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Obsidian as a task manager doesn't work for me

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2 min read

I have been using Obsidian for more than a year to take notes of all sorts (meetings, work, personal, long-form writing, blog drafts, and so on). It provides a distraction-free environment to write drafts and do long-form writing, but I couldn’t get the hang of it as my daily task manager.

I used to maintain an Inbox directory to capture everything (work and personal tasks). The list grew over time. I also used Obsidian Tasks plugin, which has modern-day app equivalent features of managing a task such as adding a due date, recurring date, setting priorities, checking the task as done or canceled, scheduling it, and more.

It worked fine, but it was overwhelming for me. Things got complicated quickly. The UI was boring, and since I don’t use Obsidian Sync with my iOS device, it lost the point to capture everything/brain dump.

I ended up moving to the Things 3 app and good old friends — and pen and paper. I won’t do a second attempt at Obsidian since both Things 3 and paper work for my brain and help me with reminders and retention. I have used Things 3 just for work in my previous job, so it is not a new app that comes with a learning curve.

I’ll still keep using Obsidian as my personal knowledge storage system and for long-form writing.


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I'm a software developer and technical writer. On this blog, I share my learnings about both fields. Recently, I have begun exploring other topics, so don't be surprised if you find something new here.

Currently, working as a documentation lead at Expo.