Give Me 15 Minutes. I'll Teach You 80% of Obsidian

There are three main things that if you

care about them make picking Obsidian

over other note-taking apps a great

idea. First, if you want near zero

friction to capture your own ideas.

Second, if you value connecting those

ideas using links and back links. And

third, if you want to improve your

thinking, learning, and writing while

using an offline local first format you

can take with you anywhere instead of

being stuck in one app or format. If

that's you, I'm about to share the

essential 80% of all those features in

Obsidian and how you can use them to get

the most out of Obsidian in the shortest

time. Let's start with what Obsidian

actually is, which is just a vault, a

folder of notes on your computer. Here

it is right here on my desktop. It's

that simple. Inside this folder, your

notes are just individual text files.

These files are in a futurep proof

format called Markdown. Open those files

in Obsidian and they look like this. But

you can also open them in any other app

that reads markdown. Here's the same

note in text edit in VS Code, Ulyses,

IIA Rider. So even if Obsidian

disappears, as long as there are

computers, you'll have a way to open

your notes because at the end of the

day, Obsidian is just looking at a

folder with notes on your computer. You

own your data. But if you want to sync

Obsidian across devices, there are ways

to sync your vaults. You just connect

Obsidian with any cloud storage service

like Dropbox or Obsidian Sync, which is

one of Obsidian's few paid official

services, allowing you endtoend

encryption and version history of all

your vaults. Obsidian is so secure that

no one on their sevenperson team even

knows how many people have installed the

app. Though their CEO estimates that

it's between 5 to 10 million.

So, how does Obsidian work? Once you

open Obsidian and create your first

vault, you'll be here. Now, over on the

left, here's a list of all the notes in

your vault. Create a new note here. It's

called Untitled. Let's go ahead and

throw it in the folder. We can go ahead

and create a new folder here. If we want

to sort, we can click this and sort by

file name or modified time or many

others. If you lose where the current

open note is in the sidebar, go ahead

and click this and it will autoreveal

the current file. And this button

expands and collapses your folders. You

go a little bit higher. Here's the

search button where you can search

across your entire vault of notes. If

you click over here, there are bookmarks

where we can bookmark different files

that are important to us. or click back

here and we're back to the file folder

structure. And then click on a note to

see it in the right. You can

commandclick or control-click on Mac or

Windows to open notes in new tabs. Once

open, you can click and drag a tab and

move it anywhere into different panels

for your unique type of multitasking.

Obsidian has a crazy amount of plugins

and themes, folders, and metadata that

you can add to your notes. It can be as

simple as a note like this with a couple

sentences and a couple links or

something as complex as this with tons

of property, images, embeds, and

personal details. There's a steep

learning curve if you try to do

everything at once. So, let's start by

making the simplest possible collection

of notes. So, let's go ahead and create

a new note and let's say do things the

right way. Then I can tab and start

typing. Now already you can see a new

dot, a new node in our idea verse in the

graph view on the right. Now let's add

some content. Now the beauty of Obsidian

is you can create and connect notes at

the same time. We'll think of something

this reminds us of. So do things the

right way. This reminds me of

believe things better than you found

them. Nice. And how we link in the first

place is we hit the left bracket twice

and then we start typing. How about a

new one? Family phrases to live by. And

for me, I'll now hit the right bracket

twice and then period. And over on the

right, we can see in the graph view, do

things the right way, connecting to the

two new placeholder notes. But what's

wild is these notes, even though they're

not created, will still show up in any

type of search that you do. But if you

do want to make it a new note, let's go

ahead and commandclick on it on Mac.

That would be a controlclick on Windows.

