January 14, 2022

Productivity Power Hour #1 Overview

👋 Introduction

Welcome to the first session of the new Productivity Power Hour series! For those who've been following me for a bit, you'll know that this timeslot used to be reserved for Obsidian Office Hours. And while I am still a huge fan of Obsidian, I wanted to open up the live stream to give us space to explore other tools and ideas, hence "Productivity Power Hour!"

📋 Outline

⭐ Highlights

  1. I love my AirPods Max, but they're not for everyone. If you don't have an issue with your wireless headphones switching between multiple devices, the recommendations from Wirecutter are great. I needed to solve a specific problem and the AirPods Max did the trick for me.
  2. When creating notes in Obsidian, there are two main strategies:
    • Leverage existing notes through the Quick Switcher so you don't keep creating the same idea which means you won't be able to iterate as easily.
    • Focus on writing the note. Don't worry as much about tags and stuff until it becomes more natural. Your goal is to capture ideas, not fill out a form every time you have something to write.
  3. I am still a big fan of Notion and haven't left the ecosystem. It's fantastic at collaboration and the ability to create shared workspaces. But when it comes to personal knowledge management and idea management, the dealbreakers for me are:
    • It's too slow. The cost of context switching and fetching ideas is too expensive for rapid iteration.
    • Lack of data control. If the servers go down, so do the rest of your ideas and thoughts.

📚 Resources

🤔 Final Thoughts

I've covered this topic in various ways in other streams, but I hope that having a dedicated session is helpful to those getting started with Obsidian or note-taking in general.

If you'd like to attend a live Productivity Power Hour session, be sure to check out the schedule for the latest. Thanks for reading!