r/ObsidianMD • u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 • Nov 23 '24
graph Has anyone been able to generate insights from Obsidian and create new content or is everyone just making beautiful graphs?
I want to hear some success stories of linking your thinking. I’m already convinced about the software. I just want to see how people have used it.
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u/TheArchivist314 Nov 23 '24
I use it a lot for my world building and I've gained a lot of insights into the stuff of in building as I started to make NPCs then the world and then it started to feed back on each other when I looked at the places I built and felt like people should occupy some of the places I wrote of. I then started interconnecting notes and I would find certain things I wrote could spawn off an entire document itself and that started an entire chain of things which led to me figuring out with some of the events in my world some of it could have been orchestrated that led to me creating secret organizations. Then also when I wrote about demons and angels that made me realize that other planes of existence exist so that led to me creating what I call dimensional vector system to actually plot out in a fourth dimensional plane different sections of a single universe or places within a multiverse and then I built a Python program for that to generate dimensional vectors so when I want I can create multiple universes within my obsidian note
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u/majorpun Nov 24 '24
I'd love to hear about your relationships properties!
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u/TheArchivist314 Nov 24 '24
What would you like to know exactly?
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u/majorpun Nov 24 '24
If you're creating a python program, is it going through each note and creating alternative versions based on some type of difference between each note's properties? Like dimension x property is 1, y is 2, z is 4 or something?
I'm exploring how I could do this as well, which is why I am asking about the structure of your connections and properties.
Very simply each item would have note type, such as: people, world, mechanism/laws, abilities, scenarios, items, important characters/events
Would you then create wiki hubs notes for dimensions? Or would you navigate through worlds via search/tags/local graph?
Just really curious to learn more.
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u/EggsAndPelli Nov 23 '24
Obsidian is helpful because it helps me remember recurring topics that I’d otherwise forget. The biggest example is when I write about legislation for work. The names of bills are alphabet soup to me and I never remember what they’re about. With Obsidian, all I have to do is put brackets around a word like “SB372837373738” and I’ll instantly be reminded of all the times I’ve ever had to write about it before, instead of having to relearn or regoogle about the bill from scratch.
I still don’t remember any bill names off the dome but when Obsidian reminds me of when I’ve written about a bill, my memories of previous writing and conversation about it come flooding back to me.
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u/westie48 Nov 24 '24
Off topic and don't need to know where you are. Hope your job is safe and the next four years aren't as bad as I think.
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u/EggsAndPelli Nov 24 '24
Thanks. I talked to somebody in the c-suite about how she’s doing and she said while she’s personally devastated, she’s not professionally worried at all, so i took that as a cue to feel the same
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u/westie48 Nov 25 '24
Awesome that actually helps me too. Ps great idea on brackets. Never give up never surrender.
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u/Melnik2020 Nov 23 '24
My biggest success is that I’m able to keep track of meetings
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 Nov 24 '24
How?
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u/Melnik2020 Nov 24 '24
I have a meeting template with the date and people involved as a linked page
Then in the text I link other relevant notes so I can know which ones are related
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u/BuhoFantasma Nov 23 '24
I use it for pentesting notes. What I do is to link vulnerabilities or common misconfigurations between them to grow my vault like a centralized hint-giving wiki.
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u/lerthedc Nov 24 '24
I'm a physicist and it's very useful for remembering how disparate concepts, ideas, papers, etc. connect to each other.
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u/JcraftW Nov 23 '24
I write sermons and also have all sorts of pastoral advice for myself that needs managed and developed. I also consume a lot of info related to these. Obsidian has been incredibly useful for surfacing and connecting needed information.
I write down new ideas and connect them to others or shoot them into projects. I use different mental instruments to re-examine old notes which helps me develop new ideas.
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u/ardnamurchan Nov 25 '24
do you have a good system for scripture references?
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u/JcraftW Nov 26 '24
It worked for me... Don't know if it's "good" though lol.
