Introduction
One of the first noticeable issues that arise from working at a big organization is the scale of it all. It can be very difficult to keep track of whom manages what and where to find them. Now of course, this struggle isn’t anything new or unique, almost everybody that has worked in a big organization has experienced this. However, I believe I have found an easy way to get up to speed significantly quicker, while simultaneously reducing the mental load experienced.
The tool
I have been an avid user of Obsidian ever since its launch in 2020. It’s a proprietary app, however, the notes you write are yours and are stored locally. The notes are plain markdown files that can be opened by pretty much any modern notepad software. And obsidian doesn’t require an internet connection apart from getting updates. For work, I have set up obsidian using a synchronized OneDrive folder as well as an automated backup to GitHub. The first one is automatically done if your notes folder is placed in a synchronized OneDrive folder. For git, I wrote an article: How to synchronize Obsidian via Git for beginners.
The method
My recommendation is to start with colleagues. I have a note ready for each colleague I have interacted with. Every colleague has Obsidian “properties”, such as: their department, the floor I can find them on, are they an internal or external colleague etc.
The next step is to index what your colleagues are working on. This could be in broad strokes, e.g. Dave is the system administrator of x. Or very specific, e.g. John is working on project x as role y. For me ownership, projects and domains are the most important, as I often have to recall which persons are involved with a domain or project that I need to contact or cooperate with.
Depending on the type of work you do, this can be expanded. For me, as I am a Software Engineer, I have created the same types of notes for servers and software that I have come into contact with. While a Risk Manager might make notes for customers or partner companies, and a Mechanical Engineer for facilities and machines. To give you some ideas.
Now that you have a solid base, it is time to use the main benefits of Obsidian: Backlinks and Graphs. In short, backlinks allow the user to connect and navigate through notes via clickable links, and graphs give an overview of notes and their connections. The backlinks can be used to connect the aforementioned colleagues to their projects or domains. And while the global graph can give a decent (and pretty!) overview of all notes, the real power is in the local graph, which gives you a quick visualization of all the connections (backlinks) a note has.
While it will probably take an hour or two to get familiar with, the benefits far outweigh the costs in my opinion. Every piece of knowledge can be stored and referenced from Obsidian, which significantly reduces the mental load of a job on your brain. Additionally, communication and mentorship become much easier, because information that was written down will always be more complete than recalling that same information. As long as everything is kept up to date, of course. And as obsidian is also available as a mobile app, notes can be easily referenced while away from the computer, which can come in handy during meetings.
Creating overviews
The last core functionality of Obsidian that I want to mention is the canvas. As the name suggests it is a canvas in which the user can place existing notes, text and/or images. I love to use this feature whenever I want to make a visual explanation of a certain proces or concept.
It is as simple as selecting my existing notes, linking some of them together, maybe adding some text and then exporting it as an image. A great way to share knowledge with your colleagues without having to introduce them to your entire collection of notes.
Expanding into niches
Web Clipping
Another great addition for those who have to use the internet to gather information for their job is the Obsidian Web Clipper, a nifty little extension that allows the user to export the contents from a website into Obsidian with a simple click. This removes the need for those long lists of bookmarks, and removes the risk that a page or website might no longer be accessible in the future.
Data mapping and indexing
Dataview, by far the most popular community extension available in the Obsidian marketplace, is a tool that allows the user to query their notes using a language very similar to SQL (and easy to learn!). This can be very useful for making a table of contents, index notes, overviews, tracking changes or any other notes data you wish to query.
Embedding
There are numerous community extensions available that allow the user to embed content into obsidian. A few examples are: excalidraw, handwritten notes, mathematical formulas or YouTube videos. Almost anything can be embedded which can be very useful if you wish to make obsidian the central place for everything.
Author: Tim van Oudheusden
Published: 2025-01-17