{"id":11404,"date":"2025-11-12T12:31:38","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T20:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/?p=11404"},"modified":"2025-11-12T12:31:38","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T20:31:38","slug":"trying-obsidian-md-note-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2025\/11\/12\/trying-obsidian-md-note-tool\/","title":{"rendered":"Trying Obsidian.md Note Tool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TL;DR: I&#8217;m going to try switching from Notion and Dynalist to Obsidian to manage my life notes.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Over the past few years I&#8217;ve been looking for the best way to take and keep notes related to life.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve tried <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2021\/10\/28\/todo-app-dynalist\/\">a bunch of tools<\/a> but not been happy yet. It&#8217;s essential to not try too hard at this task because the tool is just&#8230; a tool. But it&#8217;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 &#8220;very good&#8221;. But trying helps.<\/p>\n<p>Here is what things look like right now. My tasks are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Passwords and similar &#8211; kept in a searchable pile of Google Docs<\/li>\n<li>Events &#8211; personal, family, work &#8211; kept in Google Calendar &#8211; this is for concretely timed events like &#8220;going to dinner tomorrow at 6pm<\/li>\n<li>Todo items &#8211; with due dates\/deadlines &#8211; kept in a Notion Timeline &#8211; this is for todo items I need to start working on particular date<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-12-at-11.48.43-AM.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-11405\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-12-at-11.48.43-AM-600x345.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"190\" height=\"109\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-12-at-11.48.43-AM-600x345.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-12-at-11.48.43-AM-300x172.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-12-at-11.48.43-AM-120x69.jpg 120w, https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-12-at-11.48.43-AM-768x441.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-12-at-11.48.43-AM-1536x882.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-12-at-11.48.43-AM-2048x1176.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-12-at-11.48.43-AM-50x29.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 190px) 100vw, 190px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Quick Notes &#8211; kept in Dynalist &#8211; My goto &#8220;Gotta write this down quickly!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Static Informational Documents &#8211; in Google Docs, on my computer, on little scraps of paper in piles on the floor of my office<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m only moderately happy with the Notion Todo list because while the Notion interface is pretty (a plus!) , it&#8217;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&#8217;t excellent. Google Docs is a good place for documentation but there&#8217;s no way to make Google Docs have the timeliness of for example, saying &#8220;Hey, don&#8217;t forget to work on that project today!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I tried using the paid Dynalist app to keep everything together because for $5\/month Dynalist integrates with Google Calendar. But Dynalist isn&#8217;t a great place to write long documents either.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So today I&#8217;m trying Obsidian.<\/p>\n<p>What I want is a tool that can be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Timely &#8211; &#8220;Don&#8217;t forget to work on that project today&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>Holds well formatted documents &#8211; (&#8220;Here&#8217;s your password info. Here&#8217;s all the notes on your project. Here&#8217;s the timeline of that long-running project.&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>Calendar-ish &#8211; (&#8220;Ding ding! It&#8217;s time to pick the kid up from tennis lessons! It&#8217;s time to leave for your work appointment!&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>Quick Note Capable &#8211; (&#8220;Here&#8217;s the shopping list, sorted by location in Trader Joe&#8217;s. Here&#8217;s the name of that guy you met last week.&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>Searchable &#8211; (&#8220;How do I get back to that project?&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>And the magic part: Integrate all of the above &#8211; (&#8220;Ding ding! It&#8217;s time to work on that project again! Here&#8217;s the running notes from last session and the documentation you&#8217;ve built up!&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been oogling Obsidian for a year, which consists mostly of me being on the Obsidian subreddit, and occasionally googling about it. Let&#8217;s hope this is a USEFUL, LOW-PAIN attempt.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Last night I got excited because the Obsidian Outliner Plugin look a lot like Dynalist. I know it&#8217;s something like &#8220;pretty good&#8221; 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!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TL;DR: I&#8217;m going to try switching from Notion and Dynalist to Obsidian to manage my life notes. &nbsp; Over the past few years I&#8217;ve been looking for the best way to take and keep notes related to life. I&#8217;ve tried a bunch of tools but not been happy yet. It&#8217;s essential to not try too [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11406,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11404\/revisions\/11406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}