I need some help assessing if this makes sense. I am meeting with a few couples/individuals either for counseling or catechism (depending on the day). I was trying to figure out how to manage, which session, topic, etc each person or couple is on.
I created 2 databases in Notion, the first database has the following properties:
Name, Session #, Topic, Progress Status.
The second database is just for lack of a better word, session topic guide. It just lists 1-x, and then the topic associated. Then there is a relation between both database, because people are on different sessions depending on how often we meet.
All of that is in Notion and just to see who is where, so that when we meet, I am aware of what topic we are discussing.
If today is Week # 3 for example, then after verifying in Notion, I head over to Obsidian and open my talking points, discussion questions, goals for the session.
Is this overkill? Is there a better way of doing this? Should I keep all the talking points in Notion?
My only resistance in everything is that Obsidian is typically where I do any and all writing. Notion for me (until I use it more heavily) is just a âDashboardâ of sorts for whatever project I am working on. Thoughts?
I live and work in Canada for a hospital. May be different where you are, but there are super strict rules here about patient confidentiality. Patient names in Notion would be a major no-no.
Obsidian maybe better if stored on a protected/compliant location and not synced to the cloud/multiple devices.
It sounds like you may not be in an institutional setting, but Iâd take the data youâre capturing very seriously from a privacy point of view.
Lots of ways to do it depending on what you like to work with. I have played with canvas, kanban and dataview dashboards and am looking at the new core bases plugin as well. All have strengths and weaknesses but all are easy simple and keep all the data in Obsidian which is inherently more secure for personal infop than a cloud based Notion system.
I am finding I can use Obsidian for writing, reference storage, project management, goals, program designs, task management, personal journals, household inventory, log files of entries across our biosecurity line, sheep info, research papers and notes, estate planning documents, farm planning documents and more. The advantages of learning one tool with a relatively small set of pluginâs very well far outweighs the disadvantage of it not being really designed to do all those things out of the box.
I also have forks of my critical plug-ins in case they go away in the future. I may not know how to program them or maintain them myself but I can always hire someone to update or modify my forks if I find a critical need and the plug-in is no longer supported.
Sounds a bit like the old-days: The advantages of spending quality time to retro-fit third party components into a PC motherboard far outweighs the disadvantages of the motherboard hardware not being really designed out of the box to do anything beyond run the fan for the power supply.
I fully respect your expertise and dedication. However, not everyone is a hacker at heart, and even those who may be may not have the commensurate ability or focus needed to juggle the requisite demands.
With this in mind, could you point to tutorials specific to what @FrMichaelFanous needs to help in making the transition?
That is what my current setup in Notion looks like at the moment. Simple with nothing personal. I was hoping that I can link my Obsidian Notes into Notion. Essentially, doing the followingâŚ
In SessionâŚ
Open Notion
We finished session 4 topic, letâs go to topic 5 this week.
Tap Topic 5, Obsidian opens
RealityâŚ(if I keep the Notion/Obsidian route)
Open Notion and Obsidian side by side
View the status and swipe Notion away
The end.
I think because I never made dashboards or tables or âtrackersâ in Obsidian. I am hesitant, mainly because would that change my mindset of workflows. I am always going back and forth between the universal question:
Does X belong in Craft, Obsidian, or Notion? I was/am rigid in my thinking because I looked at Obsidian as solely a writing tool. The distinction between Craft / Notion can get finicky. Craft looks aesthetically more pleasing to the eye. But again, I created another rigid case in my mind.
Craft is for showcasing/sharing. (this vacations, brochures, etc). I am tracking my house construction in Craft (a visual progress). Notion is still a new kid on the block for me, using it mainly for a directory of things and tracking progress, movies, books, etc.
You could try putting everything in Obsidian for a week and see what works and what doesnât. The link to Obsidian would just be a wiki link. But then, if the Notion set up works for you, thereâs no reason to change it.
I donât know of any tutorials I can recommend as Iâve never watched any for this sort of stuff. I basically read the documentation and try things out. What would be easiest depends on how @FrMichaelFanous thinks. With my current set-up which is heavily tasks oriented Iâd use a combination of tasks in a person/couple note and code like this to create the dashboard.
tasks
not done
is not blocked
(starts before tomorrow )
(path does not include 05.01_Hold_Projects )
tag includes Personname
With a block for each couple but that will get unwieldy to manage for
With a bit more time and because I think it would be simpler to edit and maintain Iâd look at the new core plug-in Bases and do a simple table of the person, status and next item to work on. I have not done anything with Bases yet. I only know of it by reading about it in the release notices but on the surface it looks to be tailor made for the job.
Iâve never used Notion so I canât compare it to Obsidian choices but the idea of a Dashboard is common so I was keying of the dashboard name
You could do this in Dataview. I just asked ChatGPT but this looks like itâd work:
task
where !completed
and !blocked
and (start <= date(today) or start <= date(today) + dur(1 day))
and !contains(file.path, "05.01_Hold_Projects")
and contains(tags, "Personname")