1. Zettelkasten for INTERMEDIATE users of Obsidian

this is the first in a series of videos I hope to release about using obsidian to develop ideas much of what I will be talking about in this and future videos can be done in apps other than obsidian but it's obsidian that the videos in the series will be focused on I should add here that this series of videos I plan on releasing is not for people who are new to obsidian people who are new to obsidian are what most people would call losers if you're offended by that assessment of your loser life I encourage you to watch some videos that will teach you the basics of using obsidian then you can come back here and join us intermediate users of obsidian that's right intermediate that's a step above losers back when apps like obsidian in Rome came onto the scene you would often find people saying that the best way to get started with using them was to just start writing just start writing and wait till later to impose some sort of order upon your notes that was the advice plenty of people gave there is some wisdom in this advice after all if you wait to start writing until after you have devised the best way to organize your Vault and the best way to write notes then you are unlikely to get much if any writing done as Mac's stories managing editor John Voorhees points out it is very easy to get sucked into the process of creating elaborate systems for your note-taking to a degree where it becomes counterproductive systems themselves aren't a bad idea the trouble comes when the system becomes the focus at the expense of the ideas it's intended to organize however if you have no system at all set up and instead follow the advice to just start writing it's just a matter of time before you'll feel overwhelmed every time you open your Vault to avoid that feeling or at least reduce how frequently you experience it it helps to build something of a system from the get-go I wish I could provide you with a system that works perfectly out of the box I wish it were as easy as you identifying what you want your system to do and me responding with instructions on how to build such a system but that's not how it works as photographer and obsidian user Nick zeit says you are not going to design your perfect PKM system before starting because you need to understand your system in practice and practice only comes through the execution and use of the system you are probably going to get your first few attempts wrong I got only my first 87 attempts wrong so you're in good hands although it will take some trial and error on your part to build a system for developing ideas that works well for you I believe there is at least one component any system should have namely a way of linking questions you want to answer to notes that help you to answer those questions I'm going to say a little here about why questions are important and then give you a glimpse of how I have set things up in my obsidian Vault to assist me in answering the questions that I have questions are at the heart of learning according to Harvard Business School Professor C Roland Christensen questions initiate learning they are the entry point to the discovery of knowledge the key to intellectual growth developing your own system for developing ideas is all about growing intellectually and asking questions plays an important role in promoting such growth questions are among other things expressions of uncertainty or perplexity and yet they can function as what the American philosopher John Dewey calls a studying and guiding factor in the thinking that we do this is a point Dewey makes in his book how we think in that same book he says a question to be answered an ambiguity to be resolved sets up an end and holds the current of ideas to a definite Channel every suggested conclusion is tested by its reference to this regulating End by its pertinence to the problem in hand as Dewey indicates here coming up with questions amounts to establishing for ourselves an end or purpose that we can use to ensure we hold our own current of ideas to a definite channel that is with the help of questions we can increase the likelihood that we will be focused and directed in developing ideas rather than feeling as though our ideas are scattered in all over the place I should add here that feeling as though your thoughts are scattered in all over the place is pretty much unavoidable when it comes to developing ideas but one advantage of coming up with questions is that it reduces this likelihood by coming up with specific questions you are less likely to treat your obsidian vault as a mere Dumping Ground for everything you consume you're less likely to fall victim to what has been called the collector's fallacy that is the mistaken belief that the more information you collect the more knowledgeable you will become I encourage you to come up with some questions to guide the inquiries you hope to engage in with the help of obsidian or a similar app originally I was going to create two separate videos walking you through this process process but I've decided that the instructions are probably easier to follow when they are laid out in text beneath this video you will find a link to a page on my website that provides those instructions I recommend setting aside say 20 to 30 minutes to read through those instructions and then come up with questions of your own in what remains of this video I'm going to give you a glimpse into how I have set things up in obsidian to make it easier to answer questions many of the files I have in my obsidian Vault are what I call claim pages each of these files or Pages has on it one or more sentences that amount to an assertion or statement that in most cases is based on some source of information usually a book or an article but sometimes a video or a podcast with some inspiration coming from a video released by Danny Hatcher I've come up with a way of creating and automatically filing claim pages that I'm pretty happy with up here I have a number of buttons that I can click on to create files of different types when I click on this green circle here I'm prompted to type in the title of a claim page after I type in the title and hit return three things happen first a file with that title is created second that file automatically opens in a separate pane so that I can start adding information to it immediately and third the file is automatically filed away where it belongs namely within the claim Pages folder in My Vault let's look now at what's on a typical claim page in my obsidian vault at the top you can see some metadata in What's called the yaml or front matter if you don't understand what I just said it's clear that you have yet to ascend to the lofty status of intermediate user of obsidian each of the fields and values you see here are automatically added when the node is created I don't have to enter any of this information myself underneath the front matter are some reminders to myself about the procedures I should follow for creating notes of this type once the node is created I delete this part further down you can see I have a place for adding tags or rather tag pages to the document I'll often add one two or three tag Pages here what's the difference between a regular tag and what I call Tag Pages I'm not going to talk about that in this video Under The Heading of the idea something I got from the template that Bob dotto uses for his notes in obsidian I type the idea or claim that this note is about as much as possible I write out that idea in my own words though in plenty of cases I also include a quotation from the text I was reading when I decided to create the claim page you may be aware of the videos I've made about building an old school analog settle costume the claim pages I have an obsidian function as backups of the analog note cards that make up my zettel costume in plenty of K cases I do not include quotations on my zettel costing cards in part because I want to keep myself in the habit of writing things in my own words and in part because writing out quotations by hand takes too long typing up passages on a claim page in obsidian takes less time so in plenty of cases when I type up on a claim page the contents of a zettel costume card I will add a relevant quotation somewhere under the idea heading here moreover regardless of whether I add a quotation here when I type up the contents of a zettel costume card I know that in the future I will likely come across other relevant passages below the heading of relevance categories is where I use queries to collect these additional passages so that when it comes time to write a piece that includes this claim I can look at a number of relevant passages not just one the passages you see here live elsewhere in My Vault they're being pulled into this one spot with the help of the queries I've created here this means that I do not have to pull up this file in order to add relevant quotations to it if I had to pull up a claim page every time I wanted to connect a relevant quotation to it I would not only be wasting my time but also and even worse I would be engaging in context switching which would in all likelihood break my concentration the way I have things set up I can be taking notes on say a particular book and doing so on what I call a book page and then when I come across a relevant quotation I can as it were tag it with a link to this claim page along with the words relevance hi or relevance medium or relevance low and then it will show up in the relevant spot on the relevant claim page I plan on creating a video showing you how to create and use these relevance queries and why I think using them can get rid of a pain point in the process of developing ideas I also plan on releasing a video about how to create the sort of buttons you see up here just so you know I have ones here for creating a new file for each article I read a new file for each author I add to my system a new file for each book I take notes on a new file for each copper light or usick that comes into my possession and so on if you want to get to work creating these sorts of buttons as soon as possible and are worried quite legitimately that it will take me too many weeks to create the video showing you how to do that check out the link to the Danny Hatcher video that's beneath this video and again if you want assistance in coming up with questions for your obsidian Vault check out what's beneath this video okay I hope I've given you enough of a glimpse into how I'm using obsidian these days to make you beg me to create more videos I welcome your begging until next time my fellow intermediate users of obsidian

Channel: FP

Views: 8,079

Keywords:

Id: fQRKME36Zm0

Length: 9min 57sec (597 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 30 2023