Making notes actually useful in Obsidian

rw-book-cover

rather than abstract theories,then you might want to
stick around for this video.I'm gonna show you some
concrete strategies that I usefor making my notes actually useful.I think the main difference and nuancebetween personal knowledge
management or PKMand the kind of note taking
that we did in schoolis that PKM separates note
taking into two different parts.The first is writing the stuff
down that we want to learnand the second is incorporating
them into our vault

or a personal wiki or
whatever you want to call it.Personally, when I take my initial notesthey're usually stream
of consciousness styleso I'm not really thinking
about using full sentences.They're usually in bullet formand I'm just writing
down whatever I've heard.Spelling and grammar be damned.This stage is, for me,
about just understandingwhat the person is sayingwhether that's from a
YouTube video, or a podcast,or a book.This might not come as a surprise to you

because I've talked
about the service a lot,but I also heavily use Readwiseto import highlights
that I've made in books,or podcasts, or tweets, or a
bunch of different sources.Having those initial notes gives
me something to start with.One of my sources for highlights
these days is Brilliant.Brilliant is a sponsor
of this part of the videobut I wouldn't even talk about themif I didn't genuinely like their product.Brilliant is an online learning platformthat is really good at taking
these broad complex topics

and then distilling them
into more digestible lessons.And I really love their focuson practical uses for maths and sciences.Here I am trying to paint a
flower in their Python coursebut I'm actually writing real codethat sometimes has to do
with their instructionsand sometimes I just like to play around.I probably wouldn't like Brilliant as muchif it weren't so easy to
take notes on their stuff.I click on the Reader
extension in my browser Chrome

and then I can highlight different partsthat I find interesting in a lessonand even take some notes.In this one, on Artificial
Neuron Networks,I was thinking about my
existing Obsidian noteon artificial intelligence,
so I made a note of that.You may notice that I'm using
the Obsidian links syntaxand neither Brilliant nor
Readwise recognizes that,but I know that all these
notes are gonna end upin Obsidian anyway.Sometimes if I don't want
to take notes or highlightwithin the browser itselfwhile I'm going through the lesson,

then I can do it in Readwise Reader.Through the Readwise
official plug-in in Obsidian,anything I highlight or
any notes that I takeare automatically synced
to my Obsidian vault.So just to show you what that looks like,here is the imported page
and imported highlightsfrom the lesson Computationally
Modeling the Brainand here's the other imported pageon Computation Models of the Neuron.You'll see that I also have a linkto Artificial Intelligence here.And because these links are now referring

to real Obsidian notes,
I can hover over themand see the contents or
open them up on the side.I try to take notes on
everything that interests meand that turns out to be a lot of things.Luckily, Brilliant has heaps of lessonsand they're adding to them all the timeand rotating them so it's
always fresh and new.If you are as interested in
a variety of subjects as I amthen go to brilliant.org/nicolevdh
to get a free trial

and then also 20% off of your
premium annual subscriptionshould you choose to continue.Thanks, Brilliant.Once I have the initial notes in my vault,then the next step is to incorporate theminto the rest of my notesand I call that processing my notes.Processing is called by different names,depending on the methodology
you're following.I don't really follow any
of those methodologies.So when I say processing my notes,I basically mean paraphrasing
and abstracting ideas

out of what I've learned.I also mean creating new notes
and updating existing onesthat happen to be on the same topic.And then, I also mean creating linksand situating those new ideas
within what I already havein my other notes.For paraphrasing and abstracting ideasfrom what I've learned I like
to have this summary metadatawhich I pull in through
data view queries sometimes.This is like a one
sentence summary of a note.

This is a note that I created for a courseor a specific lesson in a
course called Mastering YouTubeby Matt D'Avella.I also, as you can see, like
to have the summary section.This is a callout, so I'm
using the abstract one herebut you could really
use any type of callout.Just so you know, to create a callout,you can do Control + P
or Command + P in my caseand then type callout.And you can insert that callout there.

