I recently used linked thinking in Obsidian to do some critical meme analysis for therapy. It was a good exercise in creating index notes, e.g. a meme crossing over Marvel and The Good Place wouldn’t fit in a folder for either one.

  • Callie
    4•11 months ago

    Been using Roam on and off for a while. A friend of mine calls it her exocortex and I’ve been feeling similarly. As someone with ADHD it’s so nice to be able to offload a bunch of mental overhead to a place where I can just review it later without having to struggle to recall what I wanted to remember!

    • micseydelOPM
      2•11 months ago

      Even though I prefer Obsidian now, Roam was like being able to run after only having crawled with Google Docs. It changed how I approach thinking.

      • Callie
        2•11 months ago

        Can you describe what you like about Obsidian vs Roam? You’re not the first person I’ve heard say they switched.

        • micseydelOPM
          2•11 months ago

          There are lots of different ways to compare, but with Obsidian I like

          • that I spend zero ongoing cognitive energy on security/privacy/availability concerns
          • first-class aliases
          • speed
          • easy to backup continuously
          • local graph view
          • (while I don’t use it much,) the mobile app is much more solid
          • the leadership and the business
          • I find it easier to do long-form writing

          I do miss Roam’s outliner and backlinks sometimes, but not enough to have bothered with a plugin yet. I also wasn’t sure about Roam’s future, and remained a paid subscriber to support them until I saw how the CEO had decided to moderate the subreddit.

          • Callie
            1•11 months ago

            I hadn’t been following the CEO’s behavior. The rest sounds excellent, I’d kill for a decent mobile app. My single greatest frustration with roam is the glacial loading speed on mobile since I’m usually using it to hastily type a note while out doing other things. Thank you for the rundown, I’ll definitely be looking into switching over.

            • micseydelOPM
              2•11 months ago

              I honestly don’t use the mobile app much, but when I tried to use Roam’s app in a doctor visit, it was embarrassing to wait 30 seconds for it to load. It was doubly embarrassing when I compulsively closed the app and had to open it again 🙃

              I hope you post about your experience experimenting with Obsidian :)