Ultimate Notetaking: My Neovim Zettelkasten Based on Obsidian - Complete Walkthrough

[@mischavandenburg]

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[@nschutten]

Thanks, I will have a look!

[@KeimpedeJong]

Awesome video, dankjewel. 2 suggestions, automatic links and tags, ai integration

[@Wynell]

Wow! I just finished watching your workflow video and went to see if you have a Zettelkasten one, and yep, you just uploaded it!

[@mischavandenburg]

More to come!

[@sintes4ek]

I had a few tries of making my own note system and faced some big issues that stopped me each time. Your video is full of useful concepts and tips. Honestly it's just great. I feel really inspired. Now I know what I need to do to make a convenient note taking system for myself. So, I really appreciate you.

[@mischavandenburg]

I'm so glad I could inspire you!

[@scirons]

That workflow is amazing! My main question is: How you managing your calendar and tasks, and integrating it with your ecosystem? That's the core reason I haven't migrated out of org yet.

[@StephenAllinson]

This is a great video. The hour flew by. I will be watching it again and taking notes! The bash script for day notes is going right into my daily flow. Thanks for sharing! This is years of information condensed into a single video.

[@mischavandenburg]

Thank you for your kind comment. Hopefully the script will help you! And you are right, this is indeed years worth of research and tinkering with my setup which is condensed in this video. I could easily have kept going for another couple of hours but I'm saving that for future videos!

[@devopstoolbox]

Hi Mischa! Loved the video! Fellow ops engineer here. I created content about pretty much the same topic recently and planning a workshop about it, I love it how watching someone else's content completely opens your eyes to new possibilities / workflow and other options. Great stuff! Thank you for this!

[@samarnagar9699]

hello omer how are you doing

[@devopstoolbox]

@@samarnagar9699 😂💪

[@mischavandenburg]

Hello! Nice to meet a fellow engineer and content creator! I had a quick peek at your video and it looks very promising, I will definitely check it out.

[@naimneman]

heya! Good to see you here man, love your content. I was about to ask @mischavandenburg a question but now I want to ask you both hahaha; *¿what kind of person is suitable/made for DevOps?* I'm studying CS in Argentina and switched to Linux about 2 years now, currently using EndeavourOS with Sway and looking for a job in the industry, but I don't know if I should focus on web development or something else. Anyways, loved your video @mischavandenburg! Hope to see more content like this in the future.

[@RobFieldingz]

You have inspired my journey into knowledge management. And to come back to vim with your neovim series. I keep coming back to dig deeper into each topics. Many thanks for your videos, and showcasing the level of integration you have achieved.

[@mischavandenburg]

Thank you for the kind feedback!

[@roofoo8053]

Brilliant. Detailed, well explained and I'm going to adopt this way for myself.

[@matthias3342]

Thanks a lot for the insight into your method. For a long time in my life I've got along without taking notes, keeping everything in my head. But I've been struggeling for some time now, since it has become overwhelming at some point. Your videos gave me the motivation to implement a similar system for myself and provide some very usefull information on how to start. Cheers from Germany.

[@ripper5941]

This video was very well organised and formatted to precisely communicate the ideas with a clear structure.

[@krzysztofkaminski6474]

Perfect combination of vim and Obsidian. Great video and examples. Found few nuggets to incorporate into my workflow.

[@mischavandenburg]

Glad it was helpful!

[@wavedepletion]

Thanks for this! I've been working on my own neovim-based notes system for years before discovering Zettelkasten etc., and it's been fun integrating a few of these ideas into my own project. Really helpful to see how someone else has been doing it. Wrote my own zet script to drop quick ideas into an Inbox/scratch folder while watching this.

[@mischavandenburg]

Excellent!

[@nschutten]

Excellent, inspirational and instructive video! I normally stay away from videos that are longer than 30min, but I am really happy I watched yours. I have learned a lot from your insights and workflow and will be sure to use (some of) it in my daily life.

