Notes revamp

I don’t know exactly when this happened, but I have this weird obsession with writing things down. Perhaps it started when I began working in IT. On a nearly daily basis I’d run into some type of issue and, obviously as part of my job, would need to figure out how to fix it. So I’d spend a few hours researching and trying different things out. After a while I’d stumble onto the magic formula and would be able to solve the problem. I’d then move onto the next issue and do the same thing (research-test-fix).

Then a month or two later an issue would surface, but this one would seem vaguely familiar. However, because there was this deluge of so many different issues/technologies to deal with I usually couldn’t recall the details. So I’d spend a few hours working on the fix and as I was wrapping things up I’d remember that, yeah, we did have this exact same problem two months ago and I fixed it the same way. Or, the more frustrating example would surface where I’d come across a problem I knew we had fixed before, but for the life of me couldn’t remember how. So again I’d waste a bunch of time and effort to fix a problem I had already solved. I hated everything about that. The feeling I’d have when I knew I knew something, but just couldn’t remember the details. And, of course, the feeling of wasting so much time and effort on already-solved problems.

Consequently, I got in the habit of writing down how I did everything. How I built systems from scratch. How I installed and upgraded hardware. Installed and upgraded software. Fixed bugs and resolved failures. Everything. And not just work stuff – I also documented and kept notes on most things in my life. I first started using Word docs and when I figured out that was a bust, transitioned to plain text files. I then got sick of managing all of those and moved to Evernote. Documentation systems finally caught up with the times and we started putting all of our stuff online in various wiki-type systems. But I still had a bunch of personal notes/information that I needed to maintain.

Evernote became expensive so I moved out of that and into Bear, which I’ve been on for the last 6-7 years. I generally don’t have any written document outside of that system – if it needs to be written down, I put it in Bear. It’s been a great piece of software and is reasonably priced. But I still feel like my information is locked up in a system and I don’t have full control over it. You can export your notes in various formats so it’s not that bad. But, there were some other features I was interested in (e.g., linking notes) so I started looking for alternatives and landed on Obsidian.

Obsidian’s killer feature (for me) is that it’s more like a notes IDE than a traditional notes application. Specifically, all your notes are just text files (in Markdown format) in your filesystem. So if Obsidian goes out of business you aren’t screwed because your notes are locked up in some proprietary format. They’re just text files on your computer (or in a cloud service), which should work as long as computers exist. There are a bunch of other neat features (e.g., links, tags, community plugins, YAML metadata, a very active community) that make it a compelling piece of software for your notes. It’s a little frightening how robust the software is and how “intense” some folks are with designing their “Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)” systems. I’m looking to make use of some of the PKM stuff, but I’m just starting to dig into it so we’ll see. Hopefully I’ll get my system set up so I can write more about it in the future. It’s kinda nerdy, but if the shoe fits, I guess.