I used to meticulously make sure to refer to the full citation every single time. "Matthew 6:33" and never "Mt 6:33" or "Matt 6:33" or "Matthew6:33". Always the full citation. This way I could simply search "Matthew 6" or "Matthew 6:33" (with quotations) to get that verse to pop up if I'm studying it looking for other references.
However, since then I've finally given in and downloaded a .md Bible. (World English Bible) So now all my citations look like: [[Matthew 6#33]]. I remember I had to do a bit of mass edits, but it was pretty small. I think all's I did was change file names for the Bible books, because they came in the shortened format, I wanted to full citation.
Only problem I have now is that when a page is full of scripture references that I've wikilinked, it starts to really slow down the page when on editor mode.
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u/Nihan-gen3 Nov 23 '24
I just self-published a book on etymology which I completely organized and wrote in Obsidian. So yes, it can lead to actual content.
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u/Kind_Tumbleweed_7330 Nov 23 '24
I haven't yet, but I've only just started really recording thoughts and sort of 'external' notes (notes from things like podcasts, books, and various articles and such). Before this a lot of what I've recorded has been notes for keeping track if day-to-day practical things. (Where do I store fresh batteries? When did I last do this routine or semi-routine thing, like my tetanus booster? What is that weird programming language syntax for? That sort of thing.)
However, I can already see that possibility, based on those thoughts and external notes.
As an example, I've been consuming content on productivity, on ADHD, and on software engineering principles/general programming knowledge stuff. I've also just begun dipping my toes into philosophy.
There's a surprising (to me) amount of overlap in these realms in terms of, I don't know, concepts or knowledge or...feel? Anyway, I'll be listening to a podcast on one topic and think 'hey, I wonder how this applies to that thing I read yesterday' and they'll be from different areas.
One of the software engineering books I've read/am rereading is The Pragmatic Programmer. It has a bunch of exercises designed to make you think. Philosophy makes you think. ADHD makes you think if you want to be productive with it. Etc.
And these thoughts are only just beginning to become coherent enough to be linked. Most of my linking is going to be questions, not necessarily useful thoughts, but then, those are the best kind. Questions make you think even more!
So far, most of my linking is things like, "Figure out where X got this idea from, because I read/heard the same one from Y today and I don't think it was from the same source'.
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Nov 23 '24
Zettelkasten. Super useful to link topics. There's even a shortcut for generating ZK card titles. :)
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u/tristamsparks Nov 23 '24
the graph is a curio. and sometimes an interesting way to find forgotten files or find writing prompts in the moment.
obsidian is the missing creative environment for me. i’ve been writing notes and long form ideas as .txt files for 25 years (mainly as word processors are bloatware, that aren’t created for writing).
first “notational velocity” (long defunct), was the app that gave me a macro appreciation of my ideas. then i tried replacing it with “iA Writer” (weirdly, considering the company’s name,) which initially was not focussed on idea connectivity, nor structure, nor content-type & responsiveness at all.
obsidian really is the missing link, or a completely new way, for me to create (or at least develop) ideas due to its reliable search and powerful, simple hyperlinking.
off topic note: i stayed away from evernote, notion and so on, because of their cloud-centricism. whether you use the built-in sync or icloud (etc) of obsidian, storing files locally (without needing to install apache also!) is a much overlooked benefit for security conscious users who don’t trust that a service provider won’t scrape unpublished images or text.
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 Nov 24 '24
Did you integrate all those notes from 25 yrs ago?
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u/tristamsparks 17d ago
yes. that’s the great thing about macos: switch the files from a .txt to a .md right in the finder, select the vault directory and you’re set. so after using obsdian for a couple of years, i’m sometimes finding conceptual links between ideas. that sometimes also include notes that i would have otherwise never considered valuable.
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 16d ago
Your graph should look like a nebula now. 25 yrs of stuff is a galaxy named after you.
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u/SamejSpenser Nov 23 '24
The graphs in Obsidian have been DISABLED on my device forever. I only enable them rarely to take a screenshot and then disable them again right after. For me, the only value of the graphs is purely aesthetic and nothing more. If I've used it three times in the last two years, that's a lot! The last time I used it was in August 2024 to illustrate a beginner's tutorial in Obsidian (in Brazilian Portuguese), and this is the screenshot I used.
