Why Justin Sung is wrong about Obsidian

[@artemsolod236]

I know Justin recommends infinite canvas software to do what he calls processing/encoding (Concepts is the app he uses) so I believe he's not really advocating for paper. Excalidraw would have been a great tool for this if it wasn't becoming very slow after you've hand drawn enough elements. As for what I think is the main point - I interpret it as with diagrams you can explore many possible structures for the knowledge, verify them and keep them simple i.e. quickly visually digestible and comparable. It's like trying out many possible maps of content and identifying if they make sense. With linking notes it's less deliberate and flexible + text is way longer to consume than a diagram, at leas for me. However, his system is more about studying in a classic way where you know your syllabus and less about doing research where you gradually accumulate the body of knowledge and try to make sense out of it. Anyhow, thank you for the video, the notion of "Extending cognition" really resonated with me - I think that's the goal to strive for when building one's system.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

Thanks for sharing this! Extended cognition is a philosophical approach to cognition. Might be worth exploring 😁

[@seyadeodin]

I would love a barebones excalidraw plugin with better touchable support.

[@PriyambodoArundayaSatmika]

@@seyadeodin Me too! Also Excaldraw being slow after a while of drawing elements is such a huge drawback to me :((. For now i still prefer One Note for concept mapping due to it's free label and also better stylus support overall.

[@codingglides]

I took Justin's course for a year and it helped me learn technical subjects more efficiently; however, his expertise lies with helping students and professionals - people who already have a clear path as to what they need to study/work on next. His advice doesn't really apply to self-directed learners, which I believe makes up the majority of us Obsidian users. Obsidian tells us what to study next, the same way teachers/bosses tell students and professional what to do next. Justin is mistaking Obsidian for a learning tool, when really, it is an organization/archive/creativity tool. He is right that Obsidian is not useful for encoding - I use an infinite canvas app on my iPad for that; only afterwards do I create notes.

[@g12nm]

Could you please tell me, how obsidian is different from using a google doc for placing all your notes

[@pxxush]

@glossophone can you elaborate on how obsidian tell us what to do next like a teacher.

[@ecoconatus8089]

Thanks for sharing, makes so much sense

[@PedroMadureira25]

I learned a lot from this video. Thanks for the great content!

[@SamuelWebster]

I feel like a lot of this is based on Obsidian as a markdown editor and nothing else. There are plenty of ways to make notes accessible, usable, trackable and searchable.

[@Sunset248-j3t]

This is a great video, coming from someone who took his course!

[@felipemldias]

I wish obsidian had a better WYSIWYG editor, the constant conversion between markdown/code and text in live preview is cumbersome, especially for nontextual elements (pictures, callouts, tables, link previews, etc). I know several people who left ift becuase it's impractical if you're not a tinkerer

[@DannyHatcherTech]

Agreed! As I writr it doesnt bother me often.

[@Metruzanca]

Really agree with your point on Zettelkasten. I used to do what Justin did and that didn't work for me, nowadays I do what you described and that works great for me. My files are generally named something specific, e.g. since I'm a programmer they're usually on how to do X with Y tech. I'm also now using entirely tag based organization instead of folders. I also often add aliases.

[@MaxwellBuba]

When I saw Sung's video my impulse was that he was wrong about PKM. Thank you for your explanation.

[@hongotopiadada7574]

German here and you are 100% right, a Zettelkasten is literally a box (for/of) notes from Zettel (note) kasten (box)

[@DannyHatcherTech]

Thank you! I tend to have doubts on that 😁

[@MirdjanHyle]

It's endlessly fascinating to me how simple words in a language can become technical terms in another.

[@SidhaSuccess]

Thanks Danny and fellow commentators. The topic of using different tools and systems to extend cognitive awareness and knowledge is especially challenging with so many tools to choose from, all of them extremely limiting to what the optimized human brain is fully capable of. I look forward to apps in the future with GUIs that adapt to different cognitive frameworks much more fluently. Feels to me like we are making only incremental progress and still in the stone ages in this regard. A fully optimized brain is of course primary to a fully optimized digital brain. ‘A truly educated human being marvels at nothing other than their own Self.”

