This is part 3 of a series about how I write and reflect using Obsidian, an extensible digital note-taking interface with some surprising and unexpectedly useful features. This post details how I make use of plugins like Periodic Notes, Templater, QuickAdd, and Dataview to manage my Daily Notes Page and Morning Pages writing practice. I’ve been using Obsidian since 2021-02-06, and it has completely revolutionized my writing process. New posts every Wednesday until the series is complete.
The primary activity I use Obsidian for is writing. In terms of volume of words and time spent in the app, the majority of this writing would actually be classified as journaling. Journaling is what brought me to Obsidian in the first place, the promise of being able to see connections between different entries across the months and years of my writing, and it has certainly paid off to be able to to journal in this way.
This is the first part of a series about how I write and reflect using Obsidian, an extensible digital note-taking interface with some surprising and unexpectedly useful features. This post serves as an overview and index for the rest of the series, which will explore in depth how I use Obsidian for note-taking, journaling, and creative writing. I’ve been using Obsidian since 2021-02-06, and it has completely revolutionized my writing process. New posts every Wednesday until the series is complete.
My graph as of 2023-01-01
In Search of a Digital Note-Taking Analogue
What are the primary virtues of analog note-taking? Immediacy, for one. A notebook requires no loading time (aside from locating said notebook,) no power source (if there’s sufficient light,) and creating a new note is as fast as turning the page. Geography is another one. Our brains evolved to remember the relative locations of things, and physical books maintain that sense of space—the pages exist in an immutable order that becomes familiar over time. Then there’s portability. I used to keep a Field Notes notebook in my back pocket at all times, and my current Leuchtturm 1917 notebook fits as easily in my small café bag as it does in any of my backpacks.
But there are some disadvantages to analog note-taking that left me wanting more. While my Leuchtturm has page numbers that enable me to create an index of its, that index is only really useful for that single volume. I’m currently on my twelfth volume, so unless I’m going to maintain an independent index, I can no longer keep track of where all my writing lives. Another disadvantage is impermanence. On the one hand, we still have Leonardo DaVinci’s notebooks some five hundred years after his death, but on the other hand, I lost one of my Field Notes notebooks on a bike ride back from the climbing gym and I never saw it again. Thirdly, so much of what I read now is digital that it would be much simpler for me to copy and paste excerpts to add commentary than to painstakingly write down every piece of information I want to recall—and then index it.
