Obsidian Workflow To Write a Blog Post
This week I experimented with the Obsidian workflow.
I have been using Obsidian for storing notes and linking ideas for a while. But only recently that I caught up in the idea of writing an entire post within the system.
It was exciting at first but I soon faced the roadblock of forming a workflow.
Should I write from the captured notes or develop ideas from an outline?
I find myself most efficient writing in bursts. That is to craft the entire draft when inspiration hits on my phone or laptop. When I free-write this way, ideas come more naturally (because I write from the experience) and the flow is better. It also requires less editing work later on.
I decided to try this out with Obsidian.
So what I do is copy-paste the rough draft (from my phone or Google Docs) to a new Obsidian note.
Then, I create a Reference Note to keep all links I have read/watch about the topics and link this back to the Draft Note. (Originally, I just added a reference session below the draft. But I like to keep a lot of details for reference, so a separate note makes more sense).
When more ideas emerge as I write, I mark it to add new notes later on (Obsidian allows you to do this beautifully, just add [[ ]] between the ideas you want to learn more, and a new note is created. Here’s a great example video). Or if I already had the notes written about that idea, I would add it to the Draft Note.
Well, to be honest, the process doesn’t let me finish a post quickly. I guess it’s because now I want to write more in-depth and research-based articles and insights instead of opinion pieces as I used to. So I tend to switch back and forth between writing and researching. The more ideas I come up with and the more sources I capture, the more rewriting/refining work I have to do. The result is the entropy of ideas and external sources.
So there are 3 things I need to work on :
1. Separate the writing and research stage. Perhaps I should start by learning all I can about a topic and adding separate notes to Obsidian. Once I’ve absorbed the ideas, I can either write from what I remember or arrange notes into a complete draft.
2. Be more selective with my reading. I realize reading too much can disrupt your learning/thinking process. Also, it creates a burden to add notes to the system. Imagine you have 10 random notes on long-form pieces in your note-taking app, you’ll get daunted to turn them into evergreen notes in Obsidian. So less reading means less taxing on your brain. At least in the short-term because you can’t work on too many ideas all at once.
3. Finally, I should take better notes. One of my recent habits is to write notes in a paragraph since I want to capture the main message of what I consume. Then again, an article and video contain more than just one important message. I should expand notes into more bullet points so I can capture useful advice and quotes. This will facilitate the task of adding notes Obsidian too.