Biblically Connected 5: Meditating day and night

How Mike Schmitz makes biblically connected notes and

Jul 10, 2021

Welcome back.

As I send this, I'm off on a solitude retreat taking some time to disconnect from the buzz of the online world and spend time with God in prayer.

I'm so grateful to my wife and in-laws for allowing me to do this but it means I might not respond to your comments straight away.

And inspired by this break...

Passage

Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
Psalm 1

Poll: Struggles?

Thanks to everyone who voted in the last poll. I'll certainly make sure to reflect future content on the apps you use.

Here is this weeks poll.

Biblically Connected 📧 @BibleConnected

What’s the biggest issue with your note taking process?

Talk: Mike Schmitz

Welcome to the second interview with a Bible knowledge management practitioner and today I'm joined by the prolific Mike Schmitz.

Could you introduce yourself for anyone who doesn't know you?

I’m Mike Schmitz, and I make things on the internet. I co-host 3 podcasts (Focused, Bookworm, and The Intentional Family), and work as the Executive Editor at The Sweet Setup. Links to all my current projects (as well my sermon sketchnote videos) can be found at my personal site, faithbasedproductivity.com.

What brought you to using Obsidian?

I started off using Roam Research and was instantly captivated by the ability to link notes together. Over time I grew tired of the #roamcult marketing and started looking for an alternative. Obsidian was the obvious one, but it wasn’t until I went through Nick Milo’s excellent Linking Your Thinking workshop that I really went all in with Obsidian and was determined to make it work for me.

I went into Obsidian with a specific project in mind: to create my own personal cross-reference library. I personally think having a specific use case for an app like Obsidian is important. It can do so much that if you try to make it do everything at the beginning, you won’t actually get any value out of it. Pick one thing that helps your workflow and figure out how to build a system for that.

Do you use any other note or file management application?

I use Drafts to capture things and then use an action to send that text to Dropbox so it shows up in Obsidian. But other than that, I don’t really use anything else for note or file management. Obsidian is where the magic happens. It’s my note-taking app, idea development system, and writing app all in one. And I absolutely love it.

We do use Notion at The Sweet Setup, but it’s more for managing the editorial calendar than it is for creating.

You recently ran the Zero to Obsidian workshop with the sweet setup, what inspired that?

I saw a lot of people being overwhelmed by everything that Obsidian can do. I was myself the first time I opened the app! I instantly closed it and decided “this isn’t for me.” Having gotten through that initial resistance, I wanted to create a workshop where I could help people avoid that roadblock. I wanted to be able to walk people through the beginning steps of using the app and start to craft a workflow solution that gave them instant value to their personal workflow. Instead of throwing a bunch of information at people, I wanted them to guide them in real-time as they got their feet wet.

The workshop itself is split into sections, and there are periodic breaks where attendees work on building their own system in Obsidian. Since it’s such a flexible app there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for the right way to set it up, so I try to share some best practices along the lines of atomic note taking and linking notes that people can use to solve a real pain point in their current note-taking workflow. I basically show people how to do something, then give them some time to apply it and ask questions. By the end, you’ve got the beginnings of a solid linked note-taking system that you can build on over time.

What is one tip you'd give to someone new to taking linked notes?

Break your notes down as far as you logically can. For example, I come across concepts like the Pareto Principle in books that I read and I always break those sections apart as their own note instead of keeping them in a large note for the book that they come from. Why? Because I’ve read enough books to realize that these concepts really come from more than one place. And by breaking them apart as their own individual notes, I can link to them from multiple places.

The same principle applies to the Bible study that I do. I have a plain text KJV Bible in my Obsidian vault, but I broke apart every verse as its own note. This allows me to link other notes to individual verses and leverage the connections that the Local Graph shows me when I go back and study.

How can people connect with you online?

My personal site is faithbasedproductivity.com, and I’m on Twitter as @_MikeSchmitz.

Thanks for taking part, Mike. If you would like to be featured in an interview, please fill in this short form.

Tools

There are two plugins that can help get your book highlights into obsidian.

Obsidian Kindle plugin
Obsidian Readwise plugin The Readwise plugin requires a Readwise account and subscription which can also be used to save highlights to other note taking apps like Evernote, Notion and Roam.

(p.s if you use that Readwise affiliate link, you'll get a free months trial and help support the newsletter.)

Craft has added inline equations and upgraded the share sheet to capture images and other files. Find out more and learn about the other changes.
The.rip The rip is a service that turns tweets and twitter threads into markdown. I had tried it last year and couldn't get it to work, but now it's fine!

Links

I shared the first part of my look at making a book of the Bible MOC/Hub note.

Abe peter's shared 10 reasons why he thinks you should use Doom Emacs (and now I'm exploring VIM keybindings…thanks?)

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See you next week.

Biblically Connected