How I Use Obsdian

How I Use Obsidian to Track My Brain and Tasks

I've tried pretty much every possible note-taking app out there. I've used Evernote, OneNote, Notion, and even tried to use Google Docs as a note-taking app. I've also tried to use a variety of task management apps, including Todoist, Things, Sunsama, and OmniFocus. But I've never been able to find a system that works for me.

I tried out Obsidian a few years ago when I saw that Cassidy Williams was a fan. I didn't dig into it much at the time, but more recently I've been using it as my primary note-taking app and I've been really happy with it.

Why Obsidian?

There are a few things that I really like about Obsidian:

It's a local-first app, which means that all of my notes are stored on my computer and not in the cloud. This is important to me because I don't want to have to worry about data leakage or privacy issues.
It's built on top of Markdown, which means that all of my notes are just plain text files. This makes it easy to move my notes around and to use them in other apps. And I can use my favorite text editor to edit my notes (for example, I'm writing this right now in VS Code).
The interlinking between notes is really powerful. I can easily create links between notes and then see all of the notes that link to a particular note. When I go into detail later about how I use Meeting Notes and Daily Notes, you'll see how powerful this is.

Tasks

As I mentioned, I've tried pretty much every single app and methodology around task management. As a neurodiverse individual, I've found that most of these systems don't work for me. I've tried to use GTD, Bullet Journaling, and Kanban boards, but none of them have stuck.

My current setup is managing my tasks and todos inside Obsidian, using the Obsidian Tasks plugin. This plugin allows me to create tasks inside my notes and then see them all in a single view. I can also see all of the tasks that are due today, which is really helpful.

The reason this works for me is that when I think of a thing that needs to be done, I can create a task for it right there in the note where I'm thinking about it. This means that I don't have to switch contexts to a different app to manage my tasks, which is really helpful for me.

MOC

There are a lot of different ways to organize notes in Obsidian, but the one that I've found most helpful is the MOC (Map of Content) method. This is a way of organizing notes that allows you to see all of the notes that are related to a particular topic. I'm early days with this method, but I'm finding it really helpful so far, although I am still kind of "randomly" creating notes and then linking them together.

Meeting Notes

As a manager, I spend a lot of my day in meetings. I've found that taking notes in meetings is really helpful for me to remember what was discussed and what I need to do next. Currently, I'm using a template for my meeting notes that includes the date, the attendees, and the agenda. I then take notes during the meeting and link to any other notes that are relevant to the discussion. And I can create tasks/todos right in that note.

Meeting Notes setup

I currently have a folder called "Timestamps", which has all the notes that are related to a point in time. The thing that matters about this is that it kind of keeps these notes in one place.

One thing that I am still working through is my folder structure in general; that said, I am finding that "organizing" my notes via folders is less important than the interlinking between notes.

Anyway, all of my meeting notes are in the folder Timestamps/Meetings. I use the QuickAdd plugin in concert with the Templater plugin to make it easy to create these notes.

Meeting notes template setup

My Meeting Template looks like this:

---
date: <% tp.file.creation_date() %>
type: meeting
company: 
summary: " "
---
tags: [[🗣 Meetings MOC]]
Date: [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD-dddd") %>]]
<% await tp.file.move("/Timestamps/Meetings/" + tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD") + " " + tp.file.title) %>
# [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD") + " " + tp.file.title %>]]

## Attendees
- 

## Topics
- 

## Notes


## Actions

A couple things to note:

The date frontmatter field is automatically populated with the current date of the note creation.
It creates a tag that is labeled to the MOC, which is helpful for me to see all of the meeting notes in one place. I'm not sure this is the best way to accomplish it, so I'm still working through this.
The await tp.file.move line is moving the note to the Timestamps/Meetings folder and naming it with the date and the title of the note.
It creates a H1 header with the data and title of the meeting (well, it's the title of the note, but you know...)
It pre-populates the sections for the note. More on the Attendees sections in a bit.

