How many notes do you have saved on your phone? At a quick glance, I have 743 notes stored in Apple Notes alone. I had more than that in Evernote, and let's not talk about the scattered notebooks littering my bookshelves. As you might imagine, they're pretty useless without any organization. Instead of jotting things down, it's better to have a central place to keep everything. That's what Obsidian is, and one of the reasons it's a great tool for folks who are new to taking notes. Aside from its availability on every platform and the low cost of $0 (thank you, open-source software), Obsidian offers a simple baseline to start from that can grow to be as complex and involved as you want.

Obsidian makes it easy to start small

Build from the ground up

We tend to treat taking notes as something that everyone knows how to do, but that's not the case. There are different approaches and methodologies, and it takes a bit of experimenting to figure out what works for you. Obsidian excels at this experimentation phase; a basic vault is nothing except a note editor and a file navigator, and it's incredibly easy to navigate. There aren't any complicated processes involved. New users aren't overwhelmed by information, and the Obsidian Importer makes it easy to transfer any existing notes over from platforms like Apple Notes, Bear, Notion, and more. It even supports HTML and Textbundle files. Chances are, if you're new to note-taking, the only applications you're likely to have used previously are supported.

As you learn to use Obsidian, you'll gain practice with its native features (bilateral linking, the graph view, etc.) The bilateral linking is a particularly beneficial feature for beginners, since it makes it easy to connect different notes and ideas together in an interconnected web of knowledge. Your notes are more useful when connected; for example, if you're studying physics, a note on Newton's Laws of Motion would be good to link back to when you reach a more advanced topic like orbital mechanics.

Your notes are yours

They aren't locked in a proprietary format

Evernote was once one of the go-to applications for folks who needed an easy-to-use notes app, but it changed over the years, eventually becoming a subscription-based model whose only free tier offers severely limited functionality. You only get 50 notes, but more annoying than that, it prompts you at nearly every turn to sign up for the premium versions. Obsidian doesn't do that. All of your files are stored locally on your machine (although you can sync them across devices through the cloud), and since they're all created in a Markdown format, you're able to take your notes with you if you ever want to leave the platform.

That means you aren't at risk of something suddenly changing and holding your previous notes hostage, which is something Evernote users experienced. In Obsidian, your notes are future-proof, even if the platform itself vanishes one day.

Obsidian has a vibrant and enthusiastic community

Help is readily available

Obsidian is easy to learn, but difficult to master. There is a steep learning curve, depending on what you're trying to do. If you want a platform for taking and organizing notes, that's easy to do — but Obsidian has a way of sucking in new users, and before you know it, you'll have a custom dashboard. The good news is that, no matter what you want to do, someone in the community has probably done it before (or at least attempted it). Between the official Obsidian Discord channel, the subreddit, and a slew of YouTube videos, forum chats, and GitHub discussions, educational resources are plentiful and are there to help you figure out the ins and outs of setting up your vault.

You don't need to know how to code, either. ChatGPT and other AI platforms excel at generating the necessary code to pull off what you want in Obsidian, such as generating a template for taking notes in a meeting or organizing notes by semester. You can also use tools like the Obsidian Web Clipper to quickly save articles and stories related to your area of study.

Obsidian offers so many options that it can be overwhelming

Analysis paralysis is a real thing

If you like to tweak and customize the look of your applications, Obsidian can be a pitfall. There are so many options available that it's easy to fall into a trap of spending more time tinkering with Obsidian than actually taking notes and using it for its intended purpose. I mentioned building a custom dashboard before; there's an enjoyment that comes from making a platform truly your own, but you must have the discipline to know when to stop and focus. To start with, only focus on the plugins you absolutely need and save the rest for later. You can build the complexity of your vault as you become accustomed to it. If you're unsure, it's best to add only a single plugin at a time, and only when you've identified a particular deficiency in your workflow.

The optional complexity is a feature, not a bug

It's there if you need it, but not required

While there is valid criticism to be made that Obsidian can overwhelm beginners with all of its options, that holds true for most applications — and it isn't Obsidian's fault that people are easily distracted. It allows the platform to grow with the user, as opposed to something like Apple Notes, which is severely limited beyond basic note-taking functionality. Obsidian offers powerful features that are available if they are needed, but they aren't forced on new users. The beauty of Obsidian is that you can get a truly useful note-taking platform while ignoring more than 90% of the features.

If you're new to note taking, Obsidian can grow with you

Taking notes, like anything else, is a skill you learn over time. Whether you want to use the Cornell method, mind mapping, or a different approach, Obsidian can be used for any field of study. Start small. Focus on the important information first, and as what you learn becomes more complex, add plugins to your vault as needed. When I started my vault, I only had a few notes in it. Now I have nearly 1,000, combined from years of earlier note taking apps (and plenty that have been added since).