[@bladekiller2766]

Even tough I get your point I'm with Justin for this to a certain extent. I agree with you that Obsidian can be a tool for learning and encoding new concepts. But the point is most of the people use it as a reference and not as a learning tool, and in that regard Justin is absolutely right. Also the way Obsidian functions with the links and Wikipedia kind of knowledge (I'm not mentioning the Graph View because many people don't use it), it is handy as a thinking tool, brainstorming and such when you are researching stuff, but even for that you can use Canvas or Excalidraw which will come way more handy rather than the Native Obsidian features. I agree with you that the Native features are good for thinking but they are not for learning and encoding. I would argue that if you want to cover the encoding part you MUST use Excalidraw in your workflow for concept mapping or any encoding that scientifically works. Concept mapping is the key thing that Justin emphasizes when talking about encoding and with just Markdown you cannot achieve that. Also Zettelkasten in Obsidian is still just a thinking tool, making notes atomic does improve encoding a lot, but rather as I mentioned "Atomic Concept Mapping" is better for encoding. So the point that Obsidian is reference tool is not correct, because you can make Obsidian a learning tool, but it is correct that most people use it as a reference and nothing else.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

I didn't say Obsidian can be a tool for encoding - I believe I said the concept is redundant in this context. "not good for learning and encoding" - what does that mean? "making notes atomic does improve encoding" - what makes a note atomic? Obsidian 'can be' a reference tool but saying 'most people use it as a reference' is a bold claim I don't think is accurate. Thanks for your comment 😁

[@bladekiller2766]

@DannyHatcherTech yeah, the standard pkm approach of obsidian and any forum or platform like reddit forums, youtube, obsidian forums, literally any video about Obsidian uses it like reference tool, even tough they think that they use it as learning tool. Also, what do you mean that it is redundant? Also you can read about "what is atomic" in zettelkasten method. I believe only the people who follow zettelkasten in obsidian use it as a learning tool, and others are just thinking that they use it as a learning tool, some may use it as a learning tool but not effectively.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

@@bladekiller2766 I think how we explain learning is different which is where my confusion lies here. Redundant - not needed. Zettlkasten method - Each approach differs...

[@bladekiller2766]

@@DannyHatcherTech After reading a ton of studies about learning sciences, I believe that simply using something as reference tool or just writing stuff as a reminder is not effective for learning. Another thing is a lot of people write stuff verbatim as they read or hear it, which is another ineffective way. I can speak for hours how people use Obsidian as a reference tool, but that is not the point here.

[@lmao01]

I agree with a lot although... Tools can excel someone compared to the person using still basic tools. It's not ONLY the skill. Just like you can get better at drawing by having good resources, the same way you can create more complex/better/faster types of content by having good organization tools. Some tools do a better job than others at supporting the person, which depends more on compatibility rather than skill. If a person doesn't know how to use obsidian efficiently, it will fail miserably, the same way if a person doesn't know how to handwrite, it will fail miserably. About Ease to adjust. I disagree with how they said it because they don't encompass the important part. Yet I think you are missing a psychological part. Of course, it is only my random opinion. In my pov humans cling to permanence despite impermanence. They fear loss, despite the inevitable loss. Even the ones that say otherwise. Some ideas should be just discarded without the mind having the ability to cling to them. Otherwise, it's possible that you can get into creative blocks because you cling to producing quality content with every single thought you have. Which is just unrealistic and over-egoistic. I'm not saying it's any of you guys, if anything it's what I saw in myself many times without being able to notice it for a while. Oblivescence can be a blessing, not only a curse. In general, I would disagree with their 'it's easy to adjust notes on paper'. This only works on very small volumes. The more complex topic and more notes it becomes counterproductive. I often go on the idea stage with one-liners on my wall and then scrap/move over to PC tools. Regarding too many clicks. It can be true to a degree. Although just like the one above this is productive in paper only in small volumes. If you are creating a small mind map, you are fine on paper, if you want to reference it later paper is just a mess. It’s better to take more clicks on your chest than try to crawl through the paper maze. About visual anchors. I think both tools have visual anchors. Paper CAN have a stronger visual anchor. If they said it in this way I would agree with them. An interesting way to look at this is why underlying colors help learning. Drawing a personal picture next to it. Then you could say that you can also underline etc in obsidian. Creating a story around numbers can help memorize numbers, the same way creating a pattern from numbers (like on a keypad). It's not only whether you underline it, it's more if you can create a connection to something else in your mind even when this something else can be a joke. Drawing pictures can provide this kind of better visual anchor. Despite any topic. If you can root a thought deep in your mind, it will bother you later whether you are trying to work or taking a shit. Which is a funny and beautiful design of the one's mind. Whether this is useful in any manner. Keep up the good work.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

