Hi, Fuzzy !!!!!
To begin my explanation, I think it's worth it to share our approach in the Paperless Movement® when talking about dealing with information and project/task management.
INFORMATION WORLD
• “Chaotic Thinking”: Mem
• “Structured Thinking”:
• Outliners: Tana.
• Visual Tools: Miro, Scrintal.
ACTION WORLD
• Micro-management: Akiflow.
• Macro-management: ClickUp.
I've used Obsidian for a whole year concluding it wasn't my tool. I had tested for "quite a while" Mem and gave a try to Obsidian because the way it connected ideas really shocked me. I was seduced by those graphs that perfectly symbolized my "crazy brain".
After one year, I came back to Mem and here you have my reasons at that time: "How and Why I’ve Dramatically Improved My PKM by Switching to Mem After 1 Year Using Obsidian" (https://bit.ly/3Txk7Es).
After going really deep into this app (Mem), chat with some of its co-founder and part of its amazing team, I have to say what these guys are developing is literally crazy and blows my mind. Here (https://bit.ly/3UOy6qA), I recommend you a pretty interested article to "get the point".
I'm sorry to say I cannot see myself in 2022 using plain text files, and I think it's impossible for Obsidian to achieve the destination Mem is pointing to. I say this as a personal reflection based on who I am, how I think, and my current situation (an entrepreneur running 4 businesses simultaneously with a 60+ people team).
Talking about dealing with information, my main app is Mem. I can throw in there whatever information I want: a restaurant, meeting notes, notes related to a person, thoughts... All those notes are easy to find later on and, on top of that, you cannot imagine what AI brings to the table to promote serendipity. I've found out connections I'd never have been able to achieve using tags, links, or backlinks. It's unfair to compare Obsidian vs. Mem because they're totally different apps with totally different approaches.
I think you need to be kind of nerdy to set up Obsidian properly. I dedicated 6 months (being a computer science engineer) to perfectly implement my workflows, finding out I wasn't happy at all with the end result.
Whenever I need to give structure to my thoughts, I love outliners. I've used Workflowy for quite a long time due to its simplicity and clarity. Now, Tana came into town to give me a much better GUI/UX (something essential and crucial for me when talking about software) and even more features thanks to its supertags. Yet, Tana keeps being an outliner for me. Period.
If my thoughts are even more abstract and an outliner is not enough, I bet on visual tools. Miro or Scrintal help me visualize things better, bring things down to earth, and start to give structure to move to an outline and, later on, a tangible outcome.
I don't know if this entry helps you better understand my approach and the different apps I use. If not, please, reach me out again. I'll try to explain myself better and, also, try to reply sooner (sorry, but I have had 2 crazy weeks... My apologies!).
Cheers!
Paco.
