Taking Notes for Work With Obsidian

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of getting jobs that I wasn't
qualified for at the time.And in this talk,I'm going to try to
show you how I did that.See, the problem with any new industry,but especially in tech,is that when you're getting into itthere's just so much to learn.Tech in particular just moves so quicklythat it's impossible to
really fully catch upin every aspect of it.So as a new person,you might lookat these two different
microservices-based architectures

from Amazon and Netflix and
not even know where to begin.Honestly, even for those
of us who have been aroundin the industry for a while,
this is still pretty dauntingbecause there's just a lot
of potential starting pointsand it can be really difficultwhen something is disjointed like thisto understand the system
as a wider picture.So this is a problemthat's going to be in tech
for our entire careers,but it turns outthat there's already a solution to it.

And it's a solution that
we somehow knew aboutwhen we were in school
but somehow forgot about.And that's just taking notes.The problem with our notes from schoolor the way that we take notes in schoolis that they never really evolvedbeyond just writing things
down in the first place.That's probably what most of you thinkof when you think of taking notes.However, that's just
one step of the process.

In order to build a
robust note-taking systemyou really have to go beyond
just writing notes downor writing down what the teacher said.This is the old way of taking notes.These are my personal notesfrom my university calculus subject,and they might look a bit funny now,but at the time I actually
thought that we were pretty good.Like all my classmates
wanted to photocopy my notesbecause they were pretty
good for that time.

However, here are the problems
that I noticed with it.First, my notes were separated by topic.This was only for my calculus notes.I had a different notebook or
at least a different sectionin a notebook for every
subject that I had that year.And there was never any mixing or matchingor linking between those subjectseven if they could have been
a little bit more similar.So for example, I had literatureand I also had composition,

two things that were English related,but I still kept them
in separate notebooks.Same thing with calculus and algebra.They were also static.These notes,and probably that's
because they were analog,never changed.I never went back and added
things or adjusted things.As I learned morethey were kind of just
like a one and done thing.I wrote them and then I just
go forward onto the notebook.

They were also contextual.Now that's not necessarily a bad thingbut the fact that they
were only contextualand that particular context
was honestly not to learn.The context was I wanted to pass the examat the end of the semester.And all of my notesand what I chose to even
write down in the first placewere based around that goalthat I wanted to be ableto get a passing grade.That meant that they're also temporary.

I wrote them and never went back.So after the end of the semesterafter I did eventually pass the exam,I never added to those notesand kind of really forgot about them.Even when I tooklike future more advanced
levels of calculus,I never went back to the basics.It was kind of like
something that I wrote onceand then never looked at again.So how could we improve from the old way?

Because clearly that didn't work,because I never went backto my calculus notes and they
were never useful for me,despite the fact that I
spent so much time on them.Ideally, I would find a way
to make those relevant now.So here is the new way of taking notes.Now, the new way is much more akinto how our brains actually
process information.For starters, everything
is interconnected.Just like in our brainswe don't have kind of single ideas

that are just floating aroundthat aren't linked to anything else.Notes should also be
connected to each other.They should have linkages to
say what ideas are similarand even what ideas are dissimilaror are opposing in some way.The new way of taking notes
should be constantly evolving.In fact, we should never thinkof notes as a snapshot in time.They should be an entire evolution,

a life cycle that moves with you.As our knowledge changes
and we learn new thingsin our respective careers,we should also be updating our notesto reflect that evolution.New notes are also both
abstracted and contextual.So contextual meaning they are relevantto you in a particular point in time.But also as you take more notes,ideally you would start to
see the patterns and models.And once you have those abstracted ideas,

then you're kind of creatingdifferent levels of abstraction,and having that meansthat you can apply
greater, grander conceptsto other situations.And lastly, new notes are future proof.Now, part of this does
have something to dowith the shift from analog to digital.Digital notes are more searchable,they're more long lastingthat you can back them up,and they're easier to share.

But they should also not be so advancednot so cutting edge that we're going to,as an industry,move on from whatever
medium and format you chosein a few years.So you have to strike
the right balance there.Now, if this is sounding
a little bit familiar,well, actually taking notesis a lot like building
or testing software.when you think about it.Luckily that's somethingthat we happen to know
a thing or two about.

