Thoughts on Obsidian
As a web developer, I am a Markdown enthusiast. I've developed several static sites using Jekyll and Eleventy and am comfortable using frontmatter. Obsidian combines the ease of writing Markdown with the power of frontmatter (and inline) tags and properties. Add to that a robust plugin community you've got a seriously powerful project and task management tool
I've loved organization and project management systems since I was a kid. In high school, I had a Franklin Quest personal organizer (amazingly, they still exist!). In the 90s, I had several versions of the PalmPilot. In the early aughts, I discovered Paul Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) system and devoted both my professional and personal life to it.
These days, I'm a web developer at a major research university. In recent years, I've used Trello, Airtable, Notion and Asana to manage projects and keep track of tasks.
Recently, a work colleague suggested that I try Obsidian. He recommended it to me on a Friday with a warning: "this will take over your entire weekend." He wasn't wrong.
There are a Zillion posts on the internet describing methodologies for "getting things done" using Obsidian: ways to organize your files (using folders? flat?), ways to tag your notes, ways to query notes, task management, etc. While I haven't explored them all, I've read enough to start formulating my own workflow.
Here are some methodologies I'm exploring, including associated plugins, as I discover what Obsidian can do:
- Flat file structure: I'm currently working with a flat file structure, employing the Maps of Content concept, which relies on backlinks to files to keep your vault in order
- Git plugin: I created a private Git repo for my vault. The Obsidian Git plugin allows automatic syncing of my local vault with my private repo
- Digital Garden plugin: I'm intrigued by the concept of a Digital Garden. The Obsidian Digital Garden plugin is an easy way to create one. In short, the Digital Garden plugin allows you to easily publish notes in your vault to a service like Netlify. Even if you don't use it for a "Digital Garden," per se, it enables push-button publishing of your notes, allowing one to convert their vault into a website.
- Tasks: Using the Tasks plugin, it is easy to aggregate tasks across Obsidian notes, allowing me to see all my to-dos in a single note.
- Dataview plugin: The Dataview plugin enables you to "treat your Obsidian Vault as a database which you can query from." Use it for:
- Creating charts
- Creating tables
- Creating lists