How I research and write in Obsidian

most how to write an essay videos that I've seen talk about the structure and the outline so introduction research discussion conclusion all those sorts of things but I don't see how they actually do it with the the technology yes they use word and maybe a reference manager but what is it that they're doing to get the highlighted points into the script because we think and rewrite and we write and we we think we sort of do it at the same time and I've always been lost as to how other people have done it so this is how I do it I use Tero as a reference manager so it's basically a library of all of the sources and you can see here I've got two sources at the top that I've added I've got a citation key which is like an ID for each of them and it's done automatically inside of zoto alongside all of the other information so dii URL authors title Etc and when I double click it opens up a tab and you can see I've already got some notes in here and I can highlight so I've got the pen up here so I can highlight whatever words I want if I change the color to let's say green I can then highlight in a different color they all appear in the sidebar which I can navigate to quickly and easily so that's a a highlight manager essentially you can see I've got a Post-It note there I could just add a Post-It note anywhere I want and add notes so let's say adding a comment so now I've got a comment on a green note in here you can see I've added a comment and a tag to the Highlight so I can tag the Highlight as well as add a comment to the highlight of my thoughts or ideas of whatever it is about this point and as I scroll down you can see I've got a table I can come into here and then drag around I don't want that to be green so let's just change that highlight to Yellow now I have a yellow highlight I can navigate between the green highlights the yellow highlights or the tag I can go between whatever I want inside of zoto but that's just getting the points as I come back I can then double click and open up another one so let's just say I've got some high highlighted points in here as well but how do I bring all of these points into a place to write I could go backwards and forwards between them which obviously is an ideal I could copy and paste them into a word doc which is what I've done previously but if I do a copy and paste how do I get from word the copy and pasted text from word back to zota well I'd need a link and I don't want to have to manually make a link coming backwards and forwards and I don't really want to come into here and then search for the file or the paper or whatever it is and then try and find the Highlight that that's just too much effort to be honest and when I'm working in word I used to have two different word documents up so I'd have a writing document and then a planning document and the planning document would have tons of all these different notes sporadically put around but I wouldn't have any order to them because I I read one article then I read another article and it was just a long list of a loot of points that I I couldn't like puzzle piece put together and for me Obsidian solves those issues so if I create a vault it's basically a folder on my computer I'm going to call it essay demo and then I'm going to browse and find the external hard drive let's select folder and then create so it's now created a folder called ESS demo on my computer and I have one file in it called Welcome this is Obsidian going to my external hard drive you can see essay demo if I double click in there's all of the setting files and there's the actual file the welcome. MD file now if I was working in word I would have to have two or three different word files up if I change the name of this to essay and then let's add a new note and call it Source you can see I've actually got two different files up at the same time split screen so I don't need to have to have two different word documents open and if I drag this in the middle now I've got three so I can have three documents open or I could have multiple tabs so multiple sources up on one side and then my essay over on the other side but before we get ahead of ourselves let's actually bring in those highlights so I'm going to go down to the set settings now I personally prefer this to be dark mode so I'm going to change this to dark mode going to go to community plugins turn on community plugins browse type zoto install enable options I'm going to download the PDF utility so it can read the PDFs make sure it's the zoto database scroll down I now want an import format cuz I want to import highlights and going to name it Danny import now citation key is what the file is going to be called if we go back to zota you can see we've got the two different items there and they both have unique citation keys I personally use and would recommend using an add-on called better biex for zoto if you search for better biex for zoto you'll find this page and then we go to the install latest release then we want to download the xpi that's the most recent one that was 5 days ago go for me once it's downloaded it I can then drag it into this window and then it restart sotero so it will update itself and say hey you've now got better bib Tex for zoto so I've got my download here I then drag it in and it gives me the popup window obviously I've done it so I'm not going to say install now cuz I've already got it there now when I go to edit I go to preferences I go to the better bib deex preferences and say open those preferences I can then customize the citation key formula and for me i' put the author then the short title for a couple of words and then the year