[@azcii5223]

Thanks for sharing! Are right now in the process of changing my whole working environment and workflow. You are really helping me find my way.

[@mischavandenburg]

Glad it was helpful! Let me know if you have any questions or if there are topics you would like to see more videos about.

[@phanphong3533]

I wish I could do this, been learning Vim for about 2 years and still feel like a completely beginner, keep it up mate.

[@mischavandenburg]

Practice, practice, practice! But I will create tutorials which might help with my particular approach too.

[@DmitrySychev42]

Very cool video, thanks for sharing your workflows, it's very inspirational and it inspired me to try obsidian-neovim integration. It's very cool that you showed it on your real system, not on a fake one as other people usually do.

[@marcocampione]

I was waiting for this video after the workflow one . Thank you very much for your videos ❤

[@mischavandenburg]

That makes me really happy, thank you for your kind comment ❤️ It is very motivating to hear that I am adding value to people's lives through my efforts. If anything was unclear, or if you have any questions about my setup, please ask them in the comments and I will answer them or make videos about them.

[@tetbundy5683]

This is awesome. Just downloaded obsidian, wrote a few notes and i already have some links as well!!

[@mischavandenburg]

Nice!

[@nizexlizzy]

3 questions: 1) How are you drawing on the canvas? I can’t get obsidian on my ipad to allow me to write directly onto the canvas. 2) What are you using to get the cool lines between all of your elements? 3) What font are you using? Thanks,

[@gearmaxim]

Will go to work tomorrow and try to take some notes. Already had Obisdian installed but was not really utilizing it. Thanks for the inspiration!

[@mischavandenburg]

I'm so happy to hear that I could inspire you.

[@Huckleberry_F]

Thanks a lot. Actually this is something what I was looking for. Having tons of notes and graphs scattered between notes, google notes, ms notes. Now it’s a time to put them in order

[@mischavandenburg]

Glad you liked it!

[@gunstorm05]

For the image-pasting bit, my first thought was to configure my screenshot utility (That looked like Flameshot, I use the same) to put the screenshots in one spot, and then have a script that gets the most recent screenshot and inserts it. My second thought was to use something like `xclip` to put the clipboard contents into a file and then insert _that_ file.

[@flameKuchen]

Thank you. This video is really helpful and I will adopt some of the concepts to my own workflow!

[@mischavandenburg]

Glad it was helpful!

[@tur7le254]

pretty neat setup, and inspiring on what i could do; I started taking Zettelkasten notes a few months ago but I kinda hated Obsidian, created something that will do tag files for markdown so I have the quick jumps between references as in obsidian, so I moved everything to vim 🔥

[@mischavandenburg]

Nice! Keep it up

[@ThePhiliposophy]

This is gold, only more useful. I don't know if it's the hive mind effect or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, but I see a lot of people converging on the Obsidian x Neovim x Zettlekasten approach for note taking lately. Also I am impressed how you made MacOS work for you so seemlessly (switching Desktops with cmd+{num} etc.). That being said, I see you in Linux land in the near future. Why am I confident in making such a bold and controversial prediction? Because I went through the same process not long ago and because the hive mind is strong! 😛But to be fair, I wouldn't say you'd be more productive in Linux, as your current workflow is highly efficient. And in the end the tool matters a lot less than the way we use it. Your video gave me a lot of inspirations to optimize my note taking workflow. Thank you for taking the time to make this excellent video. Will gladly watch more content from you and I hope your channel will grow the way it deserves to.

[@ThePhiliposophy]

Nassim Nicholas Taleb would be deeply disappointed in me for being so foolish as to make a prediction. Sorry, Fat Tony (a character Taleb created), I should really have known better than to fall into the trap of the ludic fallacy. It turns out, after looking at some of your other uploads, that you have been using Linux already in the past. And I know this videos is more about note taking and Obsidian. But allow me to ask anyway: why go back to MacOS as a DevOps engineer? (= not a loaded question, just being genuinely curious)

[@ThePhiliposophy]

Never mind, you answered my question @ 45:18. Note to myself: Watch the entire video before posting comments. On the plus side: yay, another note for my vault. P.S. this is my last message, sorry for the spam and the conversation in the comment section that I was having with myself 😀

[@mischavandenburg]

No need to apologize, I loved reading your thoughts as they occured to you! Thank you for checking out my content and your kind comments

[@IanAgra]

Amazing video, great teaching! Thank you very much. How do you decide between putting a note in a PARA folder or in ZK folder?

