I might’ve given the wrong impression - the obsidian part is really just a load of files with some metadata (a collection of flat file system databases), exactly for the same portability reasons/tooling reasons you mentioned
I think some people (like myself) just like some order to things, or at least the feeling of it.
Fiddling with my notion calendar of how many gym sessions/runs I made/missed is easier than actually going to the gym of course, but I like to think it helps me stay on track in a “what gets measured gets managed” kind of way.
But maybe when I’m older and more wise I’ll see it for the fallacy it is
I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about a similar home for managing “everything”. I find a tool like notion is just too generalised and I’m missing the UX of purpose made tools though, but I still want some kind of ownership and control over my own data
The dream is to have interop between services, but I control the data and can easily make my own views onto it / tools to manage it. I think this is what the MIT solid project is all about, but I'm a bit lost with the RDF and pods stuff.
I often begin tracking something in a text file, then notion or a spreadsheet, but eventually run into issues with the flow and UX, where custom made apps win out, e.g. Todoist has a better task management UX than notion, my habit tracker sends me timely reminders and has a better UX again, and all the other services which are basically CRUD apps with some extra UI/integrations (bookmarking, Goodreads)
I’m currently trying to make Obsidian my storage layer for all these things, since notion is completely closed source & non extensible. The current set of tools I'm working on are
- A sync engine to pull 3rd party api data into my obsidian vault
- A SQLite vtable/Postgres fdw to expose it as sql so other apps can interop
- A notion/obsidian "quick add" app for on the go, like the "intake" part of the OP
If anyone else has a similar itch to scratch, or experience in the area I'd love to hear more (email in profile)
I might’ve given the wrong impression - the obsidian part is really just a load of files with some metadata (a collection of flat file system databases), exactly for the same portability reasons/tooling reasons you mentioned