Is Obsidian amazing? Of course it is. So is Notion, so is Craft… the list goes on.

Obsidian is advertised as the “perfect system” for note-taking and managing your knowledge. While I myself am an avid user and loyal advocate, sometimes learning new applications/software is a massive bottleneck that results in weeks and months of customization, YouTube tutorials to get up and running, and far too much brain power to figure out how to execute a simple task. You eventually ditch it.

A perfect system isn’t perfect if you don’t use it. The plugins, the back-linking, the graph views, they all mean nothing if you don’t end up reaching for it.

Tiago probably thinks I am a Stage 5 Clinger with how often I quote him, but he is quite the expert when it comes to building “second brains” and said it best:

“Inspiration is the essential fuel for doing your best work, yet it’s impossible to call up inspiration on demand.”

It is criticalto build systems that allow for you to capture your best thoughts, ideas, creativity, and little nuggets of knowledge the moment they strike. If you do not naturally reach for platforms like Obsidian, Notion, or the like to capture an idea when it hits you out and about, sitting in a waiting room, on the back porch in the middle of your book, then it isn’t the platform for you.

The “perfect system” is the one that removes any friction. You know it, you understand it, and you use it.

Apple Notes has come a long way. Does it have a graph view? No. But what it does have is OCR (Optical Character Recognition) that makes it incredibly powerful for searching and displaying keywords from nearly anything. Handwriting, physical landmarks, images, text, audio transcripts, PDF’s, powerpoint slides, and more, you can simply enter a keyword in your apple notes search bar and in a second you can browse all of your knowledge related to that keyword.

This makes finding information from source material and original work, easy and efficient. Making connections through shared key concepts, themes, and ideas is just as possible through Notes as it is any other system.

The best part is, if you are an Apple Notes user, it is familiar to you, it’s native to the devices you already use, oh and it’s free!

It really comes down to how you structure your note-taking and that is what I have done here in this article. To the best of my ability, I have built out a structure for a functional and efficient knowledge vault within the Apple Notes app.

The point is to build a system that allows you to easily capture, store, organize, and recall the knowledge you accumulate and apply it IRL.

I hope you enjoy! As always, send me a message if you have any questions :) happy learning!