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.

[oldmurray34]

I want to start using a more extensive text editor like Emacs

I dunno how useful it would be for your use case, but there is a TUI application for editing Obsidian notes, called Basalt. I haven't really got into it, but it seems to have a very minimal amount of bells and whistles, so might suit your style of using the Obsidian.

There is also an Obsidian plugin for NeoVim. Also haven't used it, considering I switched to Logseq

[Dibs]

I'm a bit late to this, but I used Notion about a year ago and it rapidly got overwhelming and slow. Then in November I picked up Obsidian and I've found it a lot easier to use.
I've got two vaults that I'm using right now: one for my uni stuff (daily notes/to-dos, reading notes, summarising topics) and one for a writing project (characters, worldbuilding, timeline, and plot). Being able to quickly link between notes has been very useful -- I read a lot of wikipedia so it's very intuitive and what I want from that sort of system. There are plenty of plugins and themes available. I've not done any intense database stuff with it yet, but as a general note-taking and organisational device I've found it preferable to Notion.

[BlazingCobaltX]

@oldmurray34 Whoa thanks for recommending Logsec. As a researcher trying to outline multiple studies I've struggled with gathering my thoughts and Zotero + Google Docs doesn't seem to work well. This one I'll have to explore.

I've seen Notion and Obsidian recommended often by other PhD candidates, but the amount of setup they require to do what one wants feels a bit convoluted. These things are supposed to help me efficiently, I feel. Sometimes a simple handwritten notebook feels the best.

[oldmurray34]

but the amount of setup they require to do what one wants feels a bit convoluted

Yeah it can be a problem. With Logseq you still need to learn how it works and whatnot. Also keep in mind that any of these note taking apps require a baseline setup from you: you have to figure out your own approach using and organizing them. There are a wide variety of methods from subject based to Zettlekasten (you can google Second Brain term to find out some examples people have come up with) and it all depends on your use case. For instance my own vault is a bit chaotic, because I use it as a daily journal, media library (i.e. me writing about media I consumed recently), research thing (a loose collection of digested info on a certain topic or a project), project notes, task tracking and all that. But thanks to my system I can navigate them pretty easily: I have a time log for journaling, queries for task tracking and a system of tags that I use to get around my vault. But then again I am deranged, your vault doesn't have to be complex, so don't get discouraged by someone else's setup and start small: just keeping a daily log for your ongoing research and immediate thoughts, and separate pages for topics, literature etc. I am not a researcher in an academic sense of the word, I don't write papers, so my suggestions might lack some caveats, but that's the thing: it is better to start small and just slowly build up your methodology as you go. I would even advise not to bother transferring your old notes to logseq in one go: it's a huge annoying hurdle to overcome, too much friction, it is better to transfer or re-write stuff on-demand, as you need it

But overall make the system as fun for you as possible, because that's how I do it and that's how I have been taking a lot of notes daily 

[pasdegelsey]

Wanted to give an update - i tried out both and decided to ultimately end up going with Obsidian for now - the biggest difference was preferring that paragraph style although I still really like the free model/open source of logseq. Thanks to everyone for their input and especially  @oldmurray34 for introducing me to a new system