Hey guys, in this video I want to go over how I use Obsidian Canvas to distill and connect ideas. And I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone here and simultaneously go over the process while also diving into this idea of following

your most intense obsessions mercilessly. All right, to kick it off I want to talk about the process. So for me, it's starting with one single idea. Then I move into breaking down that idea into many ideas or just parts, right? What I'm looking for is the

resonating phrases and words that I can dive deeper into so that I can, um, tease out the idea. And then finally, I sprinkle in my thoughts, perspective, and ideas as I am teasing out these many ideas inside of this one single idea. All right, let's take a look at the

the idea that I started with here. It is a quote from Franz Kafka and it says, "Don't bend, don't water it down, don't try to make it logical, don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Love that line right there.

Rather follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly." This is from, uh, Tiago Forte's favorite, uh, quotes from Second Brain on his blog. Uh, when I came across this I had to write it down. This I already had in my notes, so I simply just

added it by using this icon and dragging over, and then I searched for, um, the word or for the quote. So "Don't bend." You select it and there it is right here. Okay, now to move on to the next step, I did break it down into these many ideas.

or or phrases that really kind of struck me that I wanted to kind of dive deeper into and kind of tease out so those were "don't bend, don't water it down, don't edit your own soul according to the fashion." Then this word "rather", um, was a

word that I wanted to kind of tease out, follow, and then also "your most intense obsessions" and then "mercilessly." What does that look like? Well, this is what it looks like. So each of these are their own cards. A card is not a file in the

Obsidian Vault. Um, it is just a sticky note on a whiteboard. And so you can you can tease out and think through and dissect ideas on this canvas without necessarily committing to having something to be in your second brain or in your personal knowledge management

system. And then um, these are also all cards here now within these cards, you'll you'll see that I have uh some ideas that I already had or quotes that I already had inside of my Vault that I wanted to link and and add in here and

then some other ones are are new and they came about me actually diving into these words and these phrases inside of the quote. So let's see, let's start with "don't bend" here. Uh, after I created the card, I bolded this right here because this is what I

wanted to focus on and then I like to think in bullet points. So uh, think and write in bullet points, right? And so I I just started writing what it immediately reminded me of. And so this immediately reminded me of the quote "creativity as deviation from expectation," which is from

Jack Conte, I don't know how to say his last name, he is a CEO of Patreon. But he set this line and went into how we bend our work to fit inside of a box it was never designed to fit into and we make content instead of

art. Um, those things really spoke to me and I I just thought when I think of the words 'don't bend', this is what comes to mind. And I already had this inside of my vault, so I all I needed to do was to search for it. And that's just using the double

brackets here and then I can search for the quote and then I can add it in here. And so this this leads me to the the first the first tip here, which is that you want to think of uh what the word or phrase right here in this case 'don't bend',

reminds you of and then search for those notes in your Vault. It may be one, it could be multiple notes and then you can search for them by doing the double brackets. Um, something that you can do is to search the keywords that you remember. In this case I like what it started with

was creativity. So I searched 'creativity', or you can search for distinct words like maybe 'deviation'. In this, this is not something I would have a lot of that word inside of a creativity. I'm going to have a lot of that. So if I wanted to find it a little bit easier, I can look

for the words that are a little bit more um out there and the words that I don't use that often. I want to pause just for a moment here and give you a free gift for hanging out with me today. This is a a short PDF guide on how to get insights

from the non-fiction books that you read and that you love into your PKM system by the end of this guide you'll have a simple system for highlighting your books, a mindful approach for adding content to your PKM system or PKM

Notes app, a process for creating building blocks of knowledge for the future and then a simple tip for making more connections between your notes. The link to the free guide is in the description below. Okay, let's keep going. So I went on to look up the definition of the word

bent, which means to shape or to force something straight into a curve or an angle. Now when I was reading that definition, I I wanted to place that definition inside of a thought that I had that related to this phrase, "Don't bend", that related to the quote and its entirety.