And there are a variety
of different thingsthat you can use.I tend to use abstract for these summariesand that's what that looks like.I like these callout blocksbecause they stand out
from the rest of the note.But sometimes even within the note,I'll add different callouts.This is a collapsible callout.So when I click on this arrow here,it reveals a little bit
more of a note on this note,kind of like a way of meta note taking.

I also like to use them to
summarize sections of the notelike I did here.This is a great way to break the notes up.And if I just scroll through this note,it's easy to see the
things that I highlighted.Another plug-in that I
use for summarizing ideasis Excalidraw plug-in.So this is an image that has
been embedded from Excalidraw.But if I want to open it up in Excalidraw,I can just click on that and
this is what it looks like.So each of these are things
that I can individually change.

I use Excalidraw to
consolidate ideas in my mindthat aren't as easily
expressed in pure text.In this case, this is a
comparison between toolsand I was trying to map the
terminologies between the two.Along the lines of Excalidraw,but maybe when I want to blend
something that is very visuallike a drawing from Excalidraw and textthen I'll use Advanced Slides.This is my note on the difference

between instrumentation and EBPF.If you wanna see how I made this,I actually did a whole video about it.But there's some text herebut I'm also embedding images
that I made in Excalidraw.And if you're wondering
what these lines are,this is because even
though this is readableas a note like thisand I'm embedding part
of a note here as well,this also functions as
a slide presentation.A short one, one that's out of contextwithout any introduction or outro.

But if I do Command + P or Control + Pto get to the command paneand select show slide preview,
then it'll open up here.And if I put that here,
then I can go through itjust like I would any
other slide presentation.I do a lot of presentationsand sometimes this is a very
useful way of testing myselfif I can't talk about somethingthat maybe I don't really
quite understand it.

The next part of processingis creating notes or
updating existing ones.For example, let's saythat I updated this
performance testing pageand now when I have a look
at it, it's quite long.The first thing that I'd probably dois open up the Outline.Outline is a core plug-in
that you can enable.And once you've got it, you can open it upby going to the command pane
and selecting show Outline.But you'll see I already
have a shortcut for it,so I can just do Command + Shift + O.

And there it is here on the right.So I can see the outline
of this particular noteand this just helps me
understand the flow of it.And in this case, maybe
there are things herethat I could really move out.For example, I talk here
about the observer effectin performance testing, which is fine.What if I found out that
I have a different note?Let's create one now and let's call it,Pruebas de carga, which is
performance test in Spanish.

So let's say I have some
other information here,but I really think that this
one should be merged into this.Now obviously, there's only one line here.But imagine that this oneis as long as the
performance testing note.I might want to merge them in that case.There's also a core plug-in for that.So if you go into settings
and core plug-ins,make sure that you've
got Note Composer enabledand that merges, splits,
and refactors notes.So, let's try that out.So I'm going to go into
this Pruebas de carga one,

right click on it, and
then I'm going to selectMerge entire file with
Performance Testing.When I do that, now there's
only going to be a single file.And if we scroll all
the way to the bottom,you'll see that where I had
some other information herefrom Pruebas de carga,
now it's in this note.If I had any other information,
it would be there as well.But let's delete that since we
don't really want that there.Another thing that I really likeis the Note Refactor plug-in,
which is a community plug-in.

Maybe this explanation
is a little too long.So, what I'm gonna do is I'm
going to select all of it.And with the Note Refactor
plug-in installed and enabled,I'm going to Command

with the first line in the
selection as the file name.So if I click on that, then you'll seethat it created a new filecalled The Observer Effect
in performance testing.And then in the performance testing note,where there was a whole section,there is now just a single link.So, I'm going to make this a headingbecause I still want it
to be on the same levelas like this next one.And then in the observer effect,

now I've offloaded this
section to another note.That kind of makes this
performance testing notea little easier to navigate.So if I open up the outline now,each of these sections is pretty lean.I like to separate notes out
when I just feel like a noteis getting so long that it's unwieldy.For me, processing notes
also means adding new linksand trying to situate the new notesinto the rest of my vault.So also establishing
some sort of hierarchy

or relationship is what
I do in this last part.One way I like to do thatis by using the Backlinks core plug-in.And you can enable it or
make sure that it's enabledby going to Core plug-insand then and then toggling this over.Backlinks shows you linked
and unlinked mentionsof this page that you've got open.So if I click on this one,then I can render the mark downand see those notes more clearly.And these are all notes where I've linkedto performance testing explicitly.

