Obsidian: An end to digital chaos

For many years, I faced the challenge of finding my way through digital chaos. I have observed the same with colleagues who work with a lot of data - scattered information in various apps, clouds and notebooks is generating more and more unmanageable knowledge. Some documents have gaps that you could fly through in a spaceship. Managing such a system can take an enormous amount of time and nerves. Does this sound familiar?

With the help of Obsidian, I have managed to bring order to this endless chaos. I've tried many other solutions, but none of them have allowed me to organise myself so flexibly and efficiently.

Obsidian allows everyone to focus on what is important to them as individuals.

As we are all different, my experiences should not be seen as a universal recipe. There is no right or wrong. My way of thinking will never be 1:1 transferable to another person's perspective.

What is important for me?

In Obsidian, plugins - extensions created by users - offer a wide range of additional functions. In the following chapters, I summarise what I noticed most when using Obsidian with and without plugins. I have refrained from providing detailed instructions and detailed lists, as the use of Obsidian is very individual and I do not want to suggest any restrictions.

Good memory

Meetings are the be-all and end-all when communicating with my customers. In order not to lose sight of important points, I write personalised minutes with key words and actions. Even a loose list of just a few words, sometimes taken out of context, can bring back memories.

When a colleague comes back from holiday and asks me for updates, I no longer have to search my email inbox for long, lost discussions and forward them unfiltered. With the help of Obsidian and the dataview plugin, I can create a much more accurate update in record time.

Also thanks to dataview, I only have one to-do list that shows all of my unfinished tasks collected in one place (on my home page note). (As I tend to spread tasks across different notes, there used to be a risk that when I closed the note, some things would disappear as if through an airlock never to be seen again).

Accessibility of knowledge

Reliability is very important to me. Good memory or not, something always gets lost in the flood of enquiries, tasks, ideas, requests, plans and learning content that is currently bombarding us. Several times a week, I feel like an on-board computer (if it had feelings) when I am asked for logs, memory locations, new and old developments, content or details. (Note: a happy on-board computer).

To be able to keep up with a real on-board computer, I have created my own dashboards for certain projects, topics or ideas, for example, which automatically display an overview of relevant notes - here are three examples:

A special feature of Obsidian are the links. If you link to the same main note in several notes, you can use dataview to call up all incoming links in this main note:

If notes are moved or their titles are changed, Obsidian automatically changes all internal links. The following line is sufficient to create a list of all notes with the tag #fasterThanLight:

	
	```dataview
		 list from #fasterThanLight
		 ```
	

If links and tags do not offer sufficient flexibility, notes can be extended with properties that can be named as desired. Properties are key-value pairs and can be read out with dataview. Let's assume you have several notes with the property event, which can have different values: workshop, daily, conference, leanCoffee. To create a table of contents that displays all the leanCoffee meeting notes, you need:

	
	```dataview
		 list where event = ‘leanCoffee’
		 ```
	

If the intuitive creation of such scripts is difficult, an LLM (such as ChatGPT) can help. Not only can tables of contents be created, grouped, sorted, filtered and visually customised.

Reviews

So many events happen in the course of a year that it is almost impossible - regardless of a good memory - to prepare for something as extensive as our annual meeting in just a few days or even hours.

I realised many years ago how important it is to reflect on the week, and this has not changed to this day. Obsidian has customised this value and supports me in doing so. Every Friday, I have Obsidian show me which notes I have taken during the week. I use the note refactor plugin to move certain information to the notes for the annual meeting, feedback, highlights, lessons learnt or another relevant category.

So instead of duplicating knowledge multiple times, it can be extracted and referenced. Among developers, this is known as a basic skill under the acronym DRY: don't repeat yourself.

It's not just in December that I'm delighted at how relaxed the preparation for the annual meeting is. I am always amazed at how quickly I can create different reviews and how straightforward the planning process is.

Stakeholder management

Yes, I have a note in Obsidian for almost every person who is important to me. That may sound scary, but it's purely practical. The notes often contain information such as ‘would prefer to be contacted by email’ or ‘would be happy to be invited to meetings about first contact with aliens’.

In addition, I use dataview to show me which topics I have discussed with the person and when, which tasks we still have to do together, what I should do for them and what I am waiting for. The last two points also appear on my homepage note, as all to-dos are automatically displayed there.

Conclusion

Obsidian convinced me after just a few days because the application adapts flexibly to the user and not the other way round. You can get started with Obsidian straight away without much prior knowledge. With increasing experience, new dimensions can be unlocked.

It offers countless possibilities to customise practically everything to your own ideas. Folders, tags, links, properties, shortcuts, templates, design.

It helps me to keep track of the mountains of information and thus significantly reduces stress.

The offline availability makes it possible to edit the notes anytime and anywhere (at least when the laptop is with me). Thanks to the universal Markdown format, the notes can be edited in any other Markdown editor, should Obsidian no longer exist tomorrow.

• Bonus point: Markdown is also compatible with PCs from the 90s and the notes can be saved on floppy discs. (Please still save the data in a modern and secure way).
• Exchange: There is a Teams channel open to all adessi where you can exchange ideas about Obsidian. Everyone is welcome, there are no stupid questions and you can benefit from the experiences of others.
• Ordering: Obsidian is part of the adesso app landscape and is expected to be available to order via Matrix42 from autumn 2024. Until then, the special order can be used.

Would you like to find out more about exciting topics from the adesso world? Then take a look at our previous blog posts.