I put software like @obsdmd & @Readwise through their paces. For fun, I garden and research weird history / obscure science. 🐘 @eleanorkonik@pkm.social
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Oct 12, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Transitioning from a stay at home mom w/ a hobbyist scifi/fantasy #worldbuilding research newsletter to someone w/ a full time job, a part time job, & a moderately popular tech newsletter has been interesting in terms of the impact it's had on my notes process.
A #tweet100 🧵👇
Now that I'm busier, I still read & highlight stuff from my "easy" passive feeds, like the ones that I see in Reader and don't rely on any cleanup. But I've basically stopped casually reading the high-noise-to-signal feeds like AskHistorians that I mostly kept track of for fun.
Oct 5, 2022 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
I promised someone on the @readwise subreddit I'd write a tutorial for how I use my export formatting to get Readise info to @obsdmd
It took longer than expected because it grew into a multi-step written "how I make useful notes" guide I meant to do.
But now I got a day off 👀
Just passed the 1,000 word mark. I can't believe it's been six months since I put together this workflow diagram...
... but at least now I'm finally getting around to explaining it 😂
Oct 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Sometimes I get defensive whenever I see a comment about people who highlight too much, or collect too much, or whatever...
because I collect & highlight what feels like "a lot" but I also think I highlight the right amount, insofar as it's all at least potentially useful...
...and then I remember seeing students with *literally* every single word they've read highlighted, and remind myself that stuff like the collector's fallacy articles and "highlighting isn't as useful as you think it is!" snark pieces...
- showing people my notes about email providers and getting tips about updates I hadn't known about 👀
- answering a question someone had just asked in Discord that I hadn't even seen yet
Unfortunately, as often happens, I didn't get a chance to answer all the questions people had.
I'll write something longer over on the Obsidian Roundup website when I get a minute, with like, pictures and links and stuff, but just real quick here's top of my head responses:
Jan 26, 2022 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
I mostly don't go down the "motivational quotes" path, but there's one that has had a huge impact on my ability to Get Things Started.
It's simple, and it's not 100% accurate, but using it as a mantra is responsible for more of my habit-formation successes than anything else.
I forget the exact phrasing of how I first saw it, but the phrase "don't make the mistake of thinking that tomorrow you will be a different person than you are today" is the one thing that cuts through my natural procrastination urges and get me moving on self-improvement goals.
Jan 25, 2022 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
There was a discussion this morning about the pros/cons of using @obsdmd themes that make frequent breaking changes. I'm considered a power-user of Sanctum, which "moves fast and breaks things," and I wanted to take a moment & share why to me that's a feature, not a drawback.
Obsidian core is very stable.
But, personally, I expect to spend a couple of minutes every day working around something that doesn't quite work the way I expected it to. I beta test a lot of things for people. Bug-hunting is like a video game to me.
I get a little frisson of amusement every time I see someone or a tool say "I don't use folders" and I look at their system and see several folders.
"oh that doesn't count, it's just for templates/attachments/whatever"
friend, those are folders.
They count.
I, too, avoid trying to categorize the messy mass of things that are my "insights" and "learned things." My "index notes" all live in a happy amorphous mass — happily separate from my taxes and my novels.
Today's project: Going through everything tagged "article" and splitting it off into nested tags so that they're more useful.
A brief 🧵👇
@obsdmd Historically, I mostly used folders to differentiate between things, and this is still true overall.
Articles are the one thing in my vault I was never thrilled with the organization of, because some articles are born out of synthesis in my "slipbox," but many aren't.
Dec 31, 2021 • 6 tweets • 5 min read
@TechWithEd@twwilliams@TfTHacker I can't speak for the devs of course, but there's definitely a lot of untapped potential, even outside of plugin stuff (obsidian is very close to becoming a fully featured recipe manager, for example).
Here are just a few ideas:
@TechWithEd@twwilliams@TfTHacker Better exporting could be a game changer for entire demographics (authors), leading to wider adoption in non tech communities the way we've gotten a sudden influx of ttrpg people thanks to javalent's plugin suite for DMs.
Obsidian isn't a scrivener replacement yet, but...
Nov 11, 2021 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
1/ Now and then I feel self-conscious about being so active in the #obsidianmd discord because of periodic subtweets I see cross my dash about "productivity porn" or "tools don't matter" or whatever,
and then I realize that no, actually, I'm genuinely doing more things I love —
2/ "people are just faffing off tweaking their systems instead of BEING PRODUCTIVE"
to which I say:
mother****er I have been wanting to learn programming for YEARS and never had a good entry point, me learning CSS and JavaScript well enough to use it IS "being productive"
Oct 11, 2021 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
When I was visiting a local independent bookstore for my anniversary, I saw a book that described Athens as "the greatest civilization that ever existed" on its cover. Seriously?
A 🧵 full of indignant rage to follow.
2/ First of all, calling "Athens" a civilization instead of referring to Classical Greece as a whole is certainly a choice. Generally when we talk about civilizations, we use a grouping big enough to encompass the whole language / record-keeping format / political system.
