I use Obsidian as my second brain because it allows me to capture and organise my thoughts seamlessly. Every day, I can jot down my reflections, track my progress, and refine my ideas over time. It’s where I apply the Pareto principle to medicine, focusing on the 20% of knowledge that yields 80% of results in major specialties.
By distilling key concepts, I ensure that my learning is efficient and high-yield. It’s also my repository for medical pearls for those small yet invaluable insights that can make all the difference in clinical practice as I tend to usually lose them in apple notes and have no clue where to find them when I try looking.
Unlike cloud-based note-taking apps, Obsidian stores everything locally on my computer, ensuring my notes are always accessible and under my control. This permanence allows me to build a lifelong knowledge base without the risk of losing information to platform changes or internet outages.
Over time, it becomes a dynamic, interconnected system that evolves with me, helping me think, learn, and improve as both a doctor and a lifelong student of medicine.
If this is something you are interested in, please check out Reysu and his amazing video on setting this up:
here is a video below on how Reysu has set this up exactly: