So when I started my PKM in Obsidian about a month ago, I wasn’t transferring 2K notes from Evernote. I was literally starting from zero. So far I have roughly 50 evergreen notes and 50 notes in progress. And I have no experience trying to merge existing notes into an Obsidian PKM, so maybe take my experience with a grain of salt.
First, always remember the principle of Gall’s Law that @nickmilo mentions in LYT: Big, complex systems always emerge from smaller, simpler systems that have proven themselves over time.
Therefore, start simple and eventually, with time and patience, it’s gonna get awesomer and awesomer. Habits + Practice = Mastery (“Atomic Habits” - James Clear).
It was easiest and simplest for me to pick a single subject that I was currently studying at the time and create evergreen notes from everything that caught my interest and/or was a foundational concept. I was studying Habits, and therefore simultaneously reading “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, “The Power of Habits” by Charles Duhigg, and “Mastery” by Robert Greene.
I created an evergreen note on how to create evergreen notes (again, Nick and the LYT is an awesome resource for this) and kept that note open in another panel while writing all my evergreen notes to ensure that I was taking helpful, solid notes.
Be ok with coming back and rewriting notes that you took when you were a beginner. I learn a ton about streamlining Obsidian and how I prefer to wield my notes on a weekly basis. Rewriting and reformatting is totally ok. The law of diminishing returns will eventually kick in, but when first starting out I had a ton to improve on.
When I was first creating notes, there wasn’t much to link to. Be ok with that. Lot’s of links will come with time and lot’s of notes. Sometimes I still don’t have much to link to on certain notes.
Once you’ve moved on from your first subject, choose another subject. Studying habits led me to psychology, cognitive science, and neurobiology. Now you can start implementing Refraction Thinking, idea cross-pollination, mental models like Systems Theory, and linking notes to one another.
On the practical side, as I’m out and about I tend to keep a “note list” of all the ideas, cross-pollinations, and serendipitous thoughts I have. These are in one-idea-per-paragraph form and are just a rough sketch of what I’m thinking in the moment. Since I don’t have time to create a fully-formed evergreen note in the moment for whatever reason (I’m driving, walking, working, etc.), this is a brain dump note to which I return when I have more time. I then turn the idea paragraph into a note, and delete the given paragraph from the “note list” note.
Also, I keep track of workouts, compile professional network profiles, etc. These are of interest to me, but aren’t included in my Idea Cosmos that I’m describing above. These are more mundane and boring, and don’t have a ton on links.
Anyway, that’s how I went from about 0-35 mph in about a month. Hope this helps! And if you’ve discovered anything in the six days since you posted that I could implement into my own system, let me know!
PS - Perhaps when transferring notes, it might be helpful to transfer an idea cluster, tag, or entire subject into Obsidian? This would hopefully allow for easy evergreen note creation and linking.