And what came out was "Don't force yourself into reading, highlighting, connecting, or creating something that doesn't align with your heart, with your creative fingerprint." Okay, now this goes into step number two, or not step number two, tip number two, is what I call "Follow the Word Trail". It's a

technique that I use, uh, where I look up the definition and synonyms of a word to spark ideas, sometimes antonyms as well, and thoughts. And this led me to insert the definition into the thought that I had. This was not something, it was not a card

already, um, or it was not a note in My Vault, I should say. It was just another bullet point where I started typing, "Don't force yourself to reading", you know, all that stuff. And then I thought as I was going back over it, "Okay, I actually want to"

save that I really like that and I want to remember that so I double bracketed those words so that I could save it when I go into the note now I have a lot of connections that I've mentioned here uh but on the card itself I wanted to

link back to the canvas so double brackets and then I can search merciless note taking is what I've titled this right it's already there but I wanted to show you and then where this started was creativity is deviation from expectation and then as I was writing

this note I thought about this other quote from TD Jakes it is impossible to extend yourself beyond your ability without compromising your authenticity and uh same thing here I went in and I uh tied the notes together by linking them and adding them to this

note so that when I look and in the graph view I can see the connections now this leads you to another tip here you want to keep writing don't don't edit yourself don't don't try and edit and think well this this doesn't really fit this doesn't really

go together or whatever like just keep writing keep writing use bullet points if that helps you it helps me a lot and you'll find more ideas and when you find an idea that you want to save turn it into a note and what's cool is this this is a

note that I is inside of this card titled don't bend and it's inside of this canvas titled merciless note taking right a note can be born from anywhere and so I love that I I was able to come up with uh not necessarily that

it was something that was awesome or anything, it's just something that resonated with me and I was able to save it inside of the place where I was working. I didn't have to go to a separate space to save this, I just simply was able to make it a note with

just a couple of clicks. Another tip: you want to connect existing notes to your new idea. This new idea that I had was 'Don't force yourself into reading,' which reminded me of 'It is impossible to extend yourself beyond your ability without compromising your authenticity.' I tied these together by

going inside of the note and uh, actually I didn't do it on this one, I did it on this one, tying it back to 'Don't force yourself.' Like, I could put it on both. Okay, now let's pause for a second and note we've got all these connections

from just teasing out two words. I don't know about you, but that's pretty cool to me. Um, so let's keep going. 'Don't water it down.' This is the next phrase that I wanted to think about, and I started thinking this, this speaks to how we

communicate our ideas and things that we find interesting. We tend to water things down to lessen the taste, the original taste of the, or the taste of the original idea, so that it can appeal to everyone. Forget that! And then I started thinking about how I just sometimes

will say something or withhold something because I don't like to create waves, but then I had this thought of 'What if the waves that you create are meant to carry someone that's lost itself to the shore?' And if I go into this note, what, what sparked this idea? This title here

Is are you withholding a quote, a thought, an idea for fear of what might uh what people might think? I have, and I don't want to make waves, but what if the waves that I make carry someone to a place they need to go? Which turned into this title here.

Now thinking through that, I also thought of the quote, "Don't become a wandering generality, be a meaningful specific." From Zig Ziglar. Now I can go in here and I can start adding in my quotes. I can do uh forward slash and then type a bullet.

Point um for those of you that are not super uh familiar with Markdown, you can use the uh slash commands which I'm familiar with inside of other note-taking apps, so it's really helpful for me. But I can add in um some things here that let's

See the waves, that's what I'm looking for uh there it is. What if the waves you create are meant to carry those lost, see, to the shore? Okay, I just wanted to tie that together. Oh, I also can do this too, which is merciless note-taking, add

That to it. And I had another thought about, "Don't be lukewarm." Which is a concept from the Bible uh in Revelation, that verse there that I that I thought of as well. And then we move on to uh "Don't edit your soul according to the fashion."

This made me think of the note, "Don't let calculated algorithms erode your creative fingerprint." And this came from Jack Conte's same talk where he talked about creativity's deviation from expectation. We we modify what makes our heartbeat faster because we are conditioned to believe that views, likes,

and subscribers are success um but what if success is that you pursued what you loved for the day for me as a Christian it's you know what if what if it's that I created with God today that I allowed him to lead me into creating something

into um thinking through something that eventually came out as a note that I could save and be able to remember for later or to share with somebody else or both and I I struggle with this I forget that I wasn't created for validation from other people but just pure

affection from God so this this thought here led to find out what makes you come alive and keep collecting ideas that define and support that I want to pause real quick and jump over to the graph view because none of these um quotes and ideas were connected prior to this

exercise exercise prior to teasing out the words from this quote so if I open up the graph view and I search uh maybe deviation here okay now I think it's pretty cool that these did not exist together before the one quote that I actually decided to dive

