my notes, most of the plugins you mentioned have become welcome tools. Strange New Worlds just makes me smile when processing an idea. Refactoring a note feels like having someone else do work for me for free! Callouts have been instrumental in helping me summarize a note and quickly recalling it for presentation when a co-worker is looking over my shoulder. The one that is yet to feel natural is Excalibrain (I love Zsolt's work), which is odd because I was a TheBrain user for over a decade. The problem may be related to the timing of creating explicit and implicit Excalibrain links. The process seems to fall at the wrong time during my natural workflow, and I haven't been able to establish a habit of going back and pruning and fiddling with ontology when there's always additional work waiting. I have room to grow! With apologies for the long note, thank you. Your videos have been consistently meaning-making for me.
Hey! I do add a date every time I edit a note, helped by shortcuts from a tool I use called TextExpander (although I'm moving to Espanso). I like to see what I've worked on chronologically. That way, when I go to a daily note, I see backlinks from pages I modified that day.
I needed this video so much today. I landed on like three productivity bro videos in a row with white dudes from the States trying to sell me their workshops and like more power to you, go ahead and make money on your Brand New System(TM), but I have a kid and a job and a whole life over here, I can't just twiddle my thumbs and take notes about frigging Plato all day long. (This sounds like such a subtweet but I don't even know their names, they all look the same, they all seem to be selling kind of the same products, and again, cool, but absolutely not what I need, and they're always at the top of the recommended lists.) This video is fantastic, thank you!
Insane video! Thank you so much, Nicole. I absolutely admire your pragmatic, no-bs approach that is actually usable in real life for people who aren't exactly PKM-Influencers... 😁
Excellent content like always. I wonder if you take handwritten notes using a normal tablet or e ink one. I am very interested in a useful workflow to take notes in that way and add them to obsidian vault. Thank you!
Nice tips and how to in this video. Thank you Nicole. I'm currently using a modified version of PARA for myself (which makes sense to me). Just a quick question: What tool are you using to take highlight in the first part of the video ? 2:39
Steering clear of methodologies pushed by people who’s job it is to keep producing these to sell you. Yes!!! Thank you for saying this. So true!!! I’ve heard others describe this almost as a genre called “toxic productivity” which is also spot on.
Just a comment passing by : the fact that you reduced unnecessary clutter to focus on the main content of the video, that is PKM is very good. Also I found the flow of the video very good, I sometimes do video and it's very hard to captivate the spectator from start to finish and you did it "Brilliantly", get the pun ? Cheers
Hi @Nicole - just love your videos; they have helped me so much with Obsidian! I have a question, though, I thought you might know of a good way to handle this. I use Obsidian for my research; however, I often find people refer to the same thing in different ways, but I don't really want to have different notes for each. For example, when I am linking notes about countries that my research is covering, can I make things like America, USA, US, United States etc all mean the same thing? I guess this also counts for different forms of the same word (procure, purchase, procurement etc). If you have already covered this somewhere, please just point me to the right video! Thanks a million for all your great content, it is so amazingly useful! Cath
Hi Cath! Yeah, you absolutely can! I use aliases to define words or phrases that all refer to the same note. Here's the Obsidian documentation on it: pulse.ly/avnwbywky1 Hope that helps! I'm very happy to hear you're liking my videos. <3
Hi! First of all, I want to say that you and your blog are amazing! Second, I want to ask, how to increment note id like you do it in your TTRPG template? I've tried to google it, but all I've found is your article where you mentioned it, but without any examples( Thank you for all your content about Obsidian, it's extremely helpful!
Isn’t that feature in Note Refactor already in obsidian’s core plug-in? It feels very familiar. Maybe it doesn’t repeat the title as a heading inside the note.
Something I notice on all your videos is that the audio has artifacts / crackles. I have listened to them on different devices, high and low quality and it is always the same. 0:31 - 0:34 you can hear them clearly as being part of the video; also at 3:00 - 3:10, and a lot more.