But there's also an unlinked mentions partwhere Obsidian shows other noteswhere I might have mentioned
the words performance testingbut I didn't explicitly link to it.Looking through these
backlinks helps me determinewhether there are other notes in my vaultthat I need to update based
on the new informationthat I've just learned.Another plug-in that I've been
messing around with latelyis the Strange New
Worlds community plug-in.You might have been wondering
why I have these numbers

next to some of the linksand that's the Strange New Worlds plug-in.The number next to the link
is how many other notes I havein my vault that are pointing to this one.This is the same as using
the Backlinks core plug-in.But with the Strange New Worlds plug-in,I can also see this in a hover windowand it's just a little easier
to more casually do this.When I use Backlinks,
I'm only seeing backlinksfor the page that I've got openwhich is performance testing.

But with the Strange New Worlds plug-inI have that for every link in this page,so it's a lot easier to deal with.If I click on the number,then it opens up the
Strange New Worlds tabon the right side pane here,which is just a little easier
if I want to keep this open.Another difference in this plug-infrom the Backlinks plug-in
is that if I then goto some other page like Scalability,the Backlinks would've changed.So now in link mentions it's showing pages

that link to Scalabilitybecause that's what I've got up right now.But the Strange New Worlds plug-inis still showing that one
that I specifically opened up.This helps me figure outwhat maybe I need to flesh
out a little bit more,like why is it that I
have 12 for Scalabilitybut only five for Latency
even though I put load testingin that bucket, which has 130 mentions.So by looking at these numbers,sometimes it gives me an idea
of what I need to research

or what I need to just
spend some time writing.It also gives me an idea of relationshipsthat I need to set.I do that using the Excalibrain plug-in.In case you had noticed
on the side pane here,I do always have Excalibrain up.It's always open on
this little side windowand I can scroll into it anytime I want.I made a whole video on Excalibrain,so I won't go too much into detail here.But suffice it to say that I use itto define explicit and
implicit relationships

between my notes.I haven't quite done
this for all of my notesbut since I'm here, I'm going
to do this for this note.(soft ringing)So I've just shown you
some of the plug-insthat I use for processing my notes,namely to paraphrase and summarize them,to add new notes and also
update existing ones,and then to create links and
hierarchies between my notes.But I don't do all of these things

or use all of these plug-insfor every single note that comes my way.It really just depends on
what I'm going to use it for.Usually, I'll pick whatever
makes sense at the timeand then I will try to already
create something out of it.Now, that might be as simpleas just using Obsidian
Publish to publish my notes.If you like to check those
out, they're over herejust so you can get an idea of
what kind of notes I create.Some of them are really
not fully formed at all

but I like to publish
them and learn in public.I also like to use microblogging siteslike Mastodon and also Twitter
to just kind of test ideasand then listen to the feedback
that I get from people,if they like it, if they
agree or disagree with it,and then tailor my approach to that.I'll talk to people and see
what their reactions are like.And as I go through the
content creation process,I also like to try it
out in different formats.

So I might do it, you
know, as a blog post.And if that still gets tractionthen I might try it as a
video or as a presentationat a conference.I think it's futile to try to come upwith strict rules and
steps for processing notesthat might even require you
to learn new terminologyjust to be able to implement them.Instead, I encourage you to experimentwith the many options that I showed hereand then just choose one or a few of themdepending on what makes
sense to you at the time.Instead of worrying
about making that process

absolutely consistent
and treating your notesexactly the same way, I would worryabout what you need to doto make those notes actually useful.To put it bluntly,
fixating on methodologieswithout putting them into practiceis not much better than
intellectual masturbation.Useful at the timebut in the long term, insufficient.Thanks for watching.(Dutch) Thanks for watching,
and have a good weekend!