Obsidian is a game changer for productivity

By Ryan
Picture of the author
Published on

I've never been one to take notes, but when I've had to, I've just left random notes scattered in different places. Then along comes Obsidian to save the day by teaching me that notes are actually important.

What I use Obsidian for

I find that everything I record into Obsidian relieves a little bit of stress because I got it off my brain, but at the same time writing it down makes me remember it better.

Keeping my other productivity apps clean

The biggest lesson I took from Obsidian was how productivity apps have their intended use. Now I only use Todoist for things that need to get done. Obsidian contains tasks that I should get done.

Daily Notes

Every day a note is automatically created. I start by making a list of things I should focus on for the day, and follow it with jotted down notes from the day of things I've done in case I need to reference it in the future. I try to keep mosts notes in the journal and then simply reference my related notes to link things together. This keeps things cleaner.

General tasks

By making a markdown checkbox [ ] I create things I should do for the day. Then the Tasks plugin helps further. I prefer to use Todoist for serious things that need to get done, but anything else is perfect for Obsidian. There is a Todoist plugin that lets you put your Todoist tasks into the sidebar.

Project Notes

In my main journal folder, I have a subfolder for projects. I simply make a single note for the job in question, then in my daily notes I reference the project when I'm making notes about it.

Financial Tracking

I make a financial journal at the end of every month to track net income and investments. I also take note of any large purchases or other financial things that happened that month. Using the Obsidian Tracker plugin, I'm able to graph out the data.

IT Asset Management

Using folders and templates I've created documents for each of my servers, but also each of the drives inside by serial number and linked everything together. I also track IPAM via a single document that links out to the device that is using the IP.

Tracking things

I make a note for people, places, my appliances, serial numbers, websites I run and many more things. When I reference those, all the notes link together and it makes it super easy to track things down.

Watch / Play / Chores

I have a single note that leads with chores that I should be doing. Afterwards I keep a list of games I've been meaning to play or shows I've been meaning to watch.

Remembering the past

Sometimes it's fun to track old photos or notes down on my computer, find out what that was about and add historic articles to my daily journal to piece my past together.

Tips and tricks

  • [[ is an amazing shortcut to link to other notes of yours. I use it constantly.
  • I updated the hotkeys so that CTRL + S switches between source and edit mode.
  • The journal doesn't get so long if you use a Date format of YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD.
  • Your journal folder can house more than just a daily journal. I use the New file location of journal/daily and I keep project notes under journal/projects and financials under journal/financials.