Pocket book LM and Obsidian are the dynamic duo I did not know I wanted

Taking notes is one thing many people do all through the day. I do know I can not get by mine with out setting reminders or jotting down a number of issues to jog my reminiscence. It is like I am nonetheless at school and note-taking is my saving grace earlier than the subsequent take a look at — besides as an alternative of learning, I am simply making an attempt to not neglect one thing I must do.

Whether or not I am in a gathering or researching a brand new matter for a narrative, I take notes as I am going. I attempt to determine what is going on on with a brand new program or make sense of a subject that is getting traction recently, and I jot issues down alongside the way in which. My favourite app to make use of is Obsidian. It is nice for holding tabs on all types of subjects, and a free, easy-to-use note-taking app that is turn out to be common with tens of millions of customers.

I am additionally an enormous proponent of NotebookLM and figured why not attempt to use Google’s note taking app to assist me decipher a few of my notes in Obsidian. What I discovered was truly fairly shocking. Not solely is my handwriting atrocious, however my notes may be actually laborious to decipher. Fortunately, AI was capable of assist me spot some patterns.

Obsidian is simple to make use of and easy to combine

I used to be happy with how one can convey it over

For those who’re utilizing Obsidian, you may open completely different sorts of notes and use them for absolutely anything. On the finish of the day, you are the one typing in them, so it is fully as much as you ways you employ them. I like to make use of Obsidian to maintain monitor of my week. I often have a word with reminders for every day, together with one for freelance subjects I need to analysis for story concepts. I am going to even make a each day word for random ideas or issues I must look into.

Fortunately, there are a number of methods to combine the notes I maintain in my Obsidian vault. I can export them as PDFs and add them to NotebookLM. It is easy sufficient, however you do have to save lots of every word individually. That may current a little bit of a problem, because you may lose the connections between your notes — and the AI might not perceive how all the pieces matches collectively. So, utilizing Markdown hyperlinks is essential.

Markdown is the key ingredient for simple integration

You may copy, paste, and get the hyperlinks

As a result of NotebookLM works with Markdown, I take advantage of Markdown hyperlinks in my Obsidian notes. I depend on these hyperlinks to attach my notes and assist me perceive which subjects are a part of the identical analysis thread. I do maintain them in folders in my vault, however moderately than opening one word after which one other simply to toggle between them, a Markdown hyperlink lets me bounce from one to the opposite.

Meaning I can copy and paste textual content from Obsidian into NotebookLM, and it understands how the notes are related… all because of the Markdown hyperlinks. That is confirmed once I use one of many many options that NotebookLM affords to assist folks examine and do analysis. After all, I additionally fill out my pocket book with different analysis hyperlinks outdoors of Obsidian to color a fuller image of no matter matter I am diving into, particularly if I am beginning with notes I uploaded from Obsidian.

Thoughts Map helps me join my analysis additional

I uploaded a listing of the notes I had opened right now and threw them into NotebookLM’s Thoughts Map. It mapped out all of my notes, exhibiting how they’re related and how one can finest navigate by them. It even discovered components of my analysis and notes that I hadn’t related through Markdown hyperlinks and grouped them collectively. That may look like a small factor, however I accomplish that a lot analysis on completely different subjects that it may be robust to maintain monitor of all the pieces.

Granted, I do not all the time put all the pieces into Obsidian. However I do incessantly hyperlink again to older notes from new ones. Utilizing Thoughts Map helps me make deeper connections to notes I’ll have missed linking. I additionally actually loved the newer NotebookLM instrument, Reviews. I am going to add in a few of my scribblings (which can learn like they’re from a madman) and Reviews can flip that right into a briefing doc to assist me higher perceive each my very own writing and the analysis hyperlinks I’ve added from across the internet. Since NotebookLM makes use of no matter I present as its supply materials, it could possibly pull the solutions I would like straight from my analysis.

Typically, I simply use it to summarize and assist me set up

I can ask inquiries to remind me in regards to the matter

I do a lot in Obsidian to maintain monitor of all the pieces occurring in each my skilled and private life. Since I am at my laptop for many of the day, I converted from the iPhone’s Notes app to Obsidian as a result of it is a lot simpler to prepare and customise with completely different options. Now that NotebookLM has a cellular app as nicely, it opens up much more flexibility in how I combine it with Obsidian.

I can return into Obsidian to revise or broaden what I’ve written and reap the benefits of its wide selection of options. Holding Obsidian tidy additionally improves how nicely NotebookLM can course of and use the content material — particularly as I make updates. As soon as I sync the 2, I can use NotebookLM like a chatbot, asking questions to look deeper into the analysis. The extra I take advantage of these two and combine them, the higher they will be, which is one thing I am genuinely so enthusiastic about.