My reply to a post on if Obsidian is good for STEM students
Obsidian could be an excellent tool for you, particularly given your kinesthetic and visual learning style. You’ve mentioned that handwritten notes, diagrams, and color-coding help you understand complex topics but are becoming too time-consuming. Transitioning to Obsidian offers a streamlined approach, allowing you to maintain the connections and visual elements you rely on while reducing the time spent reworking notes.
One of Obsidian’s core strengths is its ability to link concepts in a way that mirrors how topics in STEM subjects often interconnect.
In calculus, physics, and linear algebra, many ideas overlap and depend on one another. By creating notes for each key topic, like vectors, and linking them to related concepts—such as calculating components or applying formulas in problems—you’re essentially building a map of knowledge. This dynamic structure allows you to revisit and revise notes without needing to rewrite everything from scratch when quiz and exam season comes around.
- For example, a note on vectors can link to notes on dot products, cross products, or applications in physics.
- With Obsidian, these connections remain intact and easily navigable, saving time while maintaining the depth of understanding.
This method aligns with my own approach to using Maps of Content (MOCs) to organize topics and concepts, which avoids the rigidity of folder structures and provides a flexible way to manage your vault. You can learn more about how to implement MOCs by reading a lengthy document I wrote on the topic here. MOCs provide a scalable system: perfect for keeping STEM notes organized along lines of related concepts, rather than siloed into isolated folders.
You also mentioned concerns about typing mathematical formulas, but Obsidian's built-in support for LaTeX addresses this. For subjects like calculus and physics, where formulas are a significant part of note-taking, you’ll be able to quickly type, edit, and display complex equations.
So the whole deal with including diagrams and graphics -- that's important it sounds like in your case since you're a visual learner. There's a few options here:
- Excalidraw: This plugin integrates drawing tools directly into your notes, providing a way to create vector diagrams, physics sketches, or flowcharts, much like the way you draw now.
- Think of it as the “back of the baseball card” in your note-taking system—while the text on the front captures formulas and key points, Excalidraw on the “backside” offers a visual, graphical representation that’s fully integrated with the rest of your notes.
- MERMAID: For diagrams that can be generated from text, MERMAID allows you to create flow diagrams, charts, and even trees using a simple text-based format. This can save time when you need quick visualizations to understand complex topics.
Beyond linking notes internally, Obsidian also supports the file:/// reference, meaning you can link to external resources like PDFs, research papers, or diagrams that you have saved locally. This makes it easy to keep everything connected within your notes (any object), even if the material is hosted outside Obsidian.
There’s also something important to consider when it comes to the purpose of note-taking itself: notes are more than just a transcription of what you learn. I think many people do that—they just re-write something in their own words. That's labor intensive and rarely works.
When you're reading and thinking things through, notes need to perform a function for you -- they’re a way to distill the most important points and reframe the material such that you're trying to teach yourself the material as though you were your own student. The whole "ELI5" technique, but you're the 5 year old.
The process of explaining concepts to yourself, as if you were teaching someone else, is a powerful self-learning tool. It's called the "Feinman Method", named after the famous physicist. YouTube has many other videos on this topic.
By synthesizing ideas into your own language, you reinforce understanding, and tools like Obsidian are perfect for enabling this kind of learning. It encourages active engagement rather than passive copying, which is essential for mastering complex subjects.
Once you understand the basics, you’ll see that it offers you a way to study smarter, not harder -- but it depends on your use of and the intent you choose bring to the process.... It frees up your time by eliminating the need to "rewrite" notes over and over, and it allows you to focus on what's most important—understanding the material deeply.
There's also an important concept relating to the notes once you've created them: Re-reading your notes.
Once you’ve distilled the concepts, re-reading is not really "reading"—it becomes an intimate conversation between you and your own thoughts: between the version of you that drafted the note and the current version of you further down the road trying to incorporate the concepts into your being.
By using the Feynman method, where you try to simplify and teach the material to yourself inside your own notes, using the notes as the "inner blackboard" as it were . . . you engage in a dialogue with your mind that transforms understanding into something deeper (and something that will usually last a lot longer).
Each time you revisit those words, you’re not simply seeing them again—you’re listening to your own voice explain them back to you. You may even find yourself doing some editing because your understanding has advanced and on subsequent readings, the notes manifest as a refinement of your own comprehension, right there in front of you.
Over time, this repeated act of re-reading evolves into something almost subconscious. Your brain begins to carry on that inner dialogue even when you’re not consciously thinking about it. Concepts weave themselves into your mind while you’re walking, cooking, or falling asleep.
They evolve into an internal monologue that continuously reinforces comprehension. The act of revisiting them becomes less about memorization and more about creating a seamless thread of understanding that runs quietly through your mind, strengthening your grasp on the material without you even realizing it. When you sit down to do this, I would think of it as going to visit an earlier version of yourself and you're going to have a conversation.
Anyway - once you get the hang of the basics, you’ll have a flexible and powerful system for managing your notes and ultimately, your mind.
Good luck and keep pushing forward. I'll follow this thread, maybe you can post an update on how it's going in 6 months.