So a friend of mine recommended Obsidian ages ago and I looked at it but thought I was happy using Joplin (another text-based note tool) which I still think is a great app. Took a brief look at it and thought it was just too complicated...
Then recently, I went down a youtube rabbit hole watching videos of how people use Obsidian... OMG 🤯
Now I have 2x Vaults, one for work and one personal. Dataview, templater, quickadd, periodic notes have just changed everything. Now I have documents for each person at work with their basic info and then when I make a meeting, I can just tag them which then updates a dataview table that shows what meetings I've been in with them.
Tasks allows me to just create a bunch of todos in random notes and then I can create a table to show all my undone tasks.
I mean, why did I wait so long? I've been using it for about 10 days now and it's been such a game changer. Sorry Joplin.
I didn’t know it but I’ve taken a look and I’m intrigued. I’m getting huge tiddlywiki vibes, which I’ve used on and off. I love how it apparently keeps the notes in a format where I would not need to be stuck with it forever if I wish to change down the line, which is a must for me (I still have notes from 1999 I managed to migrate from platform to platform over the years and wish to continue doing so).
What would you say is the most outrageous or “overpowered” use case you came across that really sells its potential?
So I have a folder called
people/that contains a note per person that I work with. (I have a template that helps create what I'm about to describe for each person too so creating one of these people notes is as simple as typing their name). In there I have what you'd expect, name, email, position along with maybe some personal notes I want to remember about them but then I have a dataview table that lists all the meetings I've had with them since I started taking notes.To do this, it's a simple dataview table in the person note and then I also have a
meetings/folder where I add my meetings. In there, I just have an attendee's section where I put people's names (just using the[[name]]notation) and obsidian links them and the meeting will show up in the table.I can also add todo items right in this meeting template and using the tasks plugin, I can create a list of tasks that it pulls in from all my other notes. So I have a daily journal note and this has a list of all my uncompleted tasks. (Again, all this is templated so I just have to open today's journal entry to see these things)
And to top it all off, it's all in just plain text markdown files so I'm not locked into some proprietary format.
That’s neat! I e installed it and started exploring. Looks great so far!