I come off of the Obsidian-only computer ban later today, and I'm going to be putting together a resource about the experience very soon. In truth, the web viewer inside the app saved me -- it's how I shared the weekend's newsletter, and it's how I've written this to you now. However, I've had a few ideas and built a couple of mini-plugins around this experience as well (which I've found is becoming more and more possible), and I'd like to teach about that a lot more now... Because even more so than the 3rd-party plugin store, you can customise the way that you interface with your written information, until you have a completely personal solution. Now this is amazing and infinitely distracting at the same time, so I'll share about how to figure things out in that regard too (Minimal Note-Taking principles are still the answer). See you soon!

Just the other day I published a piece on Medium that's serving as a round-up of what I've written so far about combining knowledge management and AI... https://medium.com/obsidian-observer/obsidians-new-age-ai-x-pkm-a-complete-guide-august-2026-080324427dd9 Just yesterday we shared a newsletter as well - I'm still locked 100% into Obsidian on my laptop, so I talked a little about that... https://letters.parazettel.com/posts/pztl-028-a-forced-diet-of-obsidian-only-for-a-whole-week I'll be back from my exile soon! Still working heavily on the Minimal Note-Taking manuscript, and next week's newsletter will contain some updates about this See you soon, -- Theo

Right, I wanted to make a video about using Obsidian only on my computer for seven days. The point was simple: you can still get a lot of work done if you have a good system in place. So I set up Cold Turkey Blocker and started building the intro, the bit where I click the button to begin. Then I realised I had locked myself out of System Settings, Wispr Flow, and a surprising number of other things. And Cold Turkey as a Mac app is really damn strict, as in insurmountable - I went into this more recklessly than I thought and now I'm paying the price. But it has accidentally made the demonstration better, at least in some way... The manuscript for the Minimal Note-Taking book is all inside Obsidian, so I can still get on with proper work. I have Obsidian's web browser, and I had the foresight to open my password manager before it got blocked, so I should be okay. That is the point I wanted to make in the first place: a good system is not one you enjoy tweaking when everything is available. It is one that still lets you do productive work when you cannot get to the internet. I'm still here if you need me, but if I'm a little quiet for a week or so, at least you know the reason! -- Theo P.S. My Codex limit has been reached as well, for Hermes' Codex subscription, so it's going to be a very manual few days...

That's it! PARAZETTEL Foundations wraps up with today's lesson - https://www.skool.com/parazettel-community-4498/classroom/38433b8f?md=80450ab862fc45058317dd1e68d32370 What we talk about here is less about the Minimum Viable System and more about the inevitable truth that we have to expand the system at some point. it's not as though we can simply build out a new configuration every time we've got a new project. So here we talk about Minimal Note-Taking, how building things up in the simplest possible way for maximum return means that you can stay sane and focus on the real work rather than your system taking up all of your attention. And we touch upon how changing your system should be a process of evolution really, rather than one of transformation. Learn about the Irish elk, and why small changes over time beat big and powerful features. It's in contention for the most important lesson in the entire program, and it's no surprise given that it tells you the bits and pieces that you need to keep in mind for these lessons to apply heading forward. Tomorrow I'm going to tell you the next stages - how else you can work with the Community, and what you can expect from me going forward! It's been a pleasure to have you come with me on this journey, and I hope that it's shed some light on how to take notes in a way that serves you. -- Theo

I've just posted a new article over on Medium... https://medium.com/obsidian-observer/my-pkm-took-off-when-i-started-using-periodic-notes-in-obsidian-95baa89aa911 It's all about how I'm managing periodic notes in my workflows at the moment, because they've become a very substantial 'paper trail' for work done alongside context about the rest of the day. It's streamlined and seamless, like my inbox-capturing etc., as all good elements of a system should be. The piece also has some real examples from very recently, so if you want to see legitimate notes from my Obsidian vault, it's a good one to read!