Great comment! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Everyone's opinion is random - all perspectives are valid 😁

[@kittenwhisky]

I’ve done Justin’s course. I also love Obsidian, and enjoy your channel. I understand that it’s great clickbait to make contradicting videos, but you’re doing your viewers a great disservice here. You are misrepresenting everything that Justin says,you don’t know what any of Justin’s terms mean (the way he uses them, eg encoding or cognitively optimised). Just simply interpreting them one way (incorrect way compared to his usage of the terms) and then it’s obviously easy to prove each one wrong because you are literally talking about something else. I enjoy your videos very much, rather than tear other people down, please can you make more constructive videos about obsidian and your writing processes - they are great.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

Thanks for your perspective. The video is intended as a conversation. I have an understandning different from him so share my thoughts. If he or someone like yourself with more expertise in the meaning behind his terms would like to continue the converaation I encourage that. If I am misrepresenting his work, that would be a great place for your to help me. Where was I misunderstanding?

[@HeyQuinton]

Justin has a vested interest to keep Obsidian on the fringe when it comes to his methods - Im not surprised why he doesn't like it - because it cheapens his course that he sells. Just a matter of time before he and his course get exposed for what they are...

[@terminallucidity]

Exposed for what? Being extremely effective?

[@DannyHatcherTech]

I don't know enough about his course to comment.

[@robertwhite3503]

I have never managed to understand Justin Sung's point of view. He seems to suggest everything regarding studying is a bad process. You would think he could say, "these are the six best ways to study this subject." I never feel that I have anything actionable from him. He will say you should see the connections between topics, but then speaks against concept diagrams, mind maps, spider graphs, reading and so on. He will have six videos speaking against spaced repetition and then say he's not against spaced repetition. You need spaced repetition to learn facts, but facts are not important, it concepts. It just continues on without end. After a decade or two, he will still be explaining in a convoluted manner that reaches no conclusion. I think it's just nonsense. If he could just produce a one page summary. Now he says that Obsidian is for taking notes, but you can't learn from notes, nor from anything else.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

I agree, is explanations could do with more clarity.

[@rthumd]

The video that Danny brought here, which is from his "main" channel, is not a channel dedicated to teaching his methodology, which in fact, if you want to understand it better (consider that this content is free, if you want to go deeper, buy his course), look for old videos on his secondary channel (ytb: i can study), everything is there, it's up to you to systematize it better [in any case, his entire method is based on bloom's taxonomy (hence your confusion between "facts" and "concepts"), priming and chunking for mind maps, which in the end you group into encoding and retrieval, and to that is spaced repetition and so on...] So everything, yes, everything, that he does on this channel " main" is just a refinement of this learning proposal. In my case, it works perfectly, it allows me to find relationships in a much more active and faster way (because of the use of chunking) than a zettelkasten (which in my opinion, in a macro way, follows very much along the lines of a garden, or a PARA), because the intention of this Sung method, in my opinion, is not to be applied to a researcher, who has to deal with several sources, analyze them, compare the literal and implied details... no, of course In any case, it is for those who need to have this retrieval of important information, even if the details are suppressed at first, to resolve something immediate... for example, you have just felt a pain in your heart and quickly run to a hospital, a When the doctor sees you, he won't ask you to wait 30 minutes because he has to review your notes to be able to help you... that's not how things work in reality, it simply takes seconds, or very few minutes. In this case of this video in particular, the issue with obsidian, is about replicability, for him the information is best used in a non-linear way, like a diagram, which potentially facilitates the link with other topics, so in fact, it is possible to if you use obsidian, with an excalidraw, use of tags and the help of zettelkasten, but come to Justin's point, there is no app made for this style of learning, where information needs to be retrieved quickly, anywhere, with any "instrument" like a pen and paper or a regular note-taking app on your iPad or tablet.

