# Why I Publish My Notes Online

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## Metadata
- Author: [[daltonmabery.com]]
- Full Title: Why I Publish My Notes Online
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://www.daltonmabery.com/essays/why-i-publish-my-notes-online

## Highlights
- Note taking is the best form of studying I've ever come across
- It forces you to think critically about the ideas you're consuming and what's going on in the world. Most of the time, we don't give ourselves enough slack in life to sit with our thoughts. But note taking forces you to do that.
- the constant switching of systems defeats the main purposes of note taking, rediscovering ideas you wrote about before. If you start from scratch every six months, you won't have many insights to rediscover
- The customization is nice and the ability to publish via Obsidian Publish is what drew me to it.
- Andy writes about this concept called "Working with the garage door up" and is one of the reasons he publishes his notes.
- When I was younger, every weekend I'd do projects in the garage with my dad. Since we kept the garage door open, we never knew who was going to walk by. Sometimes, it was the Soto's. Next door neighbor's of ours who always supported my school fundraisers.
  Other times it was friends asking if I could come out to play. On rare occasions, it was someone who could help us with the project we're working on! This is what happens when you work with the garage door up. You run into people and make connections you wouldn't have otherwise.
- Increasing online serendipity
- Maintain a website so people can find your bio, share your work, and describe you in a favorable light. Once your website is live, publish content to encourage people to visit your website, advertise your skills and hype you up.
- This is the opposite of the Twitter account which mostly posts announcements of finished work: it's Screenshot Saturday; it's giving a lecture about the problems you're pondering in the shower; it's thinking out loud about the ways in which your project doesn't work at all. It's so much of Twitch. I want to see the process. I want to see you trim the artichoke. I want to see you choose the color palette
- Taking notes encourages you to think about how you're trimming the artichoke. Publishing those notes shows others how you're thinking about trimming the artichoke. Someone who also thinks a lot about trimming artichoke's can now connect with you to refine their own process. It's a win-win!
- had to make sure I enjoyed the process of taking notes in whatever system I used. I like how Obsidian is a desktop app and not online.
- This for ease of use and not a privacy thing. I found if I was using a Chrome tab, it would get closed out or I'd lose it.
- I also like the free flowing structure of Obsidian and how anything can go anywhere, though I do see how this could be confusing and disorganized. If you want more structure, Tiago Forte's PARA method is recommend, or you can use the Map of Content idea.
- With only a few clicks, I could make my notes public at a custom domain and allow users to search and interact with my notes in similar functionality to how Andy's Notes work