#100DaysOfCode - Day 80: Organization - Obsidian.md

Hi Friends!

The past few days, I’ve been looking into better organizational strategies so that I can keep track of issues easily, and share that tracking with my team.

Historically, I’ve used a combination of Emacs’ Org Mode, OneNote, VSCode (plaintext or markdown), and (digital) Kan Ban board type systems.

Requirements

1. I need something that doesn’t conflict with the rest of my workflow for work or using a scratchpad. I tend to keep things digital, and use OneNote with my team, as well as VSCode for development, so those programs are sort of ruled out as task lists (navigating to the right “tab” is always a pain).
2. Needs native image support / display
3. Needs to be extensible and sharable
4. Preferably barebones / somewhat text-based (not some proprietary or complex format)

Contestants

• Emacs’ Org Mode: supports images (and has a TON of other functionality you can extend it with), but it’s not very intuitive, and I only like Emacs with Vim keybindings added on (Evil mode and/or Spacemacs), so it’s become a bit of a headache to deal with about 12391239899 different shortcuts between Vim and Emacs (just to organize myself). Org Mode something I’ll be looking back to in the future once I master development itself, but I decided against the use of it for now because it can be a bit distracting.
• OneNote: great support for images and checkboxes, but often pastes weird into plaintext. Often used for other workflows, though.
• VS Code: great support for images and checkboxes, expansive plugin support, and VIm integration. Often used for other workflows, though.
• Obsidian.md: great support for images and checkboxes, automatic synchronization, uses standard markdown format.

Winner

At the end of the day, I needed something simple that would get the job done, and I really think that Obsidian.md is the best for this. It supports everything I need out of the box, is very straightfoward, and even has plans to roll out a mobile application down the road, for when I need to access my lists on the go.

Pros:

• Ability to set custom css properties to change how things appear
• VIm keybindings
• Saves in .md files that can be stored on the cloud and shared with Mobile
• Open-source
• Runs on Windows, Macs, or Linux. Last (but certainly not least), it supports VIM keybindings!!

Cons:

• Copy/pasting does not work with images (only tested on Windows)
• No native mobile app
• Need to understand and be able to visualize markdown (only allows side-by-side editing - can’t edit in markdown preview mode directly)

If you’re intersted in trying out Obsidian, feel free to ping me on twitter @moxnr to see how I’ve adopted it into my workflow as a developer =)

Stay awesome & happy coding!

MO