A new commonplace book software.

[Death_]

Two year back I heard Leo talk about the advantage of keeping an commonplace book. He also recommended to use Onenote 2010 as a primary software for keeping notes. I did that for two years but suddenly my Onenote 2010 software crashed which scared me for a while because I did took all my notes on it for the last two years. I bought the office 2016 suite and opened it but all the format was ruined and the hyperlinks had all became useless. I began to think from that point on if this again happens in the future what will I do? I thought and did some research on that for a while than I found a alternative software to Onenote which is free. The software's name is Obsidian.md  ( Here is the official website. ) I did had a lot of pain on migrating to obsidian.md but it was all worth it. 

Why obsidian.md instead of Onenote?

•  One of the top reason is that it is future proofed. It is future proofed because your notes are all plain text based which means that as long there are computers that can read plain text (markdown).
• It is free. Short and sweet. It has a amazing UI and the graph view is just mind blowing. 
• Files are stored in your local file system which makes your personal data more secure.
• As Leo says to choose the software which has an powerful tag search. This software includes that too. 
• No lock-in. It is future proofed. Even if somehow obsidian shutdown you are still able to read your notes because the notes can even be opened by a simple text editor like notepad. 
• It has an interactive graph which shows what is linked in your notes. I can't explain it well you must see it for yourself. This could be an example :-(https://publish.obsidian.md/help/Plugins/Graph+view). But it is much more cool when you have thousands of notes like I have. 

I also came across personal knowledge management (PKM) which is an interesting topic while trying to learn it. If anyone of you is interested on migrating to obsidian than the following links might help you.

1.  This channel is good for beginners trying to use obsidian. The channels name is linking your thinking. He has a playlist for beginners which is really great to get started on it. 
2. There is Obsidian Help vault which will help you to know the app better. If you don't know where it is then it is on the bottom of the app.
3. Making your own notes on obsidian will be better than copying that of others.
4. Markdown is easy to learn but sometimes can be complicated if you don't get a hang of it. But I think looking at the obsidian help vault you may be able to learn it.

It may be really hard to migrate to obsidian because it kind of lacks on it. Sometimes you must just bite the bullet you know. I had thousands of notes on my Onenote, I copied all my notes just by copying and pasting them in obsidian. If you haven't started keeping commonplace book, lucky for you, you might just start to keep it using obsidian. The only downfall is that it doesn't have an mobile app but I think no one will be using mobile for taking their notes

 

I am still kind of a newbie in using this app but I hope this will help you in some sort of way. The channel that I just mention above was also my starting point hope it helps you. For some reason I have a feeling that Leo already knows about this app because he is just an amazing guy bring out various new concepts to our lives. If Leo is reading this than my life has been changed because of you especially because of the video called life advice for young people part 2. I actually realized from that video how much work and effort you were keeping to produce the Content of yours.

 

I am sorry for any of my grammatical errors.

Edited November 17, 2020 by Death_

[Hans]

Very interesting. I've actually been thinking for a long time about how cool it would be to have this neural network type visualisation for different ideas and concepts. Cool that someone's done it.

I like it, except for the fact that it's all text based. In my Onenote I have tons of images, embedded videos, scribbles, colored text etc. Sometimes, images say more than words can.

[Death_]

@Hans Plain text format which means markdown format. It can embed images, videos and also can record audios but there is no scribbles. 

[Leo Gura]

Never heard of it.

[Naviy]

Tried it, but feels way too complicated for me.

 

I'll stick to OneNote for now.

[romansoloviov]

Consider Roam Research

[AlphaAbundance]

You can just use the latest version of OneNote

Looks pretty cool though

[Girzo]

It's essentially a code editor, but fine-tuned for taking notes

[Thought Art]

It looks great, but why is it free?

[Adam M]

thanks for share:)

[Death_]

@AlphaAbundance The reason why I am not using newer version of onenote is because of the cloud storage. All my notes and my files must me stored on the cloud in order for me to access it which makes me kind of insecure. I also recommend you to try Onenote 2010 instead of the newer versions, new versions of onenote is a trap.

[Death_]

@romansoloviov I was going to try  roam research but it has a price to it and I and on a tight budget. Does it store files locally?

 

[Death_]

@Thought Art I also thought the same question then I found out that they are taking various donations and also made a feature called Obsidian Publish premium which helps to share your notes in the web by uploading it.  This is how they are making money out of it.  

Edited November 18, 2020 by Death_

[rnd]

The problem is that it's a close source project. The versions are 0.xx - not 1.0

What'll do you with your notes if one day the team, which consitst of only 3 people, changes their mind and decides to abandon the project and move on to something else? Or introduce new plans and remove the free plan? You'd have had years of taking your notes in the app and you'd have to move them elsewhere, or continue using the abandoned close source project which therefore one day might stop working.

How much time and effort would it take you to move your notes over to other software?

 

At least  notes are saved as pure text, right?

Edited February 10, 2021 by rnd

[blackchair]

im from Stone age, i just use notepad which comes with phone

[Hello from Russia]

@rnd that's actually a problem with tools like onenote, because they have their own note format (.onenote) which becomes a problem to migrate it to other formats. I got heavily frustrated with one note because Microsoft just doesn't care about working on it and other software is getting better

So I switched to obsidian too and I don't look back. The huge difference is that these notes are ACTUALLY future proof because they use an independent format for notes unlike tools like onenote/evernote/notion. With Markdown files you can effortlessly migrate to any other markdown supporting app with 1 click or even open your note from multiple different apps if you'd want to do so. So far I'm hyper content with my choice after using onenote for 3+ years

[rnd]

@Hello from Russia спецификация oneNote  есть в открытом виде - бери, создавай аппликуху.
Майкрософт работает над onenote, что-то ты не то несёшь

obsidian - это только от безыисходности. А OneNote нааамного приятнее, удобнее, и у неё больше возможностей.

 

[Snader]

On 17.11.2020 at 0:37 PM, Death_ said:

It has an interactive graph which shows what is linked in your notes.

Wow that's actually really tempting.

[Hello from Russia]

@rnd @rnd yea, might be, but I'm not a developer, I don't really want to create my own app, I am talking from a consumer POV. 

They do work on one note, I don't deny it, but it's not their main focus and other people/companies just come with better solutions because their app is typically their sole project and they focus 100% on it. 

Even with Obsidian, for example. What I love about it the most is that devs have a vision for note taking and that the app has a super great community. It manifests in many actually useful updates and features shipped on a 2-3 monthly basis and a ton of useful plugins from community. 

I don't get that with onenote. They update it once every 2-3-4 years or so and ship features that I don't care about at all. Perhaps I'm not at all their target audience

Don't get me wrong, I love onenote, I just don't find it as useful as new emerging apps anymore

[StarStruck]

Why would OneNote not be future proof? I'm using Onenote 2016. Until now I haven't came across any problems. OneNote is part of a larger Microsoft ecosystem. I won't be leaving Microsoft OS anytime soon so I won't have a problem.

The mindmapping fuction of Obsidian is interesting. I'm using another app to make those mindmaps so currently having two separate systems. Obsidian would solve the split but from the looks of it, it is not very advanced and it feels gimmicky. My mindmap software is much more advanced so I will stick to my setup.