It has been roughly a year since I first came across Obsidian. After careful consideration trying out Tiddly Wiki, Obsidian, Roam and TheBrain, I opted for Roam. I chose Roam because of its friction-free, browser-based user interface, its product vision and the vibrant community which I was sure will drive significant innovation - and it has! After one year, I was curious to see how Obsidian has evolved. This post will walk you through my second first-impressions comparing Obsidian to Roam.

  I am releasing the MVP version of the Roam-Excalidraw Plugin. Over the past two weeks, I have been super focused on getting to this point. As a consequence, this post is going to be shorter and more utilitarian than usual. I had to make a choice whether to release the plugin this weekend or to write a detailed blog post. I opted for the first.

Conor ( @Conaw ) pointed me to Excalidraw last week, and I was blown away by the tool and especially about the opportunities it opens up for  Roam Research ! It is a full-featured, embeddable sketching component ready for web integration. This post will showcase key Excalidraw features and discusses some of the issues I still need to solve to complete its integration into Roam. I spent most of my free time during the week integrating Excalidraw into Roam. This article will introduce Excalidraw by showcasing its features.

Taking notes is very simple. You take a piece of paper and jot down a few thoughts. That's it. But if it is this simple, why all the fuss? What makes quality note-taking so difficult?

You are keeping your notes tidy to help your future self find relevant information. Note-taking systems offer many ways to organize information. One common feature of these is how easily they get out of hand.

In this post, I am going to walk you through how I take notes in one-on-one meetings. My approach is not rocket science, it is almost embarrassingly simple;

This is an evergreen note that I will be revisit regularly to develop a comprehensive list of note-taking approaches including their practical implementations in various software tools. This post will serve as an elaborate table of contents, including a brief introductory discussion on the importance of note-taking, followed by a high-level walkthrough of each method. Links to posts and videos with detailed examples and descriptions will follow over the coming weeks and months.

We live in a complex world. Our life is complex. This post will help you reflect on the cost of complexity.

I have perfected the process of importing ePub books into Roam. I was able to create an almost frictionless experience for reading a book in Roam. Put aside the issue with reading on a tablet screen instead of a kindle, this solution is much more comfortable and efficient for reading and note taking at the same time then the Kindle. I have also develop a solution to automatically maintain full traceability from my notes to the source text even though the ePub book sits in a different Roam graph compared to my literature notes. This post is a detailed how-to guide for setting yourself up to read books in Roam. Here is the link to the Python program you need for converting your ePub books: Colab Notebook Here is the link to the Book-base.json that will be required to achieve the full experience. This is how the end result looks Detailed how-to walkthrough This second video explains the full process from the beginning to the end in 27 minu...

What tools do you use to create quick sketches of ideas? How do you co-create with others in a visually engaging way? How do you balance traditional text based expression with visual thinking?  I have a whiteboard in my office. I can feel the energy level of any meeting increase when someone stands up, takes the pen, and starts explaining his/her idea at the whiteboard. Collaborating around a whiteboard always unleashes creativity. Home office, virtual working and social distancing have made this experience somewhat more challenging to achieve. The other problem with the whiteboard in my office is it has to be cleaned. Yes, I take pictures before wiping it, however the next time we want to continue the same discussion, our drawing is gone. I would need a larger office and more whiteboards to keep track of all the different discussions that happen around my board. I love visual thinking tools and have always been a mind map junky. Over the years I have used Freem...

Photo by  Lukas  from  Pexels Being effective at work is like a martial art . The difference between the novice and the master is often not the actual moves, nor the detailed sequence of their execution, but the efficiency, elegance, precision, and speed of delivery. There is no silver bullet , just radical common sense and a persistent drive to improve. It is also true, that the same outcome may be achieved more elegantly with a different set or sequence of steps. Take for example typing. If you use two fingers, you may spend years practicing and perfecting your technique, however you will likely never achieve the same level of speed and perfection as if you had learned to type with ten fingers, and had spent your time perfecting those moves. For most of my career I have worked in large matrix organizations. I have read and learned about work. I was trained. I have picked up best practices from colleagues. In this post I lay out a summary of some of the key patterns...

How efficient is your workflow for keeping on top of all your meeting notes, action items, contacts, projects and more?  If you were to bump into someone unexpectedly would you be able to remind yourself of all the relevant topics you wanted to discuss with the person?  Can you remember all the things you wanted to get done when running your errands?  Can you keep track of your discussions with all the people you talk to regularly? In this post I will walk you through my meetings-actions-people workflow in Roam. If you are new to Roam and Roam42... Just in case you are not familiar with Roam , it is an ultra flexible note taking tool. It's like the Excel for text. If you want to find out more, there is tremendous amount of quality content available on YouTube, just search from "Roam Research". Equally, you can head over to RoamBrain.com for all the best links and more. My workf...