Sometimes, I find myself tinkering with my Obsidian system and plugins just for the sake of things.
Procrastinating like this means I’m just as ineffective as I would be if I was just watching YouTube or scrolling somewhere else.
However, it’s easy to block distracting websites. It’s less easy to remove yourself from the distracting elements of Obsidian, because they’re right there, in the app that you have to work in.
There are some techniques that I use to make sure that I’m focused on my work when I’m writing in the app, and I’m going to share them in this article. Most of it boils down to being minimal, mindful and intentional when you’re using the app.
Let’s get started…
Simplify your system
It’s nice to have a solution for every eventuality in Obsidian, but this just gives you more to maintain to make sure that your vault is in working order.
It’s hard to focus on your work when your plugins need updating, and then there are new features for you to try out, and now you need to install this companion plugin, and so on.
Pare your system down to implement only the features that you use regularly and are integral to producing your work so that work is all you’re focused on doing in the vault.
It’s not going to be easy to pay attention to writing or creating if you’ve forgotten a hotkey or the role of some obscure plugin that pops up. You’re going to have to do some tinkering to sort this out, leading to more time tweaking, and less time writing and creating, which is the purpose of the system in the first place.
I’ve found you don’t get distracted like this if you have a minimal but functional system in place for your notes. The blank ‘No file is open’ screen stares back at you, encouraging you to go and create something new.
Tidy up the interface
Obsidian has lots of icons, tab bars, ribbons, sidebars and panes, and they can all become a distraction if you’re main priority is just sitting down to write.
The technique I use to deal with this is to remove all the distractions in the interface. I have a shortcut for hiding/showing each sidebar, so when it’s time to write, I can reduce the view of my vault to simply the file that I’m working on.
So long as the features that I’m not using are out of sight, they’re out of mind and I can focus on writing an outline, or a note, or whatever else I’m doing at that point.
A great plugin for this is Hider, which has the role of removing UI elements from the app. This includes the tab bar, ribbon, status bar, metadata block in Reading View and more.
This is useful because a lot of the time, you don’t need to use these features, they’re only there to hook your attention away to something less important.
Schedule time for tinkering
A technique that I’ve only started implementing very recently, but has had good results for me so far.
I know that most of the time I tweak settings and things in Obsidian I’m doing it because it’s easier than writing, and releases a lot of cheap dopamine in my system. I’m not often tweaking for the sake of improving my productivity.
To combat this, I’ve been scheduling time into my day to mindfully alter and improve my Obsidian vault.
This prevents me from pointlessly tinkering without a plan because I know that if I write an idea for the system down then I can spend some time dedicated to implementing and improving upon it at another point in the day.
Often I find that the changes I have the urge to make when I should be working aren’t very effective, instead being founded in the desire to do something that’s easier than actually writing and producing something to share with the world. By pausing before implementing them, I’m rooting out the good ideas from the bad ones.
It’s surprising that I took so long to think of this solution really…
I am earning money writing about the changes, implementation and theory behind my Obsidian vault, but I haven’t been dedicating time to making mindful improvements and upgrades until now.
This will definitely be the change that stops me from procrastinating in Obsidian the most from now on. I have a note in my root vault that’s simply filled with ideas for meaningful improvements that I can make to the vault, keeping me accountable.
I hope that you’ve learned something from this article, and take steps to become more focused and mindful when working in Obsidian.
Thanks for reading!