[@robertwhite3503]

@@rthumd That makes sense. You get what you pay for. I have already invested time with Justin, consequently I refuse to send him money, but I'm glad you've obtained benefit from his course(s).

[@rthumd]

@@robertwhite3503 well, in reality it was more a question of the need for adaptation, I tried other forms such as obsidian, notion, systems like tiago forte and zettelkasten, but I just needed more practicality, and by chance, I didn't buy anything, what I learned was consuming its content on KZbin and consequently improving it, it is a very simple system, but profound in possibilities of use

[@inevespace]

because his main point is about cognitive habits. It is very difficult to explain people "how to think", especially when everyone believes "my unique way of thinking is not worse than others". Since the most important part is thought process, techniques like mindmaps, spaced repetition, and etc are secondary tools. They will not replace your thought process, you can do poor job using them too. His videos "against" spaced repetition was just such warning.

[@dkickelbick]

OMG, what a useless discussion on both sides.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

Thanks for your contribution.

[@f4cksoss]

someone that likes orange so much can't be a reliable person, i knew it. obsidian has become your religion, besides that, good content

[@DannyHatcherTech]

Dont hate the orange 🧡 Obsidian is just a writing tool... use what works for you 😁

[@tristen_grant]

You seem to know a lot about Danny. You stalking him or something?

[@f4cksoss]

@@tristen_grant i'm danny

[@itsjohnmavrick]

thanks for sharing your thoughts, i saw a justin sung follower making similar points against Obsidian and PKM as a whole so this became relevant, but just like what it seems in this video they see PKM as a reference tool because of their lack of skill and experience with trying to use it for their desired learning strategies

[@Martin_Adams]

As always a great video and I love the questioning and reasoning you go through. What a ride.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

Thank you. I often do this in my notes. Maybe I share more video like this 🤔

[@richlifepov]

Finally an honest KZbinr that called out Justin Sung two sided opinions, as not everything he says is credible and a lot of the stuff he says is very opinionated ❤

[@richlifepov]

His online course is a scam where he tries to keep learners subscription and not actually ever teach them, just keep taking their money…

[@wongsimon2387]

Thank you Danny. Love watching your videos. I think learning is unrestricted to any specific tools whether it's so-called primary or secondary encoding. Just use what you think that fits you is the key.

[@farzadmf]

Exactly! Don't make it something ideologicial or religious! Just do whatever YOU think works!

[@averagetechnologyenojyer]

I like the incremental writing plugin to kinda do spaced repetition, helps me remember long stuff. also, liked :)

[@simbabwe2907]

Justin sung says thing whith a certain certaincy that i find for somebody who relays on science pretty annojing. Because it sounds dogmatic. I like the approach of plausible in science. This data from those underlying assumption seems to be a highly plausible explanation for the data. This also allows other plausible explanations. He also loves the use the analogy of a machine to describe the human brain which is just wrong.(no realy just wrong). Faynman once said that man created maschine and than uses maschine to understand man. The greatest difference is that humans care. Good book is Descartes error.