that's what I want and you can change this anywh you want so that's what the name of the file is going to be when it's brought in so you know what source is what now I don't want all of these in my main folder so I'm going to add a folder called sources and I've got a slash there so sources is the folder site key is the file name and I'm going to do the same thing for the images so I've got the sources folder and then the images folder then a folder folder for the citation key and the image will then get a file name for however many images there are but I also want to make a project folder so I'm going to create a new folder called projects and I can drag the essay file into the projects folder so if I open it with the essay file in the projects folder and let's just create the sources folder so I've now manually made the sources folder let's just drag The Source in there for the moment so you can see we've got sources folder and the projects folder and now I want to make a templates folder and if I right click and new note this is the template that obsidian is going to look at to bring all of those highlights in from zoto I have this Linked In the description below but you can customize this in any way you want with all of this go code if you want to go into it but if you do want to customize it you can and I'm more than happy to help you out with that so here we've got the year and it's going to bring in the date of the source authors and just bring in a list of all the authors the title the URL to the actual publish page so where you got it from then the PDF link so this is going to link back to zoto which if you would to copy and paste into word or Google Docs you wouldn't get that and then all of this is basically a loop that says go to zoto find the Highlight annotation and then bring it in and then do that again and again and again until you've got them all and I'm also bringing in the comments and the tags of any annotations separately so if we go back to zoto and we have a look in here we've got The annotation that's the actual text itself and then there's an option to add a comment and add a tag in this one you see we've got a comment which I can change so commented text and then I've got a tag underneath it as well and you can add more tags if you want and when we come back to obsidian and I'm going to go to the settings zoto integration then into the template file we put zotter template so now it's got a template inside the settings so now when we go to the Comm command pallet Danny import find the zoto search wherever it is it may be hidden search for the zoto item so enter now I want to enter this in and it's going to fetch find it and you can see it's automatically created an images folder and inside it we have the folder for the citation key and inside that there is our image so there's the table that we highlighted and if I go to the file here is the source with everything and the image in it you can see it's brought in the year it's brought in the authors the title the URL going back to you can see science direct the zoto link the highlights that we had and if I click on this you can see it takes me to the Highlight in zoto I'll just do that again so if I scroll down and let's click on this one it's the AR Bal whatever that is if I click on that it will take me to the verbal highlight that I had inside of zoto so if you were to copy and paste from zota to word you wouldn't be able to jump back and then gain more context on the high highlights this lets you do that and you can see we've got the added comments we've got the tags in there as well there's the comment there's another comment so it brings all of it in to obsidian now I'm going to go to settings the appearance tab scroll down you can see quick font size adjustment I'm going to turn that one on so now I hold control on my keyboard and scroll in my mouse wheel it zooms in and zooms out I do this just for for quick access but it makes life a little bit easier in my opinion now this is one source if I go to Google Scholar you can see this is the two sources that I just brought in if I click on this one and now I want to quickly add this to zoto I can use the zoto connector so if I click on this you see it's going to find it it's going to add it to my library I can pick a collection if I want but I'm just going to save it to my library and if you don't have the connector on your browser you can type in zoto scroll down and you'll find zoto connectors or type in zotter connector then when you click it it should give you an option to install it on the browser your own on I'm using Edge uh if you're on Chrome or Firefox or Safari it should say install for that browser but as you can see this is an academic paper and it's selected an academic paper if this was a video then this would actually show a video icon so now when I go to the zoto my library there it is and if we have a look you can see it is a journal article it automatically detected it was a journal article it's also downloaded the PDF automatically and this one doesn't have a tag and that's because I haven't added the tag so what I can do is go over to the tag section add tag go into my emoji bar for me that's windows and full stop I think Mac is command shift space maybe uh but I can add the tag and now once it's been added that one is actually going to show and that's because down in my tag pane you can see there's the tag from the paper but if we go over to The Hourglass I can right click and assign color now this one's already got a color it's orange if it was a word it it would show in Orange but it's an emoji so it doesn't have an orange version of the Emoji but I can now select a