Unlock Your Research Potential: A Tour of Obsidian for PHD Students
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- Опубликовано: 3 авг 2024
- Learn how to take atomic notes with the Zettelkasten method and create masterful work with my book Atomic Note-Taking:
www.atomicworkflows.com/atomi...
I'm also building my own Zettelkasten inspired note-taking app. Join the waitlist at join.flowtelic.com.
To join the private discord community to improve your note-taking skills and contribute feedback for this channel, head over to:
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If you are a university and want to speak about running a seminar for your students, then please email hello@meda.io.
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This is a recording of my Zettelkasten Seminar for PHD students given at the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). It was for PHD students researching Artificial Intelligence and Music (AIM).
The seminar covers how to use Obsidian for your research and the best way to approach setting up your Obsidian vault.
Part 1 covering the Zettelkasten note-taking method can be found here:
• Supercharge your PHD r...
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:47 Obsidian overview
4:17 Lightmode from command palette
5:00 Obsidian Vaults
5:58 Editing in markdown
9:55 Linking
13:40 Attachments location
14:37 Adding a PDF
18:35 Tabs and panes
22:04 Example atomic notes
26:42 Links and backlinks
27:37 Hashtags and tag pane
30:42 Adding web links
31:50 Command palette
32:38 Zoom in and out
32:51 Graph view
38:18 Local graph
38:51 Obsidian canvas
44:22 Front matter metadata
45:13 Metatable plugin
46:36 Community plugins
50:15 Code blocks
52:58 Dataview plugin
57:23 Kanban plugin
58:36 Checklists in Obsidian
59:47 Embed note blocks
1:00:41 Mathjax in Obsidian
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Blog: meda.io
Twitter: / martin_adams
I have literally been searching "Obsidian for PhD research" for the past couple weeks because I am just starting my PhD journey. Perfect timing! Thanks!
Amazing! Hope you enjoy it!
I am using Obsidian for my work at University too. If you want to exchange experiences pls contact.
@@Martin_Adams May I ask for a question about the Zettelkasten method that I faced? The problem I faced was about facts and datum chunks when I read a textbook or very broad book. For I faced this problem that some chunks of information was pure information and hard to be organized by my own words but some of those information can’t be easily thrown away because they were referenced in later parts of the book. Let’s say there was a concept about a short part about the history of something, which could be concise into several sentences, should these type of pure information be included in my literature notes? If I made them into atomic or separated notes, it would seem sometimes nonsense when seeing it in the big picture of the “big note” that contains a million links in the note. As every bit is very little but it contains many bits in the big note. As some of my textbooks include a lot of information and background included in it, I’m not sure how should I take notes about these information, should I not use this method in such a situation? I sometimes feel very difficult to split very bit as if I would do so, it would look almost the same as the textbook because it was clearly separated in a better way than I would do, it just seems like a naive paraphrase of the textbook.
@@wilsonlamlyt7138 Hey. Right I think I understand the problem you have. First of all, there's no right or wrong answer here, find a workflow that works best for you but gives you the benefits of having most of your notes atomically so they're easier to link, easier to reason about and you can add your own insights as linked notes.
The problem as you describe is that you have a text book with lots of reference material (data tables, formulas, quotes, etc). I wouldn't try to recreate these in your literature notes if all you're going to do is copy the original work and can't add any unique thinking to it.
But what you can do is capture a snapshot (screenshot, copy the table, etc) and add it as a reference note. What you can put in your literature notes is details on when it's useful, when to look it up, what insights it's telling you. For example, if you have mathematical formula that calculates the "Population standard deviation"-you might want the formula as a reference note to look up, but you can add additional notes with examples, explain when it's useful and how to use it.
In your example, if you're encapsulating the history of something, it's mostly just pure facts that you can't manipulate at all. Here I would probably have these as a reference note with a bullet point list of the facts. Think about how you want to link the facts in, do you want to create a Map of Content that links them by region, time, etc.
Another factor to consider is your time. Rewriting the facts from a textbook probably isn't the best use of time to create a perfect Zettelkasten. So be loose-just mindful of what's copied content vs your own original content. You don't publish something that wasn't your own words but claim them as such.
