I have been using both Roam and Obisidian. There is overlap between them but both are good for some use cases. In my case, for all knowledge management and back linking I feel Roam is excellent.
As a software engineer, if I have a Markdown file with some code in it, Obsidian wins hands down. The import is just plain simple. Importing a Markdown into Roam does not work well. There is lot of tinkering to be done to make it look like its intended to. The block format of Roam does not gel well in this case.
So for all work related where there are snippets of code I use Obsidian, and its local, plain Markdown files pretty much. For everything else there is Roam. I feel the blend of both worlds is working for me as I can keep work related local with Obsidian. With Roam there are local Roams too, but its got a long way to go.
Hear, hear!
People can use one, both, or neither, whatever works for them.
Some people use different apps to divide their notes/artifacts conceptually - also totally valid. Maybe they want their journal in Bear, and their work notes in Agenda, and their hobby notes in Typora. To each their own.
People also have different perspectives on apps, and their strengths and weaknesses. Also valid.
Thank you very much for this example, Mark. I have a follow up question… are you using Roam so that you see these connections on entry somehow or are you hunting for them in exploratory mode sometime later?
I have not drunk the Kool Aid from the Zettle yet and currently of the mindset that it was a great process back in the day when it was hard to find notes that were related to each other then a index scheme would be useful.
With the advent of computers, search, tags, links I think science majors will be sporting slide rules as the next cool thing
As you build the zettelkasten, you also build the connections in your own brain, as well as a spatial relationship of the cards (somewhat lost if you aren’t using something like Tinderbox). Backlinks, and block references, and all the other gadgets make the process easier, but that is not necessarily better.
I guess the utility again depends on what one is doing with the information. If you’re aggregating references for a blog post, you probably don’t need a zettelkasten. If you’re doing research and creating new insights, perhaps so.
Once you link a term, thought processors like Roam and Obsidian identify all documents containing unlinked incidents of that term. In this case, the initial connection was made by looking at this unlinked references list. To answer your question directly, I didn’t make the connection on entry … but very shortly after, when I checked for unlinked references.
Once I made that connection, I used the knowledge graph – the map of interconnected nodes that both Roam and Obsidian create as notes are linked together – to find additional insights. Once this activity started, my own brain began generating additional potential connections, too.
I must also note that, as @JohnAtl mentions in his thread with @D_Rehak, this work does seem to be reinforcing connections in my own brain, as I find myself able to think and talk about concepts I’ve taken notes on in this way with greater depth, clarity, and recall. I’d go so far as to say I think I’m getting sharper generally, which is a nice surprise for someone who just celebrated his 56th trip around the sun.
It’s possible that the growing interest in Roam or Obsidian or other thought processors is nothing more than an eager crowd of self-improvement junkies rushing toward the latest productivity talisman. It’s possible I may be one of them. I have used a lot of information-wrangling tools over the years, and I read a lot of non-fiction about growth and organization.
I have to say, though, that, to me, the work I’m doing in Roam feels different. The closest parallel I can think of was how I felt when I got my first Mac (a 2005 PowerBook G4). Could other tools support my work in similar ways? Yes, of course. But Roam has an … elegance? … the other tools lack, and the more I use it, the more I experience magical little “A ha!” moments. It’s nice.
I dunno. I’ve also reached a point in my life where I want more depth and less dabbling, and where I want to do less dreaming and more doing. For now, there’s a happy synergy between my desire to get back to being more of a maker and the appearance of Roam in my life. If that makes me one of “these people,” well, so be it.
Thanks for these details, Mark. If it ever occurs to you to do so, I think creating a quick screencast of the scenario you described in the messages above would do wonders for extending the usefulness of Roam to other users (or would-be users).
I did some entries into Obsidian today and it is safe to say that this program is still being cooked and not done yet hence 0.8 Beta release.
Until the option made available to focus on a note or search for note in the graphical view it becomes a deproductive productivity tool to try to focus on a idea now buried in a rats nest of ideas.
While waiting for this feature that is on the roadmap, I have been diving deeper into to web front end capture tools, MyMInd & MemEx that I will update my findings in the seperate threads over the weekend for these two tools as I like them both for different reasons and creating a workflow for these tools as part of a knowledge capture system workflow.
In the process of researching for additional research tools I discover this tool that looks promising. I was did a search on MPU and did not see any references to it. It is donation software and at first looks it really looks amazing especially for any scholar doing research papers.
I have been actively contributing to the Obsidian community. It is quite the task to create this disruption type of software so add my subscription as well. I see that Roam is doing well financially to keep this development going.
Looks like Bear is zettling in to compete more with the likes of Roam and other backlink beauties. The new v.1.7.15 now links to note headers inside notes instead of just to notes.
For a while now, Bear has supported linking notes together. With a simple [[, you can type to search for the name of a note, then press Return to create a link.
Now, once you find a note to link, press / (forward slash) instead of Return to link to a header within that note. It even works for linking to headers within the current note. While we are working on an actual ToC (table of contents) feature, this should hold you over for now. See it in action below.
