In a previous post I talked about how to get started with Obsidian. If you haven't had a chance to check out that post, be sure to click the link below. But in summary, Obsidian is a free note taking application that I have been using for almost 2 years. Obsidian relies on a simple text-based markdown language to unleash the power of the engine under the hood. What is better than the simplicity of Obsidian is the fact that you can easily link notes making this a place where you can develop and externalized neural network of your thoughts and ideas.
Typically, when we approach file management on our computers we think about a hierarchical structure of folders. These folders are often organized based on content topic. For example, on my computer server I have a folder for work. In this folder I have sub-folders for things like lectures, research papers, teaching images, etc. This certainly has advantages, but it can be a cumbersome method of keeping things organized and it also requires you to remember where you stored a file. And what if that file applies to multiple different topics? Do you create a vast collection of file shortcuts? All of that takes time, energy, and discipline.
In Obsidian, I have leveraged the power of linked notes to overcome the barriers of folders. If you take a step back and think for a minute, ask yourself this question, "Why do you store files in folders?" The answer is so that you can find them. Otherwise, it would be easier to dump them all in a single place. So, as I create notes, the real priority is organizing and identifying the note in such a way that I can recall it when I need or find it when I am doing some work on a particular topic.
With that context in mind, I have created a very rudimentary folder structure in my Obsidian vault. Rather than organizing the folders based on note topic, I have organized it based on type of note. Then, I make sure that I apply appropriate tags and links in the note so as to connect it to other related notes and make it re-discoverable. Let's break it down.
000 Organizational Notes
This folder is for general housekeeping notes and for notes pertaining to certain plugins.
001 Notes
Most everything goes here. When I originally started with Obsidian, I had separate folders for notes based on my independent ideas vs notes based on other people's work. As I created more and more content in my vault, the line between my ideas and other's ideas became blurry and intermixed in notes. As a result, I consolidated those two folders into a single folder and now prefer to cite the source where necessary inside the individual notes.
002 Journal Notes
This folder is for any form of journal notes. Obsidian allows you to easily take periodic notes. So, to keep these notes easily identifiable in my vault, I have routed them all to this parent folder and to the respective subfolder (daily note, weekly note, yearly note) as appropriate.
003 Meeting Notes
As the title indicates, this folder houses notes that I take during meetings. Similar to journal notes, I have kept this separate purely for organization based on note purpose. Inside each note there may be content relevant to other notes and for that level of connection I use links to connect it to the rest of the data vault.
004 Reference Notes
This folder is for reference material. It is for notes that are not a reflection on some thought process but rather a pure regurgitation of material. I have subfolders in this folder for notes on books, journal articles, sermons, etc. Generally speaking, the notes in this folder are not a representation of my thoughts but purely a capturing of some other content.
008 Output
This folder is for the work that I create. When I set up my vault, I wanted to keep some separation between my output (blog posts, lectures, research papers, etc.) and the rest of my notes. This way I could easily distinguish between my source material (references, ideas, random notes, etc.) and the final products.
010 Obsidian Reference
This folder houses a few notes that I have created that are reminders for me about the markdown language and other functions of obsidian. They are separated from other notes purely to keep them handy for easy reference.
100 Templates
As the name suggests, this folder is where I store my template. When you set up templates in Obsidian you need to designate the folder where they are stored. So, it is good to keep this separate from the rest of your notes.
Numbering System:
If you notice, I have put numbers in front of the name of each folder. This is so that I can dictate the order that the folders will appear in my vault independent of the alphabetical organization based on the name of the folder.
