The similarities between Obsidian and Bullet Journal communities
I realized recently that the Obsidian and Bullet Journal communities are very similar. It shouldn't be surprising, both are methods to organize information and your life; one is digital and one is analog.
Obsidian
There are two extreme camps for each. With Obsidian you have the full-blown micromanagers, who trick out their desktop setups with custom dashboards, colours, backgrounds, etc. And then you have plain vanilla folk, who use it bare bones, no plugins, just the basics. Probably no tags etc.
There is middle ground, which is where I find myself. I prefer bare bones with plugins I've added as I've wanted to do more, but I don't go crazy with linking notes together or creating MOCs1. (On the other hand I have a separate vault for media (movies, books, and now music) that is a little more extravagant in terms of plugins added, and properties, but it serves a specific purpose outside of my "main" vault.)
There are buzzwords involved with Obsidian - the aforementioned "MOC", linking, tags, etc. There's a huge "industry" with YouTube videos and blog posts dedicated to telling you how to make the most complicated vault setups you can imagine. In many cases this ends up confusing new users more than anything else, causing them to go to the official subreddit and ask for help because they don't know what they're doing. Thankfully, it doesn't seem like many users are trying to monetize things too much - themes are plugins are free, and some users provide "preset" vaults via Github that you can download.
The community is very generous.
Bullet Journal
The same extreme groups can be found with "bujo". On one side you have the people who are all about making their journals look amazing with boatloads of pens and markers, stickers, washi tape, etc. And the other side is what you would call basic, or traditional - sticking to the original methods introduced by Ryder Carroll2. The basic people tend to hang out at the Basic Bullet Journal subreddit. And again, there's people in between, where I sit.
And buzzwords...there are buzzwords a-plenty. The most popular one you'll see is "collections", which are basically pages that...collect similar topics. For example you might have a collection for books you're reading or buying or have on a wish list; or a page (or more) about planning a vacation.
And then you have "future log", "monthlies", "dailies", and so on. The unfortunate side of Bullet Journal is that the community has ballooned to really monetize it. For the most part it's harmless, like referral links to Amazon. No big deal. But on the more predatory side you have "certified Bullet Journal trainers", an "official" bullet journal notebook, and so forth.
What does it all mean?
Well...nothing, actually. It's an observation I had on the weekend. I imagine every productivity system has the same set of extreme categories of users. But I found it amusing how similar Bullet Journal and Obsidian in particular were; perhaps it's because I use both of them in tandem that I noticed it.
At the end of the day, what will work for you is a consistent system that is easy to adhere to. If there's any friction in the process it's not going to work.
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