Audio stuff is so hard to chase down. It could be a variety of things! I'm curious, though-- you've commented on a couple videos where I was in the Netherlands (that's the one with the hex background). Do you also hear the same thing when I'm in Portugal (that's the blank wall, wooden floors, and lamp behind me).
Sort of-- I use TextExpander (a separate app) to generate the dates in the format I want, but I do have to do it every time I modify a note. Links don't work in YAML frontmatter, but you can use links in comments (%%).
What's going on with the "date" metadata? Do you have some plugin adding a tag with the date every time you edit a note? Why are some of them in the frontmatter and some of them are links in an inline metadata field between two percent signs?
No, I don't have a plugin for that, but I do use a shortcut app (TextExpander) for adding them to existing notes and templates to add them for new notes. Some are in the frontmatter and some are in comments (the ones within %%) because I used to put them in frontmatter but now am starting to prefer putting them in comments. It's really just personal preference! You can still query both ways through Dataview.
Nicole - your clarity and information is as always - the best. What are your thoughts & advice about importing old notes into Obsidian from other note-taking apps or sources? - Both technically and from a processing standpoint? I have been experimenting with imports on my thousands of notes - from over a decade of taking notes in my work coaching and creating content. Most of my deep work sites are on notes outside my obsidian vault right now. I have been toying with a workflow of using Readwise(which for me is the best thing ever invented "cheese"! 🤣 I have tried using READWISE as middleware for data import of large amounts of data via CSV files. Perhaps there's a more technical efficient way to do this - a script or code snippet. Thanks again for the content and ideas that you share! I will reach out to you on your Patreon site too! Muchismas Gracias! 😘
0:10 BASEED I put off learning obsidian for about a year, because from the youtube videos I watched it seemed to ridiculously complicated I didn't bother Now i realized its not bad at all, and for entertainment purposes I have spent the last week laughing at people doing absolutely bat shit insane ramblings about their pkm dogmas too many charlatans and gurus
Ouch! Intellectual masturbation is so painfully forthright, yet exactly what I really need to hear when it comes to obsessing over methodologies and structure 💀
Maybe it's jus my ADHD, but am I the only one who feels overwhelmed by all these complex workflows and structures? The burden of adding metadata, splitting and merging, integrating other apps... It kinda destroys my motivation for creating new notes.
Extra levels of organization are not necessary unless you are seeking a solution to a problem. Just doing them because they might save you time later is more likely to have you adopt a method which isn't enough ROI for your task. Workflows are fairly personal, and can evolve slowly. Lower the cognitive load of adoption and focus on what you're doing things for. Fiddling can come later
Keep exploring at brilliant.org/Nicolevdh. Get started for free, and hurry-the first 200 people get 20% off an annual premium subscription.
THEME: Minimal (light mode)
PLUGINS: Excalidraw, Advanced Slides, Outline (core), Note Composer (core), Note Refactor, Backlinks (core), Strange New Worlds, ExcaliBrain
Congrats on the sponsor!
That intro is SOLID GOLD. Every time I see these note-taking / productivity / time management methodologies crop up I think "but I could just do it my way, though". The only thing they're good for is maybe taking inspiration to start out if you're super lost. And ultimately, I don't kid myself- I do this because I think it's fun. Any moments where I start putting two and two together unexpectedly are just a bonus. (If anything, I think the biggest benefit of Obsidian is that it's a physical manifestation of a mind map- I'm more likely to remember whatever is in there because I can mentally "locate" it amongst all the other stuff I put in there. AND I have it all forever because it's all offline.)
It's been a week since I installed Obsidian. After reading and watching videos about how people use it, I'm trying not to make the mistake of creating a rigid structure, and make it very simplified, and most importantly, write down one thing only in one place. Very nice app. I've found it in your channel.
I think that's a great approach! I do wonder how long people stick to these stricter methodologies, on average, because none of them worked for me. Welcome to the Obsidian community! :)
Great video. I, like you, dropped Obsidian initially. Your fervor for the program low-key convinced me to give it one more go, and I have not regretted my decision at all. I thank you and my reconsideration for a huge uptick in productivity.
