- The first time I tried to use Obsidian, I didn't like it. It didn't seem intuitive to use. I couldn't quite get
it to do what I wanted. And frankly, I just didn't
get all of the hype. Today, I have over 10,000 notes over multiple vaults in Obsidian. So what changed? Well, it turns out that there's
a pretty crucial element of the experience that I was
missing the first time around and that's plugins. Here are my top 10 community
plugins for Obsidian so that you don't make the same mistake. Obsidian already comes
with some core plugins, some of which are enabled by default. Today, I'm talking
about community plugins, which are extensions to Obsidian that are created by other Obsidian users. The security of your notes
is still on you though so think about what
you're comfortable with before installing anything. These 10 plugins are
arranged alphabetically and the first one is Calendar. Calendar is the most
popular Obsidian plugin and for a reason. I don't know at this point why you would ever install Obsidian without the Calendar plugin because Obsidian doesn't
have a native implementation of a calendar. The Calendar plugin doesn't
just show the calendar. It also lets you create daily notes and see those daily notes
over the entire month. And it also lets you create weekly reviews if you have that option
enabled, which I do. Recently, I've been using Calendar and this other plugin, Fantasy Calendar. Even though Fantasy Calendar
definitely was made for use in a tabletop role playing
game like Dungeons and Dragons, you don't have use it as that. I've used Fantasy Calendar as my content calendar in Obsidian. It just provides a little
bit more customization than the Calendar plugin can but I install and use both heavily. Number two is Dataview. Dataview has changed
the way I use Obsidian. It's changed the way I format my notes. It essentially allows you to
define parameters and values in the YAML front matter or
the metadata of your notes and then it lets you search for them. So it essentially lets you
create your own database in Obsidian with custom fields
for anything that you want. You could use it for meetings or people or tools or
books that you've read. The possibilities are endless. By the way, in addition to the
very SQL-like query language that they have, you can also
use JavaScript in Dataview. There's just so much
to do with this plugin. And I really haven't even
scratched the surface of it. Number three is so small but so useful that I had
to include it in the list. It is Editor Syntax Highlight. If you've ever copied over
any code into Obsidian, you may find that it lacks
a little bit in readability. Editors Syntax Highlight
dramatically improves readability by changing the syntax
highlighting depending on the programming
language that you select. It isn't going to replace
VS Code anytime soon, but if you're like me
and you use it sort of as a dev log while you're
trying figure something out and you include your final solution or the code into your note, then I think that this is a must-have. Number four is Kanban which is funny because I don't even usually
like the Kanban approach. I never understood Trello and I never liked Post-it Notes. I don't use Kanban for task management. I've discovered what it's really good for is a content calendar. I create a card in Kanban
for every bit of content that I'd like to work on, whether that's code or
a section in a workshop, a blog post, a video, or
really basically anything. I really like being able
to create my own columns and spicing it up by embedding photos within the card itself. It just makes the whole
process a lot more visual. Number five is Outliner. Before Obsidian, I was using
Roam and it definitely shows. While I've moved on
philosophically from Roam Research, I still love the very
task-oriented bulletin format that it had. Well, Outliner brings the
same thing to Obsidian. So you can have your keyboard shortcuts for quickly moving
something up and down a list or indenting and unindenting as well. It has made my transition from Roam Research significantly easier. Number six is Periodic Notes. I think one of the most fundamental philosophical differences between Obsidian and
tools like Evernote is that Obsidian doesn't want
you to just capture it all. ♪ Pokemon ♪ - Obsidian is about bringing
those notes to the forefront, processing them, analyzing
them, really learning them, and then changing them
as your knowledge changes and Periodic Notes really helps with that. It is particularly useful
for OKR or objective setting because it provides a system
for reviewing notes daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. You don't have to use all of those, but I find that using some
of them is really useful in helping me step back and think about what I actually want to accomplish. Number seven probably
would be my number one if I were ranking these, but since it's alphabetical, number seven is Obsidian Publish. Obsidian Publish is a
premium add-on to Obsidian that lets you instantly
publish all of your notes or at least the notes that
you select to be published to a certain domain. Now I have it going to a custom domain and yes, it's not free. And yes, I do know that
there are other ways that you could do this
with markdown files. I have my personal blog using Hugo as a static generator for instance, but there's just something about Publish and just it taking just a few clicks between writing something
and putting it out there that really reduces the inertia for me to learn in public. Learning in public and
growing a digital garden that is constantly changing
is really important to me and it has been essential to my professional and
personal development. So Obsidian Publish has to be, hands-down, my
favorite plugin for Obsidian. Number eight is the
Readwise Official plugin and this is a plugin
that I've been wanting for a very long time. In fact, before the
official plugin came out, I created my own Python script that I was running regularly just to be able to move my things from Readwise to Obsidian. Readwise, if you don't know, is a way to collect all of the things that you're doing on the internet. It's an easy way to collect eBooks, web articles, audiobooks,
tweets, and even PDFs. And it all brings your highlights of those into your Obsidian vault. It is a really essential
part to my learning process because it ensures that
everything I've learned from a variety of
different sources ends up in my Obsidian vault for
me to process and analyze. Number nine is Obsidian Sync and it is also a premium add-on, kind of like Obsidian Publish, but it's also totally optional. You don't really need Obsidian Sync. I already use Dropbox, but unfortunately, one of the problems with Dropbox is that you can't yet use it to sync between different devices. I use Obsidian on my laptop, on my iPad, and on my Samsung mobile. So I have three different devices that I need all of my notes on. There are currently two options for this. It's either iCloud or Obsidian Sync. I don't like iCloud, and so, Obsidian Sync
is my service of choice. Number 10 is the most
recent plugin of this 10 and it is Templater. Now don't get it confused with Templates which is an Obsidian core plugin. Templater is a community plugin that's like Templates on steroids. It extends templating functionality by letting you run
JavaScript in your vault. This blows the functionality
of Obsidian wide open as now I can run JavaScript in my vault to do certain things for me. I was already a fan of
the core plugin Templates, so having Templater and all of the customization options that are possible is just amazing. Definitely recommend it. If you've made it this far and you're wondering what
the heck is Obsidian, well maybe take a step back and watch this video on how
to get started with Obsidian. And if you want to know about my usage of any of the particular
plugins that I mentioned, leave me a comment below so that I know that I should make a video on that next. Thank you for watching. Happy note taking.
