I Switched to Logseq as My Second Brain

Intro

So, I switched to Logseq as my second brain, or should I say third, because I still have TickTick around as my second. I avoided this change for so long, and I realized I shouldn’t have, as when I see it from the other side, this was the perfect tool for my use-case.

Sticking with the Known

I’ve had my digital notes hop through several platforms, including Evernote, DropBox Paper, Dynalist, and others, with my most recent setup being a mix of locally stored Org files and some write-ups on Notion. A part of me wanted to stick with the known and not move it around further, and thankfully, it wasn’t too hard after all.

Considering Obsidian

Previously, I had a brief look at Obsidian, but given how I could use Emacs as a client for my notes at least on the desktop, I stayed with plain org files. I kept my eyes and ears open, and kept hearing and reading about Obsidian now and then.

Turned out, Obsidian fits well with some of the things I care about the most:

• All notes are stored locally as plain text files
• It is still pretty compatible with Emacs
• It comes with an optional sync service, but I can also use my own

And, there are added benefits like:

• Graphical views
• Conditionally faster lookups and searches
• Possibility of working with images within notes
• Relative ease for advanced formatting
• Exporting to PDF!

Evaluating Logseq

And then I came across Logseq, which several people within my circle of influence were already swearing by. It was providing most of what Obsidian was, and it was looking even better in several areas:

• Notes could be stored either in Markdown or Org, and choosing the latter would make it a hundred percent compatible with Emacs
• Even elements like custom properties from Org files are utilized in Logseq

Making a Choice

And, if you haven’t guessed already, I eventually went with Logseq for its closeness to the Emacs ecosystem.

I saw properties created with Emacs being parsed correctly, even though the ones created from within Logseq are stored a little different. It honors tags with colons, though it suggests creating them with hashes before the tag name. Even tables in org files are rendered perfectly, though I couldn’t find a way to create tables from right within the Logseq client, at least without any third-party plugin.

Even though Logseq has a smaller user base, it is completely free and open-source, which is a huge plus.

Obsidian is Still an Option

Having said that, I’d still choose Obsidian for friends and family as it is

• easier to use
• a more pages-based platform than block-based, which is how most of us operate
• easier to work with To-Dos and other such elements that normies would potentially care about

Migration

Migrating from plain Org to Logseq was almost seamless, as everything was already in Org format. I kept a copy of the old data as backup, dropped the redundant data, and imported the rest into a Logseq graph. I still have a lot of data in Notion, but the use-case for that is different, and I plan to migrate it to another tool, hopefully soon.

Then and Now

So what was all org files synced across my machines through Syhttps://syncthing.net ncthing, viewed and edited using Emacs on Linux and Orgzly on Android, is now still org files synced through Syncthing, but viewed and edited using Logseq on Linux and Android, with Emacs still being a backup, just in case.

More Thoughts

I still haven’t been using journals in Logseq, as my OCD won’t allow me to have my data scattered across files that I haven’t named myself.

Conclusion

Next up, I’d like to explore options to bring my long written notes down from a cloud-based platform to something that would work with locally maintained plain text files.