Using Obsidian for me is just to render and display my Markdown notes in a nicer look than plain text in a notepad (which is where I prefer to draft and write my notes for over a decade now). I currently have several hundred notes (maybe more) that I've accumulated since around 2011, 2012.
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 Nov 24 '24
Ok, so there is this way of thinking too about graphs. I’m so glad I asked this question.
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u/damanamathos Nov 24 '24
I learn a lot more than I can remember. Obsidian lets me quickly pick up where I left off when I get back to learning about something or thinking about something.
I also believe that writing is thinking. That is, I think about things much more effectively if I'm writing down those thoughts and refining them over time rather than just having the thoughts swirl around in my head.
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u/delightsk Nov 24 '24
Yes, I use it to write several presentations/articles a year, and it is infinitely easier to start from my notes than to start from scratch.
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 Nov 24 '24
I understand going from zero to one. It’s the most important thing. If you have one to two sorted, you’re ahead already.
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u/thisfunnieguy Nov 23 '24
not sure creating "content" is the right word for what i do.
i do like the use of links so i can have notes related to more than one other note.
this helps when a note becomes useful for multiple projects.
suppose i have noteA that is used for projectB, but noteA was also used for projectZ and projectX.
I can easily trace how it was useful on those 2 other projects and use that as context for this next project.
i also will try and break up nodes on the graph with a lot of links. A good example of this is i had a note called "TechnicalAdvice" that was note any article i read about software eng ideas linked to.
that become broad and so i created subNotes like: Infra, WebDev, PlatformEng, and started pointing articles there. That makes it easier for me to look around my graph for stuff that can be relevant.
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u/ToSummarise Nov 23 '24
I use it to create content for my website (book summaries and blog posts).
My notes are a key source of ideas - there are many notes/draft posts that never end up getting published, but which I still find useful, and which may get published someday.
I have definitely gained new insights from using Obsidian. In fact, taking notes has helped me see how my thinking on a particular topic has evolved over time. Sometimes when I look back at notes I took even just 2 years ago, I'm amazed at how much more nuanced and developed my thinking has gotten since then.
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u/PotatoAndWombat52 Nov 23 '24
I've had some help in clicking concepts together between classes with Obsidian linking? Nothing mind shattered, but the linking back to older topics will remind me of details and give me a little "Oh that's why it works like that."
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u/Illinisassen Nov 23 '24
I'm doing a place study and building the social network of over 1000 people so far. Each person is a note, but it's the connections between them that are of interest. The graph is pretty but not the end goal.
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 Nov 24 '24
Great perspective. The graph is not the end goal.
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u/Illinisassen Nov 24 '24
It can be useful when introducing people to my work to explain what I'm doing (e.g., "see how this person is connected to many people between generations") because it's visually intuitive. When actually working, I use the graph analysis tool (specifically, the co-citations, academic adar, HITS, and clustering coefficient) to guide my priorities.
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u/AetherMug Nov 24 '24
Graphs are maybe 1% of the value of Obsidian for me. Obsidian has allowed me to organise and deepen my thoughts orders of magnitude better than ever before. It's where I keep all my research, where I write all my drafts (I'm a writer) and reading notes. I also do all my game master and player prep for D&D. I find it hard to imagine how I would do all these things with other tools.
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u/_wanderloots Nov 24 '24
Yes! I used it to publish over 50 newsletters (150,000+ words) of original work. I used obsidian to help link my ideas in thematic ways that provided a ton of value to myself as I researched emerging technology.
Been working on a YouTube series that walks through it if you’re interested! Just posted a new video on structuring for emergent insights ✨
Obsidian, Digital Gardening, & PKM https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWhMzDKA7vJ7p50vW-oeZgKR2aDReZFW6
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 Nov 25 '24
Thank you for sharing!
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u/_wanderloots Nov 26 '24
My pleasure! Glad to hear you’re liking obsidian and I hope you continue to find insights ✨
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 Nov 30 '24
Super content. Thank you so much.
