The crux of an effective notes and productivity system is to make text quick to capture and easy to find. If those were the only two criteria I was interested in, Evernote, Roam, Notejoy or even Apple Notes — all excellent at what they do — would have been enough.
Obsidian: the most flexible, non-proprietary way to create an infinitely useful knowledge base, or second brain. It’s about finding.
The Workflow: a Map For Joyful Text Capture and Organisation
When words need to be written, I open Drafts and start typing or dictating. Adding a note hands-free with Siri works well too.
Next I choose an action in Drafts to get that text where it needs to go in Obsidian. If I’m not sure where to put it, I add it to my daily note or simply leave it in Drafts. That annoying numbered red notification dot on the Drafts app icon nags me to take care of it fairly quickly.
As the Drafts action conveniently teleports me directly to the target location in Obsidian, I try to add links to related pages while I’m there and add double square brackets to set up links to pages that might not exist yet, but probably should.
Finding in Obsidian is simply a matter of using the search bar, or following a link from my Maps Of Content pages, or pulling up a random note for serendipitous inspiration.
I’m no longer distracted by other shiny objects on my way to where I want my notes to go.