(this might be the wrong forum category, I picked the one I thought fit best)
Read this if you’re new to Obsidian and or going through a honeymoon phase
TLDR: I was extremely addicted to Obsidian 1-2 years ago, configurations plugins and writing CSS. I thought I would keep them for a long time but didn’t, and now use Neovim instead. While Obsidian is a very good editor for many users and the average person, I’ve learned to not get to attached or obsessed with the tools I use and they could change again in the next few years.
Last year I made these two posts about my addiction
- [Serious] I actually am addicted and have been spending many hours per day on my vault. What should I do?
- [Follow-up] I need to clarify the extent of my addiction with Obsidian. I’ve been blowing school throughout 2023 because of it
- I’ll summarize them: I started using Obsidian almost 2 years ago after seeing the top posts about Obsidian as a PKM, using wikilinks to connect ideas, the graph, backlinks, etc. I spent countless hours looking through and setting up plugins, and even more on my CSS theme.
Since I made those posts last year, I’ve seen many comments here about how many Obsidian users fell into the same trap. Obsidian was this shiny new tool that could do all these cool things, and significantly better than whichever apps users switched from, in my case OneNote. Obsidian and similar tools strongly appeal to my interest in software, tinkering, and productivity (and maybe yours too, like many users). I (or you), want to be the biggest power user I can, so I drowned in endless plugin and app configuration.
But Let me get this out of the way: Obsidian is a great editor for most users, it’s just easy for the small portion of power users / tech-savvy ones to develop a very unhealthy relationship with it.
I really thought I would have much use out of the 50-60 plugins I installed … and I never did and never will. I think it was because of FOMO, that my knowledge base and workflow wouldn’t be as strong without them. I went through my plugin list and removed a bunch of other plugins: like File Explorer Note Count, Theme Design Utilities, Snippet Commands, Iconize, and Advanced Paste. I already forgot the names of a few other ones! I’m now down to 36 plugins and plan on removing almost all of them as I have little to no use for them. I’m now using Neovim.
After my Fall 2023 semester ended (when I had the addiction), I finally felt sated with my Obsidian vault, and went through my computer bucket list, including how to write more efficiently with just the keyboard. I knew about Obsidian’s Vim mode for a while but it’s very incomplete. It’s an emulation layer, a reverse engineered version of Vim (via CodeMirror) in Obsidian.
I spent lots of time setting up Neovim (like I did with Obsidian), but then got very overwhelmed and burnt out, and then mostly stepped away from it during the summer. During that time, I realized that I’ve gotten tired / grown out of spending so much time on software customization and getting so hooked on tools. Though I did come back to it last month and finished it, and am now am much happier more efficient and happier on Neovim with Obsidian.
Again this not to throw shade at Obsidian, in fact Neovim has a much steeper learning curve with the Vim modal editing system, and installing + configuring plugins takes a lot more steps. The average, non-tech savvy person is much better off with Obsidian. I’m not addicted to Neovim the way I was with Obsidian, I thought my Obsidian setup would last a very long time but don’t. And it’s totally possible I could switch from Neovim to another editor 1-3 years now, maybe Emacs or VS Code, or whatever shiny new tool pops up.
If you’re new to Obsidian or going through a honeymoon phase with it like I did, know that your setup may change a whole lot and you might not use most of the shiny new plugins you install. I’m not saying don’t do it all, in fact you should throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. The process of setting up Obsidian or any feature-rich app with a large plugin ecosystem, is a whole experience, and potentially eye-opening one, in and of itself.