PTPL 063: Your Obsidian Graph is Not Your Compass
PLUS horizontal rules in Markdown, and habit-stacking a new-to-me, phonetic way of writing English
Welcome to a once-a-week taster of things that I’ve found helpful in my quest to create a simple, future proof, digital-analog workflow.
The right kind of connections—not your Obsidian graph—are your compass
I rarely visit my Obsidian graph, but when I do… I like it to look like this:
So, what do you get if you cross a dad joke with modern art? “Kandinsky’s map of my PKM” by Alex Qwxlea, that’s what! Love it.
I’m not into the eye-rolling post-bashing that some indulge in when enthusiastic Obsidianites air their PKM maps in public, but I’m not against a little light hearted ribbing of the same.
Occasionally I’ll take a glance at my graph—and by occasionally, I mean once a year or so—for a casual bird’s eye view of the mélange, but it’s not the compass of my vault and it’s not something I feel the need to compare with anyone else’s version.
So if the graph view isn’t your compass to PKM bliss, what is?
The connections you make between your notes that are actually useful, and which surface when you need them, are the best indicator that you’re on the right track to building a truly useful body of notes. Your graph could be the fairest in the land and still not be connected in a way that works for you. Your graph could also look disjointed and scattered, but work perfectly for where you’re at right now.
Do you find the graph view in Obsidian useful? If yes, that’s wonderful! In any case, feel free to hit me up on Mastodon with your cleverest memes on the topic.
Horizontal rules in Markdown
Recently I learned something about Markdown: I now know that horizontal rules composed of three asterisks, or three dashes with spaces between them avoids turning the line immediately above into a header.
Three asterisks are now my choice for horizontal rules. I’ve set up a hotkey in Keyboard Maestro that’s easier to reach for than Shift+888: when I press Option + Delete, KM enters three asterisks followed by a blank line.
Habit stacking a new way to write English phonetically
A few years ago I wrote an article on the handful of secret codes I loved as a child, and the one I still write in to this day. This week I learned that Shavian, a phonetic writing system and the precursor of Quikscript, is the only one of the two that’s Unicode compatible. Ease of typing and sharing online is a significant plus.
Challenge accepted! 𐑗𐑨𐑤𐑩𐑯𐑡 𐑩𐑒𐑕𐑧𐑐𐑑𐑩𐑛!
There are many similarities between the two writing systems, so I’ll be approaching the task by applying James Clear’s habit stacking principle.
Take what you already know (and find easy)
Connect the new thing to it
I know this technique works, as I’ve been leveraging it for years in all sorts of productivity and physical movement related areas.
The Plain Text, Paper-Less Productivity Digest explores productivity through a future-proof, plain text mindset, with a soft spot for the paper that counts.
Download some free productivity goodies (including an Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.