Use Obsidian to track recommendations

I’ve been using Obsidian for over a year. I spent months figuring out how to structure notes and get the most out of my second brain. Over the next few posts I’d like to take a whistle-stop tour of some of the specific areas where tools like Obsidian can be really valuable. There are a ton of blog posts and videos out there preaching about how great it is to have a “Second Brain” capable of storing all your thoughts and ideas. That’s quite a commitment for a brand new app!

One of the key selling points of Obsidian (and other apps like Roam, logseq and Notion) is this idea of bidirectional links. These are like regular links on the web, but they go both ways. You add a link in one place and both documents are enriched - the link “source” you just added, but also the link “target” that it points to. Recommendations were the first thing I thought of when I came across this concept.

Let’s say your friend Will just recommended the book The Checklist Manifesto. You can track this in Obsidian very easily. You create a new note, and call it “Will”. In the body of the note you add a link to The Checklist Manifesto. Links in Obsidian use double-square-bracket syntax, Recommends [[The Checklist Manifesto]] after struggling to pack for Glastonbury.

You could have done this the other way round: add a note called The Checklist Manifesto and add a link saying [[Will]] recommended this to me when we were talking about planning for Glastonbury. I prefer linking from people to the things they recommend, because it saves having to create a new note. It doesn’t really matter. The main thing is to be consistent, as that helps with some more advanced features.

Obsidian also supports “properties”. These are bits of metadata associated with the note, but not part of the main body of the note. Recommendations can be a great fit for properties.

With this basic link you have unlocked a bunch of search features:

• see all recommendations (search for [recommends])
• see all recommendations for a specific resource (search for ["recommends": "The Checklist Manifesto"])
• see all recommendations from a specific person (go to the note for Will)

You might be wondering if this is overkill. If you’ve already got a to-do list set up, wouldn’t it be easier to track it all there? That way, once you’ve read the book or watched the movie, you can take it off and it’s gone. Why would anyone want a permanent record?

The first benefit is that you can collect repeat recommendations. Rather than “watch Blind Ambition”, I note down “Phil recommends watching Blind Ambition”. I don’t just gather recommendations from my friends. I also note down recommendations from review sites or podcasts. If I tried to watch every movie that someone recommended, I’d quickly build up a list that is unmaintainable. This is where I’ve adopted the Two Recommendation Rule. The first time someone recommends something to me, I note it down, but I leave it there. Once two different people have recommended it to me on two different occasions, it’s time to hunt it down and check it out. With Obsidian I can track those recommendations even if they’re months apart and from people who’ve never met.

The second benefit is that you can follow up. After you’ve read the book, next time you see that person that recommended it to you, you can thank them. You might even end up having a little chat about it. You’re able to start an impromptu book club just by virtue of having tracked the information. This is where a second brain starts being more valuable than a note-taking app.

The third benefit takes a while, but the payoff is worthwhile. When you first start using this kind of system, it’s very transactional. You put the data in. You ask for the data and Obsidian shows it back to you, just how you put it in. It behaves just like Evernote or any other note-taking app. After a while clusters begin to form. These are groups of notes that are all linked to each other. If you’ve got one friend who is prolific at recommending new bands, you’ll see a cluster of bands that they recommended. You could turn this into a playlist that reminds you of that person. Nice, but not exactly mind-blowing. If you’ve got a whole bunch of friends in different circles who love the same kind of music, that’s when things start to get interesting. All of a sudden you can start to see missing links. You can start recommending things to people based on what you know they like, because it’s what someone else recommended to you. With minimal effort you’re able to pass yourself off as a culture vulture.

Obsidian is an incredibly powerful tool. It can be a little daunting at first. It can also feel mysterious, this system of notes and links and graphs. If you’ve never given it a go, or if you had trouble getting stuck in, then using it as a recommendation tracker is a great way to get started.