Why Canvas Is Great in Obsidian  ## Metadata - Author: [[Danny Hatcher]] - Full Title: Why Canvas Is Great in Obsidian - Category: #articles - Document Note: ## Summarize: The article discusses the use of Obsidian's Graph View and Canvas features for various purposes such as project organization, mind mapping, and planning out long-form articles. The author shares five practical use cases for utilizing the Canvas, highlighting its flexibility and effectiveness compared to other tools like the Graph View. They demonstrate how Canvas can be employed for project management, creating a library and media tracker, mind mapping research topics, and planning out article structures. The article emphasizes the advantages of using Canvas for visually organizing and connecting information within Obsidian. ## Bullet Points: ### Project Organization with Canvas: - Canvas provides a flexible approach to project organization. - Use data view queries to display relevant information from files within the Canvas. - Easily create and move cards and groups to manage project status and priority. - Benefit from the visual representation of relationships between files and groups. ### Library and Media Tracker: - Organize books, movies, and series using Canvas. - Utilize groups and data view queries to track reading progress and prioritize media items. - Make use of colors and priority markers for efficient categorization. ### Mind Mapping Research Topics: - Employ Canvas for mind mapping broad concepts and abstract research topics. - Establish relationships between different topics and concepts. - Use data view queries to show connections between cards and groups. ### Planning Long-Form Articles: - Structure long-form articles using Canvas. - Create separate files for article sections and add overview notes for clarity. - Utilize data view queries to manage chapter order and relationships. - Track progress, status, and priority for each chapter in the Canvas. ## Paraphrase: 1. The article explains the benefits of using Obsidian's Canvas feature for project organization, mind mapping, and long-form article planning. Canvas offers a more flexible approach compared to the Graph View and is particularly useful for managing projects with data view queries displaying relevant information from files within the Canvas. Users can easily create and rearrange cards and groups to prioritize and track project status effectively. 2. The Canvas can also serve as a library and media tracker. Users can organize books, movies, and series, and data view queries help in tracking reading progress and categorizing items based on priority. The color-coded system aids in quick categorization. ## Conclusion: The article highlights how Obsidian's Canvas feature enhances productivity and organization for various tasks. Its flexibility allows users to manage projects, create visual mind maps for research topics, plan long-form articles, and organize libraries effectively. By utilizing data view queries and color-coded markers, users can easily track progress, prioritize tasks, and establish relationships between different elements in their projects. ## Questions: 1. How can the Canvas feature in Obsidian be applied to other creative or work-related projects? 2. What are the potential drawbacks or limitations of using the Canvas in Obsidian, and how can users mitigate them? 3. Can the Canvas be used collaboratively to facilitate team-based project management and idea generation? 4. How does the Canvas compare to other mind mapping and project management tools available in the market? 5. Are there any specific plugins or extensions that can further enhance the functionality of the Canvas in Obsidian? ## Auto-tagging: project organization, mind mapping, long-form article planning, library and media tracker, data view queries, color-coded system, productivity, creativity, project management, collaboration, mind mapping tools, project management tools, Obsidian plugins ## Index Creation: 1. Project Organization with Canvas 2. Library and Media Tracker 3. Mind Mapping Research Topics 4. Planning Long-Form Articles ## Table of Contents: 1. Project Organization with Canvas - Data View Queries - Flexible Approach - Visual Representation 2. Library and Media Tracker - Prioritization - Color-Coded Categorization 3. Mind Mapping Research Topics - Relationship Establishment - Data View Queries for Connections 4. Planning Long-Form Articles - Article Structure Creation - Chapter Order Management - Progress Tracking ## References: - Derek, "Using Obsidian Canvas to create a multi-tool management Dashboard," YouTube, Date Published (Link) ## Future Research: 1. Investigate how the Canvas feature in Obsidian can be adapted for collaborative team projects to enhance communication and productivity. 2. Explore additional plugins or extensions that can further extend the capabilities of the Canvas, such as integrating external data sources or automating certain actions. 3. Conduct user studies to assess the user experience and usability of the Canvas feature compared to other mind mapping and project management tools. 4. Examine potential integrations with other productivity tools to streamline workflow and data synchronization. 5. Investigate the use of the Canvas in educational settings for creating interactive learning materials and lesson planning. ## Hypotheses: 1. H1: The use of Obsidian's Canvas feature enhances project management efficiency compared to traditional file-based methods. 2. H2: Color-coding and data view queries in the Canvas facilitate quick and effective organization of media libraries. 3. H3: Mind mapping research topics using the Canvas improves the understanding of complex relationships between concepts. 4. H4: Planning long-form articles in the Canvas leads to more structured and organized writing processes. ## Methodology: 1. Conduct user surveys and interviews to collect feedback on the usage of Obsidian's Canvas in various project scenarios. 2. Analyze user behavior and interaction patterns through data logging and tracking within the Canvas. 