Obsidian Harvest — Digging for treasure in your vault
with Obsidian-Assisted Reflection
You have accumulated a lot of Obsidian notes. How do you get some use from them?
One way is “Obsidian Assisted Reflection,” an archeological expedition into your vault.
Reflection involves bringing something to mind from the past, and like an archaeologist connecting it (or letting the Vast Mind connect it) to other somethings.
These islands of connections can be the basis for writing, invention, and the feeling of meaning and beauty in life. And you can find them in one or two minutes per dig.
Preliminary:
If you have not turned on the “Random Note” plugin, open (control-comma (CTL-,) or (Command-,) the Obsidian settings. Click on Options and then “core plugins.” One choice will be “Random Note.” Click on its checkbox on the right to turn it on. An icon of a die should appear on the ribbon on the left side of window. Clicking on the die will give you a random note.
This is just once, of course. Steps 1 and 2 are repeating
Step One : Leap to a random note. This is the digging step.
Step Two: Reflect on and link it.
Do you find the random note illuminating?
- Throw yourself back to the mindset in which you wrote this note. Ryan Holliday quoted Joan Didion, who said notebooks are a way “to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be.”
- Is it relevant to your life now? If so, add that fact to the note.
- There is a very good chance that since you saved this document in your vault, you have added other relevant notes. Your interests may have taken a new direction. You may have new “properties” that you are using. Add the new links and properties to the note, and you are making new connections.
- Have a hard time thinking of links? For good guidance on making connections, visit Nick Milo’s Linking Your Thinking.
That is it. Advantages:
— With this quick dig you have recontacted something valuable.
— It was important enough for you to take a note about it once.
— Now you have connected this note from the past to your current interests and notes.
- Things that were not foregrounded when you wrote the note will now show. This is part of your harvest.
By this re-visitation, you surface buried gold from notes you made perhaps years ago.
With each visit you harvest a new insight or find an old one, and make connections for the future. Time spent? Perhaps two minutes, and you are done. It is so fast and easy you can do it once a day.
Thus harvesting from Obsidian becomes a habit, a steady flow, and you are enriched.
