Hey folks, for our inaugural post, share what your personal use case for Obsidian is. Are you writer, student, academic, or something else?
I use Obsidian for writing/worldbuilding notes, documentation for various technical things, and a catch-all scrap paper. I’m still working on putting together a good workflow, and I could probably be utilizing it a lot better.
As an academic I’ve used it for several years to track my classes, lecture ideas, etc., and more recently keeping a record of media consumption, movies, TV series, and novels.
I’d like to get more out of the data in my vaults but I struggle to grasp many of the most interesting community plugins such as Dataview. I really enjoy using Obsidian but suspect it’s challenging if you lack a programming background.
I migrated from Evernote to Joplin because Evernote started charging. I migrated from Joplin because the sync was problematic and wasn’t working correctly for me.
My biggest uses are my recipe collection, my bookmarks list, and where I keep notes and roadmaps for my personal hobby projects. I don’t use it anywhere even close to its full potential. Links, for example, are nothing that I use and I can’t find a compelling reason to do so. I use almost no formatting either. I do use tags, tho. I really don’t need something with as much power as this has.
Using Linux KDE, every file is indexed - including those in my Obsidian notes folder.
Whenever I find a guide, or interesting web page, I use the addon to download it as Markdown - then open Obsidian and edit out any superfluous crud.
So mostly I use it as a repository for things I don’t want to search regularly - guides, tutorials etc.
I use it primarily as a recipe book since markdown does that format pretty well.
I use it as a second brain and to consolidate my notes for school.
My school notes include half of my undergrad in economics and all of my notes for the MBA program I’m going through right now.
The second brain part comes from all the notes I take all the content I consume about stuff, mostly books, though. I think it’s amazing that I can look at notes I took years ago and remember the context of my notes.
I am another second brain and school type user. I am less heavy into the second brain part though.
My school notes are from my current program of study. I keep my undergrad notes in a separate vault. I find I rarely need to dip in there, so I keep it separate as not to clutter my main vault.
I slack a bit with the second brain, but it has saved my rear more than once. I follow a lot of Tiago can’t remember his last name at the moment’s second brain approach with some extra ideas I have collected over the years. I generally use it for: Reminders for where I stored items that might be important in the future that I don’t regularly use. Interesting quotes I collect over time. My calendar archives. Lists of things I would recommend to people. How to manuals for things I will need to do that I rarely need to do but is still important. Receipt database for large purchases with warranties. A networking/contact list that reminds me how I know know people, traditional contact information, and important information that I might not remember long term but will be helpful for things like gift ideas, food preferences for restaurant suggestions, remembering the content of networking “interviews” and things like that. Brainstorms for future projects I might be interested in doing. Storing important information for current projects, and so forth.
I don’t use linking as much as I should. The fancy connection charts are usually just for school.
I keep a pocket notebook and a part Bullet Journal, part commonplace book on my desk to dump information over the day. Every evenining or morning, I will copy over my days to do list and habits for the day so I can give some thought about what needs to get done, what to do list tasks that need to be trimmed, and help me plan my day a little. Once in a while (depending how busy/lazy I am), I will go back, decide what is important enough to keep and let the rest to languish in the notebook. The pocket note is quick notes and anything else that doesn’t need to go into my to do list or calendar. If it’s worth keeping, it either goes into the main notebook or my to-do list. I also do a weekly and a monthly check in to figure out what needs to get done this week/month. I admit, there is a lot of repetition in my process. Usually, I rarely spend more than 3-10 minutes on anything in the process, but the process makes me more mindful about what needs to be done and what is actually important. Most importantly, it allows me to search and pull up stuff quickly instead of flipping through page after page of the desk journal.