position and the position goes up to 9 will then show inside of this main area and in addition to its location so if I was to add another tag you can see 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 I'm pushing the keys on my keyboard and it's adding all of those different tags you can see all the way up to seven then when I push it again so 1 2 4 5 6 7 is going to remove all of those except from number three which is The Hourglass so if for example I say you know what I've read all of these that was holding shift on my keyboard and clicking I can push three to say I'm not waiting because I'm going to push two and say actually I'm done so let's go in and just actually highlight something so it I have actually done something yep look there we go some really important highlighted stuff and let's just grab some red ones in there as well well that's obviously really important because I know exactly what I'm doing then we jump back to obsidian I go command pallet Danny import find the paper so long-term Flyn effect enter enter and you can see it's appeared inside of the folder and there we have all of our really awful highlights but they're there you can see that one's a red highlight that one's a yellow highlight and you can separate all of these out in loads of different custom ways but I just want it in here to start with and now I want to write my essay well I'm going to remove all of these words because I don't need those and how I set this out is I make a sources heading so this is a heading one with a hash and then I go hash and then script then I make a heading two so hash space list hash space points then if I go to the top right and click on the expand button then gives me the these four different options and I want the outline so it's going to show all of those headings and I can navigate up and down the file and where obsidian gets really cool is you can link inside of obsidian so if I go to points and I go square bracket square bracket it brings up a list of all of the files in my obsidian Vault folder so if I go dton there's that datton paper and if I go te's there's the te's paper and these are both Linked In ins side of the file why is that important well if I right click on the tab and pin it now this essay tab is going to stay where it is if I click on this it opens up the file and again if I drag this over I now have a split screen so I can click on that Source there's the source and there's the other source so I can go between all the different sources and bring in the points I think are relevant so let's just create some space this point is important so contrl Ctrl V uh this point is important crl c contrl v and uh this image is actually really important so I'm going to crl C and then drag that down crl V now that was the Dutton paper so if I copy that and then paste that link underneath this point so I know where it comes from this point so I know where it comes from and this table so I know where it's come from I can get rid of that link control D and now I'm going to go to this next source uh this point is actually related to this point so I'm going to paste that underneath and this point is actually related to this table so I'm going to paste that underneath now I'm seeing a trend here so I'm going to make a heading of topic one and this is actually going to be another heading of topic two so I'm going to copy that paste underneath that point and paste it underneath that point remove the Source at the top so now I have the links going from the source to the highlighted point and they go back to zoto if I now come to this source file and click on the back Links panel you can see it's linked to the essay and it's showing I have two points that are linked there I can expand it and it shows me what's linked if I go to the essay file and go to the outgoing links you can see they are the two sources that I've linked plus the image file now I'm writing my essay well I want to start writing it but I don't to have to scroll up and down because obviously that's just inconvenient so what I can do is I can rightclick and then go split to right so now I have the essay file open twice and going to close down this tab that was middle click with my mouse so it's a scroll will now I can open up the outline again go down to the script and say introduction now in the introduction I want to write about topic one so I'm writing something really important and that is this reference so I can copy and then just paste it right in there so I know okay this point was referenced here now what I tend to do is actually delete this because I now don't need this point anymore so I get rid of that so my points list disappears because I know I've processed it and started writing about it you may want to keep them together I personally don't now here you can see we've got two points that are the same or related in some way I haven't actually read these so they're probably not but maybe I want to paraphrase both of these and say this is good IQ stuff that's the word IQ from there and then different countries there just different countries from here and I want to reference both of them well I can just go copy paste and then in here I go copy and paste so now I've got the two different sources referencing one point uh now I don't need these anymore so I can just delete all of those then I can cut it from here and then paste it underneath here this is slowly starting to build out but now let's just say I want to have a conclusion of course I need to map out all the other sections as well so we've got our literature review we got a results we've got a discussion so we can jump backwards and forwards to any point of those documents