And boom, now it's its new note. If we

look at the graph view now, we can see

it's a darker dot. it's been created as

opposed to the family phrases idea which

has not been created into a note yet. By

the way, if you close this graph view,

which is a tab over here, rightclick,

hit close, you can always reopen it with

a little ribbon button here. So, we can

reopen the graph view and now we see it

in all its glory. You can adjust all

sorts of graph variables, especially as

your graph grows to this. This is idea

verse pro. There are links below if you

want to learn more about it cuz here you

can see all sorts of surprising

connections. Not all those who wander

are lost. We can learn from nerdy

discussions on maps of content,

evergreen notes or things or statements

about things. And we're off to the

races. Who knows where this will lead?

You can jump into any note and simply

highlight some text and then hit the

left bracket twice. When you do that,

you'll notice the new dot has appeared

on the graph view. to see all mentions

of a linked note. In the bottom right,

there are back links to the active note.

You can go ahead and collapse linked

mentions. So, you can see all those. You

can expand to see exactly what it says

as it links to the active note. Speaking

of links, before we go further, there's

a few crucial settings that will save

you massive headaches down the road.

Open settings. Go to files and links and

turn on automatically update internal

links. Now, here's why this is

important. If you rename a note to a new

note name and then click away, do see

that notification updated links in two

files. With this setting, the links

updated automatically to point to the

renamed note. Without this setting,

renames will break links and you might

end up with a bunch of broken

connections. Let's change some other

quick settings. So, if you click over

here, we can now change the default

folder for attachments to a new folder

for attachments. This is really

important to avoid cluttering up the

sidebar whenever you want to add a new

image or other documents to a note.

While we're fiddling with settings, I

want to recommend changing your theme to

know how to do it. So, just click

appearances, then manage under themes,

and select Anapuchin. A nu. There it is.

Install. Now, this is a very popular

theme that acts as a base for the soft

paper theme that I recommend for

Obsidian. Check out this video next for

all those details, which I'll speed

through right now to get us all the soft

papery goodness.

Next, some quick gotchas and mistakes

that trip people up with Obsidian. The

first gotcha, don't import everything

from your old notes app. I see people do

this all the time. They dump thousands

of other old notes into Obsidian and

then they wonder why they can't find

anything. Start fresh. Link your own

thoughts. Don't drown in old clutter.

Second, keep it simple with plugins.

Avoid starting with things like advanced

tables, canban boards, data view

dashboards, and a lot more. I know it's

incredibly tempting, but don't chase

plugins on day one. I'll link a video on

essential plugins below if you want to

peak, but focus on linking first. Third,

don't overfolder your ideas or knowledge

notes. Structure must be earned. We'll

get into all that in a second and the

level of structure that I do recommend,

but when you're dealing with ideas and

knowledge, categories get so fuzzy and

ambiguous that standard hierarchies

become brittle. Keep things in big

buckets until patterns naturally show

up. Finally, don't put off learning

hotkeys. The faster you can do work in

Obsidian, the more you'll enjoy it.

Speaking of, let's talk about how to

make our notemaking faster. First, you

can do everything with your mouse if you

want by right-clicking and selecting

formatting. But trust me, you want to

learn to use hotkeys. Here are a few

essentials. Now, I'm going to be saying

command and option for Mac. So, think

control and alt if you're on Windows.

CommandB to bold. Command I to it

atalicize. Add the pound symbols at the

beginning of a line to create headings

of different sizes. Surround text with

two tildas to strike through and two

equal signs to highlight. A greater than

sign will create a quote block. A dash

will create a bullet list. Numbers

create numbered lists. Dashes plus

brackets start a checklist and three

lines on an empty line will create a

divider. One back tick for inline code

and three ticks for a code block. Again,

link to notes with double brackets or

you can link to an external site. To do

that, put the link text here and the

link in parenthesis. Command option left

or right keys will navigate back or

forward instead of clicking the icons

here.

Command F to find text on the page.

Command T will open a new tab. Command W

closes it. And if you add an exclamation

point before a link to another note, you

can embed that entire note inside

another. And adding an exclamation point

before an external link will display an

image if it is one. Finally, command P

will open the command pallet where

you'll find reminders of these shortcuts

as well as many more advanced shortcuts.