3. Compare the productivity and satisfaction levels of users utilizing the Canvas with those using alternative mind mapping and project management tools. 4. Implement controlled experiments to assess the impact of color-coding and data view queries on library and media tracking efficiency. 5. Collaborate with educators to test the Canvas's effectiveness in educational settings, measuring its impact on lesson planning and learning outcomes. ## Implications: The future research on Obsidian's Canvas can contribute to advancements in project management, content creation, and knowledge organization. A deeper understanding of how the Canvas optimizes data visualization and relationships can influence practices in creative work, education, and research. The Canvas's potential integration with other tools and its adaptability for collaborative team projects may reshape project management methodologies and foster more efficient and productive work environments. Additionally, insights gained from this research can inform the development of new productivity tools and features that align with user needs and preferences. ## Logical Validity: The article presents a comprehensive exploration of Obsidian's Canvas feature and its potential applications in various areas. The author substantiates their claims through detailed examples and demonstrations. The logical coherence of the article is strong, with clear connections between different use cases and features of the Canvas. No apparent logical fallacies are employed. However, it would be beneficial to explore potential drawbacks or limitations of the Canvas in certain contexts and compare its performance against other similar tools to provide a more balanced view. Further research and user studies may be needed to validate the effectiveness of the Canvas in different scenarios and among diverse user groups. - Summary: Related article (with template): https://dannyhatcher.com/canvas-over-graph/ Ways to Support: - My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/dannyhatcher - My Substack: https://dannyhatcher.substack.com/ My Courses: - Obsidian Onboarding: https://dannyhatcher.com/obsidian-onboarding/ - Obsidian Fundamentals: https://dannyhatcher.com/obsidian-fundamentals-the-complete-for-beginners/ Where to find me: - Obsidian notes: https://publish.obsidian.md/danny-hatcher/Collaboraters/Danny+Hatcher - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DannyHatcher - Contact me: https://dannyhatcher.com/contact/ Tools I use: - Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/ - Zotero: https://www.zotero.org/ - Morgen: https://morgen.so/?ref=dannyhatcher - Tubebuddy: https://www.tubebuddy.com/dannyhatcher - Epidemic sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/mzyymp/ - Thrive cart: https://dannyhatcher--checkout.thrivecart.com/thrivecart-standard-account/ Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction 0:40 Homepage dashboard 3:19 Media/Library dashboards 5:20 Research dashboards 7:... - URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=fenyXDW30Kc&feature=share having used obsidian for over two yearsnow the graph view even though it looksgreat in the local graph of the game canbe really cool to look at I haven'tfound a consistent use for it the canvason the other hand is a completelydifferent story I'm going to cover fiveof my most used use cases for canvas butas I go through you may see how some ofthe features or functionalities of otherplugins with canvas can actually giveyou some inspiration into your own useslooking at the community plugins I'm notgoing to show you how to set all ofthese up inside of the settings butthere is a link in the description tothe template for you to play around in the data View Community plugin andmetadata menu Community plugin being theones I use the most and that's what youcan see in this home page dashboard sothis is very similar to what I have inmy current setup I did a mid reviewvideo which I'll link in the top rightbut I have one file you can see it's ahome page query file which is this oneright here which has different headingsto show me which career is a which soarticle projects article ideas Etc allthe way down so I've brought the file inI've then added the home page canvasright click and narrow to heading and then selected the heading that I wantedto use by clicking on a card and thenzooming in I can see exactly what'sgoing on so these are article projectsof a medium priority and then the statusis edit and outline I can left click onthe file and it would take me to thefile or I can control left click andthen it opens it up as a new tab so Ican then actually go back to the homepage and open them up as split screensand the reason this is useful is becausein a file I'd have to scroll down up anddown to see all of the queries but hereI can see a three by three grid of my active article projects my videoprojects and research projects all atthe top and I have the ideas and then Ihave all of those completed projects soand activism being a completed researchfile and these are inside colored groupsso if you right click inside of a canvasyou can add a card add a note from Vaultall these options which are actuallydown at the bottom but the one that Iuse is create group and you can see it'snow added an Untitled group you canrename the group new group and when afile card like any of these three areinside of a group you can move theentire entire group and the cards will move with it those of you with Keen eyeswill notice that there's different typesof icons next to the files and that'sbecause of the different class that Ihave in them so this is a video this isa video project so I click on the videoicon and now I've got a status recordthis is a Select Property so it could beidea script edit record or done so if Iwas to move this from the record statusto the done status you see the status isnow done it's disappeared from this Viewand has come down to the completed Viewand that's all happened from the canvas view you can't do anything like