[@Chocoholic1337]

Amazing video! I'm excited to start implementing a lot of your methods into my own ways of living. Thank you for that. I had one question: You mention, around 1:06:15 that you don't actively use tags and that you don't see the value in it much - and that you'll likely stop doing it unless it's for your blog. If you're not using tags, then how is the whole 3d 'mindmap' created and how is information tied together?

[@desipenguin]

@mischavandevburg Thanks for these videos. I'm still going through this and other videos.

[@DimejiAjasin]

DUDE YOU ARE A GOD!! TEACHING US HOW TO MAKE FIRE!

[@sebastianmendestello9431]

Hi Mischa, I love your content. Thank you very much. How do you draw those lines with Excalidraw? I have not been able to figure out how to control the thikness how you do it.

[@emerson.dvlmt.g]

Great video, thank you. A question, which plugins do you use in Neovim to see the markdown files in that way?

[@IanMartinAdams]

Thanks for sharing! Very insightful.

[@elakstein]

Ohh wow , welcome guys to improve workflow video. It's a rabbit hole

[@Negative_Light]

How would one w/ the PARA method handle note that cross two areas hurm... just a quick pondering and wanted it written down

[@hapaise2924]

Damn, just finished the workflow and then aw this on my timeline! Def a subscribe but I only use apple notes, since using neovim and terminal based more, thinking of using what u use with nvim and obsidian. looks sick! Great video

[@blevenzon]

Yes but how about the time spent on the learning curve of the shortcuts?

[@JamesDaniel-gf6qq]

How are configuring everything to switch spaces with ?

[@anthonyshevchuk]

Amazing and inspiring video, thank you 🙏🏼 already started recreating something like this for myself Btw, Mischa or anyone out here, wanted to ask a question about obsidian. I am using ios, Mac OS and Linux, and couldn’t find a universal solution for syncing my notes simultaneously (Linux doesn’t support iCloud, ios plus git isn’t working, etc.) Do you guys know any options for that, except sync feature from obsidian itself? Thank you!

[@KarstenFinderupPedersen]

Great video. How do you sync to mobile? Can you open the folder from iCloud directly, or do you use a plugin that syncs using WebDav?

[@mischavandenburg]

Yes you can! Obsidian natively supports iCloud sync so I use that to sync between my main devices. I also back up my vault to GitHub so I can sync it to Linux devices if I need to.

[@petrkrnavek2420]

What plugin did you use for the stats at the end of the video? 1:10:46

[@petrkrnavek2420]

@mischavandenburg ...great video. :-)

[@JamesDaniel-gf6qq]

how are you switching spaces with ?

[@petrkrnavek2420]

Will you make a video about how you use excalidraw? :-))

[@mischavandenburg]

Possibly!

[@MalachiMarvin]

What nvim plugin do you use for markdown? It looked like it was word-wrapping for you, which vim/nvim doesn't do very well by itself.

[@gunstorm05]

Neovim does fine if you do `set wrap` and `set linebreak`

[@wznzgq1354]

what's in diablo2 folder

[@OrangePenguin77]

I saw a kindle-highlights directory and I’m wondering if you’re using some kind of a script/plugin for that?

[@mischavandenburg]

That's right, there is an Obisidan plugin that imports kindle highlights from the My Clippings file and formats it neatly in markdown documents for each book.

[@xaxeros]

Can you link to notes from the Excalidraw integration? What is the format (on the disk) of the Excalidraw notes? Can you still use your searching/scripting tools on them or are they opaque to that part of your system?

