Why I Stopped Using My Blog as a Note-Taking Tool (And Moved to Obsidian)

I’ve just wiped my blog—again. Hopefully, this will be the last time.

For a long time, I treated my blog as a place to take notes: reading notes, passing thoughts, bits of unfinished writing. It worked—for a while. But eventually, I had to admit something important: a blog is not a good tool for taking notes.

Let me explain why.

A Blog Is Not a Second Brain

The blog format, by design, is public, reverse-chronological, and linear. That makes it great for broadcasting, but terrible for building knowledge over time.

I wanted a system where I could keep everything—fleeting thoughts, private reflections, long-term projects—in one place. Somewhere flexible, structured, and private by default. A true second brain.

A blog can’t be that.

Problems I Ran Into

1. No privacy. I couldn’t put personal or sensitive notes on my blog. That immediately meant I needed another tool alongside it, which defeats the idea of having a single, all-in workspace.

2. Poor structure. Blogs are structured by time, not by logic. Notes about the same topic are scattered across months or years. Reconnecting them later is painful.

3. No mobility. I used to write blog posts in Visual Studio Code, which was great on desktop, but useless on mobile. If I had a thought while out walking, I couldn’t capture it easily.

These were more than minor inconveniences—they were signals that I needed to rethink my entire workflow.

Finding the Right Tool: Obsidian

ChatGPT suggested I try Obsidian. I did. And it clicked.

Obsidian lets me write in my favorite format—Markdown. Everything is local, plain-text, and future-proof. It syncs across devices. It supports backlinks, graphs, and custom templates. It’s the first tool that made me feel I could go all-in.

This is the note structure I’m using:

📂 00_Inbox
📂 01_Daily
📂 02_Reading
📂 03_Writing
📂 04_Projects
📂 05_Knowledge
📂 06_Life
📂 07_Templates
📂 99_Archive

And the workflow looks something like this:

1. ✍ Ideas go into the Inbox
2. 📆 Daily thoughts get captured in Daily Notes
3. 📖 Reading notes live in the Reading folder
4. 🔍 Key insights get distilled into Knowledge
5. 🖋 Drafts and essays are developed in Writing
6. 📁 Projects have their structured area
7. 🧹 Weekly review moves things into the Archive and maintains the system

It’s simple, but powerful. It works.

So What Happens to This Blog?

I’m not giving it up.

This blog is still my public voice, my interface with the world. But I’ve stopped treating it as my workspace. Instead, I now use Obsidian as an incubator for ideas. The blog will become a platform for publishing the most refined ones.

Think of it this way:

Obsidian is the kitchen.
This blog is the dining table.

What you’ll find here from now on are essays, reflections, tutorials, stories—ideas that have been simmering in Obsidian and are ready to be served.

What’s Next?

This post is the first of a new chapter. A quieter, more focused one. I’m no longer trying to publish everything I think—I’m trying to think better, then publish the best.