into imagine if you were to take one quote a day or one thought a day and do this over and over and over and over like how many connections you have and would have inside of your you know your your notes app but also inside of your mind every time that I create a

connection like Nick Milo says um from linking your thinking he he talks about whenever you make these connections you know in Obsidian or whatever note taking app you're you're still making it inside of your mind too it's it's happening in both places there are narrow pathways

beginning to form and like I kind of think of these as neural pathways for me right all this is as being formed inside of my mind as connections and they weren't before at all um so it's again it's pretty cool let me go back

and keep going so we've talked about a lot of the don'ts that stood out to me right again these are all cards some of these are notes now inside of the um Vault now all of this is leading to with these lines here this word

rather which for me it just I didn't have a lot to say about it but it is simply there's a better way when I when I think about the word rather or instead it means to me there is a better way and the better way starts out with

follow this the implication here is that we should be guided by something but what follow what follow your most intense obsessions here we're being led by the ideas that have us that won't let go which reminded me of the quote people don't have ideas

ideas have people from Carl Jung which led me to your PKM will be a joy to review whenever you know it's full of ideas that you can't stop thinking about now we're almost done here we want to follow our most intense obsessions but he describes how we should follow

them mercilessly this communicates how we should follow the ideas that have us and it reminds me of the word diligence not the English definition but the Hebrew definition which means sharp pointed right there's a focus and a precision that allows those who possess diligence to cut through the noise to go

after something ruthlessly and then I pulled in some notes that I already have about diligence. Diligence is not a skill that you require, it is a person you become. Diligent people recognize opportunities and seize them. Diligent people work willingly. All of these ideas I've had

inside of my mind, uh, inside of my PKM. And this gave me another hook right along with this, this idea of being diligent and it being described as as sharp, pointed. And how this this all started with a single note, a single quote. Right? I hope that there are some things

that inspired you today to try this and um to take, you know, one line, one word, you could it could it could even be one word, guys. Like, pick something right, something that inspired you that day. Use the random note feature in um Obsidian and and just pull something and

and pull out a canvas, an endless whiteboard, and start teasing out the ideas and write down your thoughts and just let it kind of flow out of you and see what you come up with. You'll I I'm almost guarantee you'll have this new constellation of ideas that happened to

me, uh, where you'll have the connections that you didn't have before. So thank you so much for hanging out with me today and I'll see you next time.

How I use Obsidian Canvas to distill and connect ideas (note-taking tips)

Thinking Deep & Wide with Greg Wheeler

Process of Distilling and Connecting Ideas using Obsidian Canvas

Starts with one idea, breaks it down into smaller parts, identifying resonating phrases and words.

Sprinkles in personal thoughts and perspectives while teasing out ideas.

Example using Kafka's quote: "Don't bend, don't water it down... follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

Breaks down the quote into key phrases ('don't bend', 'don't water it down', etc.) for deeper analysis.

Uses Obsidian Canvas as a whiteboard for brainstorming, without committing to a formal note structure.

Think of what a word reminds you of, search for related notes in your vault using double brackets.

Search for keywords, especially less common ones, to easily find relevant notes.

"Follow the Word Trail": Look up definitions and synonyms to spark ideas.

Keep writing, don't edit immediately; turn ideas into notes when ready.

Connect existing notes to new ideas to build a network of knowledge.

Example: Expanding on "Don't Water it Down"

Explores the idea of authentic communication and overcoming fear of creating waves.

Connects the idea to Zig Ziglar's quote: "Don't become a wandering generality, be a meaningful specific."

Expands on "Don't edit your soul according to the fashion", connecting it to the impact of algorithms on creativity.

Demonstrates the interconnectedness of ideas revealed through the graph view.

Highlights the creation of mental connections alongside digital connections.

Expanding on "Rather Follow Your Most Intense Obsessions Mercilessly"

Interprets "rather" as implying a better way, guided by compelling ideas.

Connects to Carl Jung's quote: "People don't have ideas, ideas have people."

Explores the meaning of "mercilessly" through the Hebrew definition of diligence.

Connects to existing notes on diligence, emphasizing its importance.

How I use Obsidian Canvas to distill and connect ideas (note-taking tips)

How I use Obsidian Canvas to distill and connect ideas (note-taking tips)

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