Most people who try Obsidian quit within the first two weeks.
Not because the app is bad, but because they make a couple of critical mistakes right from the start that doom them to failure.
I did the same thing when I first started using Obsidian over 5 years ago. In fact, the first time I opened Obsidian, I immediately closed and deleted the app, deciding it just wasn’t for me. Obviously, I gave it another chance, and eventually I got it dialed in - but it took a LOT longer than I anticipated.
Reflecting on my experience in Obsidian, I can see clearly now that I made a couple of key mistakes the first time around. So in this post, I want to share the five things I’d do if I were starting in Obsidian today.
#1: Start with a brand new vault
I learned this the hard way when I imported all my old notes the first time around.
Obsidian makes it very easy to import your notes from other apps. Unfortunately, doing so usually just brings over all the cruft from whatever app you were using prior.
If you felt overwhelmed by a tangled mess of notes before, dumping them all into a connected notes app like Obsidian will not fix anything. More importantly, I’ve noticed that most people who do this eventually give up on Obsidian. They just can’t make it work for them, but it’s understandable because they start with a really shaky foundation.
If I were starting in Obsidian today, I would create a new vault from scratch and get started by making just a few notes about topics or projects I was actively working on. I wouldn’t import anything, but I’d experiment with a small number of notes related to something I was interested in. I’d force myself to write down what I think about things, and I’d experiment with making manual connections between my notes to see what sort of insights they would uncover.
#2: No community plugins for the first week
Another trap people I fell into the first time around was trying to do too much with Community plugins too soon.
Don’t get me wrong, the Community plugins are one of the things that make Obsidian great. But if you’re new to Obsidian and you open up the Community plugins directory to browse, I can pretty much guarantee that you WILL get overwhelmed.
There’s just too much there, and it’s all just new shiny until you figure out what you’re actually going to use Obsidian for.
The thing that is new for most people coming to Obsidian from other note-taking apps is usually the bidirectional linking, so if I had to pick a place to focus first, I’d experiment with some of the features in the Graph View & Note Composer core plugins. And if I were starting with Obsidian today, one of the first things I would do is open up the Local Graph and drag it into the lower-right corner of my sidebar (you can actually do this by clicking on the three dots in the note title bar, then selecting Open linked view and then Open Local Graph, then dragging that into the corner of your sidebar.
Once it’s there, it automatically updates based on the contents of the active note, so you have an ever-present graph view that shows all the notes that link to or are linked from the note you’re currently working on. I believe that seeing the Local Graph update as you navigate your notes helps you understand the power of these bidirectional links a lot faster.
#3: Get clear on what job(s) Obsidian will do
Even though Obsidian is a plain-text notes app, with the right plugins, Obsidian can actually do just about anything.
That’s actually the problem.
As you get comfortable with the app, the temptation will be to use it for things that don’t really fit with the way you work. The right mix will vary depending on your other workflows and the other tools that you use, but a good rule of thumb I feel is that Obsidian should NEVER be the default.
You need to actively resist the urge to turn Obsidian into another everything app, because everything apps end up causing you to overlook the right tool for the job in favor of the wrong tool you already have.
As the old saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
In order to avoid this, you need to be clear on what the jobs to be done are in your PKM system. I have a framework that I use to help you identify what jobs your apps are being hired to do and figure out how information flows between them, called The PKM Stack.
The bottom line is that you need to know what role each app has in your own PKM system before you can make sure that information flows freely between the different parts, unlocking greater insights from your notes & ideas and helping you be more productive and creative.
#4: Capture somewhere other than Obsidian
If you’re used to treating your notes app like an archive, you’re probably used to capturing anything and everything into it. You just dump things in the archive because you can always go back and search for them later, and that way, you make sure it’s there in case you really need it.
But when it comes to your notes and ideas, less is often more.
After using Obsidian for over five years, I realize now that the real value comes not from capturing new things but from developing and refining the ideas that are already in there. I have another framework called The Creativity Flywheel that you can use to make creating easy and effortless, but the TL;DR here is that the quality of notes you have in Obsidian is the important thing, not the quantity.
You want more signal and less noise when working with your notes and ideas.
I believe it’s better to only capture the things that really are valuable, so I actually capture things to Drafts on my iPhone and then transfer things over later once I get some distance from my ideas. I find that the more time I give them, the more clearly I can see what they really are.
So if I were starting with Obsidian today, I would make sure to set up a separate capture bucket. I would use that to capture ideas in the moment to make sure they don’t fall through the cracks, but I would be very careful not to automatically pipe them into my vault, and I would be very picky about what actually made the cut.
#5: Create a Regular Writing Habit
One of the biggest PKM mistakes I see people make is that they capture things, but they never try to create anything new from what they collect.
Personally, I believe your mind is like a waterwheel. In order for the wheel to turn, there must be an input and an output.
You don’t need to make a public blog post or YouTube video from the information you collect, but you do need to decide what it means for you personally. The output could be as simple as creating an opinion note where you codify your thoughts on a topic, but there does need to be an output in order for the wheel to keep turning.
So if I were starting with Obsidian today, I would make sure that I had a regular routine of making something new from the mental Lego bricks I collected. One way to do this is to develop a simple daily writing habit using the Daily Notes Core plugin. While I tend to use the Daily Note for digital journaling, at the beginning, I’d actually use it to just jot down my thoughts on things. I’d spend a few minutes each day writing down key ideas, tasks, or thoughts, then use the Note Composer core plugin to break the ideas into their own atomic notes and write what I think about the topic.
Do this for even just a couple of weeks, and you'll start to have a solid web of connected notes that you can leverage.
