Work can teach you so many random things and most of it can be really useful. If it’s not captured or directly applied, though, it’s easy to forget these things.
Productivity tips, expertise, theories, axioms, stories, strategies. I’ve been lost in a mess of random sticky notes, loose papers, and Google Docs all containing these little nuggets of wisdom gained from my coworkers.
I needed something to clean up both my physical and digital spaces. I needed a “second brain” system like I’d heard about from Tiago Forte.
When I downloaded Obsidian, I had no idea how much this would help me...
Second Brain?
The concept is that with all of the information we deal with daily, we are no longer biologically capable of retaining it all effectively. A “second brain” is a way to “download” all of that knowledge from your real brain to a digital brain.
David Allen said it well: “Your brain is for having ideas, not holding them.”
BTW, even though this whole email is obviously about Obsidian, a lot of this is still applicable to whatever Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) technology you use.
Trying out the Tech
It was a mixed experience at first. I had been using Notion to hold my notes, but I couldn’t stick to it.
Obsidian was so much more loose—it didn’t require as much structure or setup. I could just create a file and leave it alone. No folders needed—Obsidian promised to keep track of it.
Full disclosure, I still created some folders, but even now, I try not to create any others. I might be able to get rid of some now that I have a better handle on Obsidian’s powerful way of organizing without needing folders.
My Obsidian Folder Structure I actually really loved how easy it was to jot something random down. The problem is I over-complicated it at the start.
Attempting Zettelkasten
“Zettelkasten” is a term that gets thrown around in the Obsidian community a lot. It’s a system of note taking designed by Niklas Luhman to help him capture knowledge and produce something with that knowledge—namely books and articles.
Obsidian can absolutely be your digital zettelkasten, but it’s too overwhelming to start with in my experience.
Realizing that this was killing my momentum, I abandoned zettelkasten and just started pumping out notes whenever I could. It became easier to turn to, and then something amazing happened.
Passing the Threshold
Once I had a hundred notes or so, the power of Obsidian became apparent. Ideas started flowing when I opened random notes and made connections to other notes.
Overwhelm at work started to be suppressed the more I recorded my wins, my stats, my processes.
Even the practice of going through my notes for a little bit of time each week became stress-relieving. Almost like an active meditation—and it was productive at the same time!
Finally, Obsidian was making good on its promise of being a second brain. It is my personal, searchable, visualized vault of knowledge that I rely on daily.
Reporting
Here’s a good example: At our company, we have a department meeting every quarter to go over everyone’s “OKRs” and how we did for last quarter. An OKR is just a point of focus (“objective”) for the quarter with “key results” attached to it.
We have no good systems in place for the more “creative” positions—yes, I count developers as part of that group. There aren’t great stats to report on like a marketer would have—I have no idea how my code directly affects the cost or revenue of a business
Instead of numbers of leads, I report on innovation with our site—new features for editing, new pages built, updates to the design system.
Last year, I created a system using Obsidian to capture these “innovations” for the day. Then I collected them at the month level, then the quarter and year levels.
I now had a semi-automated personal dashboard that displayed all of my accomplishments for a given time period.
Q1 personal OKRs with embedded "windows" to my monthly collections of accomplishments It made reporting exceptionally easy.
Second Brain Systems
There is so much to capture from our human experiences. Compounded by all of the knowledge we’ve gained or want to retain, it can be overwhelming.
Starting to systematize your “brain” with notes, references, experiences, procedures, etc. will help tame some of the chaos. Here are my suggestions:
1. Start—setup is not starting. Doing anything now is better than trying to predict how you’ll use something in the future. Don’t let “setting things up” be your excuse to procrastinate.
2. Take notes on anything and everything. Don’t worry about length or perfection, at the least, these are simply reminders of ideas you’ve had or things you’ve wanted to explore.
3. Set some time for processing. I try to spend an hour a week looking at the notes in my system. I’ll fix the typos, add sources, create links to other notes with similar ideas, or expand the thoughts.
Like I mentioned earlier, the great thing about Obsidian as a second brain system is that it’s really simple and you can get started with zero organization, barely any setup. The sooner you get to the notes, the faster they will start to impact you.
It is a bit of a mindset shift from “traditional” note taking, but I haven’t found anything close that has both increased my productivity AND reduced my stress at the same time.
Have I convinced you to give Obsidian a try? ;)
This is not at all sponsored, I’m just in love with this free tool. If you do download it and try it out, I’d love to know your thoughts. Hit “reply” on this email and tell me!
P.S. I've heard some great feedback from fellow CYBORGS that I should provide some more help with getting started in Obsidian, so I'm working on a Quickstart Guide that I'll send out next week, as well as a quick video series to show you my process. In the meantime...
Extra resources
Getting started with Obsidian, YouTube Playlist—my favorite creator that talks about Obsidian / ways to use it productively.