My Notes System
I’ve experimented quite a bit with different notetaking and journaling applications (iAWriter, Bear, Evernote, Notion, etc). For a short while, I even went back to paper-based notebooks. They all have their pros and cons, as many Medium articles and YouTube videos cover in great detail. Foremost, the note system must work for you.
Markdown Format
I use a variety of applications (1Writer, iAWriter, Obsidian, DayOne, etc) to take notes. Common across these applications is their support for the simple Markdown text format. Markdown is easy to write and read, and keeps your fingers on the keyboard. There is no need for a formatting toolbar or menu.
Even more, with exception of DayOne, I have access to the native note Markdown file. I do not need any subscription-based application to have access to my notes. Since they are text files, they are also small and can be easily moved, rearranged, or backed up.
Connected Notes Through Obsidian
My recently discovery of Obsidian opened my eyes to the possibilities of connected notes. I started using Obsidian to capture ideas in smaller notes, and link various ideas together. It is place to capture raw notes, a repository of things I don’t want to forget. Obsidian is a rich platform with many extensions. For example, through a plugin, I automatically import article highlights from Matter. While writing in one pane, I have access to my reference notes in another pane.
External Synchronization and Revision Control
File synchronization and versioning should be a system service, and not a pay feature of an application. Applications should support all the common mechanisms: iCloud Drive, Google Drive and Dropbox. At the moment, Obsidian mobile only support iCloud Drive. This appears to be an iOS/mobile limitation, as Obsidian supports storing your vaults in DropBox on MacOS.
From what I can tell, iCloud Drive does not support versioning, like iCloud or Google Drive provides. That is a major iCloud Drive shortcoming. For now, where possible I will keep using Dropbox and Google Drive
Encryption and File Protection
None of the tools I mentioned above support encryption natively. An Obsidian plugin called Meld Encrypt lets you selectively encrypt files, although I haven’t tried it yet. Thus, I don’t use these tools for sensitive information. My personal thoughts and journal are stored in DayOne. DayOne provides encryption, synchronization through iCloud and also support Markdown.