If you were doing it perfectly, then it may seem like you're recreating the whole textbook. If that's the case, then it's probably not adding value to your own understanding. Simply recording where the useful parts of the textbook can be looked up as a note might be sufficient. What you're doing here is figuring out the best way to access the contents of the book without having to read it from cover to cover again. You also want to highlight the areas of importance that you don't understand, and my need some further learning.
So, in summary, don't paraphrase a whole textbook, but give yourself a nice map of how to access the contents. Add your own notes to show how to use the information in the book. Keep references back to the book if you need to look it up again.
I hope that helps. I don't often work with textbooks in my own note-taking, but I hope this gives some guidance on how to approach it.
You gave this talk literally where I did my own PhD! This would have been so useful back then hahah
I’m a first year PhD student in the U.S.! Thanks for sharing.
Amazing. I hope you find the technique helpful. If you want to ask any questions, I run a free community where you can post questions and see what others are asking which you're welcome to join. meda.io/community/join
Exactly what i need! Thank you!!
Astonishing content Martin 🔥🔥🔥
I completed my PhD in 2019 and would have loved a tool like Obsidian! I’d been saying to my peers for years, ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if we could produce a thesis of networked ideas and arguments, rather than this linear thing?’ It just wasn’t what my brain wanted to do. I got through it in the end but I’m sure it would have felt way more natural if we’d had Obsidian.
Absolutely!
Your content is incredible…
Thnaksssss.
I know that this video was released more than 1 years ago, but I hope that you’ve already known that you can use command to toggle between a bullet list and an ordered list. Update them manually is pretty tedious and time-consuming.
I jumped on this video so fast when I saw it in my youtube feed! Havent seen a video from you in awhile. Hope you are doing well in your zettlekasten handbook writing.
Aww this comment made my day! Thank you 🙏
@@Martin_Adams So welcome thank you!
@@Martin_Adams I read the first chapter and I cannot wait until you finish. Definitely purchasing the book... I'm sure there are a lot of individuals, like myself, who are autodidacts, and are looking for an all-in-one efficient comprehensive explanation of this system and its application. Surprisingly, your book would be one of the few sources that would deliver that so there is a huge need, especially as the popularity of Zettelkasten grows. Everything else on the internet is extremely convoluted at the moment.
Thank you for the supportive words! I’m working hard on this book and hope it doesn’t disappoint!
@@itsdavidroland yes most stuff is theories and personal methods that haven’t been tested as long.
Thank you for that very important content ! But the quality of the sound paired with the absence of reliable subtitles made it pretty difficult to understand everything, also as english isn't my mother language. Will check the ressources you put in the description, but this is more as an advice for your next videos :)
Thank you and yes, the audio is terrible. I plan to re-record this with better audio. I’m about to launch my new book Atomic NoteTaking and course which is taking a lot of attention right now.
RUclips offered me this video in response to the search for *writing up a PhD thesis using Obsidian*, but I think the video answers a different question. Doing research for a PhD is no different from doing any other kind of disciplined research, but how to take care of exporting the chapters and the refs in the correct order into a PDF to send to the printers to produce a bound hard copy of the thesis -- that part still isn't clear to me. I don't want to deal with things like RMarkdown or other overloaded options. Perhaps there is an Obsidian plugin I ought to know about that does exactly what I'm after? Please share your experiences and advice. Thank you!
Sorry for not noticing this question sooner. Short answer is that I don’t know from an Obsidian perspective. But interestingly I’ve been through this challenge with my book Atomic Note-Taking where I have printed soft copy versions of it. Not quite the same, but my approach was to format it in Affinity Publisher as it has the ability to flow content across multiple pages. I will keep an eye out to see if I come across anything that helps answer this question.
@@Martin_Adams This is an interesting coincidence! I too have been looking at Affinity Publisher. Thank you for keeping an eye out! 😍
Which program he used to sync his vault? He said at the beginning he had used Google Drive but then he changed to what?
I’ve only used Google Drive to sync my vault. I can’t remember saying I use anything else.
Highlight : You can play quake in it
Good information but the sound quality is bad. Also, don't just upload a seminar that you did with a live audience as the intended target. It's different when we are watching it online. Perhaps you should redo this for online audience with better sound quality and no interruptions from live audience when we can't even hear their questions clearly.
Thanks for the feedback and completely agree. I do plan to re-record this with much better audio!