So this is something that
you may or may not have seen.This is the CICD kind of infinity loop.CICD stands for continuous
integration, continuous delivery.Sometimes it's called
continuous improvement.Now the idea is that when you startwith a new project cycle,you plan what you're going to release,then you build it,and then you test it.You deploy it into production,you listen for feedback,and then incorporate that feedback

into your planning for future features.Now, this model holds up pretty well.It kind of strikes the right balancebetween speed and responsivenessto what people actually want.Now, what if we could actually apply thisto note taking as well?Well then we'd have something
like continuous note taking.Now what would that look like?It would look like notes
where we read somethingor talk to a colleague
or learn about something,

process what we've learned,and have different levels
of abstraction, perhaps,so that it's rooted in
context and also abstracted.Then we write about it,we share it with other colleagues,and put it out into the world.We listen for that feedback
of what we misunderstoodor what we got right,and then we incorporate
that back into the cycleand let it inform what
we're going to learnor write about next.

This idea of continuous
note taking is the new way.It is a very different wayfrom the note takingthat you knew of,that we knew of when we
were all taking notesin high school or grade school.So that's where we get into Obsidian.I'm not at all affiliated with Obsidian.I'm just a rabid fan of it.Obsidian is a second brain,but it is, I like to think of itas a note taking app,but less like Google Docsand more like your own personal Wikipedia.

The problem with Google
Docs is you write a docand then you send it to people,but then they have to
keep track of those links.So like then you just have to gointo Google Docs if you're
looking for somethingand then search for it
and it's all disjointedand there's no like central repositorywhere other peoplecan see everything you've
ever shared with them.And it's just a little bit difficult.Wikipedia on the other
hand, is nice and organizedand yet you can still follow the threads

of different linksto get to what you want and
the search is also way better.So Obsidian is an extensible
knowledge base app.It is a free one so you can download it.It is not open source,although it is really easy to inspectbecause it is based on Electron.It is not SaaS.It is not a SaaS platform.In fact, it's local only.You can do whatever you
want with your notes

and you have complete
ownership of your notes.And all of those notes are
saved in marked on files.So just plain text files
and you could do themas you wish.So you could still back them upto some other cloud syncing service.Now, one of the cool things about Obsidianis that it is also highly customizableand highly extensible.In addition to some core pluginsthat come with Obsidian that
you can enable and disable,there's also a very rich third
party development ecosystem

for these plugins.And some of those plugins are onesthat I would never use Obsidian without.So let's get into a demoof what Obsidian looks like
and how to get started.Obsidian is availableon a variety of platforms,
mobile and desktop.So I'm using it on Mac Os now.And I'm gonna show you
how to create a new vault.So I'm gonna create a vault here,and I'm gonna call it Eurostar.And then I'm going to look for a location.

I'm just going to click
that one and click Create.And this is going to open
up a window of Obsidian.This is what it looks like.There's a side panel here.There's what's called an editor hereand there's also another
side panel on the right here.Now, when you create a vault in Obsidian,a vault is just a folder
on your file system.So if you go into Finder where I put that,now there is a folder called Eurostar

and there is something
that's untitled therebecause I haven't done anything with it.So I do have a folder here,
but let us create a new notein that folder and let's call it Testing.So let's type something here."Software testing is awesome."Now, when you go back into
Finder on your file system,you'll see that there's a
markdown file called Testing.So I'm showing you this to explainthat while there's stuff
that's happening in Obsidian,

it's actually just using
your local file systemunder the hood.So there's nothing magical about it,which means that you can just openthis vault in any text editor.So again, it is future proof.You don't need Obsidian
to continue to have accessto your notes.You can then rename this
and say Awesome notes.And then you can also do thingslike open today's daily
note here on the icon here.

If I click that, that's
going to create a new notethat is timestamped to today.And what I like to do
in how I would suggestthat you use Obsidian is
start with a daily note.Just create a new daily note every dayand then just freehand
it so you can write downwhat happened during that dayor meetings that you have during that day.I'm going to add something like,"Today I presented at Eurostar 2023."

And as you might notice,
I'm using brackets.I'm putting two brackets
around Eurostar 2023and that's making it a link.So I'm going to click on that linkand now it's created a new
note called Eurostar 2023.So, "At Eurostar I talked
about software testing."Or let's say "testing"'cause we already have a note on that.

Now if we go here on the right,I've opened up the side
panel here to show youthat there is a linked
mention section where it says"Today, I presented at Eurostar 2023."Wait, that's not what this note is.So it's actually showing us other notesthat are linking to this note.So it's saying that,"Hey, on this daily noteyou actually link to Eurostar 2023."Now the problem is

that now you might thinkthat you have to create a link every timethat you create a note or if you thinkthat you're going to create
a note in the future,maybe you should link it the
first time that you type it,but that's actually not true.So we are looking at a link
here from the daily note.So let's go back into that.Now I'm gonna show you what it looks like,if I remove the link.So I just typed it as normal.Now, if we go to Eurostar 2023,I can go and see that there
are no more linked mentions

