tags: #publish links: [[Home]], [[Topic Map]], [[Knowledge Management]] created: 2021-07-13 Tue --- # Meta - My Obsidian usage, history and structure Around September 2020, I started using [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md) to organise notes. (Yes, this started as something of a COVID lockdown project.) This approach to notetaking has revolutionised how I approach my day job, but I'm also now using it for every topic I'm interested in - these notes! - and it's been a big creativity enhancer and just plain fun and useful. ## Why Obsidian? I find Obsidian is the sweet spot: it's super flexible, incredibly fast and reliable, has powerful yet lightweight features. The Obsidian model is neat - it's just a directory tree of Markdown files. The killer feature is the simple and easily-refactored linking between notes, and tagging, quick-open, search etc. The speed of the application is key - every other note-taking app I've used is sluggish and frustrating by comparison. This format allows ridiculous flexibility and rich wiki-like linking, which is the thing that's revolutionised note-taking for me compared to list-style or outliner-style apps I've used in the past. Yet it's fast and feels lightweight. It also has a nice community around it of useful plugins around it, and feature set has continued to improve markedly over the last year. It's also safe to commit to, given the format is locally-stored Markdown so there's essentially zero vendor lock-in. It'd be trivial to switch to any of several other similar tools. It appears there's free alternatives out there, but Obsidian is *so* good, why would I switch? I'm also using the mobile app and the paid Publish and Sync features, which are neatly designed and simple, useful and convenient - it's a complete ecosystem now. I'm fine with that mild vendor lock-in, since there isn't much much of it, it sells via quality and features and doesn't try to make it impossible to switch (e.g. could easily move to another sync mechanism or script some kind of self-publish if needed). I'm only too happy to pay for Obsidian, as it's an exceptionally useful and high-quality piece of software built by a talented duo who I want to pay for their brilliant work. Honestly one of the best applications I've ever used. I'm repeatedly delighted by the pace of development with sustained quality, and I'd like to see it last! ## Indexes and maps Through the forums I discovered early on the [[IMF (Index, Maps of Content, Fluid Systems) or LYT (Linking Your Thinking)]] approach, which was key to the utility for me, and helped me think about what I want from notes and experiment with organisation early on. You'll find a lot of notes tagged `#MOC` (Map of Content) - these interlinked, overlapping freeform local indexes help with navigation, discovery and incremental organisation. A bit later I started experimenting with an additional [[Library Classification Systems]]-style index, and after pondering (see [[Using Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) or Broad System of Ordering (BSO) for tagging and classifying notes]]) settled on the current [[Subject Classification Index]], which is becoming gradually more useful for finding things as the set of MOCs grows larger. A few years on in 2023 I find myself with over four thousand notes (across personal and work sets), yet my current approach still feels plenty scalable to many times that. ## My note-taking history Before discovering Obsidian like everybody else during the Great Notetaking and Zettelkasten Explosion of 2020, I used the 'outliner' [Dynalist](https://dynalist.io/), which is from the same awesome people who make Obsidian. On moving to Obsidian, I moved and re-structured many notes from Dynalist, and until the Obsidian mobile app showed up I still used it for capture of information. Before Dynalist, I used Workflowy, another outliner which I found via a colleague in about 2017. It was much the same as Dynalist and possibly its inspiration, was less feature-rich and for a while (at the time of discovering Dynalist; I haven't looked lately) was rather ill-maintained, which prompted me to switch. Before *that* I've experimented with various other things like Evernote and TiddlyWiki, but nothing was really that useful until Dynalist. Until around 2017 my notes needs at work were way less, so I guess I managed to get away with less effective approaches. I've published my non-work notes (these) online with [Obsidian Publish](https://obsidian.md/publish) since July 2021. Why publish? See [[Meta - Why publish my notes]]. ## Structure My Obsidian vault structure has evolved a bit over time. As at 2021-07-13 it's very loosely based on the [[PARA]] system, but for me: * PARA's **Projects** -> just a TODO list and my "Inbox" where new notes are created if I didn't immediately move them. * PARA's **Areas** -> **Private**: notes on home, finances, health, personal projects *(not published here)* * PARA's **Resources** -> **Knowledge**: this published note archive, with front page [[Home]] and main indexes [[Topic Map]] and [[Subject Classification Index]]. * I'm heavily using the [[IMF (Index, Maps of Content, Fluid Systems) or LYT (Linking Your Thinking)]] ideas of **Indexes** and **Maps of Content** - most of the notes linked from [[Topic Map]] are MOCs to some degree, or will become so as they grow. Information doesn't fit in a hierarchy, despite the directory structure here, and it doesn't need to: so you will find interlinked maps of cross-cutting areas all over the place, which is perhaps the key benefit of this [[Meta - Why is this place called Hyperbolic Cloud|hyperbolic hyperlink cloud]]. Much like Wikipedia, except it follows how *I* think about things and can be trivially reorganised and added to. * I use a header section with breadcrumb links to parent and related notes, and creation date and tags. I may have stolen this from IMF/LYT too. The breadcrumbs I've found to be vital for navigation and seeing the context of the note. Since I settled on the basic structure with the top-level topic map, I've found I only need one level of parent hierarchy in the breadcrumbs - I usually only want to navigate locally to related and adjacent notes, not right back up to the index. This section isn't strict markdown frontmatter (it lacks the prefix `---` line) because that prevents the links and tags from being parsed or rendered: it's not really frontmatter, it's an active part of the note. * No linking from published notes to private. I have both in one vault, but use the Backlinks pane instead to see references from private context. I haven't found this particularly limiting so far. (At least, "no links" is the intention! If you find any that appear private, please tell me via [[Meta - Contact]] - hopefully they're broken links :D ) For all notes, whenever any section gets unwieldly or isn't a coherent topic any more, just refactor into more notes and link to/from relevant notes or MOCs. Easy to do, there's few constraints on the structure. I don't rely on devoting any dedicated time to reorganisation, unless I'm intentionally diving into a topic to see what notes I have on it. I move notes to the correct place location at the time of creation (Obsidian now has an awesome **Move Note** shortcut with directory autocomplete, a killer feature for me). I link relevant things together and link from indexes immediately, and often refactor notes with the new **Merge** and **Split** features. More creative stuff is starting to appear amongst the "collection of useful references" content, e.g. [[My Cinema, Films, TV log and list to watch]] notes and reviews, so I may rename 'Knowledge' at some point. This is possibly the one downside of my structure (vs. a directory with 2000 undifferentiated links in it as I've seen some people do): Obsidian Publish uses the directories in the URLs, so renaming directories breaks web URLs to notes. It does not, of course, break links *within* Obsidian - it robustly handles renaming notes, directories, accidental duplicates, etc etc. I much prefer the rich directory structure anyway as it makes it *far* easier to browse random notes in related areas that may want cross-referencing from other topic indexes, and I find the act of occasionally organising directories that have become chaotic is useful for discovery of useful connections. See [[Obsidian Techniques]] for more tricks. ## Work notes *(Kept separate, and not published, obviously)* For work, I use a similar structure, with separated Kanban, Areas and Resources. It is mostly an external brain and information quick lookup - I can find anything in seconds. The top-level index is by organisation structure and department, and by topic. There are sections organised by programs and projects within the organisation, and sections by department. I have main notes for each person, and link to them often which makes backlinks very useful. A lot of the notes are links to other things within my organisation e.g. URLs to information in other online software. Others are brief notes for me on my current understanding of things. Kanban has an associated inbox directory for queued and in-flight personal work tasks, and Kanban is flexible enough for prioritisation and workflow. Lately I've started using a dated `## Log` section within notes - e.g. for a project, when I have notes on a new thing that happened, I add a dated entry in the project main note, newest at the top. This lets me nicely combine 'Evergreen Notes' about the current state of things, with a historical log of what happened before - powerful yet lightweight. For work notes I also use sparse **Daily Notes** when I need them. I don't use this much - often just as a scratch space before structuring actual notes - the 'Evergreen Notes' approach works better for me. My work notes are all private notes, *my* interpretation of things. Work knowledge sharing for other people belongs in other, more collaborative software, and needs to follow the organisation's conventions, not a personal note-taking approach, so while I may draft in Obsidian it ends up elsewhere, and I just link to the output. I am unlikely to ever use Obsidian for work collaboration, even if it adds sharing features - for my work, that's a very different style of software. But it instantly became an indispensable tool for my own notes, as soon as I discovered it.