![]() ![]() Time to take a look at this workflow in its entirety, hoping to be an inspiration to others. Obsidian was the missing piece for an integrated workflow based on Markdown that covers everything from reading other people’s text, extracting knowledge, thinking about it, and finally writing new papers. Three quarters of a year later, I’m sitting here writing these lines in Obsidian. No locked silos, no proprietary file formats. So I would still be able to write everything in Markdown files and ultimately text files that other apps could use. All local, no subscription fees, potentially extensible through plugins. Obsidian promised to take some principles of Roam Research (backlinks, knowledge graph) and combine them with Markdown files. So my interest was all the greater when I first heard about Obsidian. I had not issued the strategy to put Markdown files in the center of my work for nothing. A no-go for me, not only, but also for privacy reasons. Roam is only available in the browser and my notes are on Roam servers. However, I was also bothered by a few aspects. Suddenly it was possible to link notes to each other simply via backlinks knitting knowledge networks without much effort. A bit more nerdy, but no less sustainable in the productivity bubble, Roam Research came on the scene. Notion made headlines and trended on YouTube. While note-taking apps have been a source of annoyance for many years (Looking at you, Evernote!), the topic really took off last year. However, the note-taking revolution, which is currently in full swing, proved to be even more drastic. The note taking revolution changes everything I sit in front of it for most of my workday, and the iPad now only has an (important) helper role. This year, things have fundamentally shifted in the direction of the Mac. And once I was home, it didn’t change that much, simply because I was used to working with the iPad. All this time I worked with my iPad Pro and various external keyboards. In contrast, in 2019 I commuted to my work location almost weekly and also spent about 6 weeks abroad. For one thing, I hardly ever work outside the home anymore – thanks to Corona. What is left of this system after one year? Not so little after all. ![]() I had also adopted the Zettelkasten, and with it a way to relate my notes to each other. ![]() At that time, I described why I had left Devonthink behind and how I had made the Markdown format, as well as apps that handle it well (most notably iA Writer), the center of my work. I’ve written two articles on this in the past, the first as a starting point, the second – about a year ago – as a reaction to my changed workflow. The question of how we acquire knowledge, process it, rethink it, and finally bring it back into the world in the form of our own texts is surely the most comprehensive and important task facing knowledge workers of all stripes. The focus is on the tools I use and on my workflow to get from an idea to a first paper draft. In this series of articles I would like to write about how I write papers, i.e. Articles that go into detail about a comprehensive problem and outline my proposed solution. And then there are pieces that I consider to be foundational. I write different types of articles on this blog: Reviews of hardware and software, workflow articles for specific apps, more general thoughts on (scientific) work, and little tips and tricks. Part 2: Collecting information and making use of it Part 1: Markdown, Zettelkasten, principles Included: Markdown, Notebox, Obsidian, Zotero and more… This series of articles shows how I write papers. Writing scientific papers involves many different tasks: Reading text, taking notes, organizing, filing, and retrieving knowledge, and of course, the writing itself. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |