<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HNFF_EeFr9Y" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> We're all taught to take notes in school, but for most of us, that all stops when the exam's due, and I firmly believe that that's because we're taught to take notes wrong. Traditional note-taking is: - **temporary** - **contextual** - **isolated** Traditional note-taking is more about understanding what other people think than us thinking ourselves. In contrast, the kind of notes that we should be taking are: - **continually changing** - **contextual** - **abstracted** - **interconnected** - **borne out of interrogation, comparison, and argument** - **actually useful** ## What is Obsidian? Obsidian is a desktop and mobile app that you can use to take notes, store them locally in plain text, and link them to each other in a sort of knowledge base or wiki. ### Features of Obsidian #### Local storage - You control and own your own data. - Your notes are saved locally on your own computer or device and if you want to, you can then put it online or on the cloud, all without needing to use Obsidian servers. #### Futureproof If the internet goes down, you'll still be able to access your notes and you don't need Obsidian up to do so. If Obsidian does go down, you'll still be able to access your notes using a text editor or an IDE. #### connected You can still use the typical search and query to find notes that you are looking for, but if you've linked to it from another note, that'll help you find it as well. Obsidian has: - [[Links]]: connections *to* another note - [[Backlinks]]/linked mentions: connections *from* another note - Unlinked mentions: references *from* another note that weren't explicitly linked - [[Graph view]]: visualizing how notes are connected #### Highly extensible You can customize Obsidian using: - [[Headings and themes]] - [[Core plugins|Plugins]] - [[Workspaces]] - [[Formatting text using Markdown|Markdown formatting]] #### Highly-developed Ecosystem - Community themes and plugins abound for every use case you can think of - Most third-party stuff is free and open source - Integrations with other tools in the PKM world #### Performant Everything loads really quickly. There's no waiting around for something to be downloaded. In fact, a third party researcher, Alexander Rink, did [this benchmark](https://www.goedel.io/p/tft-performance-obsidian) across a bunch of different Tools for Thought, and Obsidian came out at the top by a wide margin. #### Supports multiple devices Obsidian has apps for different platforms including: - macOS - Windows - Linux - iOS - Android ### What Obsidian is good at - **Any knowledge work**: If you make your living from what you know, Obsidian helps you learn and keep up with recent changes. - **Learning in public**: Obsidian facilitates sharing the process of learning, not just the finished product. - **Managing relationships**: It can help you keep track of important people in your life. - **[[Creating templates for goal-setting and regular reviews|Goal-setting and journalling]]**: Obsidian has mechanisms for regular reviews and reflection. - **Any creative work**: If it has a written or visual component, Obsidian can help you create and manage it. - **Roleplaying games**: Obsidian has the best suite of tabletop roleplaying game plugins out of any note-taking tool on the market. ### What Obsidian isn't good at - **Task management**: Obsidian can do task management, but it's not going to be able to compete with a fully featured task manager. - **Real-time collaboration**: Obsidian doesn't show who's written something and it doesn't have a commenting feature. - **Editing your notes online**: If you're looking for a web app, Obsidian doesn't have one. - **WYSIWIG customizability**: Don't expect to be able to be able to customize the way your notes look in Obsidian the way you would in a tool like Notion. ### The Obsidian Ecosystem There are two kinds of plugins in Obsidian: - **[[Core plugins]]**: Created by the Obsidian team, and just need to be enabled. - **Community plugins**: Created by the community and vetted by the Obsidian team. Together, these plugins make up a lot of the functionality I know and love about Obsidian. Here are three popular community plugins: - **Calendar**: brings a calendar view to Obsidian - **Dataview**: advanced queries and metadatas and tagging your notes - **Templater**: supercharges the built-in templates that Obsidian already comes with ### Pricing #### Free forever If you are just wanting to use Obsidian for your personal life and you either are happy to just have notes saved locally or you're willing to do the setup required to get things syncing across devices, then Obsidian costs $0. #### Catalyst plan ($25) The Catalyst plan is a one-off $25+ donation that lets you support the Obsidian developers and also get insider builds. You usually get new versions of Obsidian a week or two before they're released to the public. #### The commercial license ($50) If you're using Obsidian for commercial reasons, you can buy the commercial license which is $50 per user per year, which is still pretty reasonable if you're using it a lot. You also get priority support in case you need it. #### [[Obsidian Sync]] ($8/month annual) Sync is $8 a month billed annually, and it is the official Obsidian way for syncing your notes between devices and still being able to access them. Now, there are third party ways to not need to pay for sync. Personally, I just pay for sync because I think it's a small price to pay for an app that I use literally every day. #### [[Obsidian Publish]] ($16/month annual) The second add-on service is Publish, which is $16 per month, also billed annually. And that's per site. With Obsidian Publish, you can select which of your notes to make public, and then after a few clicks, all of the ones that you've selected are put on a site of your choosing. By default, your notes are going to go onto the [publish.obsidian.md](https://publish.obsidian.md) domain, but you can also link that up with your custom domain if you have one. That's what I've done with my notes, which you can find at [notes.nicolevanderhoeven.com](https://notes.nicolevanderhoeven.com). #### 40% off for education and non-profit For students and non-profit companies, you can apply to get a 40% off your Sync and Publish subscriptions. To apply, go to [your Obsidian account page](https://obsidian.md/account), scroll down to the *Discount* section, click *Apply*, and go through the prompts.