nicolevdh

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 2025-06-23 17:56:36 +0000 UTC View Post

I'm back! Here's what happened...

... I got divorced.

There, I said it.

It went about as well as it could possibly have gone (we're still lovingly in each other's lives and families), but you don't leave a 20-year marriage without some emotional fallout. I've had to prioritise my mental and physical health over pretty much everything else, including content. Funnily enough, my last newsletter was...

Patreon exclusive: Coffee chat with Brandon Boswell

Hey folks! Here's a video just for Patreons, although Brandon and I may use short clips of this in future videos.

I've been following Brandon Boswell for a while, and I even reached out to him a few months ago just to meet him for a virtual coffee. Fast forward several months, and we were able to do it in person! We met up in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to have a coffee and chat about:

• ho...

  2024-07-11 16:49:41 +0000 UTC View Post

Connecting visual notes with Obsidian Excalidraw

I've been on a real visual note taking kick recently, thanks mostly to spending time with the visual PKM extraordinaire himself, Zsolt Viczián. This week's video addresses the problem of connecting visual notes in the same way that we do textual notes. After all, some might say linking our thinking is what's transformative about taking notes.

Hybrid textual/visual notes with Obsidian Excalidraw

I just released a new video about hybrid notes with Excalidraw, and I'm quite eager to share it with you all because it's about the biggest recent change in the way I take notes.

I now use Obsidian Excalidraw to create notes that are a hybrid between text and visuals by default, using a feature that its developer calls ...

Patreon-exclusive video: Onyx Boox Note Air 3C Unboxing

Two months ago, I bought a reMarkable 2 on a whim (unboxing video here) and while the onboarding experience wasn't the best, it DID whet my appetite for e-ink tablets in general. After that video and just talking about e-ink tablets a bit more, I unfortunately heard of another e-ink tablet that made me immediately regret buying the reMarkable... and of course I ended up buying that one ...

My talk at the PKM Summit: Doing It in Public

On March 22nd and 23rd, I went to the PKM Summit, a conference held in Utrecht, the Netherlands. I had never been to an in-person conference just for Personal Knowledge Management and note-taking, and it was amazing.

I did two talks at PKM Summit. In the first one, my friend Zsolt VIczián (whom I met for the first time there and who is the developer...

Peerdraft for collaboration in Obsidian + Patreon exclusive video

I've long wished for a way to work on notes on Obsidian with other people, and I've tried many different approaches. One of them, Etherpad, I even made a Patreon-only video about last year. But up until now, nothing really scratched that real-time itch. Dropbox was the closest, but that required someone having both Obsidian and Dropbox installed-- not ideal.

2024-02-23 15:11:45 +0000 UTC View Post

Talking in Public 02: Optimal quitting + Patreon giveaway

I had fun recording the last little audio clip, so I decided to also read out the second issue of my newsletter, Thinking in Public: Optimal quitting . The newsletter itself is free for everyone to sign up to, but I'm experimenting with reading issues out loud and also adding a little background commentary in audio format for Patreon only. These won't be...

My second attempt at writing a book in public

I planned to write a book last year, but 2023 had other plans for me, and that didn't happen. This week's video is about what happened, and why I decided I'm writing a different book instead. I take you through the current setup of the book, the Obsidian plugins I'm using, and even another tool i'm using in conjunction with Obsidian for the actual writing.

Spoiler: it's 2024-02-16 11:44:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Patreon-only video: Remarkable 2 unboxing

I've heard about e-ink tablets for writing for a while, but never really "got" the concept. I'm sure you already know I like digital note-taking, but I actually like analog note-taking too. I'm a huge fountain pen nerd and have quite a collection of pens, paper, and ink from all over the world. I felt like e-ink notebooks was the worst of both worlds: not as tactile as analog, not as easily shared as digital.

What has begun to change my mind is that I bought the 2024-02-09 16:44:16 +0000 UTC View Post

Ways to learn in public-- and starting my book on it

This week's video is about 10 concrete ways that I learn in public, and I'm putting my money where my mouth is by also announcing that I'm starting to write a book in public.

