Writing down what I do in Obsidian

There&#x27;s a useful plugin called &quot;Daily Notes&quot; which automatically creates a note each day with your desired template, along with the calendar plugin I have a daily chronology of everything I&#x27;ve done which I deem noteworthy.<p>If anyones interested in Obsidian and daily journalling keep the initial ceremony low. Some people have sections for challenges, achievements, mood, emails, to-dos, etc. That&#x27;ll be far too much cognitive load for anyone - keep it simple and very quickly you&#x27;ll know whether you want to add or remove any of the daily ceremony.<p>I have a &quot;Key tasks&quot; where I include a mostly succinct breakdown of anything worth noting. I did this on Google Docs for 3 years before very recently moving to Obsidian and I wouldn&#x27;t turn back. Tags and back links definitely help me jump between related thoughts and actions much more than grepping in a 50k+ words Google doc :)

I know this thread seems to be Obsidian specific, but wanted to share: I&#x27;ve been writing down every detail of my day since January 2021 on Diarly. I pay $15 a year to have it sync across iCloud devices. I have two &quot;journals&quot; - one for personal, and one for work. From thoughts, to encounters during the day, to what food I ate, I write everything. It has dramatically improved my day-to-day. I&#x27;ve had trouble remembering my whole life, and now I can just look back and find the exact date where I did something (the search feature is pretty spot on). It&#x27;s even improved my retention skills - e.g. &quot;i don&#x27;t remember what day this happened, but I am positive xyz happened because I remember writing about it&quot;. Strongly strongly recommend it to all.

Does anyone have any experience with Joplin[0] as an alternative? I&#x27;m looking into using SyncThing + Joplin to create a sort of &#x27;networked personal brain&#x27;. I was originally looking at Obsidian, but the arguments on why they chose not to go FOSS are pretty weak[2] imo, so I&#x27;m looking at using Joplin instead.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;laurent22&#x2F;joplin&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;laurent22&#x2F;joplin&#x2F;</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;syncthing.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;syncthing.net&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;obsidian.rocks&#x2F;why-isnt-obsidian-open-source&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;obsidian.rocks&#x2F;why-isnt-obsidian-open-source&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m an ardent Emacs user for the past 20+ years. But I am considering writing a book, and the &quot;throw things in anyhow, get things back&quot; facility of Obsidian is quite useful for catching disparate thoughts to later incorporate into a flow in the final text.. Of course there is a mode in Emacs supporting obsidian-like facility, but does not feel as convenient - autocomplete never quite works as smooth as it does in Obsidian. For now, I am very impressed with the simplicity of Obsidian&#x27;s usage.

I published my Obsidian vault template in Github more than 1 year ago [1]. It has some templates and tips that I use regularly now. It may help others.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tuan3w&#x2F;obsidian-template" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tuan3w&#x2F;obsidian-template</a>

General question for the Obsidian gurus in the audience.<p><pre><code> Is there anyway to use tab-key mid-line? I do not want to indent the start of my line, and I&#x27;d be happy to have tab-character auto-convert to spaces, but I cannot use this tool unless I have a way to tab. I seem to use tab to make columns of lists, usually two or three columns worth. A decent analogy would be like the hosts file, or CRON. 2+ vertically aligned columns of lists. I understand that &lt;TAB&gt; doesn&#x27;t exist in markdown, but vim is able to convert tab-characters to spaces, is there any kind of plugin that allows this functionality?</code></pre>

Personally my Obsidian notes are a reflection of the chaos in my head. The neurons (notes) of my second brain all interconnect without rhyme or reason or folders or tagging...

Much of what the author does manually can be automated even further. For example, the whole &quot;Working with Embeds&quot; section could be replaced with a DataView query.<p>I use DataView extensively to great effect. For example, every &quot;Project&quot; note uses the same template, which includes a #Project tag and a Status:: value containing a red, yellow, or green square emoji.<p>Then a simple query like:<p>```dataview TABLE Status FROM #Projects SORT file.mtime ASC ```<p>Gives you a very nice looking, automatically sorted and up to date Project status table.

i found my love in Trilium what has everything i need and if needed, i can still change the code by myself (AGPL) + files are stored as markdown documents (so i am still able to get into my notes, even if the repo would disappear). see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;zadam&#x2F;trilium" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;zadam&#x2F;trilium</a><p>TLDR; - future proof file format (markdown)<p>- possible as local standalone + sync to simple cloud storage (like gdrive&#x2F;dropbox&#x2F;...)<p>- gantt charting<p>- uml diagramming<p>- task management<p>- available on github<p>- active development in the last months and years<p>- editable

How do you guys handle images in Obsidian? I can&#x27;t zoom or see detail on large screen shots for example. Pretty new to the application so maybe I&#x27;m missing something

That&#x27;s a very good idea to write down what you did during the day, it saved me from a bad burnout. I was working on multiple projects in parallel, and got the feeling that I was doing nothing productive on my day, but was always stressed and tired.<p>Writing down what you did during the day allows to see that you actually did a lot of things. I put even meeting and technical discussions with others, because it&#x27;s still takes work time.

