TABLE OF CONTENTS

What is Obsidian??

Veeeeeryy good question.

Obsidian is a text-based application that you can use for notes.

But for the data nerds: its a text-based application that you can use for ANYTHING.

It’s relationally based - so it doesn’t really do the whole folder to subfolder thing. Everything is just collected by links. You have full control over every relationship, and it maps it for you so you can see the ecosystem of topics, ideas, and notes.

Pros

You own all of your data. Literally no one has access to it. It’s just .txt files on your computer (like literally your Documents folder) that Obsidian renders and makes pretty.
Huge community that develop new tools and integrations (The templates you see below are just my modifications of an entire community’s work).
Non-linear, relationally based file network!

Here are some links to more resources

Cons

Can be intimidating.
There can be a learning curve to new tools.
For data management nerds - you can be tempted to play with this new completely modifiable open source software instead of actually taking notes (I wouldn’t know anything about that though).
Some brains don’t work on on-linear, relationally based file networks.

https://obsidian.md/

https://www.originalmacguy.com/obsidian-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/

Integration basics

When I refer to integration, I’m basically just referring to a subsection of Plugins.

Plugins are community made, open source, tools that you can add to your Obsidian to do whatever you gotta do better. This site shows you ways in which you can integrate Zotero and Obsidian.

There are also plugins that

keep a calendar
keep todo lists
integrate with a million different apps (if you can think it, some data nerd is making or has made it already)
better streamlined functions for your every need, darlings <3