PTPL 025: Handwritten Text Recognition in Obsidian, and Welcome Changes to the Notenik App

Plus: Forgetting the shoulds when notemaking, nested Kanbans, and the Projects plugin

PTPL graphic by the Author

Welcome to the 25th in a series of posts documenting my plain text, paper-less, Obsidian-flavoured journey — exploring productivity through a future-proof, plain text mindset, with a soft spot for the paper that counts.

Today I’ll be talking about —

• Productivity and strawberries: a gardening analogy for note making

• Knowing what the shoulds are, but choosing to forthem when making notes

• Handwritten text recognition in Obsidian (via Excalidraw, and also from Goodnotes and Notability)

• Changes to the Notenik app making it easier to use with Obsidian

Productivity Inspiration

From Winning the War of the Strawberries, by Walter Bowne:

So my suggestion? Scale down. Control what you can. Enjoy what you grow. And know that Nature is always in control. And please, use no pesticides. And use organic matter, like composted leaves from the fall.

I’m not going to spell out the parallels with my PKM, so as not to interfere with what that quote is telling you about your own.

From Advice on Writing Like it Matters, by Holly Glenn Whitaker:

I have not followed the playbooks, I have done a lot of it wrong, but I have written like it matters, like what I have to say matters. If there’s any advice I have to give, it’s that. Sure, pay attention to the technical bits, the hacks and the best practices, and drive your engagement and whatever. But write like it matters and like what you have to say matters. Write like it’s 2013 and no one knows who the hell you are or cares what you have to say, and do it anyway.

Your notes will be a lot like this, all going well. As you write, forget the shoulds and embrace the core of what truly matters in your productivity world. No one is better equipped to discover what that means in your life, in your productivity system, than you are.

Productivity Tips

• Exciting news: handwritten text recognition is coming to Excalidraw! So says its creator, Zsolt Viczián. This opens up the possibility of searchable right brain scribbles. See also this discussion on taking handwriting in Goodnotes to Obsidian, and this one on Notability to Obsidian.

What’s the Best iPad Notes App For Drawing and Handwriting?
Out of GoodNotes, Notability and Noteshelf — it’s not the one you thinkmedium.com

• Stowe Boyd has some interesting ways of nesting Kanbans and integrating Dataview into his task management system, that he calls Kanbanibalization.

Adventures in Obsidian

• I’m delighted that over 340 people have downloaded my sample Obsidian Planner vault, and nearly 60 people have availed themselves of my Markdown King James Bible with navigation and study helps. They’re both free, so go take a look if you haven’t seen them yet.

• Next, I’m contemplating building a fuller Obsidian vault for beginners. For someone like I was—wondering what the hype is about, but put off by the complexity of it all. There’ll be a free taster vault, but the full version will be a paid product.

• I heard about the Projects plugin on last week’s Obsidian Roundup. I’ve yet to play with it, but this part of their approach resonated with me:

The plugin must not leave any plugin-specific configuration in the notes, such as custom front matter properties. Notes may be shared with colleagues and teams who don’t use Obsidian. If the user stops using this plugin, they shouldn’t have to clean up all their notes.

• I’m excited about the changes coming to Notenik that are making it easier to use it with Obsidian. Here’s a discussion I’ve had with the founder, Herb Bowie, on block references. And a post showing how the founder uses Notenik as a project launcher, that could be applied to Obsidian. The thing that interests me the most about his setup are the custom URL actions and local links to link to other apps and files. Reminds me of Hookmark and Workspaces — but free.

• Gareth Stretton has a cool way of reusing Dataview queries, in much the same way I like to create “master pages” for links that appear in a lot of different places. Edit once, change them all! Nice and efficient.