How to Use Obsidian for Writing and Productivity

I’m fairly dangerous at being an worker. I overtly despise conferences, I say precisely what’s on my thoughts, and I sincerely consider that many managers exist solely to waste the time of in any other case productive folks. I additionally couldn’t be much less focused on how my work impacts quarterly projections—I need to write issues that individuals discover useful and entertaining.

So, yeah, I’m a freelancer.

I write for 5 publications, together with the one you are studying now (clearly my favourite). The upside: I’m by no means in conferences. The draw back: There’s loads to hold observe of. I’ve to handle relationships with 5 editors. It’s a problem, and I’ve tried a full array of programs over time, from spreadsheets to index playing cards, apps like Trello, and method too many to-do record apps.

None of them fairly did the trick, till I found Obsidian a few years in the past. This software has slowly gone from being a bizarre app I did not perceive to one I am unable to think about functioning with out. It’s the place I do all of my writing, sure, but in addition how I hold observe of my ongoing articles as they transfer from brainstorming to pitching to publication.

This is not a evaluation of Obsidian (I already wrote one). This is an overview of how I exploit this software to get issues accomplished. Hopefully studying it offers you some concepts for how you possibly can use it.

Everything Offline All at Once

First of all, what’s Obsidian? The software payments itself as a “second mind,” however you possibly can it put in the identical class as note-taking apps like OneNote or Evernote. Unlike these purposes, although, Obsidian shops every part—notes, attachments, and even plugins—as easy textual content paperwork in a folder in your pc. This means you should utilize the applying absolutely offline or sync the paperwork utilizing the cloud storage service of your alternative.

This has a number of benefits. For one, your recordsdata are absolutely in your management: If Obsidian stopped present tomorrow, I’d nonetheless have entry to my notes. For one other, every part works offline. My favourite factor about Obsidian, although, is the intensive plugin ecosystem. There are over a thousand Obsidian plugins, and I rely upon a number of of them. There’s Kanban, which permits you to create a board of playing cards you may transfer between tiles. There’s Extract URL, which might seize all textual content from any web site and flip it right into a notice. I may record plugins for a very long time. But the purpose is that you could customise Obsidian to work mainly any method you need it to. I’ve accomplished this to create an ideal setup for my workflow—one that permits me to do my planning and my precise writing in the identical software.

My writing course of has a development: brainstorming concepts, pitching these concepts to editors, researching, writing, enhancing, and invoicing. Here’s how I transfer by means of these steps in Obsidian.

Brainstorm

Every article begins with an thought. I get these from all types of locations. Sometimes I’m simply utilizing my pc, discover one thing that annoys me, endlessly analysis an answer to that concern, and then determine to write about it. Sometimes I discover a cool-looking app whereas studying the information or shopping Reddit. And generally I simply spend a number of hours brainstorming concepts. Whatever the case, I compile my concepts in a devoted Kanban board on Obsidian. Every card on the board hyperlinks to a devoted doc the place I embody any related hyperlinks, develop on the concept, and notice a bit about attainable angles for the article.

When it comes time to take these concepts into the world, I determine which of them I’m going to pitch to which editors and drag them to a column for that publication. If the pitch is accepted, I drag the cardboard over to my “article queue” board, if not, I contemplate pitching it to one other publication or put it in my “thought jail” to probably revisit later.