Gamifying notetaking

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I’m building a ‘second brain’ of notes in Obsidian. Each day, I create & improve upon atomic notes until they become ‘evergreen’ (broadly applicable wisdom). This is an intangible goal, which makes it hard to visualize progress. I’ve experimented with ways to make it more tangible, but I don’t want to use tasks.

I use tasks to drive the rest of my life and I want Obsidian to feel more like play than work.

One idea that came to mind was using gamification.

​This article from Eleanor Konik hits on exactly what I was missing. Eleanor views her daily tasks in Obsidian as akin to the inventory management she does in an RPG game.

So I decided to create a ‘dashboard’ for my digital garden:

My garden has my 3 types of atomic notes (seedling, potted plant or evergreen) represented by emojis. As I make notes, and subsequently upgrade them, my dashboard accumulates points.

I’ll update you on how this goes. I’ve also made a YouTube video breaking down the technicals of how I made the dashboard here.