My AI Enhanced Writing Tool

Why I Switched To Obsidian From Notion

As many of you know, I use Notion for nearly everything in my business. I store all my notes, tasks, reports, PDFs, and also host sites. All in one platform.

But I have found that I am using a lot more AI tools on a day-to-day basis, and am constantly switching platforms to do research which means.

1. I get out of the flow.

2. I have to do a lot of copy and pasting.

3. I get distracted and end up browsing.

So a few of weeks ago I thought I would revisit Obsidian, mainly because I noticed there are some great plugins which make use of AI directly inside it.

Now, don't get me wrong. Notion does have AI support, but it doesn't use GPT-4, and has restrictions on the usage, and being a geek, I like the idea of being able to create my own plugins for my personal needs (but that is another story).

So after three weeks of constant use, I have decided to switch to Obsidian full-time as a writing tool and task manager and I moved all of my previous notes over over a couple of days ago.

(The process of moving is relatively painless, but Notion does win in the layout side of things. But I am sure I can figure out a workaround.)

But what I wanted to show you today is how I am using Obsidian and what the AI tools I use do, and how they make writing and research more enjoyable and more importantly, easier.

So for those of you who are not familiar with it, Obsidian is open-source, it runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, IOS, and Android.

It is a lot like Notion in that you can collect notes, PDFs, images etc. But instead of being stored in the cloud, everything is stored locally on your machine.

You can use their sync feature for $10 a month which will keep all of your devices updated with any changes you make, or you can store your files in DropBox, iCloud etc. for free. If you are a geek, you can also use GitHub as a repository.

I personally prefer the writing experience in Obsidian over Notion as it has a nice distraction-free option, typewriter mode, and you can get a simple Pomodoro timer plugin to help keep you focussed.

There are also over 1,300 plugins available for free to help you achieve the setup you want.

I switched mainly because of the AI features which I will talk about in a minute, but I have also added a number of additional plugins which I will cover later.

But first, let’s look at the AI setup I am using.

CoPilot

This is the main plugin I use, and it is the reason I switched to Obsidian.

You can use ChatGPT directly inside the app by providing an OpenAI API key. This way, you can scrap the monthly fee for ChatGPT+ so there are no limits on the requests you can make.

You are also not restricted to OpenAI's models, you can use models hosted directly on your computer etc. but I suspect most people won’t use this feature.

One of the key features I like is being able to ask it questions about the note you are currently working on, ChatGPT will understand the context and provide answers etc.

Lastly, you can create custom prompts to run, much like building your own GPTs but directly inside Obsidian.

I can't get over how useful this is, as well as being a major time-saver.

Auto Classifier

This is a simple plugin that will automatically help you create tags in your notes using the ChatGPT API. The plugin can analyze your note (It can be title, frontmatter, content or selected area) and suggest relevant tags based on the input with tags in your vault that you already use.

I tag everything I write so I can do a quick search and find every note I have taken with that tag. I suggest you spend a week or so writing and using tags before you turn this on.

Smart Connections

This one takes a bit to get your head around, but once you have a load of notes in Obsidian, using Smart Connections you can start asking the AI questions.

Unlike CoPilot where you can chat about your current note, Smart Connections indexes and contextualises all of your notes (and even PDFs) and you can interact with them.

But what is really cool, is that you can add a Smart Connections block to the end of every note you write and it will automatically add connections to other notes it think are relevent, making it easy for you to remember where you wrote about something in the past.

As I have started to use Obsidian every day and also imported about 1800 notes from Notion, I find it really easy to find things I made notes on, even three years ago etc.

This for me makes a must-have second brain tool.

Strange New Worlds

This is a bit like the above plugin, but as you are writing it helps surface links and show information in other notes relevant to the one you are working on and will add a pane to the right with extracts information from those notes.

When I am writing long pieces of content and have gathered multiple notes for the article, I find this an amazingly quick way to remind me of facts etc. that I have written down.

Other None-Ai Plugins I use

Canvas

This is a built-in infinite whiteboard where you can add notes, PDFs etc and link them all together with arrows, group them, and so on.

This is my go-to planning space. Especially when I am sitting watching TV and don't have my massive whiteboard in my office.

I am currently writing a new report, and just being able to visually see all the notes I have written and how they link together makes the whole process easier to get my head around.

I can also bring in all of the reference PDFs I have collected and zoom in and look through those directly in the Canvas. Gamechanger.

Annotator

Adding notes to PDFs has always been a pain in the ass. On my iPad, I use PDF Pro which works a charm, but then when I am at my desk I don't have easy access to those. (I use a Linux machine now).

With Annotator, you can mark up and add notes to any PDF in Obsidian, and all the notes sync across devices.

Auto Link Title

I paste a lot of URLs into my notes. This simple little plugin visits the URL and fetches the page title and puts it alongside the URL.

Better Word Count

Turn off the built-in word count plugin and add this one. It provides more information and you can get word counts from highlighted paragraphs etc.

Calendar

Using Obsidian was a bit of a paradigm shift for me. In Notion, I would specifically create a note for what I was working on.

Now, I have Obsidian create a daily note for me and I fill in all my thoughts, research in that one daily note, and add tags to those.

When I am searching I either search by tag or let one of the AI plugins surface the information for me.

The calendar plugin lets me choose daily notes quickly and even shows me how much I have written on that particular day.

Colored Tags

Does what it says on the can. Allows you to have custom colors for your tags. Simple but useful.

Colored Tags Wrangler

Adds a lot more features to tags such as changing their colors, adding colors to cards on your Canvas based on the tag, changing Kanban card colors, adding colors to a folder you created etc.

Commander

Obsidian can sometimes be a little hard to work with because of having to use the command palette to access a lot of features. This plugin allows you to assign commands to icons in various locations of the interface for easy access.

I have all the tools I use inside Obsidian as icons for quick access without having to go to the command palette or remember hotkeys.

There are a bunch of other things you can do with it, but that is for another article.

Kanban

This is a standard Kanban task manager which I now use to manage my daily work. I used to use Notion for this, but again I like to keep everything in one spot if I can.

Mind Map

Yup, you guessed it. You can now create mind maps directly inside Obsidian. This was the one feature that Notion lacked and I had to use external services, now I don't.

OmniSearch

This is an essential plugin. It allows you to search everything in Obsidian. It will search your notes, PDFs, and even images. It can OCR text in PDFs and images. It just works and is fast.

Open Gate

This plugin allows you to embed websites directly in your notes. This is immensely useful for research.

Outliner

I like to use outlines when I write, and again, Notion lacked that feature. This plugin understands ouline levels, and you can show/hide them. This is how I write everything so this one might just be for me.

That's it for the main plugins I use. I also have a bunch of others I use, but these are the ones I think are useful for most people.

I am not sure if this was of any use to anyone, but I just thought I would share how I do things in the hope that it helps.