My second brain

When I joined AWS one year ago, I discovered what it means to be in a big company. Everything is at scale and security is not left behind. it means that many tools I was used to in my previous companies are at least disallowed.

During my tenure at JellySmack, I started to use Notion and got addicted to it. As I can be easily distracted, the Second Brain concept is something I've embraced and I need to write down everything thus Notion was the perfect fit. Unfortunately for me, it is strongly forbidden at AWS so I had to look for an alternative...

While discussing with several colleagues during my first months, it happened I was not the only one struggling with this and was told to try out Obsidian for my note-taking needs.

Six months later, I know I won't be able to switch back to another tool for my needs. First, knowing that all my content is stored locally¹ on my computer in a human readable text format make me assured I'll be able to use it even in case of network unavailability or even Obsidian disappearing.

Also, the plugin ecosystem is filled with treasures (DataView 💓) and you can tune your workspace in any manner you desire. if you're already a markdown user, you know the difficulty to maintain clean and well-formatted tables, have a look at the Advanced Tables plugin.

In my daily routine, Obsidian is now a central element. At the beginning of the day, I'm prepping all my meetings with templated notes; and during the meeting I write all I can² directly in the same document. Using tags and some dataview magic, I'm able to link/connect all resources for a specific customer in one page and follow its projects in a clean way.

Every little project also gets his own note, even classes and trainings are here³.

What's next ?

My workspace is quite cluttered, even after several cleanup sessions, and needs to be optimized: I'll test out the PARA method an see if it fits. I'll also move my personal Notion workspace to Obsidian locally; it is more difficult as I use many niceties from Notion.

And, last bu not least, this blog is now written in a dedicated Obsidian workspace!