INTxK

In productivity forums, enthusiasts often debate choosing between Obsidian, Google Keep or Paper Notebooks when it comes to note-taking (or note-making and note-keeping).

Knowing a tool’s strengths and weaknesses is important to reap the benefits well.

Any kind of knowledge work requires some form of a thought-capturing mechanism. You want to capture your ideas and thoughts as fast as you can before they disappear. This is note-taking.

Oftentimes you only have your smartphone with you. Which is why I think Google Keep is just perfect on those occasions. It offers the smoothest user experience when it comes to capturing ideas.

But capturing ideas is not enough. You want to sit and reflect on your ideas too. This is note-making.

Initially, your ideas are raw and will need to be fleshed out.

Technically you can use a digital tool for this, but I do not recommend it.

I suggest using the good old pen and paper. Believe me, it’s still the best way to think and organise your mental space.

Get a blank piece of paper and see how free and creative you feel.

And then, you’ll also need a proper way to record your data— that is, you want to keep your notes well.

Papers don’t tend to last. So transferring data from papers to digital media is important if you want to use them in the long term.

Tools like Obsidian give you opportunities to save your data without being dependent on a specific digital tool.

You save your data in plain text. And plain text is universal to most operating systems: Windows, Mac and Linux.

So, even if you stop using Obsidian, you will still have access to your data.

The takeaway here is that a knife cannot replace a hammer, and a hammer cannot replace a screwdriver— but they do their job well enough.

Know your tools well and use them wisely.

[Mustafa, 2025-05-18]