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?”