How I organize my notes in Obsidian

I have note spanning years now so trying to organize them is mostly pointless, however my pattern has changed over the years, especially once finding Obsidian.

I’ve introduced an additional challenge on top of my note taking and organization by wanting to have a system from publishing notes publicly on my personal site while keeping the ability to reference notes both from private and public.

Folder Strategy

After porting over my notes from Evernote, Google Keep, Google Docs, random word files and text files into Obsidian I found myself a little lost. Following the communities around Obsidian, you’ll end up stumbling into The P.A.R.A. Method.

That helped the initial organization of everything and eventually I have moved away from it and use concepts of it, (mirroring when possible folders across applications, it helps remove context loss).

Here’s my current system,

__system

As the name suggestions this folder was designed to hold anything around configuration or extras that plugins use. This also includes assets for the project which I’ll explain below.

I found a really interesting concept on the Obsidian sub-reddit to turn a folder into a clickable image on the top-left, which gave me the idea initially to throw in all the “system configs” into that folder. This would hide it away because once setup you don’t really want to spend energy thinking about it. The double dash __ means it always sits above the folders.

You can do a neat trick which I used for a long while which I detailed here: Setting up a vault logo with css

Subfolders

assets
This is my Obsidian asset folder setup in the settings. I also add this folder to the Excluded Folders setting in the core sync plugin.

This keeps my main vault data syncing very quick. I use SyncThing for syncing assets across devices. It’s a complex setup but works for me.

excalidraw
This is the config folder for excalidraw plugin

scripts
This is the folder used for .js files used by some plugins.

templater and templates
I switch from using the core templates plugin and the templatr plugin for templates in Obsidian. I have a copy of each and place them in these folders.

_Public

This is my attempt to contain my notes in both a public and private context. I currently use a complicated setup with a Symbolic Link -mklink. I connect this folder with the public folder in my Quartz setup. This is an open source project to help publish markdown notes.

I would like to use the Obsidian Publish tool but for me, the cost for what it offers is hugely misaligned so I can’t justify spending the money even if it’s to support Obsidian. (P.S. if the price was 1/4 the price it begins to potentially worth it, but to host static files and publish them can’t justify, sorry Obsidian devs)

Thinking now, I could rename this to _Published but its fine for now.

  • Assets - Public assets so it’s all organized in one spot.
  • Blog Posts - Any blogposts I’ve created, it’s a mess I don’t like this system ATM.
  • Book Shelf - My collection of books I have read, want to read, etc.
  • Dev - My notes for developers, focused on tools, code, and more.
  • Food Stuff - Notes on food, Recipes etc.
  • Gaming - Tracking details about games I own, want to play, etc.
  • Links - currently empty, don’t remember why I created it prob delete it.
  • Notes - general notes are being put here instead of the root of the public folder (I could rename to )
    • Quotes - Collection of Quotes.
  • People - Notes about people that’s acceptable to be public. I place authors in here for example.

Addresses

The idea of this is to capture notes that are typed out addresses. This helps associate a place to a person or business.

I attach data points for a map plugin so I can see the address appear on maps if I want.

Canvas

Instead of searching all over the root folder for my .canvas this is just a quick cheap way to find them.

Overall I think this is useless and if the notes for canvas is written well enough then it’s easy to find. (could also link it to make it easier to find as well, or use bookmarks)

Categories

This was an interesting idea I saw Steph Ango (CEO of Obsidian) mention in Reddit. I think I’ve changed my application of it but my use now is to capture the use of the new bases feature. I inline them bases on specific topics.

An example I have a category folder for Games and books. This uses the bases feature and creates a way to see all my book notes organized in cards which is very nice for reviewing.

Bonus note: once you setup a base with specific properties shown and filtered on location, you can click a button to add a new note and it’ll be in the same location as the other notes as well as have those properties in the frontmatter. So good.

Clippings

This is used specifically with the official Obsidian Clipper browser plugin.

todo expand on the ideas and details here I am starting to come up with a system now that I think will stick.

Companies

Notes on companies, these are services I use and want to have their contact details like emails, phone numbers, addresses etc. I may also have some details in them that are about my experiences or something I need/want to remember about that company. It’s useful when talking about a company to link in notes to bubble up common threads.

Exercises

Notes on exercises how to do them, links to resources etc.

Games

This is my current not public game notes. I’m slowly going through all my notes here and converting them to the public version.

This is a process because of the public vs private context issue I mentioned before. Some details I think should be public and it’s great to share. But for example, I track when I lend games or borrow games from friends; I don’t want their details leaked out into the public and its no ones business. I have developed a system to track this but requires me to slowly update all my game notes.

This project of updating them also has me checking in on details about when the game originally was released, how published it, and developed it as well as update the banner and cover art if needed.

Notes

I have trouble atm separating Journals and Daily notes. For day to day, the daily notes feels fine, but four journaling it gets confusing to add it in the same daily note but I have everything a bit mixed.

In my main vault I have been slowly placing more of my “notes” into the root and getting a feel for what that’s like.

Subfolders

  • Daily
    • organized by year / month
  • Emails
    • organized by year / month
  • Events - calendar events converted to markdown files
    • organized by year / month
  • Journals
  • Meetings

People

This is my private collection of notes for people. Like an address/phone book, notes for birthdays so I can remember, details if someone likes or dislikes something whatever might be useful. Its particularly nice when writing a journal or general note and you can link to someone specifically.

Projects

todo add in details about this.

Generally a collection of projects as folders. Each project will have its own structure and feel porting over anything relevant to that project into the project folder OR linking from a main/indexed type note for that project.

Recordings

This is a project I have on-going. It’s using a transcoder voice to text local system to take recordings I have done mostly for personal journaling and capture it via text. I’d love to refine this process and automate it as the setup is clumbsy atm. The idea of being able to record in text form, automate pulling details out and having the “recording” text searchable is very neat.

Things

The idea of this is to capture the things I own in the physical world. (or digital.)

I built a project to manage this a bit using PocketBase for my Figment project as well. However I still want to have the notes in obsidian because this is my home base.

The goal for this is to expand notes on things to include when I purchased it, when it needs to be replaced, its value in market today. If I have 1 or more of that thing, general condition of it. all those details I could possibly want to capture so I can use that info for whatever I want.

  • when to water plants,
  • when to change the oil on your lawnmower,
  • when to purchase new filters for HVAC,
  • What power tools do I own,
  • How much insurance coverage do I need for my physical things I want to replace in the event of something happening.

All that kind of thing.

Work

Here I have a folder for every workplace I’ve professionally worked at. Within that you may find a “mini” Obsidian vault. Some companies I was allowed to use Obsidian some I am not; however I can still take my own personal notes about things and that’s where I store that information so it’s easier to contextualize and separate but still reference.

Writing

Just my writing, something that’s a bit more focused writing. This content would be for personal letters to someone or articles I would have published etc. It’s pretty sparse atm, content may be found under Notes instead.