How to Turn Obsidian Into a Personal Kanban Organizer
You might have tried organizing your life using one of the dozens of task management solutions. The pessimist in us realizes they’re not that different, and if one didn’t work for you, probably none will. You need something more than mere task lists.
Enter Obsidian. Although it’s primarily a note-taking solution, Obsidian’s Kanban plugin allows you to use this visual method of organization for managing your tasks. It’s easy to set up, straightforward in its use, and best of all, free!
So, let’s see how you can turn your notes into tasks and juggle them on a Kanban board visually with Obsidian.
What Is Kanban?
The Kanban method is based on a board-with-notes-on-cards paradigm initially used to track production within factories. To learn more about it, check our article onhow to manage your tasks using the Japanese Kanban technique.
Among the many available Kanban solutions, some of the most popular online tools are:
If you’d prefer more desktop-centric solutions, check our thesedesktop kanban apps to organize your to-do list and maximize productivity.
Now, Obsidian joins that list and, in many regards, even overtakes some of those established solutions. That’s becauseObsidian’s Kanban pluginreplicates the way those solutions allow you to “juggle cards between columns”, but you also have all of Obsidian’s other features available.
So, one card on your Kanban board can lead to a note, which may include links to other notes, images, files, web addresses, or contain lists (“plain” or with tasks).
It’s Kanban, but it’s also Obsidian, resulting in an unbelievably versatile solution.
How to Bring Kanban Into Obsidian
For this guide, we’ll jump to the point where Obsidian is installed and set up to access notes in a vault. If you haven’t set it up yet, or you’re wondering what “vaults” have to do with notes, check our article on how toturn your notes into a second brain with Obsidian for Windows.
Just like Obsidian’s authors, we, too, can’t offer a guarantee about the security or trustworthiness of Obsidian’s third-party plugins. Since we’re not the authors of those solutions but merely using them, we should warn you that we can’t vouch for them.
Additional Addons for Kanban
It’s worth installing some more plugins that can help when working with Kanban boards in Obsidian. We won’t go over them since that would be outside the scope of this article. Still, we thought we ought to provide a short list of some it’s possible to check out by yourself and choose the ones you consider worthwhile:
You can seek them with their names in Obsidian’sSettings>Community pluginspage. Regarding one of those helpful additions, we coveredhow to turn your notes into a database with Obsidian and the Dataview pluginsome time ago.
Getting Started With Kanban in Obsidian
With the Kanban plugin installed and activated, you may start using Kanban boards in Obsidian.
Start by making a new Kanban board. The Kanban plugin allows you to create Kanban boards in many ways:
The Kanban plugin will show a small requester window from which you could create your first list. Type your list’s name in the empty field at its top and click onAdd list.
If you’re unfamiliar with Kanban boards, we suggest you begin with the classic three-column approach. Create three lists:
Shuffling Your Kanban Cards
Each list on a Kanban board holds a series of cards. With the suggested Inbox-Doing-Done setup, those would represent tasks.
Achieve Next-Level Productivity With Obsidian
We left the best for last: each card’s content " behaves " similarly to actual notes. So, Obsidian’s shortcode, enclosing a string in brackets or double-brackets to turn it into a link, also works on the cards!
Thus, you can have text on them linking directly to one or more of your notes. And that’s how you can link cards to pages with details about your tasks, turning Obsidian into an ultra-detailed Kanban task and project manager!
Want to develop a career plan that will put you on the right track to your goals? Here’s how to create one on a Kanban board.
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