Really nice to hear that! :) I'm very glad we both reconsidered! Happy that your "one more go" stuck!
Some people's full-time jobs is coming up with methodologies - love it! THat's exactly what 99% of the Obsidian videos on note taking feel like "Here's a super-duper complex system I use to take a note that lets me record one idea per hour."
Crazy stuff.
Yeah! I hear you! I need something that works and helps me actually do my job.
Much respect, Nicole, for your production discipline and appreciation for the clarity, fluency and benefit that comes through to the viewer. I have seen way too many videos that remind me of 5th grade piano performances at the annual school talent show where the kid goes, "Oh, wait. Sorry. OK." And then plinks on until the next pause.
You’re kinda the person i’m mostly seeing in the last weeks of work on Obsidian and i love your energy and approach. Thanks for being such generous in your sharing! 💖
New Obsidian user here, the app caught my attention in another video, but your content convinced me to choose it. I did not want to roam around TH-cam finding random tips from productivity influencers who do not actually use what they endorse. Also your teaching style is gold. Enjoying the app so far.
Yep, my feelings exactly.
I've been trying to get into obsidian for almost a year, but I felt awkward using it, and forcing myself into something that wasn't working. Your videos have really helped me to stick with it and learn it properly. Thank you!
Thank you for this, and numerous other, videos on Obsidian. Your videos are the easiest to follow and also some of the most competent.
I love obsidian, it has everything I need. I can import and export, I can use my tablet and my laptop, they sync seamless, I can sync my kindle reading and I can link my notes. I can do quick capture in google keep and use frames. Your videos have made it so much better with plugins and themes. Thank you.
I loved your summary at the end. (I'm still laughing). I had wondered what 'Strange New Worlds' was but hadn't quite got that far in my journey yet. This was a really great look at different ways of working with notes. Thanks!
Another great session from Nicole. Thank you for being authentic, candid and practical. And your delivery is efficient, but your don't talk over us non-technical folks. Your closing comments 😆💯
Another great learning Saturday with Nicole. Thank you.
Really glad I found your channel. Mixing your perspective on taking notes with those of others. Like you comment in the beginning on using methodologies. Btw, glad you enjoy Swedish!
A summary tool I use is WordTune Read. It provides summaries and videos. The summaries of videos are very good, and it transcribes most of what is said in a video. I use the summaries in my notes, highlight the ones I think are most important, and create a link to my own notes on a subject. The article summaries are good, sometimes it leaves out important points.
Yours is some of the best content out there, love it! Almost, fell out my chair laughing with your comment at the end of this video...yep, that pretty much sums up one's fixation on methodologies! Keep up the great content!
Great!
I'm really learning a lot, and yes, I took my notes from this video I neeed to put in practice a lot of things :p
Keep the good stuff, I really like your videos :D
this is was the exact video I needed! amazing work!
I'm seem a lot off your videos, I'm trying to applying it to learning new languages, programming languages - this is hard for me, and notes that i take everyday like my journal, but i want to connect everything - cause that's how my mind work. Its a lot of tools and some are paid. Your videos are very helpful
The joy of using Obsidian significantly increased when I abandoned what wasn't working; the adoption of anyone (everyone?) else's comprehensive methodology. It was a PKM hampster wheel of frustration resulting in falling farther behind in my work which requires a lot of note-taking for project management. The "falling behind" part was solvable in the short term by devoting more hours to digging out, though often by trying some new comprehensive method back in the wheel. The frustration was chipping away at my love for writing, so I hit reset and reverted to keeping my Obsidian notes in project folders as my only structure. That alone eased some of the pain. In the day-to-day routine of creating actionable content from my notes, most of the plugins you mentioned have become welcome tools. Strange New Worlds just makes me smile when processing an idea. Refactoring a note feels like having someone else do work for me for free! Callouts have been instrumental in helping me summarize a note and quickly recalling it for presentation when a co-worker is looking over my shoulder. The one that is yet to feel natural is Excalibrain (I love Zsolt's work), which is odd because I was a TheBrain user for over a decade. The problem may be related to the timing of creating explicit and implicit Excalibrain links. The process seems to fall at the wrong time during my natural workflow, and I haven't been able to establish a habit of going back and pruning and fiddling with ontology when there's always additional work waiting. I have room to grow! With apologies for the long note, thank you. Your videos have been consistently meaning-making for me.