thiswith the graph View and trying to dothis all inside of a file is there's alot of scrolling up and down are usingthe outline which is a bit of a pain sothat's the pain point this canvas solvesfor me let's move the third video saythe priority is actually low but let'sgo to status and say I'm editing this soit's going to disappear from thecomplete section and come up to theactive videos and because of the way Isorted their data view query it'sactually appearing above the first videoso this gives me an option to narrowdown to specific headings and you cansee on the right hand side what I've done because of the way that the file iscreated I have the complete heading as aheading 1 articles video and research isheading 2. so down here we have just theheading twos but over on the right wehave the heading one and everythingunderneath so you can show as much or aslittle as you want inside of the canvasuse case 2 is for my library I did arecent video explaining how I did thatwhen I'll leave that in the top rightbut here it looks a little bit differentbecause it's a different configurationof groups and different cards inside ofthis canvas because it's fully flexible so I can come over to my ribbon and saycreate new book once I've searched forthe book I can then add it it will addit as a new file so that's all theinformation I want there's the file andwhen I come back to the canvas you cansee at the top we have another data viewquery and it's saying hey consciouscoaching this is a book that you'veadded in obsidian but it's currently notin the canvas so I'm going to drag acard in there it is I've now added thebook to the to read section it willdisappear from the query because I'venow added it and the status this is to read I can then add it to the readingsection to the queued section and theseblue groups are priority so if I was togo into this book you can see the statusis queued and the priority is low thestatus is skewed because it's a yellowand the priority is low because it'sblue so if I move this over to thereading this is now going to change toreading and height because the bluegroups have now gone from low to highwhich is the priority and the status islooking for any colored group that is red yellow orange or green so it'sreading and then if we move it over toRed because here priority is gonebecause it's no longer in a blue groupbut it has been red so it's completeagain because of the flexibility in thecanvas being able to drag books aroundit's far easier to just click with mymouse and drag than it is to click adrop down menu or something like thatthat you would do in another tool that'sjust my preference and as you canimagine I've done the exact same thingfor media so this could be films moviesseries I've just put in some randomfilms in here so we've got Frozen 2013 that currently I need to add so we'llcome over here edit Frozen 2013. nowI've added it I can then move it overhere so it's an individual so you canhave these groups as anything you wantthis is going to be an individual filmthis could be for the family to watch uhhigh priority so it's disappeared fromthe group and it's ready to go there arelots of different ways to mind map andthere is not really a wrong way that'sjust more effective or less effectiveand for me when I'm mind mapping insideof broad Concepts and Abstract conceptsof research doing the small notes doesn't help me so what I've done hereis I've got to research my map and I'vegot a group which is a very broadoverview so psychology see there's loadsof things inside of psychologyphilosophy and then Behavior so theseare behavioral sciences philosophysciences and inside of the group I thenhave an area or a topic or a concept soI've opened up the Gestalt concept whichis inside of psychology and when I comeinto the file it's automatically addedpsychology to the research field becausethat's the group it's in if I was tomove it down to behavior you can see this property will change so it's now inBehavior and the related research fieldhas also changed if I put it back intopsychology the research will go back topsychology you can see it's inecological Dynamics and the reason it'sadding that is because this ecologicalDynamics is connected to the group thatGestalt is in and if I was to go toecological Dynamics you can see therelated research field is could stopbecause these two have a relation herein between a card and the group so it isa related research field and then you can also see Gestalt psychology isrelated to inactivism philosophy and youcan see that in the connected field overhere which is an activator by clickingon the metadata icon and then going intothe settings of these fields you can seeyou can actually be very specific andlook for specific colors any color youwant look for the direction of thearrows whether it's incoming or outgoinglook for the edges that the connectionsare to whether it's to the right lefttop down or two of them bottom of themany of those colors and you can evenlook for data view queries in there if you really wanted to go ham but I don'tbother with that so This research my mapallows me to be far more flexible withthe connections between differentconcepts and topics which are then putinto the file so when I'm working insideof the research file I can remember whatareas might be related rather than justadding a specific link because if I wasto have a link like this one I have tomake it manually and two if I do changeanything inside of this it automaticallyupdates whereas in inside the file I'dhave to take it out or I need to addsome context and that's just a friction point I don't want to do it so I use thecanvas moving over to an article awriting or a book dashboard this is howI plan out some of the longer videoessays or longer articles that I writeI've recently started writing onsubstance rather than just inside of myobsidian so you can actually see whatI'm writing rather than having to lookaround my published site and this is howI plan them all out with all of thedifferent parts that go into it if youhave a look over to the left you