TL;DR: I’m going to try switching from Notion and Dynalist to Obsidian to manage my life notes.
Over the past few years I’ve been looking for the best way to take and keep notes related to life.
I’ve tried a bunch of tools but not been happy yet. It’s essential to not try too hard at this task because the tool is just… a tool. But it’s also important to keep thinking and looking and doing. My good friend PPG correctly reminds me that no tool will ever be perfect, or heck, even “very good”. But trying helps.
Here is what things look like right now. My tasks are:
- Passwords and similar – kept in a searchable pile of Google Docs
- Events – personal, family, work – kept in Google Calendar – this is for concretely timed events like “going to dinner tomorrow at 6pm
- Todo items – with due dates/deadlines – kept in a Notion Timeline – this is for todo items I need to start working on particular date
- Quick Notes – kept in Dynalist – My goto “Gotta write this down quickly!”
- Static Informational Documents – in Google Docs, on my computer, on little scraps of paper in piles on the floor of my office
I’m only moderately happy with the Notion Todo list because while the Notion interface is pretty (a plus!) , it’s terrible with writing large, formatted documents, like instructions, or documentation. And the timeline tool has an effective granularity of 1 day, no more and no less, which isn’t excellent. Google Docs is a good place for documentation but there’s no way to make Google Docs have the timeliness of for example, saying “Hey, don’t forget to work on that project today!”
I tried using the paid Dynalist app to keep everything together because for $5/month Dynalist integrates with Google Calendar. But Dynalist isn’t a great place to write long documents either.
So today I’m trying Obsidian.
What I want is a tool that can be:
- Timely – “Don’t forget to work on that project today”)
- Holds well formatted documents – (“Here’s your password info. Here’s all the notes on your project. Here’s the timeline of that long-running project.”)
- Calendar-ish – (“Ding ding! It’s time to pick the kid up from tennis lessons! It’s time to leave for your work appointment!”)
- Quick Note Capable – (“Here’s the shopping list, sorted by location in Trader Joe’s. Here’s the name of that guy you met last week.”)
- Searchable – (“How do I get back to that project?”)
- And the magic part: Integrate all of the above – (“Ding ding! It’s time to work on that project again! Here’s the running notes from last session and the documentation you’ve built up!”
I’ve been oogling Obsidian for a year, which consists mostly of me being on the Obsidian subreddit, and occasionally googling about it. Let’s hope this is a USEFUL, LOW-PAIN attempt.
Last night I got excited because the Obsidian Outliner Plugin look a lot like Dynalist. I know it’s something like “pretty good” at writing documentation, and I think it can now do calendarly things. I got giddy thinking that Obsidian might be able to do ALL THE THINGS. Fingers are crossed!