My note taking system is simple:<p>I&#x27;m using MacOS Notes application, in that basically have two important notes: Reading and Writing.<p>My professional life is mostly about reading and writing.<p>Other minor notes include: Awesome materials.<p>I never have a separate Todo&#x2F;Outcomes,.. notes.

Since this post will attract Obisidan veterans, I asking for some validation of two potential need-gaps in Obisidian I&#x27;m tracking for a while -<p>1. Live recommendation for Obsidian[1]<p>Say I&#x27;m typing a note and write a sentence about echo location then I get recommended a previous note with a comment from a HN user about how moths escape bats by deafening it in a side panel.<p>It&#x27;s not a keyword based recommendation, But a sentence classification (I understand the compute overhead drawback).<p>2. Automatic tag generator for Obsidian[2]<p>This is simpler, Generate tags for the notes automatically based on previous tags and if none is available then generate new tags.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;needgap.com&#x2F;problems&#x2F;409-live-recommendation-for-obsidian-knowledgebase-recommendation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;needgap.com&#x2F;problems&#x2F;409-live-recommendation-for-obs...</a> (Disclosure: It&#x27;s my problem validation forum)<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;needgap.com&#x2F;problems&#x2F;408-automatic-tag-generator-for-obsidian-knowledgebase-tags" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;needgap.com&#x2F;problems&#x2F;408-automatic-tag-generator-for...</a>

Buried in this is a reference to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.obsidian.md&#x2F;How+to&#x2F;Link+to+blocks" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.obsidian.md&#x2F;How+to&#x2F;Link+to+blocks</a><p>Turns out a (carefully written) link in one document will render as the contents of some part of another document. Possibly more useful in this context is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.obsidian.md&#x2F;How+to&#x2F;Embed+files" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.obsidian.md&#x2F;How+to&#x2F;Embed+files</a><p>I&#x27;ve been trying literate programming in obsidian and that looks like a very direct solution to having source code in separate files, which all the tooling definitely prefers, which still renders inline from the main document.<p>Does broadly work - the ```C ``` style block disables the embedding, so the markdown syntax to pretty print the code needs to be in the source file, not in the file that embeds it. Also the ^block_name syntax can&#x27;t be on the same line as the closing ```.

no shade, but just reading this I was sure this was written by someone who works in BigTech. Because this was very reminiscent of ceremony required for BigTech performance reviews.

I’d really like to understand how people managers who work on teams &#x2F; corporate environments use Obsidian.<p>I find that most of my work meetings are shared docs. It often feels like double work to put some things in Obsidian and move them around.<p>I also don’t use Obsidian as a task list - I use Todoist which is totally fine for that.

&gt; Update the link to the weekly note. (I can definitely use a templating plugin to make this happen automatically, but haven’t spent the time on that yet.)<p>Here ya go! (Requires Templater plug-in)<p>``` Week: [[&lt;% tp.date.now(&#x27;yyyy&#x27;) %&gt;-W&lt;% tp.date.now(&#x27;ww&#x27;) %&gt;]] ```

I am very impressed in the detail that the picture in the article is also a screenshot in dark mode when I switch to dark mode. Well done.

This was like a window in an alternate dimension for me: I had no idea documenting what you do was a thing and the way the author describes it makes it sound like a well-known activity that everybody does. Have I been living under a rock?

I’m using `vimwiki` for years and love it.<p>I also tried Obsidian but I need it also mobile and I cannot define a storage path for my files.<p>I just like the freedom, minimalism and flexibility of vimwiki.

After trying Obsidian, notes,Evernote and OneNote, I finally found Logseq and absolutely love it. Anyone else prefer Logseq?

If anyone is interested in. I&#x27;m working on a &quot;emacs-like&quot; system that you can also use to take notes in, but it&#x27;s more line a Outliner(like Roam Research) + Brownser. It&#x27;s still in development.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ilse-langnar&#x2F;notebook" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ilse-langnar&#x2F;notebook</a>

Did he mean to link to his Obsidian config? It looks like there&#x27;s supposed to be a link there but there isn&#x27;t.