[@mischavandenburg]

Excalidraw files are markdown files and notes can be inbedded into them. Give it a try!

[@prashlovessamosa]

Thanks for sharing buddy.

[@mischavandenburg]

Any time!

[@blighthornsteelmace820]

I use obsidian for some time. I really like mark-down, and that text based notes are on my pc, not somewhere in some companies. But I would like to have them on phone too, however I don't use apple ecosystem. I was really interested when you said you will make your own host + encrypt and backup. What would be the best tools to set those up? Also another thought was - callendar - the same - I would like to have it private, but at the same time I would like to have some notifications. Is there any way to integrate some text-based notes with something that could work as callendar?

[@mischavandenburg]

iCloud calendar works best for me. Some people (and myself included when I started with Obsidian) try to make obisdian do everything: a calendar, tasks. But I find I'm better off just using separate apps for these things because they do them better. You can use Obsidan Sync, it works really well and I used it for about a year

[@zheli2417]

how to make the mindmap at start it pretty 😊

[@Ragazzo__]

What is your color scheme for the terminal? I checked your dotfiles, but there were many schemes there. I don’t use windows, so I would have to try and copy by hand the hex codes and apply it on my own

[@mischavandenburg]

Gruvbox Material

[@Ragazzo__]

@@mischavandenburg thank you! Great theme ❤️

[@Mrcperez]

Is safe to use obsidian to keep passwords, or there is a tool that you recommend and you can link to the note system in a safer way?

[@mischavandenburg]

Never store passwords in Obsidian or any text format. I use Microsoft Authenticator and Keepass

[@con_sci]

seems like you found a way to remove the delay that happens on mac when you switch between desktops. care to share how?

[@mischavandenburg]

I don't think I did anything special for this, but I do use the Amethyst window manager. I recently created a video about my entire workflow which you might find interesting

[@con_sci]

@@mischavandenburg ah amethyst doesn't seem to have anything to do with it unless I'm missing some hidden option. anyway good presentation

[@mikeziri]

Found someone just like me. Cheers!

[@mischavandenburg]

Nice to meet you bro! 👊

[@mattmotionpix]

No one talks about the curse of making lots of notes across many topics really easy to mine through for folks with adhd (lol, sigh)

[@indianpanda239]

You may have mentioned this in the video and I missed it but I can't figure out how you were able to run your scripts without using ./ in front of them. Like when you use zet you dont have to type ./ . How did you do that?

[@indianpanda239]

Never mind I figured it out. My mistake was having the .sh extension to my scripts.

[@HectorGonzalez-vp1ss]

How do you keep your buffer centered?

[@mischavandenburg]

It's a plugin called NoNeckpain

[@elu1]

very powerful... still too complicated if i were to set it up myself...

[@mischavandenburg]

This is the culmination nearly three years of intense focus on the topic. Start small and it will grow

[@NickBair316]

Is the mind map done in Exalidraw? I don't see any sort of connectors like what you use. Just arrows.

[@mischavandenburg]

It's done in Excalidraw. You can enable more pens in the settings and then it's the "organic line" pen I think

[@NickBair316]

@@mischavandenburg oh okay! I didn't realize that. I'll take a look. Thank you!

[@oliver1367]

Thanks for this! Was trying all sorts of things to make my lines like that :D

[@Airehthpid]

Great Video, 👍

[@mischavandenburg]

Thanks 👍

[@edwinrandall5062]

I am on locked down PC and cant install apps that are not company std and would like similar online solution in browser, i cant add browser extensions either

[@mischavandenburg]

Generally IT can make exceptions for safe applications, unless its an ultra sensitive high security environment. You can always ask.

[@Jesus-r3f1x]

Nice. I legit do the same.

[@williamnguyen5771]

My only wish is that the markdown is rendered not in its raw form

[@thedoctor5478]

maybe make it a plugin

[@badmax7319]

Schade, beim "Zettelkasten" dachte ich an ein deutsches Video.😉