can seethis is a long form project file and theway that I do it personally is I havethe section so introduction main body and takeaways as overview files whichyou can see at the top of the canvashere and inside of these files is whereI'll add notes about certain sections somaybe a character limit or make sure toinclude certain elements for the litreview or inside of results maybethere's a method of collecting resultsor presenting results that I want to usein a certain article so I'll add anynotes as an overview note inside of thistop part moving to the right I then havea couple of data view queries which arelooking for the chapters the actualwritten chapters which are abstractliterature review methods resultsdiscussion and conclusion and I can see which part they're in and this query onthe left is saying to add so I need toadd these two chapters inside of myproject board whereas these four havealready been added you can see with thestatus and a priority which as you willimagine are because of the groups thesecards are in so this is high andresearch that's the abstract so we Zoomback in abstract is high in research sopriority and Status we have priorityhigh medium and low and then status atthe moment is first draft research first edit second draft but there could be asmany or as few as you want but forclarity in my overview I also want toknow well what order these chapters aregoing in yes I can see at the side butsometimes I want to see it inside of theactual project board and I can see herethis arrow is going into the literaturereview so the abstract then goes to theliterature review and you can see thatrelation actually inside the dataviewquery because inside of the literaturereview it says before that there is theabstract and the abstract after thatthere is the literature review so therelationship of the chapters is actually shown inside of the file so when I'mwriting inside of my literature review Ican see at the top what chapters beforethis oh it's the abstract so if I do gogranular with the chapters and thesearen't as broad chapters as justliterature review maybe it's a certaintopic a certain method a certainscientific review or theory that I'mlooking at I know what theory camebefore it and what method or Theory cameafter it and again this all happensinside of the canvas so if I want thisliterature review to go to thediscussion you can see that relation isgoing to be added inside of the query soyou can now see literature review after that is the discussion and in thediscussion before that is the literaturereview and then we come to the moretraditional useful canvas which is mindmapping and you can see here the way Ido my my mapping and spreading out ofideas is I have a purple card alwayswhich is a key sometimes the key is thesame other time the key is different itdepends on what sources and what topicsand Concepts I'm looking at but for thisexample anything in red it's a topicblue key term yellow research orangequestion and claim it's green Ipersonally leave a link to a video or a link to a source but you could bring itin if you wanted to and have the videoor the image play inside of the canvasto me that's too cluttered and that isresearch specific because it's a sourceand this is research specific becauseapparently according to Derek who is theperson that did this video there is lotsof different research so maybe I want tohave a look at the different researchthat's been proposed but the learningstyles is the main topic of this mindmap first question I had is do theyexist that's then explored inside of thesource goes down to a memory strategywhich actually relates directly to what was being spoken about as a key term forvark so these four things relate to varkand these four things have behaviors orgrouped together you can see there's agroup which feed into memory strategiesso how are you going to learn learningstyles through behaviors these behaviorsare from the varc framework and thememory strategy leads to no significantdifference from the science again that'srelated to this Source that's what thesource said actually there's nosignificant difference and there areother sources as well which I would wantto explore but these all seem to converge into what's called a modalpreference so learning styles as aframework isn't quite accurate enough somodal preferences is really true andthat's a claim the claim is learningstyles is really a modal preference forLearning and if I right click on theline and follow connection you can seeit's going to the multi-modal approacheswhich is linked to learning topicanother claim and multiple ways toexplain same thing again another claimwhere all of this actually comes inhandy is once I've found the claims andI've isolated what's going going on I've got some questions I would then want torelate the questions to actual researchfiles which you can see because this isa demonstration Vault the research filesare empty that this question is directlyrelated to the source which actually isconnected to these three claims whatabout extended or embodied cognitionbook that relates to an activism andother research files I have in my ownvault which is where I can then relatean activism as a research topic to thelearning styles concept and in a similarsense behaviors wait behaviors is a group and that's also a group inside ofmy research mind map which if we lookinto the ecological Dynamics researchfile you can see there's the researchfield it's Behavior so these fourbehaviors must be related to ecologicalDynamics in some way so I've added theresearch file so the colors and the keymake it easier to come in and knowexactly where I need to go but linkingthe research files actually gives meactionable points to go off and go toexplore and do more learning these arejust a few examples but this is why Ithink the canvas is much more useful andversatile than the graph View and I'd be curious to see how you're using thecanvas core plugin if you are at allinside of the comment section below, Why Canvas Is Great in Obsidian, Danny Hatcher, 01h6h2jefcq3qvs1awygdk7khh.