Biblically Connected 7
Roger shares his note taking system and the danger of saving too much
Welcome connected community,
I hope you’ve had a great week wherever you are in the world.
This week I have another interview with a member of the community and some more links and resources.
As always, any suggestions are welcome.
Passage
Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Matthew 11:28-30 - The Message Translation
Talk - Roger Wm Bennett
I met Roger over on Micro blog, I asked him if he wouldn't mind sharing some of his approach to using obsidian for his digital notes and he happily obliged.
Could you Introduce yourself to anyone who doesn't know you?
I'm an aging retired American attorney, but more importantly, a lifelong practicing Christian. (The flavors of Christianity I've practiced, though, have changed. I blogged that story at moderate length: A life in a string of epiphanies – Tipsy Teetotaler ن.) I'm now an ("eastern") Orthodox Christian and the Cantor in my parish.
Interests: music (most genres, but I currently only perform vocal), travel (including European), reading, turning a sedentary professional career into an active retirement, roughly 70 pounds lighter, indulging personal opinions.
What sort of notes do you keep in your obsidian vault
What I keep and what I should keep differ.
First, almost everything I save is a markdown version of a webpage. I may annotate them, but the download is the beginning and I write almost no Obsidian notes from scratch. (I use death_au's "MarkDownload" browser extension for my browser, finding the extension in Obsidian help for "Capture information").
Second, I have lived my life rather as Sisyphus in the underworld — as if I had to figure everything out. Now, even though I'm convinced that the project is folly, I still behave as if it were my task.
That's a long way of saying I've saved too many notes, throwing every interesting URL I read into Obsidian, on the chance that each article might just contain the magic key to my grand unified understanding of Reality (or by analogy, get me to the top of my Sisyphean hill). So there are many orphaned notes, connected to nothing and probably not worth linking since they're pretty lightweight stuff. I'll weed them out eventually, but I should have started off with a more limited end in mind, saving maybe only 20% of what I have actually saved.
The notes I'm saving now are those that strike me as potentially life-altering — not just interesting miscellany. That includes
Social criticism.
Obituaries, bios & individual profiles of inspiring figures.
History.
Articles from socially conservative counter-culture sites, especially those that challenge some of my inherited views.
The Bible.
Notes from Orthodox Church Fathers, priests and commentators, but also …
Notes from and about non-Orthodox Christianity and
notes from essentially every nonfiction book I read (about which, more below).
Why did you choose obsidian over other note applications?
I'm not sure I even knew of the others when I started. Several people on micro.blog mentioned Obsidian very favorably. My initial visits to the Obsidian website left me wondering what the heck this seemingly barebones thing was actually good for, but eventually I started to understand.
But then I experienced a truly bizarre crash of my rather new Mac early this year, corrupting all my DevonTHINK databases and giving me a push toward switching to simple markdown files, stored in a Dropbox folder and organized in Obsidian — relatively bulletproof.
You use the app Readwise with Obsidian. How does that help you with taking notes?
The key is to poke around Readwise for the actions (outlining, concatenating, tagging) that are not front-and-center when you start.
How to Add Chapters to Your Highlights in Readwise with Headings was a turning point. If a nonfiction ebook isn't worth the trouble of outlining by adding headings as you read, to outline the book, it's probably not worth reading in the first place. I also concatenate highlights that form a coherent thought, free of intervening fluff. (Using headings, by the way, permits deep-links into markdown files at a level higher than a specific paragraph.)
Upon finishing a book, I browse highlights on the Readwise site, where a pull-down menu allows export of my notes (very conveniently in markdown format) which then goes into Obsidian or into an intermediate markdown editor (I use iAWriter). I probably should tag-as-I-go with concept tags more faithfully when reading in readwise, but I fell out of the habit as I became fastidious about headings. A review of my outline in Obsidian is when I tag my book notes.
What is one tip you'd give to someone new to taking linked notes?
Think carefully about what you're trying to accomplish and don't save notes that don't contribute to that. It's easy to clutter Obsidian with lots of orphaned notes.
Get a free tutorial on YouTube. Nick Milo has a fine one.
Consider separate Obsidian databases if you have several things you're trying to accomplish and they aren't related enough that you'll want links across them.
Save downloaded stuff selectively. It's almost too easy to save stuff that you'll never really need to see again.
Poke around in Obsidian's help database occasionally to discover features you didn't know about. I particularly wish I'd learned about deep links earlier (Obsidian calls them "Link to headings" and "Link to blocks" in its help files.)
How can people connect with you online?
I'm @ReaderJohn on Micro.blog, where Chris an I met.
Though I still have a toxic Twitter account, I don't use it. Instead, I express my petulant side on a Blot blog here.
I periodically aggregate stuff (or even wax thoughtful) at the Tipsy Teetotaler WordPress blog.
Thank you, whose next?
Thank you for taking the time to share your approach, Roger.
I'm looking for more people to share their systems (especially as I'm running out of my stockpile of interviews!) If you'd like to share how you take connected bible notes, I'd love to feature you in the newsletter. Just click the button below.
(I'm especially interested in none obsidian users so we get a broader perspective. Thanks!)
Tools, Links & Articles
I shared my current thinking over links, tags and folders. This is based on their characteristics as well as some personal opinions.
R.W. Roberson shares how he is using Zotero with Obsidian to manage highlights, notes and citations.
How to Cite Resources from Your Logos Library – J. David Stark
I’ve run into issues with this in the past.
Share
Thank you for joining me to develop our note taking approaches together. I hope it has edified you. I'd love it if you shared this edition with someone else you think might benefit from it.
See you next week.