Obsidian Vs. Notion

[pasdegelsey]

I've been a long time user of Notion - I really enjoy its flexibility, cross platform usability, and ease of use. I use it basically as a dashboard for my to do list, library of information, journal collection and more. And as an ADHD baddie it's basically become like a second brain for me. But I've gotten increasingly concerned about data privacy, negative customer reviews, and increasingly annoying shoving of their AI down my throat. I've heard about Obsidian but I'm not familiar with it.

Has anyone used both of these programs to be able to share a few pros and cons? Which one did you end up sticking with? What do you mainly use the service for? Etc. whatever else you think would be relevant to someone on the fence. Alternatively - do you recommend any similar programs for note taking/to do lists?

Thanks in advance 

[oldmurray34]

I've been a long time user of Notion - I really enjoy its flexibility, cross platform usability, and ease of use. I use it basically as a dashboard for my to do list, library of information, journal collection and more. And as an ADHD baddie it's basically become like a second brain for me. But I've gotten increasingly concerned about data privacy, negative customer reviews, and increasingly annoying shoving of their AI down my throat. I've heard about Obsidian but I'm not familiar with it.

Has anyone used both of these programs to be able to share a few pros and cons? Which one did you end up sticking with? What do you mainly use the service for? Etc. whatever else you think would be relevant to someone on the fence. Alternatively - do you recommend any similar programs for note taking/to do lists?

Thanks in advance 

Hoo boy, as an insane note taker, I can tell you a bunch about Obsidian.

Pros

• Pretty actively developed and stable
• Stores docs in .MD format, so it is effortless to sync them, move them, open in any other software
• Has a lot of plugins for very different use cases
• With a little help of one plugin, one can query through the entire vault to fetch specific data in specific formats (like automatically collecting every task with a certain tag, date or whatever)
• Free, if you don't pay for sync (which you can DIY easily even without much technical knowledge)
• Has a cool graph thing, that shows connections between your notes

Cons

• Not open source
• Task tracking functionality has to be configured with plugins

This is my Obsidian setup as an example

All-in-all, a decent software. But let me introduce you to Logseq. What's the deal with Logseq, you say? Is it log or is it seq? The thing about Obsidian or Notion is that you have plain documents. It's cool and all, but let's say you have a big document with your notes on a subject, which you haven't split into separate docs. And let's say you need to reference a certain part of that note in a different note. The thing is that Obsidian can reference only the entire notes. It is a problem, because taking notes should be a process as frictionless as possible. Actually fixing that aforementioned huge note document would take time and mental bandwidth and it's a big no-no in my opinion, when it comes to note taking.

So, why Logseq? Easy: that baby treats every line as a separate entity, which you can easily reference 
It is super useful, because you can just throw words in your notes and not think about file hierarchy, folders, file names or any other nonsense. You mentioned ADHD, I think that feature should be useful for you. Plus Logseq has a very convenient way to create tasks, you can throw them in any and all block or page and they will get rendered in your journal entry if the scheduled date or a deadline is close to that journal's date. Among other things, Logseq also can render graph with your note connections and whatnot, it has it's own built-in query system to pull data in any way you want and overall I feel like it needs less plugins to get it going for my workflow. Oh yeah, and Logseq also is completely free and open-source  .

Now cons:

• Logseq is being developed by a small team, so the process is a tad slow
• There are less plugins for it, since it's less popular
• There is a bit of a confusion for newcomers, because there are two different versions of the program: markdown version and database version. Basically the latter is their new backend they are developing. In the future notes will no longer be saved in .MD files, which makes the whole thing a bit more snappy and stable (it is far more efficient to find stuff in a database then in aa heap of files). DB version is still in development, but it is available with some caveats

Overall I wholeheartedly recommend Logseq, especially DB version. While being less stable, it has awesome features, like actually very useful tags, that streamline template creation, some nifty usability features etc etc. You can try out that version in your browser. It stores notes and all the data locally, it doesn't send your stuff anywhere. A lot of people in the community actually are using it as a main way to write notes instead of dedicated desktop version, so you can just go ham with it if you so desire. It is possible to install desktop version too (I use it for instance), there is info in FAQ I linked earlier.

Here's a quick taste test in a form of my Logseq screenshots:


I completely switched from Obsidian to Logseq and very happy about my choice. I do everything there: research, work notes, task tracking, journaling, habit tracking etc. I have my own methods to keep journaling and taking notes, which, I feel like, is a subject for a separate thread

P.S. My Obsidian and Logseq themes are highly customized, so they don't look this way usually (I have a cool script that themes every software I use with a colorscheme, extracted from wallpaper image)

[pasdegelsey]

@oldmurray34 Thank you for such a well written out response! I'm definitely going to look into logseq after this!

[oldmurray34]

@oldmurray34 Thank you for such a well written out response! I'm definitely going to look into logseq after this!

No problem at all, make sure to shoot me a message if you have any problems with that thing! I can literally talk hours about benefits and practices of note taking

Also their discord is pretty alright. Logseq is a tad worse documented then Obsidian (mostly because it's less popular), so discord can provide some useful info in a pinch

[noahie]

I tried Notion before, thinking that it would be super useful. It turned out that it wasn't actually practical for me. The initial appeal came from setting up the space, but it didn't actually make me more productive or streamline anything. The fact that I was paying $10 a month for it was a bummer too, especially since I wasn't privy to free and better alternatives at the time. I got sucked into all those YouTube videos watching people's elaborate setups and it just seemed like such a chore.

I tried Obsidian for the same reasons after quitting Notion, but I found the idea of linking between notes and that graph view to be absolutely pointless. I grew up with nested file trees and for me, that's always been my preferred method of organizing. Wiki-style notes sounded cool in theory, but I didn't really have the use case for it. If I were in grad school or doing some kind of deep research, a personal wiki might sound nice, but that's not the way I think. I am a true linear thinker :P

I quit Obsidian and then just started using Google Docs, which I preferred. Then I became a free software zealot and switched to LibreOffice. After that, I got obsessed with doing everything in the terminal. With my website, I needed something more extensive for editing the markdown files that turn into my website pages, so I actually ended up going back to Obsidian. I just went ahead and disabled most of the plugins this time around.

I want to start using a more extensive text editor like Emacs, but I am comfortable enough with my workflow as it is.