DRAFT

My Digital Notebook
Obsidian
Zettlekasten
Notetaking
Organization

I want to share how I think and get things done. Over the years, I’ve developed this system for managing my time and knowledge. It’s grown naturally, starting from a single markdown file on my first day at my first job after grad school.

I’m writing this in a descriptive way. I don’t think it’s the single golden system that will work for everyone, but it does work for me. And every change I’ve made to it over the years has been in response to a need I had in my life.

Now, this system is quite mature and it’s still ever-changing. It’s most valuable trait is its adaptability.

Over the years I’ve developed a pretty significant system for managing my time and knowledge. That system is tuned to address some of my personal weak points and encourage creative productivity.

I’m always a fan of reading articles and watching videos about other people systems. Sometimes this is about stealing great ideas. Other times, it’s just fun to see how other people think. I would encourage readers to take this as a descriptive, not prescriptive model of organization. I’ve developed a system that works really well for me over several years. I don’t pretend to know the perfect system for every person.

If I were to give some general advice to those seeking to build their own productivity system, it’d be this: build a system that encourages self-reflection. A good system will reflect on its own successes and failures to continuously improve.

I’m actually quite skeptical of people who say they have developed the perfect productivity and knowledge management system because I believe the way people think is so distinct that the systems we build should reflect that. I do believe in theft.

Philosophy of the system

My Digital Notebook

Writing everything in markdown is super important to me. It means I can take the information with me wherever I go. The files are not tied to a specific vendor. They are plaintext so they work even without a markdown renderer. They are super easy to move around. Able to be managed by Git. I can grep through them.

Markdown has its shortcomings, but I am cool with them.

I have a “monorepo” approach to my notebook.

Obsidian

This notebook started as a daily log on July 22, 2018. This was my first day of work at Microsoft. My first job after grad school.

What lives outside of the Notebook?

As expansive as my digital notebook is,

Inspirations and Influences