Visual thinking, practical Zettelkasten, and a new Patreon perk

Hey folks! I'm coming back to life here after some unintentional time off, but here's what I've got to share with you today.

Livestream: How to Sketch Your Mind in Obsidian and more

Last week, my friend Zsolt Viczián (developer of the Obsidian Excalidraw and ExcaliBrain plugins as well as general visual thinking guru) came onto my channel to talk about how he does visual thinking in Obsidian. He's recently released a book called Sketch Your Mind: Nurture a Playful and Creative Brain that I reviewed and enjoyed. It's about the what, why, and how of visual thinking for the purpose of producing meaningful output.

Zsolt's visuals-first approach really differs from my own style. I don't think I'll go as far as he does with visuals, but I have experienced a lot of benefits from incorporating some of his ideas into my notes. I still use hybrid notes like I describe here, and they have really helped me break out of the linear thinking rut at times.

Upcoming livestream: No Boilerplate + Bob Doto on Zettelkasten

I read about Niklas Luhman's Zettelkasten (ZK) method early in my PKM journey and made many attempts to make it work for me. It never did. I'm inherently skeptical of any methodology that is rigid and restrictive, and I've felt that ZK is that. I left it behind, but I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something there that I didn't quite get.

I really love talking to people who challenge my opinions, so I invited my friends Bob Doto and Tris Oaten to come on the channel to talk about how they implement Zettelkasten. The catch: I want to talk about a practical ZK method, one that is actually used to be productive and not just hoard notes. We'll be talking workflows and plugins and results, not terminology and rules.

Bob Doto is the author of A System for Writing, and he leaves behind him a trail of published books as proof that ZK works (at least for him). Tris Oaten is the (yet unseen) face behind the channel No Boilerplate, and he creates videos on Obsidian, software development, and other nerdy things I love.

The three of us will represent different perspectives on ZK: Bob is the expert, Tris is the recent convert, and I'm the skeptic. I'm looking forward to learning from them!

Join us here on Wednesday at 18:30 CEST/16:30 UTC/12:30 EDT, or drop questions about ZK in the comments below and I'll make sure we get to them!

New Patreon perk: CSV to Markdown converter

I don't know if it's just me, but I've had multiple occasions where I had a CSV file and I wanted each row in it to be a Markdown file. I've done this for:

• TTRPG monsters with stats and books (I used an early version of this for D&D and Pathfinder monsters, both also available as Patreon perks)

• Org charts at work with details for every person

• My Nintendo Switch game collection, with play status, duration, and game category

So I decided to clean up the script and make it more generic so that it can be used for any situation. Here's the link to it. I've also added it to the list of Patreon perks here. Enjoy!

What's next?

I'm feeling ready to tackle video creation again, and I already have a few ideas I'm excited about. But I also want to hear from you! What would you like to see from me?

Have a great day!