QuickAdd setup

The way I create new meeting notes is via the QuickAdd plugin. This lets me just hit CMD-P and then pick QuickAdd: Meeting, which will create a new note with the template above.

The settings for this are:

The path to my meeting template
Configure the filename format to what I type in the prompt (this will be converted by the template, but the template uses the current file name, so we set it here)
It says to create it in a folder, but that isn't actually set; as you recall, the template will move it to the proper folder. I don't recall if this will work if this isn't set!

So they are pretty basic! Most of the smartness happens in the template itself.

Daily Notes

Getting into the habit of having a daily note is working pretty well. I've found that for me, my daily notes are less about...notes, and more having a place where all my tasks and thoughts are in one place. I can see all of the tasks that I need to do today, and I can also see all of the tasks that I've completed. I can also see all of the notes that I've created today, which is really helpful for me to see what I've been working on.

Daily Notes setup

Similar to the Meeting Notes, my Daily Notes go in a folder in the Timestamps directory, but a bit more organized. The directory structure is Timestamps/Daily Notes/YYYY/DD-MONTH (e.g., Timestamps/Daily Notes/2024/01-January).

Each daily note is titled using the date, in this format: 2024-02-01-Thursday. This is helpful for me to see the date at a glance.

Unlike the Meeting Notes, I don't use the QuickAdd plugin to create these notes. There are two plugins that help you with daily notes: Daily Notes or the more enhanced Periodic Notes. I'm using the latter, but I'm not sure if it's necessary (it adds the ability to have Weekly and Monthly notes, for example, which I am not using right now).

Periodic Notes setup

If you use the Daily Notes plugin, the config will be similar

Not a lot to set up there! Basically, it just tells the plugin where to put the notes and what the format of the note filename should be (to get the structure like mine, it is YYYY/MM-MMMM/YYYY-MM-DD-dddd).

Notice that the "Daily Note Template" is left blank. I configure this in the template setup using Templater.

Templater setup

For my daily notes, I am using the "Folder Templates" feature in the Templater plugin:

You'll notice I have a few folder templates (yes, Weekly Notes are in there even though I am not using them now). The one we are interested in is the Timestamps/Daily Notes template.

A folder template is pretty straightforward; it's basically saying "if a note gets created in X folder, use Y template". So in this case, if I create a note in the Timestamps/Daily Notes folder (or any subfolders), it will use the Daily Note template.

Daily notes template setup

This template is a bit more complicated than the Meeting Notes template, and it covers a few things that won't make sense yet. And it's way too long to put here, but you can check it out yourself: Daily Note Template

A couple things to pull out of that template:

Frontmatter:

---
created: <% tp.file.creation_date() %>
cssclasses:
  - cards
tags:
  - daily_notes
---

The created tag helps keep track of when the file was created. The cssclasses tag is used for a plugin that I am using to style the note. The tags tag is used to keep track of all of the daily notes.

# <% moment(tp.file.title,'YYYY-MM-DD').format("dddd, MMMM DD, YYYY") %>

<< Yesterday | Tomorrow >>

As we all well know, DATETIME is one of the hardest computer things. This is the way to format the title/heading of the note, and it also adds "Yesterday" and "Tomorrow" links to the note. This is helpful for me to see what I was doing yesterday and what I need to do tomorrow.

I have quite a few bits in the template which are used to show various tasks, which leverages the Dataview plugin. When I get around to updating the Tasks section, this will make more sense. But here are two examples:

## Daily Checklist

```tasks
not done
due before <% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 1, tp.file.title, "YYYY-MM-DD") %>
hide recurrence rule
hide task count
filename includes Rituals
group by heading
```

In this example, my "Daily Checklist" is a set of tasks that I have created in a note called "Rituals". This is a note that I use to keep track of things that I want to do every day. The tasks block is a Dataview block that shows all of the tasks that are in the "Rituals" note that are not done and are due before today. I have "group by heading" to divide up my "morning" and "evening" tasks.