A weekly newsletter where I help people apply values-based productivity principles and systems for personal growth, primarily using Obsidian. Subscribe if you want to make more of your notes and ideas.
π― The 2025 Obsidian Report Card
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If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. π‘ The Big Idea: Where Obsidian Shines (and Where it Struggles) as of April 2025A few weeks ago, I read Jason Snell's Apple Report card for 2024. It's a post he does every year where he collects feedback from others in the Apple space and includes comments and average scores for areas such as the Mac, the iPhone, Services, etc. In addition to the collective scores and occasional comments, many contributors share their full comments and scores on their own platforms after the report card comes out. Which got me thinking... it'd be cool to do something similar for Obsidian. Unfortunately, it was a little late to start collecting responses from others in the Obsidian and PKM communities, but I thought it'd be fun to just share my thoughts on the state of Obsidian in 2025. Full disclosure: I actually ended up with almost 4,000 words for this one! That's way too long for a newsletter (π), so I'm just going to share a brief summary here. If you want to read the whole thing, check it out on the website here.
The full post has a lot more detail and a ton of links if you're interested. I'd also love to know your thoughts on this newsletter format! This is a little different than normal, so I'm curious which you prefer:
If you have a literal minute to share your thoughts, please hit reply and let me know! π Something Cool: PomoBar PluginOne of the productivity tactics I still use to this day when I find myself procrastinating on a task is to set a Pomodoro timer. It gets its unusual name from the Pomodoro Technique, which was invented by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It's very simple: just set a 25-minute timer when you find yourself procrastinating on something, work until the end of the session, and then take a 5-minute break. Many people use those tomato-shaped kitchen timers (pomodoro is the Italian word for tomato), but there have been lots of productivity-focused adaptations since (one of my personal favorites is the Time Timer). One of the reasons the Pomodoro Technique works so well is that it eliminates the friction of getting started by giving you an out in 25 minutes. Now you don't need a separate app or physical device for this, but I do find it helpful to have a visual indication of how much time is left. So the PomoBar plugin is perfect for me, because it adds a visual timer to the Obsidian status bar that is easily seen while I'm writing. I don't think I'll use this all the time, but since I'm writing in Obsidian frequently, I can definitely see this being useful. π Book Notes: Keep Going by Austin KleonSpeaking of procrastination, Keep Going by Austin Kleon is a great book if you could use a little help staying focused and creative when life gets a little crazy. This book has 10 short chapters that speak directly to potential causes of procrastination, and Austin shares specific tactics you can use to help overcome it. Itβs kind of like a creative pep talk for when you feel stuck or burned out. If you want to download my mind map book notes for Keep Going by Austin Kleon, click here. β Mike |
Practical PKM
A weekly newsletter where I help people apply values-based productivity principles and systems for personal growth, primarily using Obsidian. Subscribe if you want to make more of your notes and ideas.
Prefer to read this newsletter in your browser? Click here. π‘ The Big Idea: The Obsidian Web Clipper Works Best When You Use It to Capture Ideas, Not Articles Last week, I published a video on how to use the Obsidian Web Clipper. The whole point of the video is that most of what we clip never gets looked at again, so we should clip a lot less and focus on the ideas, not the text. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the collectorβs trap: PKM tools have made collecting almost effortless, and...
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. π‘ The Big Idea: 3 simple questions can change your life β if you give them enough space. "Just slow down." That sounds like good advice. But it's also nearly impossible to follow when everything is late, and all of it feels urgent. It's tempting to go looking for something new when you feel this way: a new app, a new system, a book that finally explains what you're missing. But you probably don't need a new revelation....
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. π‘ The Big Idea: The value of your vault comes from what you leave out. A couple of years ago, I was in London for the Relay 10th anniversary show and decided to visit the British Museum. I discovered that the museum has 94 galleries and over 807,000 square feet. Thatβs about the size of 14 football fields, including end zones. Itβs massive. And there are some genuinely fascinating displays, including the Rosetta Stone...