Here's Why I'm Not Using Obsidian Anymore & What I'm Doing Instead

After years of daily use, Jonathan Pritchard is stepping away from Obsidian—not because the tool failed, but because it started to cost him something he values more: real attention at home. A moment with his three-year-old daughter made the problem concrete. She told him to put his phone away and play, and the realization landed that even when he believed he was “present,” his devices signaled otherwise. When he took notes on a laptop, it looked like he was checking email or social media; when he writes in a physical notebook, the behavior reads as focused listening and note-taking, which makes people feel respected and engaged.

That dynamic matters even more with young children. Pritchard describes how his daughters are more likely to copy what they see than what they’re told. If he wants them to treat reading, writing, and “real work” as valuable, he has to model it—getting up, being active, and showing that time with a notebook is part of life, not something done behind a screen. He also frames writing as a foundational life skill: learning to read and write is a competitive advantage as kids grow, and physical note-taking supports memory in a way typing doesn’t. He points to his own experience with sketchbooks and an art background—when he looks back at physical work, he can often recall where he was when he made it, because the notes carry richer context and “metadata” tied to the physical act of writing.

The shift isn’t a full abandonment of Obsidian. He plans to keep using it selectively for work that benefits from digital organization—such as set lists, keynote or workshop preparation, and client details that need time-based management. For “life” notes and everything he’d normally store in his Obsidian vault, he’s moving to a Bullet Journal-style notebook. He even shows his setup: a Bullet Journal with three ribbon bookmarks, stickers, and a pen loop, emphasizing that the system is now his daily capture tool.

Pritchard also connects the change to his channel’s future. Obsidian content became the dominant driver of views, even though his original goal was broader creator-focused education—branding, marketing, sales, and business for creators. With fewer Obsidian tutorials planned, he wants to pivot toward sharing how he’s applying lessons learned from organizing in Obsidian to his physical journal, including how he avoids losing information. He says the move is partly motivated by past pain: too many notebooks and difficulty finding information, which pushed him toward Obsidian in the first place. Now, he’s trying to keep the organizational benefits while restoring the attention and memory benefits of paper.

Finally, he addresses authenticity. He doesn’t want to keep publishing Obsidian videos just to chase views for a tool he isn’t using daily. He may still post a couple more videos—particularly around plugins he used most—before wrapping up the Obsidian-focused series, then continuing with journal and productivity content aimed at creators and families.