Obsidian: The King of Learning Tools (FULL GUIDE + SETUP)

Quick note: To get relevant links to show up at the bottom of each page: 1. Make sure the 'backlink' core plugin is turned on, as well as the 'backlinks in document' toggle within it. 2. Exit the settings and press Ctrl + P 3. Search for and select 'Backlinks: Toggle Backlinks in Document'

now this video is like a genuine helping hand in the swarm of deceiving ones ... -No bs -No exaggeration -No irritating aestheticism just pure minimalism and pragmatism. Also i really appreciate how you pulled off such a technical task with such simplicity. I am not a native english speaker but i can understand each and every bit of it ...keep it up dude.

the potential for this is really mind-blowing. research papers and other papers could be completed in hours rather than days with a highly sourced vault

One of the YouTube videos you just HAVE to watch all the way through, trust me. Incredible job with this video. THIS is what I go on YouTube for. You sir, are a gentleman, and a scholar

I had never heard of Zettlekast or Obsidian until this morning. Every so often, YT's algorithm nails it. I'm excited to get into all of this. Thanks for being concise and sharing what you've learned. 🙏🏾

I've been using obsidian for 2 years on and off. I say "on and off" because of these common hangups I continued to get annoyed by. I go through phases of switching between MS word, notion and obsidian over and over never feeling fully comfortable in any them. After watching this it's time to go again into Obsidian, but fresh. This is by far the best Obsidian video I've seen because it is simple and exactly how to use it PRACTICALLY. You are quickly becoming one of my favorite channels on all of youtube and just joined the newsletter. THANK YOU.

Quick tips for creating concept notes from books. To avoid doing it “manually” I use the Note Refactor plugin. In a large Obsidian “name of book” note, I write down all the insights I had while reading. At the very end, I go over it again and give a title (e.g. H3) to each “concept” in the book. So that they become independent notes I launch Note Refactor which will automatically separate my concepts into different notes. The advantage is that each note is automatically linked to my large book note.

I literally got this yesterday after watching your video on mini-essays , so this is actually perfect for me. I'm an anthropology and philosophy undergrad with a personal research project on archiving my local city's working class culture and history. I've been archiving, taking photos of places, and reaching out to my community to make it a collaborative process.

I’ve been looking forward to this like a new episode of of my fave TV show.

Well, I just got it recommended out of nowhere and this blew my mind. This is such an intelligent and informative video on such an abstract topic, huge props for it. And thanks for showing me an instrument I've been looking for!

I have completely set this up, on June 22nd, I will come back to this comment and give my overall review of what worked and what did not. EDIT: June 22nd Review I honestly can't thank you enough for this set-up. I had been using obsidian for 8 months now and I had not encountered a set-up this revolutionary. So here's the review, it is the least I can do as a thank you. 1. Tags I am unbelievably impressed. The fact that you came with the revolutionary idea to use notes as Tags was really unbelievable. I used them, and they worked. They helped me keep my notes really organized. I don't what happens, but I really like the feeling when you add a reference in a note. 10/10 2. Indexes Tags helps us organize notes, but how to organize the tags? I had that question for quite a while until I was exposed to "Indexes". I never thought about organizing Tags like this, and I can see it helping me avoid countless hours of organizing in the future. 10/10 3. Templates Even though I was using obsidian for 8 months, I had never knew about templates. And the Template you gave was a great one. Especially when you showed us how you write using that template. 10/10 4. Flexibility I really liked the overall set-up and that I could use it for other purposes with different vaults other than just writing about books, podcasts, articles etc. 10/10 5. Main Notes The idea to store all main notes inside a single folder and then organize them with tags was just fascinating. I used to keep my notes in folders and then subfolders. Which made it really annoying to find them again. 10/10 6. Overall Review Arguably the best obsidian set-up ever. - zero bs - zero exaggerations - detailed explanations - visually appealing - Unbelievably simple yet unbelievably effective - unbelievably GREAT. I hope you all will be open to new updates if I feel as though it will be necessary in future. Love this set-up. By the way, I didn't expect to receive so many replies in the comment. I'm not complaining in any way and I was also happy to see so many people waiting for this. 11/10

I just finished reading "How to Take Smart Notes" and I'm returning to your video a few weeks after seeing it first to set up Obsidian. Thank you tremendously for sharing your setup. Eager to see my notes turn into a beautiful neural network!

this is single handedly the greatest obsidian note taking video ever. had it been 10 minutes longer, it would have been the greatest note taking video ever.

I started out by placing this video as a source material and wrote about Obsidian and the things I gathered about it Pretty good starting exercise

Man. This is so helpful. I know you are worried about being another voice in a virtual sea of voices, but the reality is that this video--your video--might just be the one that will help certain people, where nothing else has worked. I am a grad student, teacher, author, and I run a history and literature society. I have been so overwhelmed--to the point of having to go to therapy, where I discovered something about myself: I thrive off of structure. I know I have to get things out of my brain and onto a page--but I always avoided that because it was messy. I have since started bullet journaling, but that is mainly for calendar and habit tracking. What do I do about all these books I'm reading, these books I'm writing, the things I'm teaching, the things I'm studying? Well, I can't say for sure, but hopefully this is it. Cheers - and thank you.

This has been almost exactly my experience with Obsidian. The low barrier to entry, the ability to expand tools within the ecosystem, and most of all, a structured way for your knowledge to accrete and combine is so powerful.

2:17 "this setup is free from BS"🤣🤣🤣🤣 you got me with this phrase man (I was skimming the video so as to assess if it was worth watch

Your 'seemless like butter' moment cracked me up. I hadn't giggled like that in a while, thank you!

This is the first YT video I've watched more than twice in its entirety. It just made me see what I was doing wrong all this time with Obsidian (and note taking in general). Great straightforwardness and clarity. Thanks for sharing.

AMAZING. I have watched, over time, at least a half dozen videos on this topic. Complete waste of time because of the complexity. I love your system. Although you referred to "tags" in the video, technically, those are links. I'm sure if people are paying attention they'll see that, and, see that it's a much better way to "tag" notes. I have wasted a lot of time with Obsidian, but thanks to your clear, simple and uniquely effective system, I'll be using it A LOT more. Thank-you very much for sharing this. This is probably the most valuable video I've found on YouTube to date.