Obsidian

Organize Your Thoughts

Like most people, I’ve been on a mission to organize my life and my learning in a way that makes sense to me. I would like to embody the archetype of the absent minded professor. Intelligent, if a little lost. Right now I’m channeling some seriously frazzled mid-thirties millennial vibes and it’s nowhere near as cool. 

The quest for an organizational tool must be shaped by the end users specific information processing strengths and needs. I tend to start with non-linear thinking when trying to retrieve information. My brain is more like a web in which I am continuously lost, tugging on threads and looking for clarity. Because of this, any organizational tool for thoughts and learning has to allow for flexibility and interconnection. The very idea of being flexible requires understanding that things do not occur in a vacuum - there is relationship between ideas, an interplay amongst concepts and to be flexible is to hold this exchange loosely enough that they can breathe and move, but with a firm enough handle as to develop understanding.

Secondly, any organizational tool has to allow for details and specifics without losing one’s sanity in the abundance of information. I’ve tried everything over the years from notebooks and journals, to scraps of paper and detailed folder systems. My google drive is an elaborate collection of folders and subfolders, and sub-subfolders, in an attempt to nest ideas within broader, overarching concepts. To my endless frustration, I find myself frequently lost because each thought that I have organized in the folders connects to multiple concepts and whichever concept connection is the most prominent can vary from day to day. Which means the folder I think I put the note in may not coincide with the concept that made the most sense to me the day that I filed it. 

Unfortunately, handwritten notes are no better. I’ve tried used individual notebooks for differing subjects and I typically end up confusing the overarching concept by which I have organized the notes - which either ends up in tons of empty notebooks because my brain shuts down, or a random notebook packed full of ideas, thoughts and quotes on every subject, but the ideas are lost in the abundance of pages and I can never find them again. Obviously it’s frustrating, but especially if you are trying to revisit and work with concepts enough to actually have a functional knowledge of anything. 

Answers in April

My Kingdom for a Pen, as my father would say. Or at the very least, my kingdom for a functional system. 

It was a rainy day in April when I put on a video essay, via youtube. Odysseas, of course, because I’ve found the content I’ve heard thus far to be well thought out and the concept applications easily modified for my own time and focus constraints. 

I happened to glance at my phone screen as I moved between chore tasks and was utterly arrested. Time stood still. There, on the split screen, hundreds of tiny dots were lit up, soft white lines branched between them, constellations against a medium grey sky. 

And when I realized that the constellations laid out before me were ideas, linked by relationship and mapped out, I was done. 

Obsidian was for me. 

What is Obsidian? 

“Obsidian is a personal knowledge base and note-taking software application that operates on Markdown files. It allows users to make internal links for notes and then to visualize the connections as a graph. [Obsidian] is designed to help users organize and structure their thoughts and knowledge in a flexible, non-linear way.”
(Wikipedia)

There are several excellent articles and blog posts on how linking in Obsidian works, along with information on the other features and how they work. I’ll link those below for your perusal, if you so desire. 

The biggest take away for me is that I can easily navigate webs of thought and I can track and build on that knowledge. With a variety of tools such as linking, tags and folders I can work within a more binary structure, such as with folders, and I can work outside of that binary and expand into nearly infinite flexibility through linking. 

Maps of Content, explored and explained by Nick Milo of Linking Your Thinking and Tim Miller of Obsidian.rocks, allow you to progressively and organically organize your thoughts while still being able to find them as your notes multiply. 

Of course there is a time commitment, both to the initial learning curve and to maintaining order as you structure your thoughts, but I’m not aware of any functional system that doesn’t make some demands of the user. The benefit of time commitment is walking away with a deeper engagement in your thought processes and continuing to build your skills in organization and retrieval. 

The Verdict

Have all organizational problems been solved?

All knowledge contained and mastered?

Will I be the next Sherlock Holmes?

Am I overly dramatic in a bid to coax a small laugh from my audience? Perhaps an exasperated eye roll? 

Well, yes and no. Of course no one is expecting to solve all problems with one app. And obviously knowledge, by nature, cannot be contained and mastered. And no one is expecting me to be Sherlock. Not in this life. 

BUT. 

Thus far, I’m really happy with Obsidian. I’m still in the process of converting notes and learning to set up maps of content, but even with my very limited use, I’ve been pleased with the interconnecting features. I enjoy the confidence of filing a note and knowing I’ll be able to find it later. I’ll never give up putting pen to paper - I love it too much, even if I lose everything in the mass of pages. But I didn’t start Obsidian with the end goal of no longer handwriting in journals. I started it with the goal of being able to organize and access my thoughts and observations so that I can better understand and utilize them. And for that purpose, Obsidian is working out beautifully.

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Pros and Cons of Obsidian

Beginners Guide

Getting Started with Obsidian

Maps of Content

Obsidian as a Zettelkasten