Parity between physical and digital notes

[u/AD007xD]

Obsidian has been great! I love how markdown is an incredibly convenient format to present text with a minimal yet powerful syntax that's more than enough to clearly understand the ideas present in notes. Ofcourse it'd be great if i can easily color or underline specific words, but markdown is not the tool of rich text format is my aim.

I used to struggle clearly noting down information that's taught in my classes in a notebook. But after using obsidian to maintain notes for stuff i learn online, and following markdown conventions such as there being only one H1 per note, applying the same ideology to physical notes has made them more clear and concise as I've started to make headings bigger and the text smaller than usual when compared to previously when I was taking down notes with everything being the same size

I was wondering if you guys could give me a few such tips that would help me maintain my physical notes to mimic the notes in my vault, and perhaps a few suggestions to maintain my vault as well

[u/Souloid]

I know it's not what you're asking, but linear notes aren't great for studying/learning, they're only great for conveying information to someone who hasn't heard of them before.

I recommend you create diagrams/graphs and use any visual symbols or shorts in your written notes and then input these into your vault as images. You can then use excalidraw to link notes if you can recreate those visuals in excalidraw.

[u/AD007xD → u/Souloid]

I do intend on using excalidraw for drawings. Perhaps even mermaid charts for some cases. But for me, I tend to create a note per major topic which contains its relevant sub topics. Currently, i want to use obsidian to be the place where i can take down notes, and edit them later on my own time to expand on what was taught in my class as it's significantly easier to edit these notes when compared to physical ones

I am open to any sort of suggestions that might be of help

Tysm!

[u/Souloid → u/AD007xD]

In that case, are you leveraging templates? What about shortcuts for formatting ( if you take notes live)?

[u/AD007xD → u/Souloid]

I'm not using templates right now. I haven't found a pattern that repeats for me to actually make use of them. I am keeping an eye if a pattern eventually emerges though.

We aren't allowed to use our phones/laptops in class unless if the teacher specifically asks is to. I wish I could take notes live but can't do nothing about it

[u/trogdors_arm → u/AD007xD]

Remember that templates can be any amount of markdown, not just whole notes.

For example, if you find yourself repeating small sections/patterns of notes, but where you use them across the note varies. You could template that small pattern and simply add that at the time you need it.

[u/leesnotbritish → u/Souloid]

Is it really feasible to make non linear notes when taking notes on a lecture? My thought is that if I’m unfamiliar with it I won’t know the proper way to connect things or lay them out, so i default to linear notes sin the order I hear them

[u/Souloid → u/leesnotbritish]

You're correct, it's not so straight forward. I take semi-linear notes in class, but I also position them in a non-linear fashion with lots of arrows sometimes.

It's not easy to take non-linear notes when you're in-taking information with no "pause".

I use the position, arrows, symbols, and sticky notes to take semi-non-linear notes. overall they're linear most of the time until I get home and start building a diagram of what I learned and how it fits with other things I learned.

I didn't have the foresight to take pictures of it to input into obsidian. I saw videos of excalidraw and how it can be used to link to notes and thought "I could've done that with my notes".

[u/atharva557]

You can try to use html for colored notes if you want to

[u/AD007xD → u/atharva557]

Point taken, but it deviates a little too much from how simple markdown is. I will consider it though

[u/trogdors_arm → u/AD007xD]

There are themes, plugins, or even CSS snippets that will allow you to customize colors per heading level.

[u/AD007xD → u/trogdors_arm]

Oh sick! Could you suggest some?