Whether you’re a brand new Obsidian user or you’ve been using it for a long time, these are the 10 things you need to know to get the most out of your notes and ideas.
Develop Your Workflows One at a Time
The first time I tried Obsidian, I immediately gave up and uninstalled the app. It seemed WAY too complicated, but that was largely because I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to use it.
Later, I came back to it with a specific workflow I wanted to build: a cross-reference library of my sermon sketchnotes.
(If you want to see this in action, I have an Obsidian Publish version here. Just use the password matthew25 to access the notes.)
Building a single workflow at a time allows you to start getting immediate value and also provides clarity on what to optimize next.
It’s important to get clear on a single way that Obsidian can help your current productivity & creativity workflows. This is especially important at the beginning because it gives you clarity on what job you hired the app to do.
You’ll discover ways to layer things on top of that foundation once it’s built. But if you try to do too much, you’ll just feel overwhelmed (especially at the beginning).
Don’t Split Your Vault
People often ask me if I split my Bible study notes from the rest of my book notes, and the answer is No.
There’s a ton of inspiration to be gleaned by having things all in one vault where I can make connections across domains.
This was important for me because my creative journey began when I started seeing things overlap between the productivity books I was reading and the Bible verses I was teaching from in my Personal Management class for Bible College (I went back to school and got my Bible College degree just for funsies).
I began to see how the Biblical principles I was studying were being applied in the productivity books I was reading. Some of my greatest insights and revelations have come from connecting things that didn’t appear to be linked at all.
So, while there are cases where a separate vault can be useful, I recommend having everything in one vault, which allows you to make connections between your notes & ideas in ways you couldn’t otherwise.
Embrace Atomic Notes
Before Obsidian, I was using Roam Research, so the concept of “notes” didn’t really exist. You could keep drilling down as far as you wanted to go without any thought to where one "file” stopped and another one started.
But Obsidian doesn’t work this way. At first, it was a real struggle for me because I didn’t want to have to make individual files for each and every Bible verse I wanted to link.
But eventually, I did it (with some help and a script from my friend Joe Buhlig). And I discovered that breaking notes down into the smallest component parts was actually great for linking things together.
In the book Atomic Habits, author James Clear defines atomic two ways:
- an extremely small amount of a thing; the irreducible unit of a larger system.
- the source of immense energy or power
The more you break your notes down into smaller pieces, the more you will discover new and interesting connections between them that you hadn’t seen before.
(If you want to see this in action, I have an older YouTube video on the topic here.)
Use a Separate Capture Tool
Obsidian is great at a lot of things. But quick capture is not one of them.
And even if it was, I don’t think I’d recommend capturing things directly into Obsidian.
In order to get maximum value out of your notes and ideas, you need to curate what you keep in Obsidian. So, to keep a high signal-to-noise ratio, use a separate capture tool.
Personally, I use Drafts for this (though Funnel is also very good). But the important thing is to have a separate tool where you capture things, then periodically bring over only the best of the best into your Obsidian vault.
In other words, curate what you capture. In fact, I estimate that only about 10% of what I capture actually makes its way into Obsidian.
That means that my Obsidian vault only has the best-of-the-best stuff in it, which makes it easier to get value from my notes & ideas.
Keep What Resonates, Not What Might Be Important
We’re trained to collect and complete tasks without much thought as to why we’re doing them or where they came from.
The question of “Is this important?” can become hard to answer, especially when the urgency of others’ requests masquerades as false importance.
But when we work backward from our vision & values, we ask a different question: “Is this useful?”
So the advice I would give myself from 5 years ago would be this: Don’t capture what might be important. Capture only the things that resonate.
I grew up playing the violin, so the idea of resonance really clicked for me. When something resonates, it causes a reverberation in your soul. It feels a little bit like an echo and acts as a cue that there’s probably something here.
In other words, capture the things that pique your interest. That’s the useful stuff.
Consider the Role of Your Devices
Even though Obsidian allows for feature parity between desktop and mobile devices, I don’t recommend using it the same way everywhere.
