No going back

I continue to remain astonished I was ever able to research and write an entire non-fiction book about a wide variety of topics without the aid of the wonderful (and free) Obsidian app.

Don’t get me wrong: other perfectly good ‘Personal Knowledge Management’ apps are available. They’re very much the in thing at the moment. But how was I ever able to organise my thoughts without atomising them—breaking them down into smaller and smaller discrete notes—and then linking them together? How did I ever manage to get my head around complex, interrelated subjects? How did I ever spot interesting unexpected links between apparently unrelated topics? How did I ever see the wood for the trees?

I managed somehow, but this new way is far better.

I can never go back.

Obsidian note and graph
(L) My Obsidian note about the rush to publish Darwin and Wallace’s ‘joint’ 1858 paper on evolution.
(R) The corresponding Obsidian graph, showing how this note links with certain other notes in my research vault.

Richard Carter

Richard Carter is a writer and photo­grapher living in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. He is currently working on a book about looking at the world through Darwin’s eyes.Website · Newsletter · Mastodon · Facebook

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