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My Obsidian Workflow

Post · How I structure (or rather, don't structure) my notes
TL;DR: I basically do not use any folders — just interlinked notes and tags, even though I do not actively use the tags at the moment. The main structure comes from heavily interlinking all of the notes, and from daily notes, which I use for a kind of journalling and as a collection of links to the notes I created during that day. I try to keep the effort to create a new note as low as possible, because I want to create a lot.

No folders, low friction

I do not use any folders. Instead, I try to keep the "burden" of creating a new note as low as possible. Since I use Obsidian for basically everything — from journalling, to university notes, to personal projects and DnD — I oftentimes want to create some kind of random note that may not strictly fall into a classical folder hierarchy. In general, when I want to create a note, I do not want to think about where it should go, but just create the note and create links and connections while I am going.

So the only thing I do when I create a note is add my template (using a shortcut — see this video), which is a header containing a link to the current daily note, a place for tags, and a "Next" and "Last" section. There I add a kind of root note if I want it to be part of some folder-like hierarchical structure (so when I create a note with more detail on some topic, I may add that broader topic note to the "Last" section of the subtopic note). Since I also do not really want to think about what tags I want to use, I usually have specific templates for each broader topic that I repeatedly use, like University Maths, DnD, …

Short, focussed notes and links everywhere

Once I have added the template (which is just one shortcut and not more work/thinking), I create the note itself. I try to keep individual notes relatively short and focussed on one topic, so I like to structure more complex things into several subnotes (e.g. in maths, a note per definition, theorem, …).

Another important thing I do: when I mention some topic/person/… that I imagine I may create a note on later, I type that name as a link and not just as normal text. So for layers in machine learning, I would write: In [[Supervised_Learning]], after the [[Input_Layer]], we have the [[Hidden_Layers]]. This is basically the 'magic' part of our model. In [[Shallow_Neural_Networks]], we have just one hidden layer. In [[Deep_Neural_Networks]], it is more than one — even if I do not have any of the linked files yet, because I may create them in the future. So when I create them, I immediately see "oh, I considered this there already, how interesting".

Daily notes

Also, I use daily notes a lot. Every day, I create a note in which, at the end of the day, I write down what I did during the day and reflect on that — what could I have done better, what did I do that I would not do again, what are highlights, … By doing that, I become more aware of how I could change my life for the better, while I also have the daily note as a note that links to most of the other notes that I created during the day (or at least their areas), so I can revisit them more easily.

The daily notes also interlink topics that are not that closely related, like DnD and Maths. At the beginning of each day (or the end of the previous day), I set myself daily goals, based on weekly and monthly goals and such. These make reflection easier and give a good guiderail to do the stuff I want to do.

In general, while writing notes, I think about what I remember doing that was related, and add links to that. While doing this, I also oftentimes rediscover forgotten notes… and see connections.

Finding things again

The names of the notes reflect their content. So when I want to find something again, I can either search for the name directly, search for specific words, or look for related notes that I remember and use their links.

Plugins and extras

One plugin that is incredible, especially if you want to do some maths, is the Latex Suite plugin. It enables you to create snippets — basically "if I type …, it becomes … instead" — specific to certain typing modes (like: only if I am in math mode), and this is just incredibly handy.

I also keep a todo list in Obsidian (just via - [ ] for checkboxes), a calendar (Full Calendar plugin, but I think that is only worth it if you really want to use Obsidian for basically everything), and I use Excalidraw sometimes for visualisation.

Videos worth watching