[@joshkasap1349]

The visual anchoring point is probably Justins best point and i don't think your argument related to it was very good. To be clear, I'm not suggesting it's not possible in obsidian. You can add pictures, use a canvas, excalidraw, emojis, etc. to attach and add these sorts of visual ques. But admittedly they generally are abit more cumbersome to work with efficiently in obsidian when compared to just drawing out a simple picture. for example, ideally i would want the ability's to draw a custom picture directly into the obsidian note freeform similar to how you can draw in one note. While you are correct typography, headers, font, and the meaning of individual words can be unique and provide their own visual anchors when the entire note is just text on text on text it can become cumbersome and difficult to use. There are only so many ways to use headers, and text effects to keep you notes organized and provide a proper visual que that can quickly be referenced. Very often it will come down to the meaning of a word to provide that visual anchor. But that requires you read the word in order to determine if its the visual anchor your looking for. And that's the main problem. It's easy to scroll down a page with 10 headers and find the area that has the hand draw palm tree. and know that's the one related to what your looking for. Its a lot harder to do the same when you just need to manually read each header until you recognize the notes your looking for or by chance recognize the general note structure contained under a header which could allow you to recall that this is the correct header without needing to actually read. And example of this would would be if you recognized because you saw a long bullet list and you know the header your looking for contains a long bullet list. I still think advantages of obsidian outweigh the general ease paper notes have to integrate visual anchors.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

I am intrigued by your explanation of the use for a visual anchor. For me the searchability of something doesn't rely on if it is a heading/bold/italic - it is the words themselves. Remembering what something means or how it relates to another concept is easier through words for me. Visual anchor is a concept that is poorly defined from my experience of the literature which is why I find it interesting him using it 🤷‍♂️ Would be good to chat with him about it.

[@richlifepov]

⁠@dannyhatchertech you are a legend… finally an honest highly intelligent KZbinr that can falsify an online so called guru Justin Sung… You just gained a subscriber and excited to see more honest content like this 🎉

[@ecoconatus8089]

Thank you for brining lots of necessary nuances to the topic

[@spartanmod3]

The problem with these social media gurus and self-proclaimed experts is that they primarily care about selling courses and products. They're not consered to provide genuine value. So they will say things like these and make controversial points in order to set them apart and draw in viewers. Anyone who's seriously interesting in learning should not get information from some KZbin guru. To me KZbin is valueable to see how deal with some problem, to gain perspective etc., not as a primary source of knowledge.

[@DannyHatcherTech]

@@spartanmod3 agreed. I use KZbin to see what is cultural more than accurate.

[@binualexander9439]

pictures are more useful than most people think , I think most of my learning has been around images as anchors . Maybe not true for all - some can use text only as great anchors and not need images.

[@the_flushjackson]

From experience Justin’s framework and the bulk of what he’s saying makes sense. I don’t think we should dismiss tools at all, but there’s magic that does happen when you physically produce with writing versus typing. We’ve had wiki software you could use locally for over 20 years and it just never works as a second brain effectively. I think Obsidian can be used to great effect, but I don’t think we can get away from physically playing around with relationships - maybe VR / AR will change that drastically. I like the idea that Obsidian could potentially show you relationships and sort of “where to go”. I don’t know if that’s more useful than AI chat tools though. Maybe?

[@studyinginthedesert7690]

Absolutely on board with larger files vs atomic notes. I personally mix a bit of both approaches by summing into paragraph-long notes by heading (many of these in a single file) and embed links of those into a zettelkasten tree hierarchy (mimicking the original Zettelkasten numbering system, or an overall index) separate from the page they live one (mostly because my pages are organized by source, e.g. from a single book). It's just simpler to run through and find notes if they're primarily in bunches that allow them to hang together in the memory.

[@rbpompeu1]

You are so right! More I use Obsidian more it (not me!) adapt to me! Got it?!

[@gavada8596]

I agree with you completely

[@AnAnonymousMedicalStudent]

Justin is arrogant and ineffective tbh lol that guy really rubs me the wrong way

[@DannyHatcherTech]

We all have our preferences 😁

[@syntax2357]

How? His course is world class

[@oreo753]

In what way is he arrogant? He always tells is to not believe you’re stupid but you’re just using the wrong processes.