Closed swyxio closed 2 years ago
I absolutely love obsidian. The best things so far are
I love Obsidian and use it the same way! You can add YAML to any page you don't want published to keep it private if you want to move everything from Notion -> Obsidian. Just add this as a code block to the top of your page.
The preview is adding horizontal lines, so I added a screenshot:
published: true description: The case for having a -Public- Second Brain, and why I picked Obsidian. category: note slug: obsidian-brain tags: Meta, Learn in Public cover_image: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hungsu/vileplume-obsidian/master/Vileplume.png
I've gone through many versions of notetaking systems in the past decade, from literal "in memory" storage, to writing cheatsheets, to blogging everything publicly, to storing private notes in OneNote, then SimpleNote, then Notion. For focused topics, I have a long history of making markdown repos on GitHub accumulating thousands of stars. I've also considered Evernote, Joplin and Roam and its less culty competitors Foam and Athens.
Two months ago I moved my notes to Obsidian, and I've been fairly happy with the result. Time for a good ole experience report!
Why a -Public- Second Brain?
I'll assume you already know the benefits of Building a Second Brain - I was a mentor for the course if you need a quick intro. Here my focus is on convincing you why your S.B. should be public:
My Criteria for Second Brain Tooling
As I reached the limits of SimpleNote/Notion/GitHub, I thought about these factors for my next notetaking tool:
Notably lacking among these desirables is the idea that the notetaking service should be free. As a serious knowledge worker intent on making this work for the next 40-60 years of my life, I'm quite happy paying $5-20 a month for something that is going to last that I don't have to maintain myself.
These factors are why I chose Obsidian, with Obsidian Publish (which is still relatively new and leaves some things to be desired).
I admit I was also influenced by Ezell and others in the Coding Career Community who have been talking about Obsidian for over a year.
Obsidian Tips
More tips from readers in the related thread:
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Overall, I'm the happiest I've ever been with my public notes so far and feel I've been both unblocked and more productive with Obsidian. Not all my notes are public, of course, so I still keep some stuff in Notion.