Should i use obsidian?

Knowledge management
1

greetings,

i dont really know where to who i should ask my question.
I am reading and watching many things about Obsidian and I am wondering if it suits my need : I need a tool for my pkm

i have in mind to gather all my studies and researchs about hermetism, symbolism, mythology, astrology etc…
i would like to gather all the meaning and representations of the concepts, link them together, anotate and find a way to make a big graphical picture of it
in order to find new ideas, and get closer to metaphysical concepts and archetypes

so far i am using simple spreadsheets in mac Numbers. Instead of using tags to code the caracteristic of my topics, i format the text in several ways using colors, indents, size, italic bold etc…
it is very limited but thats how i do

problem is that i have a lot of data and to import everything in obsidian would take… month. so before taking the decision i would like some help of experimented people.

My main concerns are how i can tag and link my data
and how i can make a graph out of them

for exemplem if i take the god Ares (mythology) i would have to be able to :

  • describe his names, objects, animals, functions, place, gender, race, lineage,…
  • his genealogy and related entities
  • the myth and the causal process of it
  • the author/source and the credibility
  • some interpretations of different people
    adn to have an easy visual reading of that

on top of it,
being able to make the same work for the concept of Mars/Mangala in astrology, in alchemy, in hermetism, in hard science,…

to link all these with other concepts such as Zeus (myth), prima materia (alchemy), atman (metaphysics),… etc…

what do you think?
does it worth i give a try for few month to transfer my data to obsidian?
any plugins you would recommend? (i though of infranodus, but im not sure i ve udnerstood all)
if not, is there any other app you recommend me to have a look?

my english is bad, but i hope i have been clear enough
thank you

2

You can use Obsidian as a personal wiki. You could write notes like Ares (mythology).md or prima materia (alchemy).md. These notes can be linked like in Wikipedia. You can add Tags and Properties.

You don’t need “concepts” in Obsidian, just because some Youtubers like to talk about them. They talk about Zettelkasten and other methodologies, that might not be useful for you.

You don’t need plugins to start with Obsidian, just because some Youtubers like to talk about them. Obsidian itself is a very powerful and versatile tool. Plugins can be useful, but they can also be very distracting.

You don’t have to “transfer” all of your data to Obsidian. You could simply start by exporting your existing data to Markdown and copy it into a test vault. Play for a few days with Obsidian. Read the Help pages.

Obsidian is an excellent choice for that kind of knowledge you are interested in.

2 Likes
3

I use Obsidian mainly for a similar kind of knowledge management (and detailed book notes). It’s excellent, though expect some time spent on figuring out how best to organize your vault and workflow. It’s very flexible and extendable through plugins, so you have enormous freedom to structure your notes and connections between them any way you want.

Depending on how many notes you have, I’d first decide between getting all or a representative sample of them into Obsidian. If a huge amount, go for a sample that will enable you to explore how best to organize your PKM: will you have several distinct note types and would you like to set some templates for them to speed up your workflow, what you want linked, what is better served by using tags, what kind of properties (metadata) will be useful, as just a few examples. Not being overwhelmed by thousands of notes helps work out your optimal workflow and structure, while learning Obsidian’s in and outs, what you want it to do and how to achieve it.

Barebones and out of the box, it is very easy to use it as a personal wiki, as mentioned, but with a lot of room to build it into much more sophisticated tool as well. So I’d say dive in and explore.

2 Likes
4

I second the idea of starting with a small sample. In addition to the points mentioned already, it will make data conversion more efficient.

When you know, how your data should look like in Obsidian, you can use external tools to optimze your data for import. For example in Numbers, you can add formulas in the spreadsheet that convert data fields to strings. Or you could quickly add the same data to many entries. In the next step you could use a text editor for some advance text replacement.

Another argument for the small sample. You can test, if you like Obsidian at all. Working with Obsidian is very different from a spreadsheet.

