583: The Obsidian Deep Dive

I literally came to this thread to say exactly this!

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Yes I ditto what Gabe says . . . money is rattling in pocket . . . awaiting the exchange of money for Field Guide . . . Yes, thatā€™s the ticket!

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Fortunately, there is a whole community dedicated to a ā€œmental illnessā€ called CRIMP identified by Steve Zeoli. Hereā€™s Steveā€™s definition of CRIMP:

CRIMP stands for a make-believe malady called compulsive-reactive information management purchasing. Symptoms include:

  • never being satisfied with your current system of information management
  • continuously being on the look-out for something newer and better
  • purchasing every new PIM program you learn about
  • and secretly hoping you wonā€™t find the perfect PIM, because then youā€™d have to stop looking for a better one

So, when someone speaks of succumbing to his or her CRIMP, it means acknowledging that theyā€™ve purchased another PIM program even though they really donā€™t think they need it.

There must be a 12-step program for over-coming CRIMP, but who really wants to? Itā€™s too much fun.

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Hi! My Name is Bobby and Iā€™m a CRIMPERā€™er

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Viticci gets it.

Starting at 1h4m: Connected #344: A Chainsaw from Eight Miles Away - Relay FM

I hope he (and Finn) release the plugins he describes!

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ā€œHi Bobbyā€ :wave:
Ā Ā Ā Ā 

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+1 for a @MacSparky Obsidian Field Guide

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Iā€™ll post some of my templates. It seems Obsidian has enough users now to justify more posts. I am going to make an Obsidian Field Guide. I was planning on holding off for 2-3 months before starting because right now the app isnā€™t even really out of beta. I donā€™t want it to become dated 2 weeks after release.

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Excellent news.
In a few months the iOS version should be out as well.

That is great news. Iā€™ll buy it. Iā€™ve experimented with Obsidian but donā€™t want to devote a lot of time and material to it until I understand better how to use it effectively and efficiently. Your Guide will be extremely helpful!

Addendum: Iā€™d consider using Obsidian instead of Craft IF there was a way to select a lists of tasks in a note, e.g., from a meeting and have each one of them show up as a discreet task in OF. Craft handles this extremely well. I canā€™t fine a way to do this in Obsidian.

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Iā€™m sure he will for $5 a month! :wink:

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There are a couple of plug-ins that will do this [ ] item and continue with creating a list with them as part of a todo plug-in and another that is part of a task / project plug-in.

I havenā€™t tried them as I have a different purpose, for Obsidian, which is replacing a dead NValt and 1200+ notes that it sat on top of.

OK, Iā€™ll admit it: Iā€™m waaay behind - I just listened to this episode today.

I was struck with how easily @MacSparky and @ismh were seduced into falling for this app, despite its Electron ugliness. It must be quite an app.

Being retired, Iā€™m not convinced I would be able to make good use of any PKM app. Iā€™m curious if other ā€œseniorā€ forum members have similar views.

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Iā€™m younger and a good way from retirement but if learning is a life long enterprise then I would think that a PKM system will always be relevant.

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Iā€™ve decided to move my academic research into Obsidian and completely remove DEVONthink from my workflow (after it lost about three months of files from a database due to bugs in DT). Iā€™ve never liked DTā€™s interface and if itā€™s not trustworthy at storing data Iā€™m through with it.

So far, Iā€™ve found Obsidian absolutely fantastic for this purpose. Using alongside Ulysses while writing seems to be a fit from heaven, as it is a really good way to organise and display my materials and to record notes from research meetings.

Iā€™m still keeping all my other notes in Craft though, which I much prefer for my personal notes. I want this to be strictly for logging meetings and making notes for research projects.

Iā€™m curious as to how this will work for you as Iā€™m keeping an eye on Obsidian. But I keep a lot of PDFS, emails, jpegs, and websites in DT consolidated and grouped based on research topics or projects.

I havenā€™t spent enough time with Obsidian to get a handle on this but I donā€™t see how Obsidian can handle efficiently what I just described.

I may well be wrongā€“insights on this?

Embedding PDFs, videos, images and audio is simple. Organising using the folder view is easy.

This is the screen Iā€™m using today while working on a paper. Iā€™m viewing PDFs, images and documents across this screen.

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Oh, just stop it; youā€™re making my life harder! :laughing: :wink:

Just when I think I have my workflow settled and perfect ā€¦

Iā€™m not finding Obsidian especially intuitiveā€“perhaps Iā€™m just slow. Do you have a recommend best resource (besides the upcoming field guide by Sparks)?

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Itā€™s not super intuitive. However, I managed to figure it out in about half an hour just playing around. I started by filling a folder with md files and put all the attachments in a folder, then I made this into a vault. Then I just dragged the attachments into the documents from the folder browser to where I wanted them and it inserted the appropriate links. After that Iā€™ve just been viewing in preview mode and arranging the window panes as required.

The hard part was getting it working on mobile. I had to add ā€œstickersā€ to a Discord account (Iā€™ve never used Discord before - thatā€™s a really unintuitive app and makes Obsidian look friendly!). Eventually after following a lot of steps, I got a link to the TestFlight app (which is pretty darn good!)

Hmmm. I will stay with DT (Iā€™ve never lost data and I backup religiously) because it has a lot of powerful features beyond storing files so my only remaining dilemma regarding my workflow is making a final decision between Craft and Obsidian. I want to stop "shopping apps. Iā€™m almost there.

I like Craft, a lot, but there is something compelling about only using plain text files, even though I can and have exported Craft notes as .md files. I also like the idea of storing all professional and personal notes in one place and linking thinking, research, and project notes at will. ā€œOne note app to rule them all.ā€

I did not realize you could drag files into Obsidian and they would create links for you. That is MUCH easier than the awkward markdown syntax.

Ok, against my better judgment ā€¦ Iā€™m going to relaunch Obsidian and give it a longer test run. :slight_smile:

Addendum
I converted my DT notes to markdown, created a new vault, indexed it to DT and opened in Obsidian. Here is what I now have.

Iā€™ll experiment with this over the next four weeks to ensure I give it a good test run.

My biggest challenge will be how to get a bulleted list of to-dos from Obsidian into OF without copying and pasting. Craft does this seamlessly and easily with one click.

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