DG07 Sources of Digital Garden & Zettelkasten

🕸️Digitalgarden
Status - Forests🧶

I first got the idea from Keep Going by Austin Kleon. I remember him talking about Pay attention to what you pay attention to. So I created a creativity newsletter, called Chitthi.

Then a few years later I read the book How to take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens.
But I was far from practically understanding the idea of note taking.

Then I learnt about Obsidian. And amongst many names on Youtube, I will mention the ones, that made it easy for me to learn about Zettelkasten Method.

They had more clarity on how to have note-taking system instead of a new shiny app called Obsidian.

This video by Morgan gets to the depth of it.

One of the principle of my life that I try to abide by is Functionality over Fanciness

But the beautiful part of Obsidian is, it covers up both form and functionality very well.

This video by Vicky Zhao gets into why I could connect writing in Obsidian as tending to my garden.

Even if you don't know all the shortcuts, plugins, still put your ideas into Obsidian, look at them and think of them. There is no perfect structure.

Structure must be earned

And then there's Nick Milo with his channel Linking your thinking.

So in short Obsidian is a place where

• You write down your ideas.
• Link your ideas together. Connect them.
• Don't prejudge your idea. Quality doesn't matter in the beginning.
• Don't manage your life in Obsidian. To work with ideas, you need effort. Not a project management.
• Don't bother about recording everything you know so far. Enjoy the process.
• You can't escape good ideas.

You may feel I am done, but I am not. Through practice of a ritual you realize the limits of that ritual, and I learnt that writing your ideas is not enough.
To bring clarity in your ideas you must draw them.

This I learnt from Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam and his other books Show and Tell + Blah Blah Blah

If you have visited my Chitthi, you must have seen my illustrations. I post my visual ideas there occasionally.

And here's the great thing about Obsidian, it supports plugins. Enter Zsolt. This guy developed Excalidraw plugin which is a white board tool that helps you draw in Obsidian app itself.

Lastly, in 2025 I was introduced to Maggie Appleton and her Digital Garden and it inspired me to share my knowledge (collective and self contemplations) publicly.