I think this is an interesting perspective and one that I resonate with in part.
I was a pen and paper user, then a Notion user, then a Roam Research user. The move to Roam really started my interest in the "tools-for-thought" space, but I have found it not a good community to be part of at times. Roam in particular was very toxic, where if you did something slightly against the norm you were shit upon.
I also found that being an active member of the community lead me to being more of a tinkerer, constantly looking for new or better ways to do things and a good part of that was the peer pressure of someone saying "you should do this X way rather than how you are doing it".
Notion for me is probably one of the worst here too, just because there is a lot of functionality. If something doesn't work quite right, then it will bother me and I won't be able to leave it until I have resolved it. This is where I lost most of my time.
Moving to Obsidian, I have quite intentionally tried to keep it as simple as possible, and also kept away largely from the community. My initial vault set up took maybe a few weeks, and it has stayed pretty much exactly the same for the last four/five years. It is simplistic, and that works well for me. It's that mindset that has resonated for a lot of people who aren't interested in the tinkerer aspect of the community.
Every now and then I will get a stray comment about how I haven't utilised bases or some newer feature in Obsidian - but I try and ignore it.
I’m sure we could chat for hours on this topic then!
The simplicity of your setup definitely has me questioning if I’ve overdone it with plugins inside of Obsidian, I know I did the first time I tried to use it. I should probably consolidate my vault and pay for Obsidian sync, since iCloud sync is one of the biggest downsides for me this time around.
I can’t ever bring myself to commit to Notion. The financials don’t make sense for me as a single person business.
I’ve made Apple Notes and Reminders work for a long time, I feel like I’m going to dive into Obsidian again and then Apple will update their apps to work better together, so I’m just trying to hold out. 😅
I do still love the writing experience in Obsidian and it makes me think actively about the potential connections while writing, which has always been a positive.
I think this is an interesting perspective and one that I resonate with in part.
I was a pen and paper user, then a Notion user, then a Roam Research user. The move to Roam really started my interest in the "tools-for-thought" space, but I have found it not a good community to be part of at times. Roam in particular was very toxic, where if you did something slightly against the norm you were shit upon.
I also found that being an active member of the community lead me to being more of a tinkerer, constantly looking for new or better ways to do things and a good part of that was the peer pressure of someone saying "you should do this X way rather than how you are doing it".
Notion for me is probably one of the worst here too, just because there is a lot of functionality. If something doesn't work quite right, then it will bother me and I won't be able to leave it until I have resolved it. This is where I lost most of my time.
Moving to Obsidian, I have quite intentionally tried to keep it as simple as possible, and also kept away largely from the community. My initial vault set up took maybe a few weeks, and it has stayed pretty much exactly the same for the last four/five years. It is simplistic, and that works well for me. It's that mindset that has resonated for a lot of people who aren't interested in the tinkerer aspect of the community.
Every now and then I will get a stray comment about how I haven't utilised bases or some newer feature in Obsidian - but I try and ignore it.
I’m sure we could chat for hours on this topic then!
The simplicity of your setup definitely has me questioning if I’ve overdone it with plugins inside of Obsidian, I know I did the first time I tried to use it. I should probably consolidate my vault and pay for Obsidian sync, since iCloud sync is one of the biggest downsides for me this time around.
I can’t ever bring myself to commit to Notion. The financials don’t make sense for me as a single person business.
I’ve made Apple Notes and Reminders work for a long time, I feel like I’m going to dive into Obsidian again and then Apple will update their apps to work better together, so I’m just trying to hold out. 😅
I do still love the writing experience in Obsidian and it makes me think actively about the potential connections while writing, which has always been a positive.