For example, I use Obsidian on both my iPhone and my MacBook Pro. However, the computer is where I do 95% of my work in Obsidian because the form factor is better suited for what I need to do.
For me, the computer is where I do all of my actual “work.” My iPhone is only used for two things:
- Quick Capture (I use Drafts for this)
- Journaling at the end of the day
Because I’m only using Obsidian on mobile for journaling (and occasionally referencing a note), this means I 1) don’t need to sync my entire vault and 2) don’t need the majority of the plugins I have installed.
Paring things down on my mobile device drastically improves the experience AND helps funnel me down intentional paths whenever I use my mobile device. Because I’m clear on what I want to use it for, I am much less likely to spend time unintentionally scrolling endless feeds or dipping my toes into the infinity pools.
Don’t Try to Make Obsidian Do Too Much
Obsidian can do anything. But that doesn’t mean it should do everything.
In fact, everything apps tend to be pretty bad at just about everything they try to do.
To help overcome this tendency, I use a framework you’ve probably heard me talk quite a bit about lately called The PKM Stack.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept or want to dig a little deeper, it’s the topic of this YouTube video:
A deep dive into The PKM Stack framework.
The TL;DR is that understanding how information flows into and out of your PKM system is vital if you want to get more out of your notes & ideas.
But it goes beyond Obsidian. You need to get clear on what jobs there are to be done in your PKM system and what roles you’re hiring each app to do.
Only then can you pick the right tool for the job.
For example, I do all of my task management inside Obsidian (I’ve got a YouTube video on how I set it all up here.) But that’s because it’s easier for me to have everything together in Obsidian for the type of tasks I track here (writing newsletters, YouTube scripts, etc.). I schedule these tasks using the Block Priming method I described a few weeks ago, and this workflow helps me do my best creative work.
But if your work is different and you rely on something like location-based reminders to alert you of what to do when, then my system is terrible for you.
You need to understand how your systems work before you try to optimize them.
Consider Your Sources
I once heard Sahil Bloom say that everything you create is downstream from something you consume. So, it’s important to curate the sources of information that you feed on.
Think of the information you consume as food for your brain. Unfortunately, if you’ve never considered your information sources, you’re probably consuming the equivalent of information junk food. The really useful stuff tends not to just find its way to so. We have to go looking for it.
I have three questions that I use as a filter for the information sources (podcasts, newsletters, YouTube videos, etc.) that I subscribe to (borrowed from Jim Rohn):
- Who am I allowing to speak into my life?
- What effect is that having on me?
- Is that OK?
Simply asking these questions makes me more likely to focus on the good stuff. And while you don’t need to learn something new from every piece of information you consume, too much “junk food” will leave you feeling overwhelmed and unproductive.
You are what you eat.
Make It Useful, Not Perfect
It’s easy to look at what others have done and feel imposter syndrome about your own PKM system.
The truth? PKM is messy, and that’s OK!
My personal vault is often a complete mess. When you watch my YouTube videos, I clean things up just so that it’s easier to understand what is actually going on. But the only way to keep your Obsidian perfectly clean is to never use it.
I like how Bob Doto described zettelkasten in his workshop for The Library recently: “a system of anarchy for leveraging chaos.”
Things don’t have to be perfect in order for them to be useful. And when it comes to making sense of your notes and ideas, the process is often pretty messy.
Keep Creating
One of the most common mistakes people make with PKM is that they collect things but don’t create anything.
I believe a good PKM system needs to have an input and an output. Without the output, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by everything you’ve collected.
The act of creating something new from the component pieces you’ve collected is an important part of the sensemaking process.
There’s a saying that goes, “thoughts disentangle themselves through lips and pencil tips.”
I would add, “and also clicky keyboards.”
The act of writing is how you gain clarity on something. It doesn’t have to be a published blog post, newsletter, etc. It could just be an opinion note where you codify your thoughts on a topic.
But you do need to have an output if you want your Creativity Flywheel to keep spinning.