Combine these tips and you can create

beautiful notes in Obsidian.

So, can we get around Obsidian and

organize these beautiful notes

effectively? Yes. Command O opens the

quick switcher to find or open a note

fast. But the standard way to navigate

is through your sidebar. As you make

notes, they'll populate here. So, if you

want to organize things more, create

folders in the left sidebar and put your

notes into them. Don't just do this

making folders with random topics

because if you do this long enough,

you'll realize it's pretty hard to find

your notes or remember where they are.

That's because a lot of notes can exist

in five or 10 different folders. So,

there's all sorts of decision fatigue

just to place a single note. So, what I

suggest is building a folder structure

only as it deserves it and making the

biggest picture folder categories

possible. You can then use your quick

switcher links between notes and even

the graph view to get a better sense of

where notes live. Over time, you can

create a more sophisticated structure.

Now, I've built a free template called

Ideverse, which you can get by scanning

here that can get you started building a

solid foundation. But hey, right now,

let's walk through the basics. Ace AC

atlas is for your timeless ideas and

knowledge. Calendar is for your

timebased notes like a journal or a

daily note. Efforts are for timebound

things, things you're working on,

projects, tasks, anything productivity

oriented. This is a great simple way to

organize your vault and then create

subfolders under each as necessary. Some

other ways to organize your notes

include bookmarking by hitting the three

buttons and seeing it in the drop down

or hit command P and pull up the

bookmark command. You can tag notes by

using the pound key to bundle and filter

by types of notes wherever they are in

Obsidian. More often than not, I

recommend instead of tags, creating maps

of content. These are notes that

organize and link other notes together

by topic or theme and create really

strong connective hubs in your graph

view. And if you're capturing quick

thoughts in Obsidian, creating a daily

note structure in the calendar section

of your folders is a great way to

capture daily thoughts on the fly and

then link out to the rest of your idea

verse as needed. Okay, let's talk

Obsidian's different note formats.

Standard notes in Obsidian are textbased

markdown files, but you can add in all

sorts of things. First, you can embed

images directly into your notes. Just

drag and drop an image file right there.

You can attach PDFs, audio recordings,

and a bunch of other documents. You can

turn on the audio recorder core plugin

for quick voice memos or embed YouTube

videos and even tweets. Tables are easy

to build by hitting command P, typing

table, which will give you insert table,

then hit enter. or try the templates

core plug-in which lets you create and

repurpose notes in reusable formats. To

get even more sophisticated organizing

and filtering notes in your idea verse,

you can add properties to notes like

created date, checkboxes, links, text,

numbers, all this to your notes without

cluttering the content. Just hit command

semicolon to add a new property. Then

set up as many as you like. Air

properties with Obsidian's basis feature

to create really cool organizational

formats that can be sorted and updated

by note type or visualize your notes

with Obsidian's canvas, a virtual

whiteboard to drag in notes, images, or

new cards for brainstorming. By the way,

more details on setting up bases or

canvas in the links below. Finally,

let's talk about how Obsidian does AI,

which is easy enough since Obsidian

doesn't have AI. Instead, you get to

decide how much AI and what ways it

integrates. Pick based on how private

you need your data to be and how much

you're willing to do to preserve that

privacy. Right now, I'm using Claude, an

AI that allows me to do things like ask

questions, and talk to my notes, do deep

research, and instantly populate

properties in Obsidian. I always back up

my notes first before trying anything

new with AI. And I create a separation

between my idea verse, my original

thinking and any AI generated notes so

that Obsidian stays a sacred space for

my notemaking. If you want to set up my

note-taking system, try my free idea

verse by scanning here. Once you do, you

can get a step-by-step guide to set up

your own vault in Obsidian in minutes.

And check out this video next for how to

install my favorite Obsidian theme, the

one you've seen throughout most of this

video. Thanks for watching and happy

notemaking in Obsidian.