Try it yourself
- Install Obsidian (free) and make one new folder for your notes.
- Move one list you use every week (from Trello, OneNote or a notes app) into a single note.
- Skip the setup guides. The first time something gets in your way, search for the answer or a community plugin that fixes it.
They say the best time to start using Obsidian as the substrate for your second brain was yesterday, and the next best time is today.
My Trello and OneNote use got replaced this month with Obsidian, plus Ollama to run LLMs locally using the Copilot extension.
Obsidian adoption is an ongoing side quest. If you’re among the converted, I’d love to hear what patterns work for you. Delightful set of eurek-AH! moments.
June 2026 edit: I should pass on the best advice I got on adopting Obsidian and .md, in case it helps. A colleague told me “just get started, don’t read dozens of articles, and whenever you experience friction, search for the answer or an Extension that helps.” This helped me immensely. I am using a PARA-adjacent format (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive) and adapting as I go. It helped me a ton to not feel like there was one perfect system I needed to adopt. An AI assistant in the root of my notes means that it can grow with me.
There’s a future article inbound about extracting information from your knowledge wikis, and considering the triggers that cause you to search (or get nudged by your AI assistants).
Sure it is cool to build a library, but even cooler if you benefit from it regularly.
p.s. The community around Obsidian is absolutely top shelf – my hat is off to all involved.