let's go down to the conclusion so this table has some interesting points maybe you want to say something about that so the Flint effect was in lots of countries so I copy there paste there so now I've got the source I can copy paste it into the result so these are some results maybe it's part of your lit review so let's just X and then paste so those crl X to cut contrl V to paste now I don't need it inside of here so I can get rid of that get rid of those and for the conclusion actually you know what I like this but I'm not entirely sure what this was talking about so I'm going to click on the page one take me okay that's what it was talking about I remember remember now it was something to do with this thing I don't know I'm making this up so I come back then I can say whatever it is that I want to say about this thing in the conclusion we are getting Dumber because that's what the reverse flim effect is about basically you know what I want to leave this there cuz I might add this into the discussion but I'm not sure so I'm just going to leave that there just in case now I have my essay written out in obsidian with links back to the appropriate sources as I write and as I think maybe I go oh actually you know what if I go in into this file so you can see I've opened the source file straight away I can see oh this was tagged with something or oh yeah I had this idea I may want to add that to the script well I've got the sa file open over here so I can add it to the results but maybe it was actually appropriate in the discussion so this this comment here that I made actually this came up with this idea in the discussion point so I'm going to get rid of that one again middle click on the mouse and you can see it's inside of the discussion section so you can write and think at the same time going backwards and forwards between different pages again you can have tabs you can have multiple splits so you can have it top down the bottom you can show or hide anything and it just makes the writing and thinking space much cleaner for me however if you want to turn it into the university well that's where you're going to have to take it out of markdown out of obsidian and into Microsoft Word so going to go settings Community plugins and browse going to go with pandoc install enable options and you'll want to make sure you've got pandoc installed on your device so type pandoc into whatever browser you use download the latest version so go to the download page and then download it I'm on windows so I'll download one of these and then if you're on Mac you download that Linux ET etc etc but once that's all downloaded you can see you can change the internal links so that's these things at the moment they've got two brackets on you can change those so it turns into text text and if I open up that left side barar you see we're in the folder this one is the essay file if I close this down this is the essay file if I go to that command pallet button again search for pandoc I've just typed in pan for short and then word I'm now going to use the pandoc plugin to export as a Word document you see exporting and successfully exported so it is now inside of these folders but we can't see it go down to settings files and links now I want to detect all file extensions because it's been changed to a docx file and there it is so when I click it I already have a saved Word document that was on my other screen here so it's brought in the headers it's brought in the links and you still I've still got the link back to Zer if I want it but there is the script this is where if you want this to be automatically cited properly then you can use pandoc information with bibliography files and CSL files or if you've already got it linked with zoto you've got your word linked with zoto you can say okay I need to add a citation this is the Dutton citation so add I'm going to use Harvard elevia okay let's just type in dton the negative Flint effect that's the one let's go enter and now it's been added in so I can get rid of that come down to the bottom and then go edit and add bibliography now I've added the duton bibliography if I was to then copy that and then let's paste it in there because that's there as well but we also need this citation so I come on to there let's say add or edit cuz I copied the dton we've got the dton 16 let's go with what's that te's yeah there we go so enter now I've got the two different citations I push enter and it's got bigger because it's now added the two different citations in so we can get rid of that bit from word but now the bibliography has extended so we've got the tside at the top of the other file so zoto and word working together this is how I would do it to make sure nothing is missed if you were to do it automatically of course something could get missed so I would copy and then backspace paste just to make sure that all the citations are in appropriately in the formatting that you want but the main point here for me is with obsidian you can have the same file open twice so the essay open twice or you can have sources open go through sources you can essentially puzzle make all of the different points into the script with whatever outline you have or whatever running Theory concept idea philosophy value that you're working with you can see all of the words at the same time and it doesn't have to be one big long document on word that you're scrolling up and down or you're clicking outline to navigate through this for me Works obviously everyone is a little different

Channel: Danny Talks Tech

Views: 20,687

Keywords:

Id: zEYp0BJL7MU

Length: 22min 43sec (1363 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2024