And you can find out what approach to Obsidian you prefer:

  • Some people use complex plugins like Dataview and Templater to build a sophisticated system with lots of automation. Others, like me, prefer a workflow that works without any plugin.
  • Some users prefer to do everything within Obsidian. If there’s a plugin for some task, they use the plugin. Others, like me, combine Obsidian with external tools.
  • Then there are users who love to customize Obsidian’s look with plugins and CSS snippets, so that it looks exactly how they want it to look. And others simply take it as it is.

IMO the question “Should I use Obsidian?” is closely related to “How do I want to use Obsidian?”

5

Obsidian is Nearly Perfect for This Type of Research

I have two tips for how you can transfer all your data from Mac Numbers into Obsidian. You’ll need to familiarize yourself with both Obsidian’s features and find the plugins that best suit your workflow.

  1. CSV Export: You can save your spreadsheet as a CSV file directly from Mac Numbers and import it into Obsidian as a markdown table using one of the available plugins. Numbers also supports exporting to Excel (.xlsx) format, which may be useful depending on your needs. Once imported, you can either use a native feature in Obsidian or a plugin to split the document into new notes. As far as I remember, there is a plugin that can automate this process reasonably well by letting you define where the document should be split. Alternatively, you can manually add wiki-links in the tables wherever needed, then create notes for each object as you work through your list.
  2. Automated Python Script via AI: A slightly more advanced method that can automate the entire job is to ask an AI, such as Perplexity or Microsoft Copilot (the ones I use—others will likely work well too), to help you write a Python script to perform this task. These AIs can actually write the entire script for you based on instructions you provide in natural language. If each row in your spreadsheet represents an object/subject, the process is quite simple—especially if you also have column headers. You can prompt the AI to write a script approximately like this (adjust as needed):Prompt Example: Write a Python script that does the following:
  • Open {filename} and transcribe each row into a markdown note as follows:
    • Column 1 should be both a YAML key with the same name and a level 1 heading.
    • Columns 3–5 should be paragraphs under this heading.
    • Column 6 is a new level 2 heading, and rows 7–12 are bullet points under it.
    • Rows 13–15 are dates and should be YAML keys plus added as lines under Heading 1 with a level 2 subheading titled “Vital Data.”
      • If the column “Type” is “Person” or “God,” rows 13 and 15 should also be YAML keys “Start Date” and “End Date.”
      • If the type is “Event,” the same columns should be under a level 2 heading titled “Historical Dates for {name from column 1},” formatted as “Description: Date,” with the description extracted from the column headers before “Date.”
  • Ask the AI to create wiki-links for the columns you want to link to other notes. If you already have columns with links, you can specify these columns to hold wiki-links (I recommend using wiki-links with aliases).Markdown notes should be saved with filenames {date 1 - Type - Column Name}. Each type should be saved in its own subfolder under the main folder “Mythological Research,” with the type as the folder name. The path for the main folder is {desired filepath}.

You can structure your AI prompt with arguments on separate lines, specifying how each column should be treated—for instance, whether it should be both a heading and a YAML key, which fields belong under which headings, etc.

It’s also wise to ask the AI to include a function in the script that lets you set how many rows to process. This allows you to test the script with 5 or 10 rows initially and add an “All” option for processing the entire CSV or XLSX file once the script works as intended.

If you’re unfamiliar with Python, you can ask the AI to explain the basics of installing Python and running Python scripts. You can also have the AI handle the installation of any libraries/packages required for the script if they’re not already available on your system—though basic file and text processing libraries are standard.

If something doesn’t turn out as you want, simply refine your commands until the script meets your needs. It’s also helpful to ask the AI to add Python comments describing what each function does, so you or others using the script can easily understand it.

I’m not a Python programmer myself, but this is my approach to creating scripts for batch jobs when the task would be too time-consuming to do manually.

Endnote: This comment has been translated, corrected for grammar and flow, and fact-checked as far as possible by Microsoft Copilot AI.