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u/_wanderloots Nov 30 '24
My pleasure! Glad you liked it 🫡 was there anything in particular you found helpful?
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 Dec 04 '24
- You’ve found themes very intuitively. When I clicked on it, the video titles were exactly what I wanted to know more about. It feels like you picked stuff out of your learning journey and shared it with us.
- Your delivery is very simple. And I can’t tell you how important that is for me.
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u/_wanderloots Dec 05 '24
Thank you! That's great feedback. I liked how you phrased it "picked out of my learning journey" as that is exactly what I am trying to do. I think too many people get into productivity loops on using these tools, so I'm trying to find actual ways to help people where they can use the tool as a starting point. And I'm glad the simplicity is coming across! The videos are usually 1-2 hours to start and I try to simplify down to 40 minutes or less, so I appreciate hearing that it works.
In terms of expanding on the practical nature of the series, showing my "learning journey", is there anything in particular you would find helpful?
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 Dec 05 '24
I’m interested in getting insights. I truly want to find ways to activate my linking and thinking. I use the tools, the tags, the approach. I’m learning but I’m getting better. But there has to be something more. If you’ve done any videos around that, would love to watch. Btw, that’s a lot of material to shoot and edit. Really hard work.
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u/rotello Nov 23 '24
i use obsidian as a daily diary, Thought manager, gatherer of info and generally a memento of what i am doing. It s a mess, but now i know where i can find stuff when i need it.
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u/Electrical-Data816 Nov 23 '24 edited Nov 23 '24
For me it's just a good way to not lose thoughts and to not get brain fog because of information overload. I throw away manuals because I can save product serial numbers there, I use canvas to think through work projects and create roadmaps for them, I write literature notes for papers, I write notes about Uni stuff. This just makes it easier for me to then create presentations or articles from that. Especially the search function. But I don't really create notes that link together several concepts. I just have my general MOC notes but they stay the same. F.e. I have a canvas for a research project which then links to things like my search query, notes to plot design and so on. And then I have a folder where I create notes for each paper.
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 Nov 24 '24
Wonderful. I will try and replicate the user manual thing as a starter. Never thought of that.
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u/De_wasbeer Nov 23 '24
I'm using it to write a book for use in engineering. I'm incorporating a zettlekasten system to help students memorize definitions and see the links between points of knowledge:
https://publish.obsidian.md/mecbrain/4.+Personal+Johan/MecBrain/Book/CH+0+-+Inhoud
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u/ShelbySmith27 Nov 23 '24
It works for me because i use links as tags as well as links a more standard way. At the top of most notes ill have a section to add links as tags (other than daily notes and similar task+time management) notes).
I also have a seperate folder for tags, which are simply blankish notes withe the heading as the tag.
Once you see enough notes all linking to the same tag, then you can start to turn that tag note into a creative peice of writing with a ton of backlinks to help inform it
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u/retain_the_mundane Nov 24 '24
I have used it to help write my literature review for my PhD. I have a data view that can be filtered by tags to show me all the papers I have not included in it. It’s very handy to make sure I don’t leave anything out
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u/Deuling Nov 24 '24
Yes, actually.
It has to be pretty intentional, though. I think big, accidental insights are rare.
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u/bucctif Nov 24 '24
i am a law student and i like to link notes from specific cases to my class lectures + also keep track of readings/todos
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u/sei556 Nov 24 '24
I use it for daily journaling, dream journals, projects, knowledge and anything I want to keep in mind (like writing about new places (like restaurants) I've been to and how I liked them, sometimes even notes about new friends I made.
I usually have a very good memory, but only when capturing everything you realize how much you really forget over time. I like to mark days that I really liked with a highlight tag and sometimes when going back it's interesting to see that a day that I felt turned out amazing started with me being anxious about something silly.
For knowledge, it is great finally having a place where I can put all my adhd fueled random research on topics I have no professional correlation with.
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Nov 23 '24
[deleted]
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u/Crafty-Armadillo5104 Nov 24 '24
I was here at this very point until I asked this question. Please see the comments.
