I moved to Obsidian for personal knowledge management

I had heard about Obsidian before, but in 2026 I made a significant change: I moved my personal knowledge management system fully into Obsidian.

My journey in this space has always been anchored around finding a solid tool and sticking with it for a long time. I’m not someone who enjoys constant platform churn, especially when it comes to personal knowledge. That’s what makes this shift feel meaningful–and why I’m excited about where Obsidian fits long-term.

A few core tools over time

My journey started with Microsoft OneNote. I’ve been using it since the very first version, and I stayed with it for years. Eventually, I moved to Evernote, which became the first cloud service I ever paid for. Early on, Evernote was great–but over time it became bloated and, for me, increasingly unusable.

After sunsetting Evernote, I returned to OneNote, but it never quite clicked the way I wanted. It always felt like something was missing in how I wanted to manage and work with my information.

Then came Notion. I went pretty deep with it and, for a while, I thought I had found exactly what I was looking for. But I was always uneasy about two things: it being an online-only service, and how difficult it would be to meaningfully port my data out if I ever needed to. Even with export options, I value having direct control over my content–especially when it represents a large, long-lived collection of personal knowledge. I don’t need a cloud platform to have that much control over it.

Why Obsidian kept pulling me in

I’d been drawn to Obsidian for quite a while, largely because it uses Markdown for everything. From a data ownership and portability perspective, that matters a lot to me. There’s something deeply reassuring about being able to view, read, and edit your notes in any text editor. It makes the system feel safe and durable.

In that framing, Obsidian itself becomes less about owning your data and more about presenting it well–adding polish and quality-of-life features on top of files you already control.

What changed in 2026

The key thing that finally pushed me over the line was the introduction of Bases–essentially databases of notes inside an Obsidian vault. Community plugins had approximated this for years, but making it part of the core platform brought a simplicity and coherence that really clicked for me.

At the same time, the rise of LLM-powered tools–like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot–made working with large sets of documents far more practical. Being able to operate on notes in bulk is a real advantage when your knowledge system lives as plain text files.

Another subtle but important factor: Obsidian isn’t a cloud service. That means I can use the same tools and processes at work and in my personal life without mixing the two. The workflows can be shared; the data doesn’t have to be. Nothing needs to live with a third-party vendor by default.

How I’m using it now

Today, I use Obsidian for:

• Knowledge capture
• Project planning and tracking
• Prioritization
• Weekly and monthly reviews
• Blog planning and writing
• Logging activities over time
• Roleplaying GM work

There are a number of other ways I’m using it as well–probably enough to warrant a separate post.

Why this fits me

I’m excited about the momentum I’ve built with Obsidian, and I’ve enjoyed talking with others about how they use it. It’s definitely geared toward a slightly more technical audience if you go beyond basic document creation–but that’s part of the appeal for me.

Most tools in this space force a trade-off: simplicity in exchange for vendor lock-in. Obsidian lets me push toward more advanced workflows without giving up control of my data. For how I think and work, that’s a trade I’m happy to make.