This isn't a marketing ploy. I don't have a book written out yet, I've never written a book before, and I'm just starting. I really am fascinated by the idea of writing a book in public, angst and insecurities and all. I don't know how this is going to turn out, but you can give me feedback on the outlin...

Patreon exclusives: Canvas Candy Tutorial + giveaway

More than a year ago, the Obsidian team released Canvas as a new core plugin. Canvas is a way to visually arrange your notes, media, and even embeds of external sites on a wide, infinitely scrolling space. It's supposed to mimic that feeling of spreading your notes out on a kitchen table to work on them.

I've always liked the idea, but it's been a little limited for my use cases. I've heard people bemoan the lack of cu...

Free alternative to Obsidian Publish: Quartz

Hi everyone!

This week's video is about a free, open-source, self-hostable tool called Quartz that you can use to publish Obsidian (or other Markdown-based) notes. It recently won the Best Tool in the Gems of the Year 2023 awards, voted on by members of the Obsidian community.

Publishing notes with Quartz involves more setup than ...

Wearing blades as well as jewels - Talking in Public, the NVDH Patreon podcast

So Patreon apparently has a podcasting feature! Of course I wanted to try it out. So here's something that's half me reading out the latest (aka first) issue of my newsletter, Thinking in Public, and then half talking about a few things I didn't get to mention there.

Since this is new, I'm not entirely sure how this works. I think you should have gotten a link to an audio RSS feed. This...

Video preview: My information processing pipeline in 2024

This week's video is about the process and apps that I use to consume content (books, articles, PDFs, podcasts, and videos) and take notes on them so that I remember the important bits. I also talk about a controversial newsletter issue I read from Oliver Burkeman entitled How to forget what you read, which I both loved and hated so much that I made this video.

In other news, did you k...

Video preview: my video creation workflow

I first started making videos on YouTube 7 years ago, but it's only in the last two years that I feel I really hit my stride in terms of consistency. Part of that is due to taking a lot (I mean, a LOT) of courses on creating videos for YouTube specifically, and the other part is building a system around processes so that I don't forget to do things.

... and, of course, I use Obsidian to track a big part of it.

New on the Patreon vault

Some of the things I show off in this ...

Goodbye OKRs, hello yearly theme

Happy 2024! I wanted the first video of the year to be about balance.

Last year, and the few years before that, I've made more and more specific objectives for the year. The OKR (Objectives and Key Results) approach is something I'm familiar with in my day job, so it felt natural to extend that to my personal life as well.

What I found out last year, quite dramatically, is that it was too much. Having objectives, even ones I set for myself, made me push a little too hard to achiev...

Patreon exclusive video: Taking literature notes (Living in Information)

Hey folks! It's been a while. Lots of personal things have come up for me in the latter half of the year that have made me particularly glad that 2023 is over. Onwards and upwards!

I'm ramping up on creating more content for you all this year, and I'm brimming with ideas.

Interviewing Jorge Arango on organizing notes in Obsidian

Did you see my livestreamed interview with my friend Jorge Arango? I did it at the end of the year, and I think it turned out pretty well. We talk...

Patreon preview: A different way to publish Obsidian notes

Obsius Publish

Hey, folks! I'm finally back after a bit of a break, and this time with a preview of a video I'm publishing next week about a community plugin called Obsius Publish. Obsius Publish is my current go-to plugin for publishing temporary or one-off notes quickly and for free. I'm still using Obsidian Publish for my main notes, but sometimes I want to publish notes semi-privately and just give...

Toxic productivity and burnout

For this week's video, I did something different: I recorded a conversation between me and my friend Andy Polaine, a leadership coach, about what happens when productivity gets toxic and turns into burnout. Some of you may recognize him from the interview with the Obsidian CEO or from the 2023-07-03 21:53:58 +0000 UTC View Post

Follow my learning exhaust

Here's a preview of next week's video, in which I trace the path of one book I read throughout my vault, from raw Kindle highlights to the variety of notes, videos, and presentations I made from it as a result. The whole process took five months (so far).

The book in question is Emergence, by Steven Johnson.

Note: This video will be unlisted until Friday, when I have to mark it as private shortly before it is publ...