Priya Tried One New Tool. Here's What Happened.

Priya tried Obsidian (See Sean's full review →) for two weeks in February. She evaluated it against her notebook system using three criteria: does it capture thoughts as quickly as writing? Does it help her find things faster? Does it require less maintenance than her current system?

Her findings: Obsidian captured thoughts slightly slower than handwriting for short items. It found things faster because full-text search beats manual page scanning at scale. It required more maintenance — plugin updates, vault organization, backup configuration — than her notebook system, which requires no maintenance.

Her conclusion: Obsidian is a better tool for retrieval. Her notebook is a better tool for capture. She has continued using her notebook for daily capture and migrated her reference material to Obsidian for searchability.

Why This Matters

Priya's evaluation criteria were different from the criteria I would have used. I would have evaluated whether Obsidian was better than the tools I already had. She evaluated whether it was better than her specific system for her specific needs.

The result is a hybrid system that neither of us would have designed from scratch but that addresses the actual friction points in her workflow: slow retrieval from a physical notebook. She didn't add Obsidian to replace the notebook. She added it to solve the one thing the notebook does poorly.

This is how tools should be adopted. Identify the friction. Find the tool that addresses the friction. Don't reorganize the entire workflow around a new tool because the tool is interesting.

I have used eleven tools at once. Priya has used a notebook and one app for six years. Between us, we have converged on the same conclusion from opposite starting points: fewer tools, more specific selection criteria, and zero tolerance for tools that create more work than they remove.