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sentinel's intro to obsidian for cyberstudious' masterpost jam day 1

this week, i'm gonna help you get set up in obsidian! getting obsidian downloaded and starting to build out your vault is fairly straightforward, so i'll also touch on plugins and personal knowledge management (pkm) to help you organize your files to your liking. today, let's tackle the basics:

what's obsidian? obsidian is a notetaking app and personal knowledge base that uses markdown files to give you quick access to and full ownership of your files. vaults (what your database/file folder is called) can be fully customized through the use of plugins and themes and are stored locally, allowing for quick offline access.

what's markdown? markdown is a markup language that adds formatting to plaintext files. its a fancy (and super easy) way of adding styling to a text file without making the file size huge. it's easy to learn, and works great for notetaking.

what should i know? you'll need a quick primer on markdown! i recommend markdown guide's for the basics, and obsidian's syntax docs for obsidian-flavoured markdown—this comes in handy for linking files and images. you'll also need to know a bit about your computer to make sure you download the right version of obsidian.

should i use obsidian or notion? depends what you're using it for! i prefer obsidian over notion for a ton of reasons. the biggest being obsidian's offline capabilities, speed, and plugins that help with my studies (like quick LaTeX!). i also love the privacy that obsidian offers, i align greatly with the ceo's values, and i appreciate having full control over my files as well as the app's interface. i won't totally nerd out here, but for me, obsidian is the no brainer choice when i need to get some deep focus sessions in.

resources download obsidian obsidian plugins markdown guide obsidian markdown syntax

got a question? i tried to keep jargon out of this as much as possible, but i might've made a mistake! if you get stuck, or have a question about obsidian or markdown, let me know! i'm more than happy to help :)

what's next? tomorrow's theme is books! i'll be sharing my favourite pkm books that helped me organize my obsidian vault to become an academic weapon