Great video! What are all the dates that you add on the top of each note? You add a date every time you edit a note?
Hey! I do add a date every time I edit a note, helped by shortcuts from a tool I use called TextExpander (although I'm moving to Espanso). I like to see what I've worked on chronologically. That way, when I go to a daily note, I see backlinks from pages I modified that day.
I needed this video so much today. I landed on like three productivity bro videos in a row with white dudes from the States trying to sell me their workshops and like more power to you, go ahead and make money on your Brand New System(TM), but I have a kid and a job and a whole life over here, I can't just twiddle my thumbs and take notes about frigging Plato all day long. (This sounds like such a subtweet but I don't even know their names, they all look the same, they all seem to be selling kind of the same products, and again, cool, but absolutely not what I need, and they're always at the top of the recommended lists.) This video is fantastic, thank you!
Insane video! Thank you so much, Nicole. I absolutely admire your pragmatic, no-bs approach that is actually usable in real life for people who aren't exactly PKM-Influencers... 😁
Excellent content like always. I wonder if you take handwritten notes using a normal tablet or e ink one. I am very interested in a useful workflow to take notes in that way and add them to obsidian vault.
Thank you!
Nice tips and how to in this video. Thank you Nicole.
I'm currently using a modified version of PARA for myself (which makes sense to me).
Just a quick question: What tool are you using to take highlight in the first part of the video ? 2:39
Ah it's the Readwise extension, you can see it as she showed it at 2:28.
Steering clear of methodologies pushed by people who’s job it is to keep producing these to sell you.
Yes!!! Thank you for saying this. So true!!! I’ve heard others describe this almost as a genre called “toxic productivity” which is also spot on.
Great video, it's very interesting that my Obsidian work notes turned into storylines.
I love watching your videos, you do it well. Thank you. Greetings from Frankfurt Germany
Danke, Christian! Happy you like them. Greetings from across the border, in Maastricht.
Just a comment passing by : the fact that you reduced unnecessary clutter to focus on the main content of the video, that is PKM is very good. Also I found the flow of the video very good, I sometimes do video and it's very hard to captivate the spectator from start to finish and you did it "Brilliantly", get the pun ? Cheers
What is the theme and features you are using ? It is really good looking
What is the name of your theme? ie: @6:13 it is so similar to notion theme.
Hi @Nicole - just love your videos; they have helped me so much with Obsidian! I have a question, though, I thought you might know of a good way to handle this. I use Obsidian for my research; however, I often find people refer to the same thing in different ways, but I don't really want to have different notes for each. For example, when I am linking notes about countries that my research is covering, can I make things like America, USA, US, United States etc all mean the same thing? I guess this also counts for different forms of the same word (procure, purchase, procurement etc). If you have already covered this somewhere, please just point me to the right video! Thanks a million for all your great content, it is so amazingly useful! Cath
Hi Cath! Yeah, you absolutely can! I use aliases to define words or phrases that all refer to the same note. Here's the Obsidian documentation on it:
pulse.ly/avnwbywky1
Hope that helps! I'm very happy to hear you're liking my videos. <3
Hi! First of all, I want to say that you and your blog are amazing! Second, I want to ask, how to increment note id like you do it in your TTRPG template? I've tried to google it, but all I've found is your article where you mentioned it, but without any examples(
Thank you for all your content about Obsidian, it's extremely helpful!
Awesome content! Thank you for this. Just out of curiosity, I noticed that you have multiple dates in your front matter. What are these for?
Great video. I don´t have de "render markdown button" on the backlink panel. Do you use a plugin for that?
Ok, I find it. I installed "Query Control Pluging" through BRAT.
