PTPL 051: Accessing Your Obsidian Vault in nvUltra and Taio
PLUS Tips for tables, and 3 lessons after using Obsidian for a year
Welcome to the Plain Text, Paper — Less Productivity Digest! I’m Ellane, and this is a once-a-week taster of the unusual, the helpful, and the delightfully mundane, as well as the next instalment in my quest to future proof and simplify my digital-analog workflow.
This week —
Tables in Obsidian
3 lessons from Drea after a year of using Obsidian
nvUltra and my Obsidian vault — no’ bad; no’ bad at a’!
Taio — a snappy, free iOS app for interacting your Obsidian vault, sans plugins
Productivity Tips and Inspiration
Tables in Obsidian
My notes from this article by Prakash Joshi Pax:
Create templates for markdown tables, and better still, pop them into a shortcut/snippet. I use Keyboard Maestro for things like this.
Use the Table Generator and Advanced Tables plugins
Don’t struggle with tables in Obsidian when an app like Excel or Airtable are a better choice!
Lessons from my Obsidian girl-crush, Drea, after a year with the purple gem:
Limit plugins, especially on mobile! Update or delete.
Develop your own structure. Don’t copy others; start working and a structure will emerge.
Don’t make Obsidian your everything app! Use other apps (e.g., for tasks) where they are a better choice.
Super grateful to Drea for pointing to Taio as an alternative to the Obsidian iOS apps. No plugins, but it’s snappy, easy to use, and displays transcluded files!
Off Topic: Help this productivity dude win a bet!
Josh Spector is my favourite productivity and content marketing one-paragraph newsletter writer. He’s the realest deal you’re going to see in this space! He’s that guy next door who always gives you a friendly wave, doesn’t hold you up when you have to be somewhere, and can help you fix your lawnmower engine on the weekend.
Josh has a bet with Arvid Kahl that he can get to 3000 YouTube subscribers first. When they began, Arvid had 2000 subscribers and Josh only had 1,600. Get our mate Josh over the 3K line and he’ll give away one of his mighty Skill Sessions for free! I’ve already bought two, and found them very helpful. Subscribe here for his YouTube channel, and here for his newsletter.
Adventures in Plain Text (and a little paper)
Settling-in to the TaskPaper syntax
I may eventually move away from the TaskPaper way of recording and tracking tasks, but that day is not this day! While it’s helping me keep a good overview of what’s on my plate, in the apps I like the best, I’ve got no reason to leave. Current challenge: refining my simple list of @ tags to classify tasks.
This is a repeat of the list of apps I use with my TaskPaper file from last week’s PTPL digest , in order of preference, and with one addition:
Mac:
TaskPaper
Obsidian (with a nice set of saved searches)
Sublime Text + PlainTask package (I’m not actively using this one, but it’s good to know I can)
iPad and iPhone:
iA Writer
Taio (pro version has configurable actions)
Taskmator (to avoid data loss you must close the file in the app before making changes anywhere else)
Viewing my Obsidian vault through nvUltra’s eyes
A few days ago I became a beta tester for Brett Terpstra’s nvUltra, the successor to nvAlt. It’s nice! Very different to Obsidian because there’s no standard file tree, just a list of most recent files sorted by name or date created/modified. Files in subfolders are listed individually with the folder/ listed before the /file name.
In nvUltra you press ⌘L to activate the search bar, then start typing the name or contents of a file. If nothing comes up, press enter to create the file. Wiki links work, but not [[the kind that don’t work|this kind]]. It’s very much a hands-on-the-keyboard kind of app.
What I like best about testing different plain text apps is the way it helps me see my notes from a new perspective. It helps me make them more robust; less reliant on any one set of features.
If you’re interested in joining the (admittedly drawn out) beta, send Brett a request at me.brettterpstra.com.