I use Obsidian daily, but my understanding of the app is terrible. I use it because it's the best markdown editor I've found — I just edit separate .md files, many of which are essentially a 'template' that contains a whole bunch of checkboxes.
Is there a good 'starter guide' that I can use to get up to speed so I can start using Obsidian to track my notes, etc.? I'm very used to editing individual .md files for this kind of thing, but manually, and I get the impression Obsidian offers a bunch of benefits.
Honestly, play around until you find your own flow.
You don't need to use every Obsidian feature under the sun to become a productivity machine, nor have it all perfectly organised, linked and categorised in your "second brain". Take notes, label them well, and use the global search when you need something. Try a new plugin from time to time.
Using Obsidian "just" as a markdown editor is a perfectly valid use. I used VSCode with some Markdown plugins for years. I tried Typora, Coda, etc but they felt too limited and sluggish. I just wanted code-like markdown editing with a bit of fanciness, and Obsidian does just that.
I have a template for journalling, and a simplistic structure for where to place files in my knowledgebase. It's not perfect, and doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me.
The only drawback I can say really is that I need to better separate public and private resources, as I'm always afraid I'll accidentally publish some private notes that live among the other files you might see in the link.
There’s a lot of crappy “I want to be a content creator!”-tier content out there. You’ve gotta do a bit of digging to find examples that aren’t someone organising their YouTube channel, crappy Medium blog, or other content creation side hustle.
For anyone looking for a simple markdown editor (nothing more), I would recommend Typora. It's closed source, and the plugin system is lacking, but it gets the essentials basically perfect.
I used to use Typora but something put me off — I can't totally remember what. It might have been that it creates copies of files rather than saving in-place, which then screws up hard links. But it might have been something less 'niche' too!
Is there a good 'starter guide' that I can use to get up to speed so I can start using Obsidian to track my notes, etc.? I'm very used to editing individual .md files for this kind of thing, but manually, and I get the impression Obsidian offers a bunch of benefits.