I have just started using Obsidian this last week or two in the hopes of eventually migrating away from Notion. There are some things I miss though, like to-do lists. I&#x27;ve also found that code blocks are a little unreliable about whether they render pretty or just stay markdown.<p>I like the idea of getting all my stuff local, but there are going to be a few things about Notion that keep me there for a while.<p>Also, (and this is slightly tangential since this doesn&#x27;t exist for Notion) - I would _love_ a nice way to be able to write guitar tablature in my notes. If some kind of plugin exists for that it would be awesome.

My note taking system is a single &quot;donelist.txt&quot; that sits in a GDrive&#x2F;onedrive&#x2F;xdrive on my machine. Entries are:<p>9.11.22<p>scrum<p>working on stry1234<p>meeting X<p>- do a thing<p>lunch<p>created PR for stry1234<p>meeting Y<p>8.11.22<p>scrum<p>working on def4321<p>lunch<p>created PR def4321<p>meeting Z<p>meeting A<p>...<p>This is good enough for me although I&#x27;m still figuring out how to plan ahead better. Maybe I should write down how I expect the week to go, goals and schedule, on Monday and update from there.

I can see Obsidian being popular because it makes notetaking fun and customizable and may motivate people to do it more. But as far as actual productivity goes I can&#x27;t see any benefit it adds.

For the unix fundamentalist out here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Aperocky&#x2F;diaryman&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;diaryman.sh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Aperocky&#x2F;diaryman&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;diaryman.sh</a><p>I had this little script aliased from shell, whenever I type `diary` it creates&#x2F;open the current days&#x27; note file in vim.

Oh it&#x27;s just an ad for some app.<p>Here I thought he was actually writing things in actual Obsidian. That would have been actually interesting.

I use obsidian because apple notes lost all my notes amazingly when syncing between two computers and my phone- and my hope is that the markdown file method that obsidian uses in iCloud will be more resilient.<p>That said I&#x27;d rather have something that versions my notes files

I hadn&#x27;t seen the block embeds feature. I&#x27;m going to have to add this to my workflow.<p>I typically keep a daily note and then if any one section gets large, move it to it&#x27;s own note and link it in my daily. The blocks would be a great addition though.

I tried Obsidian on Windows early this year and found it to be quite slow and clunky, but it seems like everyone else loves it. Is it that the software has improved since earlier this year, or was it just a local issue all along?

I&#x27;d love to try something like this but my problem is that I routinely use 3 different computers throughout the day(Windows, Mac and Linux. Could this be used with git to keep things sync&#x27;d?

I had the same problem, but needed something quicker, so I made a small CLI utility:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pypi.org&#x2F;project&#x2F;dia&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pypi.org&#x2F;project&#x2F;dia&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;ve seen a lot of recent posts about Obsidian in the past week. If it&#x27;s a marketing tactic then it might be working on me. I hope it&#x27;s a decent product and not just some PR stunt.

Alternatively, there&#x27;s the pen and paper version of Obsidian: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.antinet.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.antinet.org&#x2F;</a>

I finally settled into:<p>- text files (edited with vim using vimwiki format ie. adding ``` %% vim: set ft=vimwiki ``` to the file<p>- syncthing (@ mobile, desktop and server)<p>- Markor (@ mobile)

I&#x27;ll probably try out both Obsidian and LogSeq at some point. Do their use-cases overlap or are there different goals of each project?

And there I was all excited, expecting long-term preservation of writing by 3D-printing molten rock.<p>I&#x27;m a strong believer that names of software packages should be chosen to be something that doesn&#x27;t yet return any results from a Google search.

This is called transclusion.

This would be interesting if it was about chiseling a volcanic glass, not another note-taking app.

No. You&#x27;re not going to charge me for taking notes.

I just installed Obsidian. Tried it. The vibe of the contents that I put into Obsidian has a funny &#x27;Obsidious&#x27; tone. I think a neutral vibe is what is required for a generic content editing software. Uninstalled.

I honestly tried to love obsidian because of how easy it is to set up and how user friendly the UI is (plus there are tutorials and tons of articles), but I just can&#x27;t get over it being offline and only means to sync are looking for a plugin that will use git&#x2F;dropbox etc plus there are no mobile app anyways.<p>Right now I found that notion is perfect for me. It does not have a mind mapping functionality but its very good, super easy to use (to the point it being intuitive) in all other areas AND I have perfect sync, mobile app and web app so I can use it on my work laptop, phone and personal PC without any problems<p>But if you don&#x27;t need that, obsidian is amazing