Obsidian, the kitchen sink, and focus.
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A couple of weeks after posting it, I almost removed the DeskWorks video about Obsidian. A couple of reasons for that:
My heart wasn't in it without anyone to interact with, and it showed (the live session had been a lot more fun, despite tech issues).
I didn't think I'd done a good enough job of clarifying the subject.
I'd already changed my dashboard beyond recognition.
Deleting content didn't feel right however, so the video still stands—for better or worse. But I did get the app's definition right: Obsidian can be anything.
This doesn't mean it should be.
My journey with this app has been about learning how it fits in my workflow, and it's now clear I fell into the kitchen sink trap: it's just too easy to add functionalities to this beast, tweaking for the sake of tweaking.
I don't need to manage time, due dates, and tasks in Obsidian. I find the process cumbersome, and no amount of fiddling or plugins can transform it into anything as refined as any actual task manager app. So I've gone back to TickTick, which never stops evolving and keeps adding useful features (i.e the fairly recent addition of the timeline view). It syncs to my calendar, does Kanban, includes iOS widgets, timers...it's much better at the job than cobbling together a homemade solution from bits and parts:
A few months ago I "upgraded" to an Insider Obsidian account to show support for the project, but also to follow its development through insider builds. And I'm constantly impressed by the teams's consistency of vision: unlike Craft, they really seem to know what they're building. Community plugins probably allow them to be much more thoughtful with the app's core capabilities.
Canvas notes, for example, are evolving by leaps and bounds: text cards are now indexed and searchable, and queries can now be processed, which opens up an entirely different level of interaction.
Canvas: brainstorm.
Canvas: a new dashboard.
And the new Bookmarks core plugin (which replaces Starred) is seriously powerful:
Bookmark just about anything in Obsidian: files, folders, graphs, searches, headings, blocks. Organize your bookmarks in the much more robust Bookmark view. Reorder bookmarks with drag-and-drop. Create Bookmark Groups to organize your bookmarks into collapsible sections.
Amongst other things, this makes it possible to create a fully customized navigation sidebar (instead of relying on physical folder hierarchy). I've already implemented this and it's a huge QOL improvement.
So I've left the squirrel chasing phase: Obsidian is my brain, not my planner.
Everything in its place.