because I've removed the link.However, there's still
an unlinked mention.That's because Obsidian
does this awesome thingwhere it doesn't expect you
to create explicit links.It recognizes the implicit links.So, it's enough that you have
a note called Eurostar 2023,and it'll show you all of the instancesin your entire vault where
you've said "Eurostar 2023."Alright, so I'll, I'm
gonna go back and link it

because there is still a
cool thing that happenswhen you do make explicit links
and it's called graph view.All of these things come in
Obsidian by default, by the way.So when I open the graph view,now it has this cool little
graphical representationof the notes that you've created.So you can hover over them
and look at them individually.So if I hover over the daily note,the Testing note is kind of
faded into the background

and that's because I'm lookingat one particular link right now.And then I can also click on anyof them to go to that note in particular.So that's a little overview
of how Obsidian works.Hopefully, you seethat it is very different
from Google Docs,and links are an essential
part of using Obsidian.So let's get back to the presentationand let's talk about different waysthat you can use Obsidian.One of the ways is logging.So now I've shown you how to
start with Obsidian, right?

But rather than build it up for you,which would take a really long time,I'm actually going to show
you what I already have.So we're going into my own personal vault.So this is an example
of a note that I havethat I created while I
was testing something.I was actually trying to learn something.So you can think of this
as a dev or a test log.So, I'm talking about the
different tests that I created.Everything in Obsidian is Markdown.So this is a Markdown table,

and then it is rendering
everything by defaultso that when I move my cursor out of it,it's rendering the table already.So you can see that I've written downthe different runs that I had,and for each one I was running load tests,and I was kind of tracking
the number of viewsa description and a bunch of metrics.And there's even a linkto k6 and the Grafana
dashboards for those tests.And this is how I like
to use Obsidian a lot

when I'm trying to figure something out.You know, it doesn't have
to be anything polished.These are my notes.So this is just a recordof how I use Obsidian,
of how I'm learning.And this is a code block,which is delineated by these back ticks.And I can copy and paste that elsewhere.I put links in there.And then in this one I
was trying to figure outhow to install Grafana on Kubernetes.So this is a record of
everything that I tried.

And I timestamped some thingsto using the markdown syntax for headings.So this is how I use Obsidian for logging.Another use case for it is learning.So after all of this,
I did eventually learnhow I should install
Grafana on Kubernetes.And then I started to create
kind of like a parent noteand this is what that looks like

and this is where I distilled
my learnings from this log.And this one is much more polished.I'm saying, "No, these
are the exact steps."You know, I left out all the timeswhere I kind of meandered,and then I went through.And now if I ever have to do this again,I can refer to my own notes about it.I don't have to go to stack
overflow, which is excellent.This is just going a
bit more quickly here.This is one where I am
looking at the k6 tool.

I work on the k6 team at Grafana.So I have a lot of notes about k6,and each one of these has like maybein some cases some content
that I've created on it.And they aren't supposed
to be a replacementfor the k6x documentation.This is more like a shorthand,a curated selection of topicsthat I refer to again and again.And this is all related to me,
all related to my knowledge.

So it is different from
just a documentationthat somebody else
created that you might nothave gotten a chance to look into.Every part, every note in this
is something that I created.And I've done the same
for things like, you knowhow to learn git, which is
something that every developeror tester is going to come across.And I do it with programming
languages as well.So here's how to do stuff in Python.Again, this is still based

on what I need to know about Python.I'm probably not going to be
creating a Python based appand deploying it from scratchbut I do need to know how to
do some things to do my job.So that's how I use it for learning.I also use Obsidian
for learning in public.Now, it's kind of similar
to the previous onebut I've already shownthat I create content based on the notes,that I have in Obsidian.

And being able to start from somethingfrom the notes that I already haverather than like starting from nothingis a very, very big
part about why Obsidianis so useful for me.I also use it to create
presentations like this one.I'm gonna go through all
of these in in a second,but I also use it to collaborate
on GitHub with my team.I publish almost all of my notes,so that I can share
them with other people,

and that includes a change
log of what I'm working on.So let's get into these.So I, on top of doing videos
for Grafana Labs and k6,and doing presentations
and writing blog posts,I also have a separate
YouTube channel personallywhere I have 30,000 subscribersand I talk about taking notes actually.And so I use Obsidian directlyto both create a content calendarand generate content

based on the notes that I already have.In terms of presentations like this one,oh, this is not wrapping quite wellbut, actually, I can show
you that this presentationthat I'm giving you is
written in Obsidian as well.So there is a plugin for
Obsidian that lets mejust create presentations in
markdown, just like notes.So presentation is just a
note formatted differently.So these are all of the slides,

