Personal product reviews

Knowledge management
1

Hi friends - first post here. Love the quality of this forum! (Go forums!, btw.)

I’m coming from the outliner-connector mindset and trying to understand if Obsidian would work for the some of same things I’ve been doing in Roam. A situation that happens frequently and was a life improvement to me, where I’d previously just store the information in my head… personal product reviews.

For example, I’ll have something like this:

October 31th, 2020

  • Bought [[Xyz Hair Cream]] for $9 at Target. Works well but gave me an [[Allergy]]. Don’t buy again.

In Obsidian land, would you:

  1. Advise against writing about this kind of trivial stuff

  2. Write in daily notes just like in Roam

  3. Create a page named [[Hair Product Review]] and consolidate all information there, like I was writing a blog post:

    Hair Products and Allergies

    Xyz Hair Cream

    I bought this at Target for $9 at Oct 31th, 2020. It works well but gave me a strong allergy.

When a new product is tested, remember to open this page and add the review to the bottom.

This last option sounds good in the sense of “write in a way that makes it easy to find it later”.

Also with this last option, I feel like Obsidian would already be competing with tools like Hugo (static generator).

Would love to understand if you doing similar stuff. In my case, its mostly for remembering and not for publishing.

(In the past I have bought the same product twice, forgetting why I didn’t like it in the first time. This is what I’m trying to improve…)

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  1. I can’t see any reason not to write it here. Easier to get stuff down in the place you’re writing. Obsidian can cope.
  2. This is a valid choice.
  3. This is another valid choice.

I wouldn’t do 2. Because I don’t do daily notes.
I would use tags to help filter/select similar notes.

3

Ok, of course, so the other obvious option is:

Note named Xyz Hair Cream or even Product Review: Xyz Hair Cream, review in the note body and tags to help find it: #hair #productreview

4

Really, I think it’s up to you - Obsidian isn’t going to hold your hand. Lots of valid and productive ways to organize yourself.

Personally, for web clippings and very brief notes (only a bullet or two), I have a Scratchpad note that could also be thought of as an incubator. My daily web snippets go in here, and I’ll slowly group them under # Headings as common themes start to emerge. Once one is clear I’ll write either a blurb on it in a daily note if it is ephemeral (e.g. a news event that may not have much permanence) or in an Evergreen note (probably more appropriate for a overall product).

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5

I don’t use the daily note, but I do use a page to consolidate similar things. I think of it as an index or card page. It all depends on what works for you. My “system” is changing as I try things out and see how they suit me.

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