Is logseq right for me? Need help with newbie questions!

Questions & Help
1

Dear redditers

Wanted to ask is logseq is the right tool for me. I am a musician and artistic researcher. I am using a Zettelkasten system for organising research and atomic notes, writing drafts etc, and am not planning to change this. However, this is not good for planning, management and todos, so I am looking for complementary software and logseq seems interesting.

Naturally, I have self-diagnosed with Paralysis by Analysis, so I have procrastinated writing this post for a long time, but here it goes, without ambitions of being perfectly structured

What I am looking to organise

    • Task management, on project-basis, with both
    • planning individual projects
    • setting future goals and visions for
      • my ensemble
      • myself as musician
    • curating repertoire lists with links to:
    • music score notes and analysis as preparation for rehearsals
    • random notes and quotes on pieces and composers
    • note taking in meeting with composers and administriative meetings
    • project planning (time outlines, )
  • Todo-lists, with good options to modify, see below
  • Specific questions:
    • Can I create future journal entries? I like to schedule specific todo-tasks for specific dates in the week. and at least, in the evening I want to lay out the specific todos for tomorrow. richt now I am doing it in
    • Personal Diary – is there a specific space/entry mode for reflective diary entries? I do not like to have such text clogged up with, and on the same pages as, todos et. al.
    • Is it possible to tag single todo-tasks?
    • can I set a TODO today with a todo-date, so that it shows up on that journal entry?
  • Compatibility and sync
    • Does anything speak against having my folder inside a Zettlr ”Workspace” – so that I can read it from zettlr as well?
    • What is the best way to sync with ipad? Gdrive od iCloud? I Am thinking about having a whole Folder for Zettlr on one of these drives, with one workspace dedicated for work from logseq
  • Important for me i the separation of work-related notes and personal diary. Possible? Ideally, I would also like to hav some kind of day-planning tool for schedule, training, meditation etc. Have seen someone doing this beautifully with obsidian, although with 22 plugins …
  • I am not keen on relying on too many plugins.

Do you think logseq is the best software for this kind of work flow? Would love to hear your thoughts. And if yes, what is the best way to set it up, and what videos/articles do you recommend?

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2

Hi -

I’m not an expert or associated with the dev team but I went through a few of the same questions so I’ll pass along my guidance such as it is.

You seem to be asking a lot from one piece of software, but I think LogSeq is pretty flexible and might handle most of what you need. But first thing: if you don’t think in outlines, this is probably not the right tool - there are some odd rough edges still that might make Obsidian a better fit. If you love outlines, and can embrace “search not sort”, LogSeq is kind of amazing.

So…

I think you could do most of the items in your first top level bullet without too much difficulty. Logseq is like Obsidian in that it’s just a smart engine sitting on markdown files; everything in that first point could be handled with various pages linking to each other.

I have a page which acts as a TOC to separate “Project X” pages for different things I’m working on - my own music, household, travel, and so forth. Link out to additional pages as makes sense.

Creating future entries - yes. If you make new pages with the date properly formatted, those get filed as new journal entries. On desktop you can use a date picker for this.

Separating a personal journal - the design seems to have a single dated page per graph (roughly equivalent to an Obsidian vault). You might make a separate graph for daily type journals? I’m actually keeping reflective journals in Obsidian; that way the separation is complete from my PKM. Plus, my journals aren’t outlines.

You can tag single tasks - they are just blocks.

There are both explicit “scheduled” and “deadline” notations to connect a task to a future date, and you can always just add a link to the [[date]] and the block will show up on that date as a linked reference.

I don’t use Zettlr but would suggest that if you really want to use LogSeq on iOS you should pay for the sync. I had data loss a few times before I switched to that. There is a built in versioning system that will get you out of most sync issues but I got scared off of LogSeq at first because of trying to just use iCloud. If you don’t want to pay for sync, be very careful about having more that one copy of LogSeq active at a time. At present, sync is “last write wins”.

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As @robertsalsbury also mentioned: paying for Logseq sync.

To elaborate iCloud is something I can really advice against. It has cost me many headaches and conflicts. Losing data etc, because iCloud was trying to sync while I was working on a Logseq page.
iCloud is also the only possible place to save your Logseq graph outside the local iPad storage.

I personally use Git to sync Logseq between iPad, Android phone and Windows PC. (as you can see I can’t really use 1 sync tool other than something like Git or similar or Logseq’s own sync due to all these different OS’ lol)
But Git is quite advanced, so it depends if you are up for it or not.

4

LogSeq is pretty great. Came from Obsidian. I’d recommend that you give Obsidian a try. It’s a bit easier in my opinion than LogSeq. It’s more of a classical markdown editor. Once you learn the markdown you can do LogSeq. It really does solve the “analysis by paralysis” that you mention, at least for me.

It helps me to break knowledge into blocks, reorganize blocks, shuffle them around in a hierarchy and so on. This is not easy to do with a classical markdown editor, but it’s easy and intuitive in LogSeq.

I recommend Obsidian simply because it’s such a large and vast system that it’s great for learning. There’s many guides on markdown.

What LogSeq does offer is pretty great and pretty unique. I’m sticking with it despite the shitty UI problems, just because the way this little note-taking application works helps me organize my thoughts nicely.

I also like the “tagging” system. Once I tag a note, the block shows up with that parent note, and the rest of them show up too. So I’ll take note on (for example) electronics, tag them with #electronics and they’ll show up in a master “electronics” note. Later on, I can reference these blocks and build a nice fat note on just electronics from little blocks all over my notes. If a block is shitty and I’m still ruminating over it like a cow, I can keep on editing it until my OCD is satisfied, without having to touch the rest. Every little scrap is unique.

It really is quite a special system. You’ll know what I’m talking about once you’re comfortable with markdown. Make the basics of markdown familiar, and then you can focus on the meta-structure and it’s going to be beautiful.

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