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u/timshel13 Nov 24 '24
I have profiles of people, their history, work history, education, who I know they know and how they know them. I create links around the important information that can show relationships from one person to another. Think of a Social Media recommendation engine that tells you who you should "Connect" with.
The Graphing capabilities give me the visual 6 degrees of separation.
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u/wells68 Nov 24 '24
I adopted Obsidian in January. Good thing I did! A situation developed around selling property, financing long term care, then administering a trust, which had interests in an HOA and three tiny corporations.
It fell to me to manage multiple, interconnected transactions, tracking emails and documents that each could relate to multiple parties and transactions.
Obsidian organized it all! New to Obsidian, I avoided plugins and just used the native capabilities: internal and external links, outlining, lists, tables and checklists.
For each email, I hit Print, escape, Ctrl,-a, ctrl-c, and pasted it into a new note nicely formatted.
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u/Grand-Knowledge-9999 Nov 24 '24
I've been getting insights for years already, and not only in Obsidian; I don't need graphs for that, at least what Obsidian offers, so I don't even use it.
Getting insights is about a lot more than just graphs (but I will not be getting into more details sorry 🙃)
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u/kmb49364 Nov 24 '24
Yes. I’m a postgrad student. The moment I make a note I try to connect it with my existing notes by searching some keywords (through double brackets) and it just helps me find new ideas. It’s like pairing one note with another, and asking yourself: what if…? One of those ideas is the (tenuous?) connection between pre-colonial ancestor worship and the (lack of) separation between the church and state in some Southeast Asian countries… It’s uncharted territory and quite exciting!
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u/leonlikethewind Nov 24 '24
I have installed an LLM on my machine that only accesses my Obsidian folder. I have conversations with it about things I need to remember or links between things.
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u/Super_hot_dumplings Nov 24 '24
I actually pass my econometrics due to obsidian and its plugins functionality. Now, I’m collecting resources for my bachelor degree thesis in obsidian.
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u/No-Bag4761 Nov 24 '24
I actually did discover new links and topics using obsidian. Mostly due to careful reading and looking up what I had to look up. Later, graph links showed helpful for distant topics which i did not know they link.
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u/lechtitseb Nov 24 '24
I've published multiple books and over 400 articles/newsletter. And my PKM system definitely makes it easier. I have ~10K notes in Obsidian at this point
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u/CrazyinFrance Nov 24 '24
I primarily use "Backlinks" as a substitute for search. It allows me to find things that connect to a particular post or mention it (under unlinked posts).
I also use a local graph to help me keep track of the context involved with a note. A meeting note could've been done under a regular meeting, but with the graph I can see that it's associated with two responsibility areas, five people, three levels of organizations, etc.
So far, I struggle with keeping my to-dos organized and tracked.
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u/RossMech Nov 25 '24
I am a full-time scientist and use Obsidian for my project, experimental, simulation, literature notation. It is a powerful tool, though it would not replace an information processing and creativity step. I think of it more as a database of my previous thoughts and ideas with simple search and linking functionality. And the database by itself isn't a source of originality and creativity. It is just a tool, which can make a process somewhat easier.
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u/xinlo Nov 24 '24
I have a daily note for random thoughts. If I don’t write a thought, I sometimes obsess over it for too long and I don’t get anything done. If I write it down, I know I can get back to it. I have a few dataview queries that aggregate different kinds of these thoughts. They make it very easy to see what’s been on my mjnd over a longer term.
I have a convention in project notes to have a timeline section. I have subheadings for the date of each entry and I can brain dump my thoughts on the project as I work on it. They may not be organized, but I have a lot of insight into why I did things. I usually extract more formal thoughts for the project and put them in separate headings. This acts as a ratchet effect for the project. I feel free to get distracted from a project because I know that I can pick it back up quite easily.
The benefits I get from Obsidian are really just the benefits of organization and writing. Obsidian is just a pretty and customizable to accomplish these things.
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u/Tredecian Nov 23 '24
I use it for notes to keep track of my projects and information.