From Bullet Journal to Second Brain: How I Use Obsidian
From Bullet Journal to Second Brain: How I Use Obsidian
I still write in notebooks. I'd like to get back to the practice of bullet journaling again someday. For years, bullet journaling was enough — a way to capture thoughts, stay organized, and think on paper. If you've never tried it, it might be worth a look (bulletjournal.com).
But eventually I found myself wanting different. Something searchable. Something that could link ideas together, sync across devices, and grow into a real knowledge base.
That's where Obsidian came in (obsidian.md). I didn't leave the notebook behind — I just found a better place for my digital notes to live.
The demo: Part of my Obsidian vault is published at jeffs.link — you can explore the notes and structure there.
What Obsidian actually is
Obsidian is a free note-taking app built on plain text. Your notes are Markdown files stored in a folder on your computer — no proprietary format, multimodal embedding, no subscription required for the basics. If you stop using Obsidian tomorrow, your notes are still just files you can open anywhere.
A collection of notes is called a vault. Think of it as a folder with superpowers: you can link notes together, see how they connect visually, and search across everything instantly.
Paper and digital solve different problems
Paper is for thinking slowly. Obsidian is for finding things later. Anything you'll want to retrieve — a reference, a task, a link — goes into Obsidian because it'll actually be there when you look for it.
You can publish notes from Obsidian too. My vault is live at jeffs.link.
Daily notes — the habit that makes the rest work
The single feature that made Obsidian stick for me was daily notes: one note per day, automatically created when you open the app. Each day gets a page. You log what happened, capture tasks, drop in links. At the end of the week you can look back. At the end of the month, you have a record.
I wrote up how to set this up at jeffs.link → Organize Daily Notes — it includes a template you can copy. If you're starting from scratch, that's where I'd begin.
Start anywhere
If you're curious, pick one:
- New to Obsidian? → How To Get Started at jeffs.link
- Want the daily habit? → Organize Daily Notes at jeffs.link
- Just want to explore? → Open jeffs.link and click around
The best note-taking system is the one you'll actually use — and that usually means starting simpler than you think.
Written with Cursor, the AI-powered code editor.
What do you think would be well stored in a knowledge vault?