Your Obsidian Theme is so beautiful. Let me see if you have a video for your Obsidian set up, if it is not there may i request you to please put one?
Isn’t that feature in Note Refactor already in obsidian’s core plug-in? It feels very familiar. Maybe it doesn’t repeat the title as a heading inside the note.
Something I notice on all your videos is that the audio has artifacts / crackles. I have listened to them on different devices, high and low quality and it is always the same. 0:31 - 0:34 you can hear them clearly as being part of the video; also at 3:00 - 3:10, and a lot more.
Audio stuff is so hard to chase down. It could be a variety of things! I'm curious, though-- you've commented on a couple videos where I was in the Netherlands (that's the one with the hex background). Do you also hear the same thing when I'm in Portugal (that's the blank wall, wooden floors, and lamp behind me).
In the metadata, do you always have to add the date manually? Also, are you able to include links in the metadata?
Sort of-- I use TextExpander (a separate app) to generate the dates in the format I want, but I do have to do it every time I modify a note. Links don't work in YAML frontmatter, but you can use links in comments (%%).
I can't figure out how to enable "render markdown" in queries....
Ditto, it’s shown at 11:50
@@Tennisbull-match-statistics Unfortunately I don't have the "Render markdown" button in the backlinks display options. Is it a plugin?
I found this video confusing, but I'm still impressed so I subscribed 😁
What's going on with the "date" metadata? Do you have some plugin adding a tag with the date every time you edit a note? Why are some of them in the frontmatter and some of them are links in an inline metadata field between two percent signs?
No, I don't have a plugin for that, but I do use a shortcut app (TextExpander) for adding them to existing notes and templates to add them for new notes. Some are in the frontmatter and some are in comments (the ones within %%) because I used to put them in frontmatter but now am starting to prefer putting them in comments. It's really just personal preference! You can still query both ways through Dataview.
@@nicolevdh I have a new use for TextExpander now! I never thought to add the date to notes I update. I will now! Thanks!
Nicole - your clarity and information is as always - the best. What are your thoughts & advice about importing old notes into Obsidian from other note-taking apps or sources? - Both technically and from a processing standpoint? I have been experimenting with imports on my thousands of notes - from over a decade of taking notes in my work coaching and creating content. Most of my deep work sites are on notes outside my obsidian vault right now. I have been toying with a workflow of using Readwise(which for me is the best thing ever invented "cheese"! 🤣 I have tried using READWISE as middleware for data import of large amounts of data via CSV files. Perhaps there's a more technical efficient way to do this - a script or code snippet. Thanks again for the content and ideas that you share! I will reach out to you on your Patreon site too! Muchismas Gracias! 😘
Thank you for creating this subtitle, I'm really not good at English. (I use google translate to write these lines)
0:10
BASEED
I put off learning obsidian for about a year, because from the youtube videos I watched it seemed to ridiculously complicated I didn't bother
Now i realized its not bad at all, and for entertainment purposes I have spent the last week laughing at people doing absolutely bat shit insane ramblings about their pkm dogmas
too many charlatans and gurus
Nice video ^^
thx
Ouch! Intellectual masturbation is so painfully forthright, yet exactly what I really need to hear when it comes to obsessing over methodologies and structure 💀
Maybe it's jus my ADHD, but am I the only one who feels overwhelmed by all these complex workflows and structures? The burden of adding metadata, splitting and merging, integrating other apps... It kinda destroys my motivation for creating new notes.
Extra levels of organization are not necessary unless you are seeking a solution to a problem. Just doing them because they might save you time later is more likely to have you adopt a method which isn't enough ROI for your task. Workflows are fairly personal, and can evolve slowly. Lower the cognitive load of adoption and focus on what you're doing things for. Fiddling can come later
how about creating content with ai?
Thanks. Always a pleasure.
I hope you're going to try my new methodology almost mythology! Linking Your Evergreen Zettlebrain with SuperHyperTags.
Haha! Sounds about right! Where do I NOT sign up? ;)