which is independently publishable.And when I change one thing here,I change the presentation as well.And then in GitHub,because Obsidian is just a
folder with markdown files,and on my team on k6,we hold our documentation
in a GitHub repository,that means that I can just use Obsidianto actually open the
GitHub repo as a folder,which means that I can writeand contribute to
documentation within Obsidian

with all of the supercharged
linking capabilitieswithout other people
even knowing necessarilythat I use Obsidian.So it's really useful for that.I'm kind of using it like an IDE.I also publish all of my notes online.Well, not all of my notes,
most of my notes online.And this is using a service,a paid service, called Obsidian Publish.But I think there are lots
of different ways to do this.You could use a site generator like Hugo

to do the same thing with markdown files,but this is another waythat I'm putting things out thereand seeing what other
people are going to say.So all of the things
that I was showing youwith Git and Python and k6,they're all available on my public notes.That includes a change log.So I also keep track of new
things that I've written about.And so you can look at my change logas kind of a sneak peek into
what I'm thinking about,

what I've changed.This is the idea that our notesshould be constantly evolving,and you can see the change logs,the last 500 notes that I've worked on.So here are some of the advantagesof continuous note taking.First, you learn faster.I think that I sometimes
get into this frame of mindwhere I love to take notes.So I just take notesfor the sake of taking notes.But actually taking notes
also helps you learn.

It's a lot.It's kind of like that thingwhere you always learn,a test of learning is when you can explainand express something to somebody else.Taking notes is kind of like that,except the person that
you're explaining tois the future you,the future you that probably
doesn't remember anythingthat that you're working on now.Another thing is that iterativeand incremental work accrue over time.So you might think that

if you zoom in on the
individual note basis,you might think that you're
not getting anywhere,but several thousand notes later,and I think I'm up to
10,000 now in my main vault,then you start to see patterns,and you start to see a body of knowledgerather than just an
individual instance or idea.You also never start from nothing.The fact that I have so
many notes at my disposalmeans that at any point I
can go into my Obsidian notes

and look for let's say
performance testing,and I can open that upand I can see things that
I've written on the subject.And all of these links are linksto notes that exist in my vault.So if I wanted to write something
about performance testing,there's a lot to pick from.So I'm never just looking
at a blank screen.I'm looking at what do I
have already in my notesthat I can kind of massage
and tweak or rearrange.

And the other thing isthat by learning in public,
you create learning exhaust.Learning exhaust are the byproductsof learning and especially
learning in public.So they are things like being
able to publish your notes.Learning exhaust is super usefulbecause it quantifies what
you've been working on,and not in a way where you feel likeyou have to write a blog postand it has to be super
polished and edited.Learning exhaust is just
putting things out thereand not worrying if you've
gotten a few things wrong.

Just to wrap up, I said in the
beginning that I have a habitof getting hired for things
that I'm not qualified in.Now you may be thinking by nowthat that isn't exactly
true, and you're right.I was qualified for those jobs,just not in a way that was
immediately demonstrableuntil I started taking notes.See, I learned most of the
things that I know online,either on my own or through
interactions with other people.

Grafana Labs is a
completely remote company.So all of my interactions
are on the internet.That's really great for personal
learning and developmentbut it is also really difficult
when you work like thatto communicate what you're capable ofto a future or potential employer.Taking notes is my way around that.This is actually the graph viewfor my personal Obsidian vault.

So every dot, every node in this graphis a note that exists in my vault.It's an idea and one that I've fleshed outin my own words based on my own learningsand my own experience,written for the future methat might no longer remember
what I was working on.Every line here between
the nodes is a linkwhere every ideain my vault has been tested
against different ideasto see like, is it related to this?

Is this an example of another idea?Is this an application of it?Is this a concept that
another idea is at odds with?And having this kind of second brain,because it really looks
like a brain right now,is what has enabled me to nail downand give to my employers an
idea of what I'm capable of.So taking notes is really something

that's going to help you
in your entire career.First, it helps you
learn in the first place.It helps you create a
record of where you've beenand what you've done and what
you've been thinking about.And it helps other employers,
future potential employers,understand what you're
actually capable of.If I could start my career over,I would take notes like this,in the continuous note taking sense,a lot earlier.

And maybe I would've gotten
to where I am faster.So thank you all for listening.I have a few links down here.If you go to my site,
nicolevanderhoeven.com,and look at the first,
at the latest blog post,I also have a link to these slides there,so you don't have to take notes,or at least you can take notesin your own time as you go through it.I'm also happy to take any questionsabout Obsidian or note taking

or any sort of knowledge
management topic for tech.Thanks for watching and for listening.